Now, what is worse – a sinus headache in warm weather or one in frigid weather? Well, I’d have to say you can be fairly miserable with sinus in heat and humidity, but there is a sharp, alien pain to cold weather sinus. You feel brittle; your nose hints that it might just shatter and fall off your face, sort of like an implosion, from the inside out. That is to say, you don’t have the idea you can reach down and grab your nose and duct tape it back on; no, you suspect it will be like shattered crystal that has been walked over. Your nose is Humpty Dumpty.

Then that icicle reaches up into the sinus over your eye and and you experience something akin to brain freeze without the ice cream or slushie. Of course, I’m letting my imagination run amok here, but it gets my mind off a small, basic complaint – for awhile.

Actually, I should be glad I am not standing out in the cold with my mouth open because when your teeth get too cold, it really is unpleasant. You fold your tongue over them and it doesn’t do anything; you just have to wait it out.

You can tell what a petty day I am having; I have bigger concerns, but it’s easier to worry about my nose disintegrating. Maybe I’ll just sit here and hold it on.

I did not watch The State of the Union address because I did not want to put extra pressure on my blood pressure medicine – especially when the camera pans out and you can see Joe Biden in the background. One other reason for not watching last night was just that – the coverage. Everyone then has to give their opinion of the speech, either as a single talking head or as part of a panel. Then there’s the man on the street . . .

This may mark me as not being a responsible citizen, but it kept me from perhaps wearing a TV on my foot.

I have no research to back up anything here; it is all opinion, and one opinion at that – mine. I have noticed that when I am asking questions about a product on in a transaction, there can come a time when BAM the worker has to sign off because of the company’s really strict time schedules. Someone new will take over and I have to go over my question again or just let it go.

I understand that in order to offer prices attractive to customers, there is a regimentation of the workforce. But, come on, penalizing a worker for not taking his/her break at precisely such and such time is ridiculous. Of course, the customer is not considered A customer; no, we are lumped together in this amorphous mass. What if a customer doesn’t get decent service because of the strict regulations? It will balance out, the corporation figures. They’ll “take it”. And if one just decided to shop there no more, well, that just it – it’s one . . . and in the end, where else is that one going to go?

I know when I do go in a store, there are certain cashiers I will wait in line for because they are not robots and perhaps inquire if it was still raining out when I came in; there are other workers I will seek out because they will listen to my question, make certain they understand it and don’t just shove the most convenient thing in my hand. A worker who will smile and exchange a few friendly spontaneous words is a breath of fresh air. Ironically, I find myself thinking, “Don’t ask it,” when I sense the automatic “Did you find everything you were looking for?” about to come out of an employee’s mouth.

What I would really not want is to have the job of being the direct superior of the employees who are “first responders” to the customers. Those people are caught between encouraging their team to be responsible and polite to the customers and the corporate push of faster, faster, faster. Unit processed per hour, low staffing, etc.

Remember when the question was “Where’s the beef?” Well, it’s right above.

I was on the computer today when a pop-up sent me on an investigation into a person I knew on a daily basis close to 30 years ago. In the wondrous world of data information in the ether, I had Google Circled some years back and forgot about it. But them this little circle of a picture appeared on the side of my computer and I knew who it was.

It being a Monday, and a cold one, and me being fond of puzzles, I decided to do some investigation on, of course, the Internet. Here I sit, just a little while later, totally unconnected by any wires to anything, and I have learned he has two replacement knees and family reunions.

And because I am nosy, I looked at some other people from that time . . . and then I went and looked in a mirror. Whoa, it is true. Time stops for no one.

As a northern Hoosier, I should be shrugging and indicating that, hey, there’s no need for a heavy coat. Heck, just run barefoot out to the car. But this fall, except for one quickly melting snow, has been warm, with temps often between 35 and 59?. And, thus it was when I opened my eyes this morning and checked my phone, I exclaimed, “It’s ONLY fire degrees!” in a totally different way; that would be the “Oh, God, we’re going to freeze!!!!!” line of expression. Not unlike Prissy in Gone With the Wind who became hysterical as she told Miss Scarlet she had never delivered no babies.

I think it is a very good idea to keep a sleeping bag in your car in winter – especially a well-made, guaranteed to like -50? or so. However, one way or another, a really good sleeping bag wound up on the garage floor and then wrapped around the front axle of a car. I have an idea about the one way or another but I am not going there, because after spending two hours on a garage floor, reaching around a wheel with knives and poultry scissors, I freed the bag – in pieces – and might have the urge to get revenge.

This, Gee, Grandma can get things done wears a little after awhile. I mean to teach someone to not panic, to just figure out what you have to do and do it is one thing when you are passing the torch down generations. It is another when you are being passed the buck.

I did have a little fun with someone Friday. We printed out two copies of the New York Times Hard Sudoku puzzle and sat together on a sofa working separately, only one of us was talking . . . numbers and remarking on how much she had done and how well it was going. So I sighed and asked her to desist, but that only made her think she had more of an edge by doing it.

I remarked that I needed an eraser and concentrated on “DO NOT LISTEN TO THE RANDOM NUMBERS SHE IS CALLING OUT AS YOU WORK.” Hubris was strong, but hubris is not the Force and as she made more distracting chatter, I quietly said, “I’m finished.” The look on her face was not priceless, but it wasn’t cheap. I’m gloating; I will meet Karma; I don’t care.

Just when I thought it was safe to look at a politic page, this popped up. I have no idea why this man so annoys me – well, maybe I do.

I don’t understand how I went so long without having a bagless vacuum cleaner, because you just feel so good when you flip the lever and you see all the dirt flop into a trash bag. And, every now and then, you can go and wash out the container that comes off and has no bag. I have a Shark vacuum and if I want to get exercise, I can stretch it out on the floor and jump over it again and again. I feel so silly having written that just because I thought of the “jump the shark” line, but I absolutely do not care. Silliness is not necessarily a bad thing – perhaps it is all those Microscopic Silly Imps jumping up and down shouting Yea! in my brain lifts my spirits.

Not that brain surgeons should necessarily have moments of silliness when they are poking around professionally. Kind of a scary thought. Maybe people with occupations along that line should have a designated silly time to get it out of their systems safely.

I had to get up this morning to take someone to work; it was probably a good thing since there was no contract that yesterday’s cascade of minor disasters would end at midnight. Once upon a time I would have written a guidebook, complete with historic marker signs, about the events of yesterday. I would have included little posts of foam bricks so people could re-enact the pounding of the forehead aimlessly against a brick wall. But I’m not up for that now. All I can manage is “cracked taillight” and “AUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHH” Did you hear that; if so, sorry – I would have muffled the primal call of frustration with the foam bricks had I written the story the first way I mentioned.

I believe a lot of people decide that they will blog everyday for a year. I decided to take that unnecessary responsibility off the table; in fact I threw it off because often people have nothing worth saying every single day. Of course, there are folks who take some psychological comfort from just writing down whatever they are thinking or their mood and so they write. That’s okay; (it has to be okay because I think I do it a lot.)

But now, if I don’t feel I will get some solace or motivation from just rambling along, I am not in that group of people who feel the pressure of having to post something. I suppose I could have started by not posting on the 1st, but it just seemed more perverse to do it this way. I am now wondering if that should be worrisome. Probably.

I sometimes wish I had been born with the personality of a girl I will designate as “D in Motion.” Actually, there are quite a few people whose personality I envy; they would know who they are. I sometimes think of what they would do or say . . . but perversely, I do something less wise – because I am AMELIAJAKE.

It could be possible that when these nice people get frustrated, they wish they could throw an AmeliaJake fit and get the stress out; maybe I could rent myself out as a proxy.