Thursday night

My supervisor turns 50 tomorrow but didn't want us to do anything elaborate for her birthday. (She's taking the day off.) I bought her a "so you're turning 50" Hallmark card and gave her an IOU for a lunch on me. (Someone else in the department took her out to lunch today.)

This has been kind of a crazy week with the stuff going on with B. The drunken, drugged-up (?) BF brought me into it (and I brought B.'s friend into it). Their domestic situation is under close scrutiny now. And the BF knows I'm not a fan. (I'd also advised B. to talk to his doctor about the situation.)

So the "death panels" have been killed from the healthcare legislation? As I made a comment earlier on a post about Sarah Palin's latest Facebook entry on that topic (which obviously wasn't written by her--it had footnotes, even--and she barely makes sense when not reading from a script), would she rather see a brain-dead patient's estate go to doctors and hospitals and insurance companies than to the patient's own family? What about those family values?

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who's on the Finance Committee, says the government shouldn't be involved in end-of-life matters. Yet as Rachel Maddow pointed out tonight, the Republican Congress and George Bush had no qualms about getting involved in the matter of brain-dead Terri Schiavo. Bush even truncated a vacation at his Texas "ranch" to return to Washington to show his support for the cause (although he didn't truncate a vacation when he was warned that Al-Qaeda was going to attack the United States). See Joan Walsh here ("Throw Grassley from the train!"). Also see here ("Grassley voted for end-of-life counseling in 2003").

Everyone should have a living will. Even Rush Limbaugh was doing advertisements (as was Rachel Maddow) for an outfit that does living wills. (Of course, now Rush is talking about the government killing granny.) Even if you're young, do you want to be artificially kept alive if, say, you get into an accident and your brain is dead and your family members will suffer paying the never-ending bills? Let's be real: it's a total waste of money. And these bills are getting higher and higher.

Tonight I saw how Bootsy has been getting on and off the bed since I rearranged the furniture. The bed is too high for him to jump up on. He used to jump up on a chair, then a nightstand, then the bed. Lately he's been jumping up on the nightstand and then the bed (and complaining). Tonight I put a leather cube by the nightstand so he can jump up on that first, since it's lower than the nightstand. (He's heavy and slow-moving and probably has arthritis as well.) (Lucky flies up on everything.)

(Actually, I had the leather cube by the nightstand on the other side of the room, farthest from the door. He was jumping up on the nightstand by the door, rather than walking around the bed.)

Made a load of chili tonight. The fresh Kielbasa I'd prepared for lunch today wasn't that great. Maybe that's why it was on sale. Hillshire Farms (or whatever) tastes better. I'd followed the instructions on the package for the Publix Kielbasa and simmered it in water for 15 minutes till it reached 160 F. internally. I think a lot of flavor leached out in the process. Maybe I would microwave it next time.