Dextromethorphan & Phenylephrine rule my life

My allergies generally aren't too bad, thanks to a long regimen of allergic immunotherapy earlier this decade. A Claritin (10mg loratadine) on heavy allergy days, and I'm fine. Moving from the warmer east coast to the cooler climes of Wisconsin has helped. Lower temps = less pollen. (My specific cocktail of east coast allergens included Grass, Ragweed and Tree Pollen, though with different sets of each out here, my protections aren't as robust any more.)

On our drive back east last week, I noticed a marked change once we crossed the Mason Dixon Line. Namely, major nasal congestion leading to post-nasal drip leading to the variety of coughing that makes people suspect you're the cause of every pandemic in the last decade. For whatever reason, my constitution LOVES post-nasal drip. If I get it for a day, I get it for a month. One time, I ignored it too long and it turned into bronchitis.

So now, I get to be "that guy" for the month of June, constantly sucking on a cough drop (Menthol 7 mg), renewing my Day-Quil (the aforementioned Dextromethorphan 10 mg & Phenylephrine 5 mg, with a nice shot of Acetaminophen 325 mg to quell the chest pains from epic coughing fits) every 4 hours and sounding more like Barry White than a white man should. Yay. Adding to the fun, I have a gig on Friday, so I need to power-up with lots of other fun stuff to keep me up and going. Whoo-hoo!

Final total for the road trip: 2004.8 miles, including sidetrips. The kids were troopers. Given the cost differential (maybe $200 for gas vs. more than $1200 for flights), I suspect this is now our preferred travel method out east. Fun stuff.

A Random Collection of Thoughts for Today

• As you probably know, I record random cover versions of my favorite songs and post them to my website now and then. One of my favorite singer-songwriters is a guy named Paul Sanchez. About 8 years ago, I recorded a version of one of his songs called "Confidential Dance." Last night, I checked my email and saw this: "I just checked out your version of my song Confidential Dance, very cool. Rockin' but still vulnerable. i dig it, thanks for the cover. red beans and ricely yours, Paul Sanchez"
• Awesome.
• Last night, I played a little local showcase for FAWM. Did four songs and a little jam. Can you think of a better way to get pumped up for the show than getting an email from one of your favorite artists telling you they listened to something you did and thought it was cool?
• The show went really well. I remembered most of the words, my setup went mostly without a hitch, and the dozen or so people there seemed to enjoy it. From my end, I like playing enough that I'll play to an empty room as long as there are lights on me.
  
• I may have some video of the event up shortly, for anyone who wants to watch a grainy, static webcam of me yelling.
• Many thanks to Drewfus for comin' out and representing for the Das Binky Recording Collective. He is owed beers.
  
• Got home at about midnight, went to bed around 12:30. When I got upstairs, three-year old DD was still awake, reading a book with the light on. I recommended she go to bed, but she expressed no interest. I decided this wasn't a battle I wanted to deal with, and just encouraged her to go to bed soon.
  
• At 12:37, DD and sister ran in saying that the light was broken. It turns out that it was. But then I noticed the clock was out. And that the street looked really dark too. Yup, the power was out. The kids were freaked out and crept into bed with Mommy. I found a flashlight and wandered downstairs to call the power company. Power came back at about 2 am.
• In a somewhat un-related incident, the Internet went out at around 7 pm. I called the phone company this AM, and after 20 minutes of tests, we determined that the cable modem was fried. K mentioned that a big lightning strike hit nearby around them, and it occurs to me that the modem is NOT plugged into a surge protector. So, they're sending a new one, and I'm without Internet at home for 2 days.
  
• I've recently become addicted to a new video game called "Plants vs. Zombies", in which you try to stop a wave of zombies from destroying your house by placing militant plants on your lawn. It's awesome. As a result of this game, I've been up till around 1 AM three times this week. Watch the music video trailer. It will eat your brain with its awesomeness.
  
• As a result of being up too late too many days in a row, coupled with the added lost sleep due to the power outage, I am borderline comatose today. This manifests itself in a bleakly dark sense of humor and an unwillingness to deal with bullshit. I would have worked from home, but I have no Internet. I would have taken the day off, but I'm taking off four days next week. Yay.
• We're prepping for a big road trip next week. I went to AAA and got a Triptik. In a nice bit of forethought, I got an extra set of maps for the kids to use / enjoy / destroy. We'll be logging about 2500 miles over the course of a week, all of it with the kids. I can't decide if we're adventuresome or idiotic.
• As an aside to all of the above, on the whole, people need to chill out some more.
  

Nature at Work, with a little help

On Sunday, we took a little roadtrip down to Janesville, WI to check out the botanical gardens. Good fun, and afterwards we stopped by a little nursery in town to check out the early season plants. There was nothing we were interested in yet, but the girls were absolutely fascinated by a Venus Fly Trap, so we picked one up.

Every kid gets a Venus Fly Trap at some point. You poke at it a few times, set off all of the little mouths, put it on a windowsill and forget about it until 2 months later it's dead. It's a fun cycle.

By the time we got the thing home, three of the five mouths had been triggered by false alarms of one kind or another (only one linked to the kids). I'd set it up in the living room, nice bright warm room with a lot of indirect sunlight. Everyone was playing around the house, and I heard a big ol' housefly buzzing around the front room. Not a normal housefly, but a big, slow ginormous one. Stupid guy too, kept buzzing in the same circle by the front window.

I grabbed a paper towel and batted the dude down... didn't kill him, just stunned him a bit. Grabbed his wings and took him over to the fly trap and fed him in. It looked pretty comical... the dude was way too big for the tiny Venus Fly Trap mouth. It looked like an anaconda trying to eat a deer. But the plant dutifully closed as best as it could, and I ran to get the kids.

Unfortunately, the fly unstunned himself and pretty quickly realized that he could just walk out of the trap. He did so, and spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out on the warm stems of the fly trap. At this point in the season, there aren't too many flies in the house for the plant to feed on, so maybe I'll take it outside in the evenings to get some grub.

Fun times at the Das Binky house.