Fair play!
What made me happy today?
- Thread starter big soft moose
- Start date
If you drink anything with caffeine, theophylline, or theobromine, you should cut your consumption in half the very day you quit smoking. Nicotine is an inducer of CYP1A2, which neutralizes xanthines like the above-mentioned in the liver. Quitting nicotine has an effect equivalent to doubling your intake of coffee or other xanthine-based stimulants overnight.
The last of many times I quit smoking was with this insight, and I was amazed at how much easier it was. That was 40 years ago. (But the principle has not changed.)
I mainly drink decaff, when I drink coffee at all so hopefully, that shouldn't be a problem.
Once I've given up tobacco successfully, I guess it's the cocaine next.
I found a massively cheaper prescription drug policy, which was OK, I guess. I don't have prescriptions. It's hard to feel happy about insurance.
One must be prepared, though.
So, in 2024, $9.80 a month for a prescription plan. In 2025, missed the memo, ended up on the hook for a nearly 500% increase at about $45 per month.
This year, Aetna was on my radar. The fine print said it would be about a Happy Meal less than $100 a month. Call it a 1,000% increase from 2024.
I was very offended. I never order Happy Meals. What was Aetna thinking?
Then I found something that made me happy, even though I recognize a lot of people got hurt.
In May, the federal government filed False Claims Act charges against Aetna and some other insurance nimrods. According to the DOJ, Aetna got insurance brokers, ethically bound to be neutral, to push customers onto Aetna policies in return for millions in unlawful kickbacks.
I wrote to Aetna and said I was materially strengthening their company by cancelling. Money in Aetna's hands, considering some of their life decisions, can't be a safe thing. By making an effort to cleanse them of nasty old cash, I was making them morally stronger.
If it was worth millions to get brokers to cheat and lie, my quintessentially noble efforts would surely be worth a few thousand.
I mailed the letter just this afternoon. I can't help myself. I've already checked my mailbox three times. I'm going to be rich just as soon as Aetna sends my kickbacks!
One must be prepared, though.
So, in 2024, $9.80 a month for a prescription plan. In 2025, missed the memo, ended up on the hook for a nearly 500% increase at about $45 per month.
This year, Aetna was on my radar. The fine print said it would be about a Happy Meal less than $100 a month. Call it a 1,000% increase from 2024.
I was very offended. I never order Happy Meals. What was Aetna thinking?
Then I found something that made me happy, even though I recognize a lot of people got hurt.
In May, the federal government filed False Claims Act charges against Aetna and some other insurance nimrods. According to the DOJ, Aetna got insurance brokers, ethically bound to be neutral, to push customers onto Aetna policies in return for millions in unlawful kickbacks.
I wrote to Aetna and said I was materially strengthening their company by cancelling. Money in Aetna's hands, considering some of their life decisions, can't be a safe thing. By making an effort to cleanse them of nasty old cash, I was making them morally stronger.
If it was worth millions to get brokers to cheat and lie, my quintessentially noble efforts would surely be worth a few thousand.
I mailed the letter just this afternoon. I can't help myself. I've already checked my mailbox three times. I'm going to be rich just as soon as Aetna sends my kickbacks!
Day 12 and My illness finally broke!
No more coughing so bad it hurts, sleepless nights as my sinus drains into my ears, and general misery.
I mean, im still spitting out gunk, but im no longer miserable!
(-sigh- now i have to shovel my driveway.... but thats a rant for the Unhappy thread)
No more coughing so bad it hurts, sleepless nights as my sinus drains into my ears, and general misery.
I mean, im still spitting out gunk, but im no longer miserable!
(-sigh- now i have to shovel my driveway.... but thats a rant for the Unhappy thread)
This makes me happy, too. Poor girlie, you have really had a siege of it!
Louanne Learning
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The Iberian lynx has been reclassified from "endangered" to "vulnerable" after a huge conservation effort. The population has climbed to 2,000 from 60 in the last two decades. Mostly, they are found in Spain. Here's some babies:
So glad to hear your antibodies broke through.
Here's hoping the rest of it disappears soon. Fingers crossed 
I was a pack a day Marlboro reds guy, interspersed with cloves on the weekends. When I quit I bought a box of toothpicks. Carried them in the same pocket I'd kept my smokes in. The hand motion was the same, reach to the same place, pull out the box, grab a stick and put it in my mouth. I even caught myself tapping the "ash" off a toothpick a couple of times.
But it helped.
If we still had blogs, this would be a short blog post but here we are.
ALL IS NOT WRONG IN THE WORLD TODAY
So my school has a long row of maybe 50 flagpoles lining the quad-ish thing out front. National flags, arrayed in, I believe, no particular order (although Israel has been at the head of the group since at least the Oct 7th attacks. Dunno). But today the security guard was putting up the flags, as usual, without any special ceremony. He's got a box of flags, gets the top one out, clips it to the line, and uses a drill to operate the raising mechanism, then moves on to the next pole and the next flag.
But I saw that one of the flags, maybe France (there was red, white, and blue, but zero wind so I couldn't see detail) was at half mast.
I didn't think our school had any habit of doing that, and I'd glanced at the headlines on the way in and seen no particularly awful disasters in the world. so I asked the security guard "Which flag is that? Why is it at half mast?"
"I don't know, but the pulley is stuck. I'll call maintenance after I get the rest up."
ALL IS NOT WRONG IN THE WORLD TODAY
So my school has a long row of maybe 50 flagpoles lining the quad-ish thing out front. National flags, arrayed in, I believe, no particular order (although Israel has been at the head of the group since at least the Oct 7th attacks. Dunno). But today the security guard was putting up the flags, as usual, without any special ceremony. He's got a box of flags, gets the top one out, clips it to the line, and uses a drill to operate the raising mechanism, then moves on to the next pole and the next flag.
But I saw that one of the flags, maybe France (there was red, white, and blue, but zero wind so I couldn't see detail) was at half mast.
I didn't think our school had any habit of doing that, and I'd glanced at the headlines on the way in and seen no particularly awful disasters in the world. so I asked the security guard "Which flag is that? Why is it at half mast?"
"I don't know, but the pulley is stuck. I'll call maintenance after I get the rest up."
43 years without a cigarette. But I could still relapse after a couple puffs, I fear.
I watched a lot of people recover from "hard drugs" who couldn't quit smoking tobacco. One guy in particular claimed tobacco was innocuous compared to heroin and cocaine. He died of lung cancer at 45. I never smoked a cigarette in my life, but when I think of all the second hand smoke I endured sitting through those meetings...
I've never smoked anything in my life, but I'll have dreams now and then where I'll wake up and my whole body wants a cigarette. Not a pretty one, either. One that'll burn me from the inside out.
I've yet to achieve that dream, and it's one I'll let be unrealized.
What's making me happy at the moment? Doritos. Nacho cheese flavor. And I've got my list plotted for shopping for the kids I'm sponsoring this year for Christmas. Gonna fill a cart after work.
Yes. I think we can call that the "Smoker's Syllogism":
1. I want to smoke tobacco, but not heroine or cocaine.
2. Tobacco is safer to smoke than heroin and cocaine.
3. Therefore, tobacco is just fine to smoke.
Obviously this is a fallacy. It can also be used to justify drinking loads and loads of vodka, because vodka is safer to drink than, say, antifreeze. Or hydrochloric acid.
I've never smoked either. When I was three, I watched one my grandfathers die of smoking-related lung cancer. When I was ten, one of my uncles died of the same. That gave me a very strong motive not to start.
When I see the concept of smoking heroine I don't think of cigarettes or tobacco. Reminds me of that old joke, "Q. Do you smoke after sex? A. I dunno, I never looked."
Must have Rath's smoking heroine imagery, but I just finished a Scrabble game (which I won) by using, inter alia, "whore" and "slut." I'll take it.
Don't worry, you'll be able to call yourself a non-smoker soon.
Buproprion coming on Thursday. It makes you not want to smoke. No. Effing. Way. I will eat my hat if a pill makes me not want to smoke.
I recommend some fava beans and a nice chianti to go along with it.
