Cracked ribs?
I am so in sympathy with the mayor on this one!
It’s the most painful “minor” injury going.
I did the same thing around the same time in 2009, hurrying from my car to one of the first Christmas receptions of the year. I slipped on new ice (nobody’s fault, middle of a storm, nobody had a chance to lay down any salt or sand), whacked my side on the sidewalk curb, but kept going to the reception and had a glass of wine to dull the pain …
For the next two weeks, our mayor is going to be in serious pain every time he laughes or coughs – shooting pain in fact, zapping his entire upper body.
Even worse, he won’t be able to sleep lying down. It’s just too bloody painful to go from lying down to standing. It feels like the pointed ends of the ribs are grinding together. So you “sleep” sitting up in a chair, which is the king of discomfort. After the jolts of searing pain, sleep deprivation is the second-worst result of cracked or fractured rib.
But you can still move, so off to work you go. But any slightly wrong move, and there’s that ferocious pain.
There’s not a darned thing you can do about it in most cases, other than gobble down ibuprofen. it simply has to heal on its own.
After two to three weeks, the pain gradually subsides. But here’s the secondary rub. No exercising, skiing, indoor tennis etc for at least two months because the last thing you want to do is disturb the finally-knitting bones.
The good news is you do completely recover, but my goodness, you then walk on ice like an old, old man for fear of slipping again.
It’s not the cold or the snow that sends us fleeing in Phoenix for the winter (as if any of us besides lawyers, accountants and oil patch guys can afford that). It’s the #@$%$ ice!

With legislation pending to drop the Alberta impaired level from .07 to .05 – not official yet but it appears imminent, somebody has to speak up for the socially responsible drinker.

Dropping the impairment critical threshhold to .05, as far as I’m aware, means no second glass of wine or beer if you intend to drive after attending any social occasion.

Now this is heresy and entirely unacceptable to say, but I will say it. The socially responsible drinker can have two glasses of wine, or two bottles of beer, and safely drive home.

When innocent victims are killed by drunk drivers, the culprits are not individuals with .07 or less of alcohol in their bodies.

The culprits are usually individuals, I would suggest, who have been on massive drinking binges, who are driving at two to three times over the .07 level, who are oblivious to social responsibility.

They are usually young men. And too often, they are driving recklessly, in the wee hours of the morning. And too often, it appears, in rural areas.

I’m sorry, the hypocrisy of all this troubles me.

You lawmakers who will pass this bill … does this mean from now on, for the rest of your lives, you will never order a bottle of wine to go with your dinner for two?

At all those banquets you attend, where the waiters are happy to refill your wine glass as soon as it’s half-full … will you turn your glass upside down after one drink?

Actually, no, you’ll have to refuse ALL wine because you already had a pre-dinner glass of champagne at the reception.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having two drinks at a cocktail party, at a pub after work with colleagues. The socially responsible drinker is able to drive home after two drinks, as we as a society have agreed with, up to this point, by pegging the point of impairment at .07.

To drop that level to .05 is not only to create a world of hypocrites, because, again, it will be widely ignored by socially responsible individuals who like TWO glasses of wine with their dinner, or who enjoy a drink OR TWO when they socialize with their friends or colleagues before they drive home … driving more carefully because they are aware they’ve had two glasses of wine or two bottles of beer.