Salt and pepper vs. ketchup Feb 24, 2017
I recently, unintentionally, made one of the biggest changes in my life since switching to black coffee:  I stopped putting ketchup on my eggs and started putting just salt and pepper.  I was traveling one weekend, and there were eggs but no ketchup.  In an effort to salvage a breakfast, I went with some simple salt and pepper, hoping to at least make the eggs palatable.  It turns out ketchup is essentially made of salt and pepper, and some sugar and tomatoes.  The sugar and tomatoes don't really matter for me in terms of adding flavor to eggs.  It all comes down to the salt and pepper.  Not only did it salvage the breakfast, it was good enough for to me switch permanently.  Now when I go to restaurants, I don't have to convince the waiter that ketchup is a reasonable condiment for eggs (it's a regional thing apparently).  Salt and pepper for the win. #food
Sinus infection Feb 15, 2017
I got my first sinus infection last year, and it was quite an experience.  I usually kind of tough it out when I get a cold or feel sick; it doesn't really matter if I'm sitting around with a runny nose at home or at my desk at work.  I don't interact with a lot of people at my job, so I can usually maintain my regular levels of activity when I'm sick.  I even try to go to the gym to sweat it out of me.  I'm sure there's science that contradicts that idea; I don't care.  It's at least partially a mental game:  Pretend to feel better, proceed to feel better. 

But a sinus infection was a whole other ballgame.  I had a meeting scheduled for that day, and I went to bed the night before feeling kind of crappy, but oh well.  So I toughed it out and went to work and proceeded to lead my meeting successfully.  But after an hour, I was really hurting, so I told my coworkers I was leaving.  My commute home takes me over some decent-sized hills, and the blinding pain I felt in my face and skull was something memorable.  I purchased some pseudoephedrine, which thankfully didn't cause me any negative side effects.  For the next few days, I was nonfunctional.  And we happened to get a pretty big snow storm the following day, so I was outside with the snowblower, trudging along blindly, trying not to make any sudden movements that would disrupt my relative stasis.  It was brutal. 

Since that experience, whenever I feel even a hint of sinus pressure, I fear for my general well-being.  It was such a unique type of pain, it's something I'd rather avoid in the future.  Thank science for drugs! #health
Pillow helmet Feb 7, 2017
So I had an idea the other night as I was falling asleep in a hotel bed with an uncomfortable pillow:  I usually sleep with a neck pillow, but I don't feel like traveling with it.  Wouldn't it be cool if there was a pillow that wrapped around your head like a helmet, with with the neck support of a neck pillow?  It would work in hotel beds, as well as car trips and plane rides.  There's a thing called an Ostrich Pillow, but it doesn't have neck support.  Million Hundred dollar idea here. #products
Outrage fatigue Feb 7, 2017
One of the ideas behind my post on political apathy was "outrage fatigue", which the Onion satirically wrote about over a decade ago by describing liberals reactions to all the Bush-era stuff that was going on at the time.  I guess it's kind of an old concept, and perhaps it's more of a liberal problem than anything, but it generally feels like a sense of exhaustion and apathy about whatever issue is currently center-stage.  It's frustrating because I feel like I'd like to be more outraged at things like Trump tweeting "Any negative polls are fake news", but I just don't have it in me.  I think part of it is a rational response to the results of previous outrage, i.e. nothing.  Outrage, opinion pieces, protests.  These things accomplish nothing when literally 50% of people disagree with every fiber of your being.  I'm done here. #politics