Reality check

Yesterday I was on my way home from work when there was a loud noise and the Grumpymobile immediately veered right. I pulled into a side street to assess the damage:

 

Sigh.

So I dug out the spare and its gear and got started, jacking up the car, unbolting the shredded tire, tossing it in the trunk...

I'd just started rolling the spare around to the front when a crew from the Grumpyville fire department drove by. They pulled over and 4 guys piled out. One of them took the wrench out of my hand, another handed me a bottle of water. They bolted the spare on, lowered the car, and put all the stuff back in the trunk in what seemed like 15 seconds (maybe they were secretly an Indy pit crew).

As they piled back in their truck one of them said, "sir, it's pretty hot out, and a guy your age should know better than to do stuff like this."

Random pics

Okay, time to hit the mailbag for stuff you guys have sent in.

First, we have this, from a patient medication form:

 

I never thought of this product coming in different grades, and I really don't want to know what the difference is between "professional" and "amateur."

 

Next, in the way only Amazon can, we have this juxtaposition from their "you might also like" algorithm:

 

One reader is currently on an Alaskan cruise, and one night at dinner they were serving uh...

 

 

 

And lastly, the same reader saw this in a brochure on board. While I'm sure the award is well-deserved, I really don't want the details. I'm sure it involved being called at 2:00 a.m., was really disgusting, and had something to do with the all-you-can-eat buffet.

 

"Helluva diuresis, eh?"

One of my patients landed in the hospital overnight for mild pneumonia, and his wife asked me to look at the records to make sure there weren't any changes in his Parkinson's medications.

In the discharge summary I noticed this:

 

June 6, 1944

"There have only been a handful of days since the beginning of time on which the direction the world was taking has been changed in one 24-hour period by an act of man. June 6, 1944, was one of them.

"No one can tell the whole story of D-Day. Each of the 60,000 men who waded ashore that day knew a little part of the story too well. To them the landing looked like a catastrophe. Each knew a friend shot through the throat, shot through the knee. Each knew the first names of five hanging dead on the barbed wire offshore, three who lay unattended on the beach as the blood drained from the holes in their bodies. They knew whole tank crews who drowned when their tanks were unloaded in 20 feet of water.

"There were heroes here no one will ever know because they're dead. The heroism of others is known only to themselves.

"What the Americans and the British and the Canadians were trying to do was get back a whole continent that had been taken from its rightful owners. It was one of the most monumentally unselfish things one group of people ever did for another.

"It's hard for anyone who's been in a war to describe the terror of it to anyone who hasn't. How would anyone know that John Lacey died in that clump of weeds by the wagon path as he looked to his left towards Simpson and caught a bullet behind the ear? And if there had been a picture of it - and there weren't any - it would've shown that Lacey was the only one who carried apples for the guys in his raincoat pocket.

"If you think the world is rotten, go to the cemetery at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer on the hill overlooking the beach. See what one group of men did for another, D-Day, June 6, 1944."

- Andrew Rooney (1919-2011)

I'm not following this

 Seen in a chart:

 

 

Quiz time

Okay, as required to maintain my hospital privileges (in addition to sending in a check) every 2 years I have to take mandatory online testing to make sure I can deal with situations at the hospital.

So, without further comment (that's your job, isn't it?) here are some of the questions I was asked, along with the answer options: