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CDC ACIP Meeting on the RSV Vaccine and Some Dad Jokes
We watched the section of the CDC ACIP meeting about RSV vaccines on February 29, 2024. There was a lot of discussion on the safety of the vaccine. It looks like it will still have a requirement that you have a shared clinical decision-making meeting with your physician. I think that still implies you’d need…
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Flight of Ideas on Junior Bald Eagles
A couple of days ago the temperature was in the mid-seventies, which is pretty balmy for February. We took the opportunity to get out for a walk on the Terry Trueblood Trail. It’s coincidental, but we did the same thing on the exact same date last February. It’s under the same condition for the most…
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Rubber Snake Trick for Pesky Birds So Far
So far, the rubber snakes are not scaring off the birds. We have the telltale evidence for their continued visits to our porch. It’s only a couple of days. We moved them around to see if that fools the birds into thinking the snakes are real.
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Hot Mic in the NASA Control Room
By now, everybody probably knows about the Intuitive Machine lunar landing of the Odysseus space craft recently, broadcast from NASA. I happened to have a direct audio hookup to the control room during the hot mic episode which somehow didn’t get broadcast last week. Sam: OK, how’s Odysseus doing? Doug: Uh, we slightly overshot the…
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The Rubber Snake Trick to Scare Pesky Birds
Our porch is a favorite roosting spot for little birds. But they don’t just roost there. They leave certain things behind. So, Sena bought some rubber snakes. I think we’ll know quickly whether they work. On the other hand, experts say that you need to move them around every so often so birds don’t figure…
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High as a Kite!
We heard about the marketing of a new cannabis product in Iowa. A company called Climbing Kites makes a beverage that contains low concentration THC and it’s legal to buy it as long as the percentage of Delta 9 THC is not above 0.3%. Their website says funny things like “Fly High: All Buzz, No…
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Update on the Mason City, Iowa YWCA Renovation and How That Connects to Pizza
This is an update on a couple of Mason City, Iowa YWCA and YMCA renovation posts I wrote in May of 2022 (May 12 and May 25). I’m also going to compare the information about those with recent news about the building which is home to Pagliai’s Pizza. Recall that the YMCA in Mason City…
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Thoughts on the Mason City 1884 Civil War Statue
Sena and I got to talking about Central Park in Mason City, Iowa. I remember my brother, mother and I taking a walk there occasionally. One time we saw a man who lost his legs and who got around using a small platform on wheels. Later in life, I wondered if he was a disabled…
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“Our Hidden Conversations” is a Very Tough Book to Read
As I approach the end of the book “Our Hidden Conversations” by Michele Norris, I find myself doing what I often do when I feel uncomfortable emotionally. I start to deploy my sense of humor. As a psychiatrist (now retired since 2020), I learned early in my residency training that humor can be thought of…
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Sweethearts on a February Stroll
Yesterday, we went out for a walk because it was a pretty nice day for February. All the snow was pretty much gone. We saw a hawk who also saw us. We approached the tree it was perched in very slowly. It tolerated our attention until we got too close for comfort—and flapped off in…
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