The Yabba-Dabba-Doo Virus

We spent the last few days of April recovering from a virus on the loose in the house. Last week, Lilly had it, then Ann, then me. Ann had to stay home from school on Friday, then I felt crummy on Saturday. While I was on the couch for much of that afternoon, Ann, mostly recovered, decided it was time to watch a lot of the fourth season of The Flintstones, a DVD set that was given to us some time ago.

I appreciate its spot in the annals of TV animation, and like it for the most part, but the show was never a top favorite of mine. A half-dozen or so episodes is more than enough at one sitting. Still, the season premiere that year, which guest stars Ann-Margret more or less as herself, is an exceedingly charming cartoon. Maybe that's because the show's husband vs. wife antics are toned down for the episode, with the addition of a musical score that's aged a lot better than the premise of the show. I don't ever remember seeing this particular episode in repeats, and I don't know whether my family would have been watching on the original airdate, September 19, 1963, but I wouldn't remember it from then anyway.

I'm mostly recovered from the virus now, and back at the word mill. So I saw the May Day Google Doodle featuring the anniversary of the opening of the Great Exposition of 1851, including the Crystal Palace, a steam locomotive, and the Koh-I-Noor Diamond, among other marvels of the fair and the age.

Does "doodle" seem the right term, considering how much planning probably goes into them? My own choice for today's doodle would have been dandelions, which have sprouted in great number on my lawn, other lawns, vacant lots, roadsides and other green patches that I can see. But that's just me being narrow-minded. The Great Exhibition is well worth remembering.

Among other things, The Guardian notes that, "the building and the original show helped create the English euphemism 'spend a penny,' meaning go to the toilet, after sanitary engineer and plumber George Jennings created the first public loos. The so-called Monkey Closets were located in the Retiring Rooms, and visitors, who were also offered a shoe shine, were charged a penny to use them.

"The first show was a big success and the profit made was used to found London's Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum." Full article here.

Those are all fine legacies of the expo. Never heard of "spend a penny," but it seems to count as old slang. Any museum that has full-sized copies of Trajan's Column, as Victoria and Albert does, is all right by me. Though overshadowed by other London attractions, I can attest that the Natural History Museum and Science Museum are also excellent.

Tuesday Gripes

Something gave me a mild headache for much of the day, though it's gone now. What could it have been? The fact that a day from late November lodged itself somehow into mid-April? Though he was talking about Minnesota, Lileks put it well this morning for Illinois too: "This spring was off to such a promising start, but it was the usual cruel tease, the cozening look, the crooked finger, the flash of ankle, the stroll down the alley where we could be alone, and then bang: a pimp’s blackjack on the back of the head."

Or maybe it was the drip-drip-drip of being nickel-and-dimed constantly. The latest incident of being nickel-and-diming literally cost me four nickels, or two dimes, when I bought 20 postcard-rate stamps today and discovered -- guess I wasn't paying attention -- that the domestic postcard rate is now 29¢, up a penny from before. The clerk didn't have any new denomination stamps, so I got 20 polar bear 28¢ stamps plus 20 Tiffany Lamp 1¢ stamps.

Looks like the nominal postcard rate has caught up with the first-class rate of 29¢ back from 1991 to '95. I was out of the country when the 29-cent Elvis was issued in early 1993. In fact, I missed the nationwide voting to pick between Young Elvis and Elvis After He Discovered Carbohydrates, but I heard it was a landslide for the former anyway.

Or maybe it's our kitchen ants. They're very small. Each could fit between the very smallest subdivision lines on standard wooden ruler, I think. We've seen a few in the kitchen for a week or so now. But only a few, marching one by one. Today they were out in greater numbers: ten by ten, hurrah. So now I have to figure out a way to deal with them, besides on-the-counter summary executions.

But I'm just carping. In the late afternoon, even in the cold and drizzle, the day didn't seem so bad after I drove past two police cars, lights flashing, on a quiet suburban street. The cops were doing a sobriety check on a fellow they'd pulled over. I know this because I caught a glance of him, balding and pudgy and about my age, with one of his legs raised. I'm fairly certain I had a better day than he did.

That Old TB

At 5 p.m. today it was still twilight. I noticed that because I arrived home from an errand around then, and in noticing that I realized that the days are indeed getting longer. Not that that means the ground is any less buried in snow, the earliest layers of which go back to the last week of 2009.

Last Friday morning, Yuriko and I made our way to a small public health clinic in the northern suburbs, a little far from our part of metro Chicago, but the closest place to receive the swine flu vaccination for no extra charge. "Free," you might call it, but I do support the Cook County public health system through various tax payments. In any case, no out-of-pocket expenses.

Maybe the term "public health clinic" evokes drab waiting rooms, dingy corridors, surly employees and flocks of poor people waiting around for hours: the DMV of medicine. This particular public health clinic fit none of those stereotypes, though it was plain in the way that public buildings often are, say schools designed from the 1950s to the '70s.

A pleasant woman behind the main desk checked us in, we did a little paperwork, and then we waited for about five minutes -- not long enough, since I wasn't able to finish a magazine article that I started -- in a small waiting area with about ten other people. Once we went in, we were shown to a small doctor's office, and minutes later had H1N1 deposited up our noses. And that was that.

"What other kinds of services does this clinic offer?" I asked the desk woman on the way out.

"This is a TB clinic," she answered.

Swine flu, then, is just a temporary sideline. With any luck, I won't need the main services of the clinic, though in our time we can't quite be sure that a disease beaten back by dint of prosperity and antibiotics and public health initiatives will stay beaten back. Still, North America seems like a reasonably good place to stay TB-free.

H1N1 Up Yer Nose

It was a classic drizzly November day today, with some periods of heavy rain. Grey skies throughout, except for a rim of sunlight from the west just before sunset. Anyway, it's damp out there and the trees are bare. It's only a matter of time before I see Orion in the evening sky and winter begins. I was up in the wee hours one night early last month and for some reason I had to go outside, and there he was with animal companion Canis Major. But that doesn't count. He has to be in the evening sky.

Lilly and Ann received swine flu immunizations up their nose today at school. So far Cook County has declined to likewise immunize the adults of our household. Last week I called the county's flu hotline and, amazingly, got a human being instead of a recorded message. I expressed interest in getting the vaccine, and she asked, "What disease do you have?"

That is, we have to have an existing health problem of some kind if we're between 25 and 64. Alas, we're too healthy right now to get shots from the county, the main advantage of which is the low, low cost -- not free, but no extra charge on top of the taxes we pay to support the the county health department. A rare thing in the hall of mirrors that is health-care pricing.

Vaccine Demand vs. Vaccine Supply

The road to public health is a bumpy one. Right after their school was over today, Lilly and Ann and I went to the Hoffman Estates municipal building for seasonal flu shots. Theirs, since I've had mine. We noticed right away that things were different this year because a line snaked out the door. Last year, there was a short line for the shots but a longer one to vote absentee in the presidential election. I guess it depends what's on the top of the public mind.

I need to stress that the clinic was offering seasonal flu vaccinations, as it does every year. A number of signs taped to the doors, and the walls along the way, said as much as well: WE DO NOT HAVE H1N1 VACCINATIONS. Sign of the times.

We waited a while, not an intolerably long while, but just before we'd made our way to the table at which you file out your forms, a woman with the clinic told us that the stock of vaccine had been clean run through. Plumb used up. Gone like a sailor's pay on Sunday morning. None of those were her exact words, but she did say that they weren't expecting such a crush of people.

So we left with some dispatch. I wanted to get out of the parking lot before word got through to the people in line behind us, who would then all want to leave at about the same time, like at the end of a concert. Before we left, we did hear from the kindly clinic lady that there will be another clinic, but she didn't know when. Maybe when Togo and Balto manage to bring more vaccine to Hoffman Estates.

Loose Change

Rain all day and into the night. The grass and other plants will appreciate it. So do I.

Even on a rainy day, when your dentist tells you nothing else needs to be done to your teeth after a session of cleaning, that puts a spring in your step. Doubly so when the dentist says the same thing about your eldest daughter's teeth, or maybe triply so, since that eldest daughter often has holes that need filling.

Anyway, I dodged some uncomfortable and expensive dentistry again -- for now -- though I do grumble about the cost of cleaning and inspection. Insurance merely drops the price from astronomical to pretty high. But then again, on an annual basis such maintenance isn't so expensive, considering the use that my teeth get.

Later in the day, I noticed this in my pocket change:

A buffalo nickel! In my entire life of handling coins, I've never gotten one of these in pocket change. I was born too late. I am old enough to remember finding silver Roosevelt dimes (and one or two Mercury dimes), silver Washington quarters, silver Kennedy halves and lots of wheat pennies, including one or two 1943 steel cents, but no buffalo nickels.

Of course, as a collectible, it's garden-variety stuff -- a 1936 Denver strike, one of some 24.8 million nickels made at that mint that year, meaning it's not a rarity. Also, it's in Very Good condition at best. So maybe it would fetch $1.50, but I'll never find out, since I'm keeping it.

Remarkably (or maybe not so remarkably) there's a web site devoted just to buffalo nickels, and it tells me that fully 119 million buffaloes were minted at Philadelphia in '36, the most by far of any year and mint for the series. Why so many that year? The answer's somewhere deep in the archives of the Bureau of the Mint, probably.

A few weeks ago, I was at a store, and I noticed a yellowish coin next to the register's cash drawer. It wasn't anything made by the US mint, but I couldn't get close enough to see where it was from.

"What's that coin?" I asked.

"I don't know," the kid behind the counter said.

"Can I look at it?"

"Here, you can have it."

And so I do. It's a 20-centavo piece of recent (1999) vintage. These days, one peso trades for about 9.5¢, so I walked away from that store 1.9¢ richer, if in fact you could trade sums so small. I think I'll keep it, too.

According to Wiki, the reverse not only sports the value of the coin, but the leafage also represents, somehow, "Ácatl (13th day of the Aztec calendar)." I wonder how many Mexicans know that. I suspect that it's proportional to the number of Americans who know that Monticello is on the reverse of the Jefferson nickel, or what the Latin on the dollar bill means (besides E Pluribus Unum, which everyone knows. Right?)

Anyway, it made my day to go into a store and pick up an object unexpectedly that includes something Aztec. I suppose the snake and the eagle have Aztec roots, too, but not from the Aztec calendar.