Did you enjoy the sturgeon while I was at the surgeon?

I haven't been posting today, because I've been unconscious, which I consider an ironclad excuse for failure to blog. But after my visit to the oral surgeon today, I've slept off all the anaesthesia and eschewed the prescription painkiller, and I'm back in the world of full human awareness, including the awareness of unkilled pain, which is kind of the way I like to think of life itself.

One reason to eschew prescription painkiller is to be able to have a nice glass of soothing cognac, which I'm thinking will go very well with my favorite hour of weekly television: "Survivor," in high definition. Another is that I need to bone up on the news of the week for tomorrow morning's "Week In Review." (At 8 Central Time, Wisconsin Public Radio fans!) All those state legislature stories I've been ignoring... I can't be hearing about them for the first time on the show. Example: "Replacement to Seniorcare drug program touted as improvement." I get an email full of wire stories like that the day before the show, not that the show is likely to cover the uninteresting sounding ones.

Still, I'll do some reading to catch up with the news stories I've let slip throught the cracks in my consciousness. Some reading, some cognac sipping, some HDTV gazing, and then a good night's sleep, and I intend to be radio-ready at 8 a.m.

ADDED: Here's a good evidence for the theory that there's always something interesting inside the boring.

U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, Chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, and U.S. Senator Russ Feingold today announced the successful inclusion of a two-and-a-half year extension of SeniorCare, Wisconsin’s popular senior drug coverage program, in the Iraq Supplemental Conference Report, a bill that also includes funding for disaster aid, veterans’ health, agricultural disasters, and other emergency funding.

What -- I ask you! -- has more to do with funding the war in Iraq than the interest that old Wisconsinites have in the government paying their expenses that happen to fall into the drug category? But don't be so hard on Feingold and Kohl, because the war funding bill also includes funding for disaster aid, veterans’ health, agricultural disasters, and other emergency funding. You know how the fact that old people use drugs is an emergency.