Stubble

Apparently, lab work is required before my routine CT scans, which take place before my regular visits with my oncologist. I guess I vaguely recall that to be the case. But when I got a call to schedule my CT scan, lab work was not scheduled. Yesterday, I got a call to get the lab work done; today. Because the CT scan is tomorrow. And my visit with the oncologist is early next week. My plans for today thereby are interrupted and otherwise made irrelevant. But I still need to get some paperwork notarized, so perhaps I can do that while I’m out and about. Although I cannot get a Medallion Signature Guarantee stamp, which is required for one of the processes I’m trying to complete; because my bank stopped providing them. And because other banks and financial institutions provide them only for clients who have been customers for at least six months. It’s the little things that can cause otherwise normal people to snap, causing them to do bad things like setting off nuclear devices in crowded sports stadiums.

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I’ve actually never contemplated setting off nuclear devices in crowded sports stadiums. Not really. I mean, I’ve fabricated such ideas to make a point, but I’ve never given them any serious thought. Few of us have. Which is a good thing. Not that many of us have access to nuclear devices. But people have done equally sinister and horrible deeds. Like bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people, or killings dozens of people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. I could go on and name dozens, if not hundreds, of equally horrible incidents of mass murder. I can never hope to understand what goes through a person’s mind that allows them to do such horrific things. I would think that a thought of just one decent, innocent person dying as a result of such an act would dissuade a potential perpetrator from carrying out such an act. Apparently, though, either those thoughts do not enter the heads of the monsters who inflict the carnage or the thoughts do not have the effects I assume they would. Whatever good deed those beasts may have done is for naught; they make their marks with the blood of the innocent. The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.

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The cupboards are beginning to look bare. I went shopping yesterday, online, and I continued this morning. I removed a few items from my order and added some to take their place. I will pick up the order (or at least some of it…I am told store shelves are bare) tomorrow afternoon. Online grocery shopping is convenient, but it is equally dangerous. I find it extremely easy to “click” on items I do not necessarily need but discover I want as I peruse the lists of products in front of me on the screen. The marketers and web designers who determine what and how to display products are brilliant in that they know the psychology of buying. If I search for “zucchini,” the screens they design show me zucchini, but also a host of “related” items that look extremely interesting. And I can “click” on those items so easily. I wrote about the documentary, Social Dilemma, recently; online grocery shopping perfectly illustrates the technology and psychology shown in the film.

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I’ve run out of steam. I have no interest in writing anything more at the moment. I should shower and shave to get ready for my trip to town to get lab work. I do not want to . I wonder if the technicians would notice my stubble and my day-old odor?