Background: I’m going to a little island off the coast of Madagascar for work in less than a week: Mauritius.

According to the CDC page, it has a strain of malaria (not chloroquine resistant). So, I troop off to my doctor yesterday to get anti-malarials and she recommends the typhoid fever vaccine. Since it’s a pill, I’m OK with it. Take my prescriptions to CVS, and they don’t have the vaccine for typhoid fever, the doctor expected that, but they said they could order it, and it’d be in today. I go to pick up my prescriptions yesterday, and the insurance will only pay for one month of anti-malarials, I need 1.5 mths for the full course. Luckily, I *will* be back in the states before the one month runs out, but that leaves me with no extra pills in case they’re needed (the doc gave me 1 more than I needed in case I lost/dropped/etc it) - they’re taken weekly. CVS told me to try to get a vacation override on the prescription today - haven’t tried yet. However, the insurance won’t cover the typhoid vaccine - at all. The 4 pills I need to take are about $62 - no big deal. Now, based on this, I’m going to assume that the insurance would rather take the chance that they’ll have to pay several hundreds of dollars if I do get typhoid fever instead of the less than $100 for prevention - for two years!

Have I mentioned that I think insurance companies are stupid?

Apfelwein,
originally uploaded by elwing.

We used Edwort’s Apfelwein recipe to make a batch of Apfelwein like I had in Germany. Brian had me get my own carboys so that I didn’t taint the beer in his PVC fermenter. In 6 weeks, we’ll be able to taste it. Then I’m going to try my hand at “real” winemaking and make something I would like to drink. Apparently, some of the wine kits only have to sit for 3-6mths after fermentation, others up to a year, which isn’t bad.

We’re accepting donations of any wine bottle that’s not a screw cap

I’ve been traveling and holed up with work lately. This month has seen 55+ hour weeks - mostly from traveling. I got to go to Frankfurt (note, some of the pictures are on my laptop and not uploaded yet), and Tucson, AZ. Last week involve traveling 5 days out of five - including one weekend. I’m glad to be home. And I’m traveling to Amsterdam, Paris and Mauritius starting Jan 6. I get to get up early tomorrow to go to the doctor and get an anti-malarial for the two days I’ll be in Mauritius. It’s got a strain of malaria in rural areas, and while I’m not sure if the area I’m going to is rural or not (Belle Mare), I know that I attract more mosquitoes than a bug zapper, so I’m not taking my chances. It’ll be fun - most anti-malaria drugs are known hallucinogens.

I’m just glad that I’m done with work for the week. Brian and I are going to Pittsburgh tomorrow for Christmas, and we’ll be back on Friday, but I’m looking forward to the downtime. I’ve already set up squeezecenter on the file server, and now I have to figure out how to stream it to a headless box that has a remote only.

Did I mention that I’m not entirely sober? I got home from work about 4:45ish, and opened a bottle of valipolcella, which I wasn’t thrilled with, but Brian liked it. And then we opened a bottle of Riesling. There may be another bottle coming.

I’ve also been playing WoW - almost level 72! I was playing in Nagrand and Blade’s Edge mountains, but I got tired of trying to find a group, so I went to Northrend. It’s quite nice.

No, it wasn’t planned, but my (direct) flight to Frankfurt last night/this morning stopped in Shannon Ireland for an emergency medical situation. Apparently, the patient was in dire enough straits to need to be at the hospital immediately rather than wait another hour and a half to Frankfurt. I hope s/he’s OK. We sat at the Shannon airport for about an hour, then we took off again. I was two hours late into Frankfurt, which wasn’t that big of a deal, but I felt bad since I promised Brian I would call when I landed. I was supposed to land at 7:30am CET, which would have been about 1:30am EST. Instead, we arrived about 9:30am. I spoke to a sleepy Brian and then let him go back to sleep.

I got into my hotel, took a shower, and promptly got on a train for “downtown” Frankfurt. I walked through the Goethe house, and the christmas markets. I tried to find an appfelwein “Bar”, but I wasn’t too interested in being around smoke. Once I started to get tired, I headed back to my hotel at the airport. I’m now fighting to stay awake until at least 5pm. Hopefully, I’ll get some homework in there somewhere…

It’s time to buy Christmas cards, but I know that most people I usually send them to have moved! Please send me your address if you want to get one - elwing elwing org (put appropriate punctuation there).