I had forgotten about Aleve (naproxen sodium). I did try it once. It did nothing for my pain, but after a while I suddenly got one numb spot around the right corner of my mouth, and simultaneously another numb spot under my right big toe. Lasted for about half an hour, and scared me, so I have never gone near the stuff again.

I'm sorry, sj. Exposure to that level of hatred is always emotionally jarring. I don't understand it, and I don't want to understand.

Aleve upsets my stomach. Ibuprofen didn't used to, but now it does too.

Heh, so much individual variation.

What really sucks is trying to figure out what works when you are in pain, because it isn't the kind of thing you can experiment with effectively in advance.

Usually I'm a big fan of ibuprofen. I'm trying to not rely too heavily on it - like dcp said, at some point you want to address what's causing the pain instead of just masking it. I haven't really had occasion to try the serious stuff (yet). That said, apparently now that I'm getting older (seriously, y'all, how am I THIS old?) I'm starting to get fun muscular/joint stuff (frozen shoulder last year, weird back tweak this week) that IBU won't touch - so let me just say how glad I am that there's a MedMen just down the street from my chiro. Otherwise, I don't know if it would have occurred to me to try CBD, which has been amazing for those types of pains. I've been getting the lowest THC stuff I can, since it's not what I'm there for, and it helps a lot.

My big accomplishment today was making it out of the dentist without any problems requiring further attention, and I will TAKE IT.

As you should!

Epic, I have also had frozen shoulder, and thought the other one was going this week, but it came out of it, thank goodness. But man, my shoulders are twingy and wonky and I sleep on them fucked-up on the regular. Ugh.

ION, I've been watching too much GBBO, and I was thinking I should make puff pastry for Christmas, the one time I make a fancy dessert, and then I realized I could just do it anytime. And maybe I will!

In regard to the NRA information, I know an association (a not-for-profit, as opposed to a charity) I used to work for did something similar. The head person wanted to cut back and so a new person was hired for that position, but the outgoing one was kept on as a consultant. It is, as you might imagine, something that opens the door for a lot of, um, shenanigans. That new head person, after several years, decided he wanted to move on. Which was fine, except he hand-picked a successor with a deal worked out that the outgoing person would have a contract as a "consultant" at a high retainer. (This, luckily, came to naught, since right before the chosen successor was to be rubber-stamped by the board of directors, news broke that he had engaged in his own shenanigans at a previous place ... and so someone else got the job.)

It's hard for me to conceive of Oliver North as a good guy.

Not "good" I'd say, just less horrible.