year1buick

Most of it I’m fairly used to, because we had to wear the full gown and head covering in the dental school. It’s the N95 mask and face shield that are the problem. Specifically, getting both to work with my loupes and light. At the moment, I can’t get either to work. Even just wearing the N95 causes my loupes to be totally off kilter. So, for the moment, I’m using a KN95 with a Level 3 over it. That way, I can at least use my loupes. But it’s still an adjustment, for sure. Naturally, the new place didn’t have any kind of orientation or shadowing today (to get a better feel how things work.) I walked in the door and they had a full schedule, right off the bat. Trial by fire, LOL.

Thanks!

“Once more unto the breach.” I start my new job tomorrow. I won’t lie, I feel a little nervous— haven’t touched a handpiece since early March, new city, new job and under a double layer of PPE (including an N95, which I’ve never done before). Should be interesting. The state also recommends taking a change of clothes to put our scrubs into at the end of the day. Plus 2x/day temperature checks. Now if we only had the house situation figured out, LOL. One thing at a time...

Wearing one outside in the summer sounds awful. I’m about to start having to wear an N95 with a surgical mask on top of that (to be discarded after each patient), plus a face shield, all day long. (And gown, head covering and foot booties.) I’m definitely not looking forward to that part of going back to work but I guess it’s the new normal for the foreseeable future.

Yeah, C. diff is can cause life threatening complications. I saw something once about spores being recovered— and reanimated— from a deep underground a salt deposit, that had been there for God knows how long. After the sun goes red giant, they’ll be the last to go.

Reading “pyroclastic flow” reminds me of the time, during a lecture in an undergrad geology elective, the professor stopped everything down to figure out the Scrabble points for “pahoehoe.” (I forget the amount. Plus, bonus tiles would make a big difference.)

My wife likes to take any one of our four mutts on walks but I hate having to stop every 20 feet for them to check out the smells and/or crap and pee. (The yorkie is the worst.)

It should probably say “inactivate” or something like that when referring to viruses, since they’re not alive to begin with. Bacterial spores can stay viable in extremely harsh environments, for very long times. Not all can form them, however. If I recall correctly from my bacteriology classes, just the clostridium and bacillus genera. But both include some “fun” species. (Dentists and Mds have to think about clostridium defficile, for example, when prescribing clindamycin or certain long term antibiotics.)

My second year in DCI and my rookie year at Regiment. Like the year before, I hadn’t really planned on marching but somehow found myself in Rockford in November and had a spot in the corps. Man, what a summer. We almost didn’t have a start at all, with nearly a 1/3 of the corps nearly getting hauled off to jail the night before first tour. (Luckily a corps parent convinced the farmer not to press charges. I wasn’t involved. Honest.) So many wild ups and downs— I think the only two corps we didn’t beat at some point that summer were BD and Star. Five parades on July 4, a crazy all night rehearsal in Natchitoches (it smelled weird), a half day off at Niagara Falls, the Horlick field lining crew, “sex gym” (I think it was this year. Might’ve been 94. I forget.) A love letter to DCI by our contras, written in white tape (I have a picture) left on the field after retreat. The death shrouds that never really were, but remained a pain in the hornline’s ### nonetheless. Kites, kites and more ####### kites. Dodging gopher holes (and gophers) at Beyer field. Brazale running rehearsal from the top of the equipment trailer, chain smoking and giving us all kinds of hell for screwing up his forms. Cesario’s pep talks. And so many other things. Even ending the way it did (we still took 6th in just about all non percussion captions) I had a great summer and made some great friends.

FFS

They were just ridiculous. I still remember seeing them for the first time on our CA tour and had a similar reaction.

That’s exactly what I’ve been using. I worded my post poorly, I’ve actually used it for years but hadn’t checked anything out in a while. (I get impatient and so have purchased most through Amazon or Apple.) The two I’ve gotten recently through overdrive had no wait but I also placed holds on my own the new Preston/Child book and one from James Rollins. Those will probably take forever to become available.

Try seeing if your local public library lets you check out books digitally. I’ve done it a couple of time recently (including so so authorized sequel to The Andromeda Strain.) When I check them out, I download them to a Kindle app on my iPhone and iPad. (I’ve never owned a Kindle.)

There’s also ongoing research using computer modeling to see if exiting drugs could interfere with SARS-CoV-2 binding sites and be used to treat infectious. I Think UT Southwestern is involved with one of these studies. Interestingly, Rosuvastatin was one that showed promise. (Which I happen to be taking. Yay for dyslipidemia!)

Yeah, it makes sense that they’d start planning that out pretty soon but it seems like you wouldn’t want to put ink to paper until you have a pretty good idea of how it’s going to play out, or risk compounding an already bad situation. I don’t envy them.

So my previous question seems to have been passed by but I’m still really curious about it so I’ll ask again. How much lead time do show sponsors and corps need to set the summer schedule? If the reopening of large spectator sports keeps getting pushed back, what’s the least amount of time DCI needs to put all of those pieces into place? Or, do they just plan away with the hope that it’s all worked out by next June? And, if they do, and it isn’t worked out, wouldn’t that be doubly disastrous? I’m just having a hard time understanding how the offseason planning is going to work in this environment.

I haven’t seen any mention yet of sporting events in re-open plans. (Granted, I’ve scaled back my news reading the past few days.) Obviously it’s a non starter for DCI until that resumes, right? How far in advance are DCI show deals typically worked out? How far can this part of the process be delayed or pushed back?

For example, hydrochloroquine sulfate taken with azithromycin can lead to qt prolongation and arrhythmias.

Wow, I hadn’t heard of that. I guess it’ll be an interesting seven years if it threads the keyhole. I didn’t realize he was the director of the Hayden Planetarium. That was one of my favorite parts of the Museum of Natural History. (I wish we could’ve stayed longer but we were on a tight schedule and trying to keep up with a bunch of hyper teenagers.) edit: I just read that newer calculations have pretty much determined it’s not a viable possibility. But he’s fun to listen to. Also, “density-dependent population limiter” is a much cooler way of stating what I was thinking.

I tell parents to do that all the time. The pH is lowest in the first 5 minutes (while the bacteria in your mouth feast on the sugar and output lactic acid waist). After that, saliva will start bringing it back up but if you continue to graze on sweets, the mineral content near areas of plaque will be more prone to go into solution.

Maybe most of the dinosaurs weren’t killed off by a meteor but a virus instead? Sort of a rate limiting step built into the natural order that occasionally kicks in whenever a species or group (or drum corps) becomes too dominant. 😉

It’s the DCP version of Groundhog Day now.

I know some people that are still quite vocal on FB about not understanding why we’re doing anything at all differently. They’ve thought of it as a non issue from day one and haven’t budged so much as an inch.