Random Tuesday Thoughts.

Third times a charm for Random Tuesday Thoughts, I think. My last two were alright, but todays randomness is bril :)

2009. Pronounced two thousand nine.
2010. Pronounced twenty ten.
This is currently driving me mad! I do concede that prior to the 2000s, we did say (1999) nineteen ninety nine, and not nineteen hundred ninety nine. And that changed in 1910, because prior to that they would have said nineteen hundred and nine, because nineteen nine is silly. As is twenty nine. But still, it is bothering me way more than it should. I do know this. But knowing it does not prevent it apparently.

We were given these sweets for Christmas. They are the fancy one that come with a map (they should all come with maps, but that's another issue). So, I've picked out the ones I like, and I'm letting Nid have all the others (I know, but what are you gonna do?) and I'm left with ones I that I can't figure out. There are 10 pictures on the map. They are fairly easy to identify, as each one is slightly differently shaped or decorated. Although, on a side note, the foil covered ones (I didn't have any of them) were labeled silver foil and gold foil. But really, it was blue with silver stripes and red with gold stripes. I'd have called them red foil and blue foil, because people (like me) might think they were STUPID! Oh right, back to the map. There are 10 images. And 11 slots in the box. There were two (sets) of one of the sweets. And not even one of the flavours I liked. It took way longer than it should have to realize this, too.

This morning the kids discovered that it had snowed overnight. Cale called the school and the automated line reported that school was closed due to inclement weather. He came upstairs to tell us. A little while later we go get up and they've left a note saying they've gone to school. Briony called back the line and it said school was on. This isn't the first time it's happened, so we know the explanation. When there is bad weather, all the students and parents call the main line that has the opening/closing message. If the line if overwhelmed with calls, it defaults to a school is closed message. When the calls die down, it goes back to it's regular message. Or something like that. How dumb is that?

This morning we were going to Asda to do some shopping. It was pretty early, and I knew I'd get hungry later on, so I fixed a cheese, onion, and mayo sandwich on a whole wheat burger bun for breakfast. Because that didn't seem very breakfasty, I had a side of potato salad so it would seem more lunch like.

Over the counter drugs in the UK. Okay, so this bit started out as random, but has moved on to a rant now that I've investigated the subject enough to somewhat knowledgeably speak on the topic. Apparently there were a lot of suicide attempt using the drug paracetamol (known as acetaminophen/Tylenol in the US) in the past. Prior to moving here, it would never have occurred to me that someone would do that. I know a bit about Tylenol. I personally love it, as it's easier on my stomach than ibuprofen. I know that you shouldn't take it for a hangover as alcohol and acetaminophen are not a good combination for your liver. I know that acetaminophen toxicity in cats is a real problem. But suicide? I never would have thought it. But there you go, it's a fact of life here. So the people in charge got together and said that paracetamol cannot be sold in packets of more than 16 (unless you get it from behind the counter from a Pharmacist I've heard. They've also put this restriction on ibuprofin. Now, I've been known to take my fair share of otc pills. I get headaches regularly, my back has issues off and on, just general aches and pains. Knowing about this restriction, I brought over with me two 500 count bottles of ibuprofen. Which have since run out, so now we're buying little boxes of pills, and it always seems we are running out. It's such a pain. I looked it up, and found that right after the pill restriction, there were 21% less fatalities as a result of overdose. There was a decrease in non-fatal overdoses of the drug. Also, there were less liver transplants. According to this article, people were also overdosing on aspirin products. A later article about a study showed that after the initial decrease in these cases, the rates have now come back and passed the previous numbers of over doses. But we still can't buy 500 count bottles. For the record, it is not my intention to offend or upset anyone who has had to deal with suicide. It is a horrible thing, to be sure. It just doesn't make sense to restrict this drug in this way. It doesn't even work well. And for the record to those of you outside the UK, I've heard that you can buy paracetamol with codeine at the pharmacy, without a prescription. 5-10% of codeine metabolizes into morphine. And if you want a bunch, you just hit up a bunch of pharmacies, don't you? Seems like that's a worse thing to have easy access to, to me.

For more randomness, hop on over to Keely's blog at The Un-Mom.