I shuffled along the little asides of the Iowa Caucuses and saw this article about the sandwich below and almost dropped my drawers. Not really.

These things are real?? Several years ago I was browning some ground round and Cameron came in and asked for a hamburger. I looked at his seven or eight year old face, smiled and on the spur of the moment offered him a “loose” meat sandwich. I MADE IT UP. AND HE BOUGHT IT. So, for years, I would palm them off on him.
Just recently I was thinking about his finding out this wasn’t something you could order in a restaurant. Well, guess what? Of course, the idea of the AJ loose meat sandwich is to brown and thoroughly drain and pat dry ground round or ground sirloin or Laura Lean. Buffalo also makes an excellent loose meat sandwich.
So, Cameron, if you every see a Maid-Rite sandwich, remember: This is NOT your Grandmother’s Loose Meat Sandwich. You order a Made Correctly.

I got a little email from LZP, the fellow who dispatched the Gnomdelionian Ambassador to our little blessed plot of earthly realm, giving me a source of information on folk remedies. Of course, THIS PLACE RIGHT HERE talks about the beneficial effects of dandelions for medicinal purposes. You know about medicinal: Oh, let’s just have a nip of the Ole Yellow for _____. Hint: it works for about anything.

To get my attention, LZP added a little caricature. This one.

I STILL have a stomach that has a poked bruise feeling when I eat anything . . . and I STILL need to stay near to the bathroom. But I do feel better, really.
This is a stubborn flu. Try not to get it, and if you do, know that we who have gone before you are sympathizing.

This morning I got up feeling so-so and went about tasks for people who felt less than so-so. Then, about 2pm, I started thinking “Uh, no. No more chills please; no more waves of fatigue. No-no-no-no.” But there I was, on the sofa, under a blanket and two afghans, my body pulled up into a ball.

After a while, I felt better and went out to the kitchen for crackers; then I sat down and did sudokus and surfed the internet and read my Kindle . . . all with the undercurrent of vague apprehension.

About an hour ago, out of the blue, I realized I was hungry. SO I HOPPED UP. I scanned the refrigerator for real food and scarfed it down. I guess the little invaders had tried one last attack before my AmeliaJake defenders planted the AJ flag on high ground.

Good job, guys. It’s V-AJ Day. (Well, maybe I’ll knock on the flagpole for good measure.)

I have written about us having the flu. At first it seemed like the fast-moving surgical strike type of flu: Snap of fingers and violent symptoms begin, hours of agony, snap of fingers and symptoms stop.
Well, not exactly. Not exactly, at all.
I guess what happens to most victims is this: Oh, feeling sort of bad, then, BAM, really, really bad. It is so bad when it abates, you feel much better – but only relatively. Days of sort of sick continue. I was different: felt sort of bad, got flattened like a cartoon character, sort of re-inflated and then continued to feel sort of sick.

Are you sort of following me here? Perhaps this flu eats vocabulary for energy.

While I was spared the wild vomiting, I am now waiting out the slow down of my stomach processing machinery. I eat crackers, some with a little cheese on them – but not very many or I feel soooo full. I tried something else – okay, it was part of a Little Debbie Boston Cream Cake – and proceeded to burp it up for hours. So back to crackers and cheese.

Quentin spent New Year’s Eve in Galveston and spotted this bear . . . very far away from the Ohio Redoubt of the West Facing Cave- but very close to a sweet shop – and we know how those WFC bears like their sweets.

The Ambassador from, Gnomdelaion met with representatives of our Getting to Know you Up Close and Personal Agency and, uh, posed for pictures afterward.