Dear Diabetes Supply Bag,

It is with regret that I write to inform you that your services are no longer needed. Though your time with me was short, you have provided me with dependability, style and functionality that I will forever appreciate.

I remember when I found you. My family and I were leaving on our first airplane trip. For the sake of airline carryone rules, I needed something I could pile all my diabetes supplies and regular purse supplies in. I searched the purses and handbags area at my supercenter rather quickly. Some bags were too big, some were too small. Some were just plain ugly. Not only did I need something for that trip, but I needed the bag to be functional after the trip, as well. (READ MORE)

Whether your meter uses "E", "ER", or another way of designating an error, we've all run into those days where it seems like we waste a whole vial, drum, or disc of strips (and lancets, if you use the Renew device!) just to get that magical number. By the time you get that "beep", you're certain you're reading fifty points off one way or the other, just due to the stress of getting the bloody lancet to produce a bloody large-enough blood drop that beads up on -- rather than wets -- the surrounding skin, and the bloody strip to take up enough of that blood to produce a bloody glucose reading.

(And yes, "bloody" is meant both as description and expletive.)

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One of the side effects of not being able to get down to Virginia for Christmas this year was that of not having to drive back during, or in the aftermath of, the Boxing Day Blizzard that blanketed the Northeast. We ran errands early on Sunday to make sure we had enough food (and other staples) in the house to last a few days, then settled in for the duration.

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"Freaking the 'danes": In fandom, the deliberate exhibition of extreme fannish behavior before "mundanes" (non-fans) for the specific purpose of eliciting incomprehension and social discomfort. (See: bear-baiting.)

With eight separate phone numbers registered to the two members of this household, it's not surprising that -- despite those numbers' presence on the National Do Not Call Registry -- we get more than our share of telephone solicitations. Most of the time, they're phishing scams telling us we can "lower your interest rates" if we give them our banking information immediately; the rest of the time, they're split between trying to get us to change our telephone, Internet, television, gas, and electricity providers.

Until yesterday.

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Several of the posts coming back from the Children With Diabetes annual Friends for Life conference (FFL) have likened this gathering of beta-less buddies to a traveling circus, a family reunion, and the sitcom Cheers, in whose eponymous bar "everybody knows your name" -- except that in the case of FFL, "everybody knows what it's like to live with type 1 diabetes". The effect, even without the Disneyification (FFL is always held at Disney World), is a Magic Kingdom of Diabetes. It makes sense: the event promoters are (and need to be) familiar with the condition, and the property managers need to be aware of -- and capable of handling -- a large, temporary influx of people who all have the same, or similar, "special needs". (READ MORE)