Look out for low-flying skull-shaped asteroids.

I’ll open this post with the usual bullshit: MARCY’S WHINE LIST. After spending nearly all day asleep on the chaise in the family room — from 10:30 a.m. when Sam left to retrieve two prescriptions at Wal-Mart until 4:45 this afternoon — I eventually woke up with an exploding bladder, a pounding headache, low blood sugar and stiff as a board due to missing three doses of pain medication. Now that I’m conscious and upright I’d like to add these additional complaints to the aforementioned list: 1) the hypersensitive skin on the back of my thighs is raw and bleeding again; 2) my low-grade fever is creeping back up; and 3) I just yanked a hangnail.

I’m pretty sure I’ll bounce back from all this misery as soon as Sam wakes up from his nap and we can have a serious discussion about DINNER, which will include the pan of jumbo stuffed bell peppers he bought Thursday at Costco. From this picture I can tell they’re not “sauced,” so we can use half a jar of my Bella Vita low-carb pasta sauce to jazz them up during their final 15 minutes in the oven. (This is the best not-homemade pasta sauce I’ve ever tasted. You should absolutely try this stuff.)

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Breaking news from our Maybe We Should Order Chinese department. Twenty-two cases of E. coli infection have been traced to Chipotle restaurants in Oregon and Washington. All of them closed abruptly on Friday according to health authorities.

About one-third of the victims have been hospitalized. No deaths have been reported.

According to Jonathan Modie, Oregon Health Authority spokesman: “Many people affected with Shiga toxin E. coli may not seek health care, so the number of people made ill by this outbreak is likely far more than identified.” He suggested that anybody who got sick — which includes puking and bloody doody — after eating at Chipotle between October 14 and 23 should see a doctor right away and mention the E. coli outbreak. 

For the record, this E. coli brouhaha follows an August salmonella outbreak at two dozen Chipotle restaurants in Minnesota, poisoning 45 customers with shitty tomatoes, and a norovirus outbreak during the same month involving 82 Chipotle customers and 17 employees at one disgusting restaurant in Simi Valley, California. You might want to consider Taco Bell for your next craving.

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It’s 7 p.m. Halloween night and I just heard my first wave of screaming trick-or-treaters outside. They’ll leave us alone at Howdygram headquarters (our outside lights aren’t on) but I’ll have to put up with this noisy crap for the next few hours because the study is located near the front of the house. In previous years we even had vans shuttling kids from other neighborhoods because our subdivision (Stonecrest Estates) is really nice and moderately ritzy with very good candy.

Have a pleasant evening and look out for low-flying skull-shaped asteroids. Thank you.