The rain storms New England has experienced this week have been an unbelievable inconvenience for so many people. Many Northeastern states had to be declared disaster areas. It is awfully frustrating the way we are constantly at the mercy of Mother Nature and always at odds with what she offers us. Personally, I think her timing is off a bit.
Every year on May 1st my town automatically begins a system of water rationing. It kicks in regardless of how much rain we have had prior to May 1st. Residents are only allowed to water their lawns 1 day per week. We are not supposed to fill pools or use any other large quantities of water at one time. No outside car washing is allowed either. My town has a series of wells that provide our water; when lawn watering is added to the water consumption equation, these wells can empty pretty fast. Some residents have gone so far as to have wells dug on their properties for the sole purpose of being able to water their lawns whenever they want to. They don't think about the fact that by using their personal lawn watering wells, they are lowering the water table for the rest of us that use the town wells. To be fair, there are some residents that do not receive any town water and instead have wells for all of their water needs. I am not referring to these residents. They had no option to hook into town water when they built their homes.
In the heat of the summer, we all pray for rain to help us keep our lawns and gardens growing. We want rain to cool off the hot weather and give our air conditioners a break. We want rain to water crops and keep the food growing, and to keep the lakes and rivers up to their normal levels. In summer, we are at the mercy of Mother Nature and many times, she withholds water from us. Maybe she does this to make us realize how lucky we are to have fresh water at our disposal and to remind us not to waste water. Point taken. Mother Nature: some rain,now please.
During other times, like this week, we receive SO MUCH RAIN that our yards, wells, drainage systems don't have any way to handle or contain it. Dams flow over or are destroyed, basements flood ruining anything that happens to lurk there, backyards turn to mud or sog or worse...sinkholes. Roads get washed away, some people see their houses wash away as the erosion of beaches advance toward the inevitable. Highways close temporarily due to flooding, tunnels close, mass transit has to stop running in some places. Some people drive into raging water that is crossing a road and risk not only their vehicles but their lives.
As a species, we are ill prepared to deal with the consequences when we receive all the water we have asked Mother Nature for. OK, so she was a little bit late in getting it to us. We wanted it last summer, she gave it to us this spring. And, ok, she gave it to us ALL AT ONCE. But beggars can't be choosers! You would think we would be used to it. This is not the first major monsoon situation we have ever experienced in New England. Downpours of this magnitude are far between but they do happen occasionally. Ok Mother Nature, you can turn the faucet off now, we are all set!
It would be nice to get the rain when we want it and in the amount we want it. It would be ideal if we could receive about one inch of rain per week, late on a Sunday night every week. That would not ruin many plans, Saturday and Sunday picnics would be safe, pool parties, outdoor weddings, sporting events, etc. Lawns would receive the rain they need for the week, gardens would be watered. Unfortunately this is not how Mother Nature works at all. She tends to drench us at the most inopportune times and when we want a little she either gives us none or a lot! She likes to fool with us.
We are but a small example of the extremes of nature, though. There are places on Earth that are much more at odds with Mother Nature than we are. So many countries in Africa receive little to no rain every year. There is so much famine due to drought conditions caused by the lack of rain. Those people are not worried about a burnt lawn, or water rationing. They are worried about survival. And yet, they have no more control over Mother Nature than we do. Africa is not the only continent that deals with drought, we just see so many images of their dire situation that it is the first one that comes to mind. There are also areas on Earth that receive either massive downpours in the form of monsoons, like India, or almost constant rain, like the rain forests of Central and South America.
What to do with all of the water? Its too bad we can't bottle it and use it during the hot dry summer months when we thirst for even a drop of water to fall. But, we can't. We have to soldier on, and deal with Mother Nature and all the wonder she hurls on us when SHE feels like it. And we need to be glad we live in a country that has a better water distribution system than most other parts of the world. So, rememeber that and keep smiling as you bail out your basement!
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Toyota Owners-Who's Next?
I have been a loyal Toyota owner since I started driving in 1977. The first vehicle I owned was a 1979 Toyota Celica GT that I bought in 1985. I loved that car. It drove nicely, and I felt "cool" driving it. It was the first time I had taken out a loan in my own name and paid it off. That car gave me my independence and a good credit score.
As a result of the good feeling I developed for my Toyota Celica, that is the only brand of car I have owned (except for one) since then. Since that Celica, I have owned a 1988 Toyota Tercel bought brand new, (and tragically totalled by a tree falling on it during Hurricane Bob), a 1990 Camry, bought brand new, a 2000 Sienna, bought brand new and a 2005 Sienna, bought brand new. I have never had any problems with any of my Toyotas at all. None of the cars that I bought brand new ever spent any time in the service department. I kept them on the average of 5 years each. I did the routine maintenance only, but they all served me well.
Then, recently out of the blue, just as if it was a stealth attack by an American automobile industry struggling to survive economic disaster, the great and powerful Japanese Toyota Corporation has fallen from its throne as the automotive superpower. I don't think anyone could have written this story any better if it had been a page out of a novel. American corporate giants (Ford, GM, Chrysler) on the verge of bankruptcy, unable to sell their product because of the perception of the inferior quality of the product; enter some "incident" to knock the king of the industry off of it's throne and offer new hope for the American corporate giants to finally get some market share.
Every day lately, we have heard new reports on the news about whether the "fix" for the sudden acceleration problem in some Toyota models is actually fixing the problem or simply easing minds of consumers who have these models. Some are complaining that their "fix" didn't actually solve the problem and they are still experiencing sudden acceleration. There have even been some reports that Toyota knew about the problem more than 5 years ago and did nothing about it until it was forced to. If that is true, it would suggest that Toyota management actively weighed the cost ($$) of a recall to repair the issue versus the cost in lives of waiting until this problem reared it's ugly head en masse. If that is the case, that gamble has cost them big time.
The perception in the auto industry of Toyota as the one to beat-- the level of quality that other manufacturers should strive for, may be a fallacy at this point. Even if it is not the case and that this malfunctioning acceleration situation is an isolated ding on Toyota's otherwise unblemished reputation of reliability, Toyota's reputation for honesty and integrity has been seriously damaged and that will take a long time to recover from, if they ever do. This whole mess has cost them far more than it would have if they had issued a recall when they first suspected a problem existed with their cars.
So back to me. I have been a loyal Toyota owner and driver for most of my life. I have put my trust in Toyota's integrity and the reliability of their automobiles. I have always felt safe in my cars. Actually I have felt that I was safer in my cars than in most other people's cars. Was that a faulty perception now that I know what I know about the lies and deception on the part of Toyota? Possibly. One thing is true: Toyota is working HARD to try to regain some of it's credibility and market share. They are aggressively advertising on TV; trying to show that they still have loyal customers. They are offering financing deals of 0% for 60 months across almost all of their models to try to attract new customers. This is unprecedented for Toyota. The lowest financing rate that was ever available for any of our purchases was 2.9% for 48 months.
Traditionally the Toyota dealers we have dealt with (and there have been MANY) have been hard pressed to offer the best bottom line prices on any of their models. Overall most have been pretty arrogant in their price negotiations. I am relatively sure that if you were interested in buying a new Toyota right now, you could walk into any Toyota dealership and name your price and make a great deal. The question is, and will continue to be, do you trust the Toyota brand now?
My current Toyota-the 2005 Sienna, is not included in any recall at this time. Do I feel any differently about driving it though? Do I feel less safe when I am cruising along on the highway thinking about those poor souls who were doing the same in their Toyotas -and their cars took over and killed them? Maybe a little. I am wondering what information will come out next. Will my car be in a recall down the road? Should I pay more attention to the "what to do if your accelerator takes over" information?
Bigger picture: I wonder, which other automakers have lied or deceived their customers to save money and save face. It may all be a house of cards that is just starting to tumble. Maybe the perception of safety and quality was just that-a perception. Maybe the reality of this situation is that more autos will have massive problems and more cover ups will be revealed. We will all need to stay tuned to this and pay close attention to the actions of the automakers. Our lives could depend on it.
As a result of the good feeling I developed for my Toyota Celica, that is the only brand of car I have owned (except for one) since then. Since that Celica, I have owned a 1988 Toyota Tercel bought brand new, (and tragically totalled by a tree falling on it during Hurricane Bob), a 1990 Camry, bought brand new, a 2000 Sienna, bought brand new and a 2005 Sienna, bought brand new. I have never had any problems with any of my Toyotas at all. None of the cars that I bought brand new ever spent any time in the service department. I kept them on the average of 5 years each. I did the routine maintenance only, but they all served me well.
Then, recently out of the blue, just as if it was a stealth attack by an American automobile industry struggling to survive economic disaster, the great and powerful Japanese Toyota Corporation has fallen from its throne as the automotive superpower. I don't think anyone could have written this story any better if it had been a page out of a novel. American corporate giants (Ford, GM, Chrysler) on the verge of bankruptcy, unable to sell their product because of the perception of the inferior quality of the product; enter some "incident" to knock the king of the industry off of it's throne and offer new hope for the American corporate giants to finally get some market share.
Every day lately, we have heard new reports on the news about whether the "fix" for the sudden acceleration problem in some Toyota models is actually fixing the problem or simply easing minds of consumers who have these models. Some are complaining that their "fix" didn't actually solve the problem and they are still experiencing sudden acceleration. There have even been some reports that Toyota knew about the problem more than 5 years ago and did nothing about it until it was forced to. If that is true, it would suggest that Toyota management actively weighed the cost ($$) of a recall to repair the issue versus the cost in lives of waiting until this problem reared it's ugly head en masse. If that is the case, that gamble has cost them big time.
The perception in the auto industry of Toyota as the one to beat-- the level of quality that other manufacturers should strive for, may be a fallacy at this point. Even if it is not the case and that this malfunctioning acceleration situation is an isolated ding on Toyota's otherwise unblemished reputation of reliability, Toyota's reputation for honesty and integrity has been seriously damaged and that will take a long time to recover from, if they ever do. This whole mess has cost them far more than it would have if they had issued a recall when they first suspected a problem existed with their cars.
So back to me. I have been a loyal Toyota owner and driver for most of my life. I have put my trust in Toyota's integrity and the reliability of their automobiles. I have always felt safe in my cars. Actually I have felt that I was safer in my cars than in most other people's cars. Was that a faulty perception now that I know what I know about the lies and deception on the part of Toyota? Possibly. One thing is true: Toyota is working HARD to try to regain some of it's credibility and market share. They are aggressively advertising on TV; trying to show that they still have loyal customers. They are offering financing deals of 0% for 60 months across almost all of their models to try to attract new customers. This is unprecedented for Toyota. The lowest financing rate that was ever available for any of our purchases was 2.9% for 48 months.
Traditionally the Toyota dealers we have dealt with (and there have been MANY) have been hard pressed to offer the best bottom line prices on any of their models. Overall most have been pretty arrogant in their price negotiations. I am relatively sure that if you were interested in buying a new Toyota right now, you could walk into any Toyota dealership and name your price and make a great deal. The question is, and will continue to be, do you trust the Toyota brand now?
My current Toyota-the 2005 Sienna, is not included in any recall at this time. Do I feel any differently about driving it though? Do I feel less safe when I am cruising along on the highway thinking about those poor souls who were doing the same in their Toyotas -and their cars took over and killed them? Maybe a little. I am wondering what information will come out next. Will my car be in a recall down the road? Should I pay more attention to the "what to do if your accelerator takes over" information?
Bigger picture: I wonder, which other automakers have lied or deceived their customers to save money and save face. It may all be a house of cards that is just starting to tumble. Maybe the perception of safety and quality was just that-a perception. Maybe the reality of this situation is that more autos will have massive problems and more cover ups will be revealed. We will all need to stay tuned to this and pay close attention to the actions of the automakers. Our lives could depend on it.
Monday, March 29, 2010
The new 50+ Club-- Outrageous!
There was an article I read over the weekend about the new members of a "50+ club"...that is Colleges and Universities that now cost over $50,000 a year to attend! It is staggering to me that college costs keep rising at a rate that far exceeds the rate of inflation and that there are still so many applicants to the colleges that charge this much for the "privilege" of attendance.
Having just gone through the whole college search/application/acceptance process last year with my older son, I am aware of all of the games that schools play with the numbers. They don't call it all tuition. They call it tuition and fees and then they make tuition the smaller part of that fraction. But the thing is, fees are not negotiable, and you cannot cherry pick the ones you want, or the ones you think apply to you. You pay for all of it whether you use the services they relate to or not.
I cannot believe that the education you receive these days at any college is worth $50,000 a year!
For some prospective students whose families are at or near the poverty line, there are no worries. They will receive a full ride if they have the grades and resume' to be accepted to the school. The full ride may contain grants, loans, scholarships, or any combination thereof. I tend to think those people will get the lions share of scholarships and grants, and have some small loans peppered in. Those in the highest income brackets of all will not have to worry about the price of school. It will not be an issue whatsoever. Getting into the best school of their choice will be the only worry for these people.
Those of us who lie in between these two extremes get screwed in every way. When you get accepted to the schools of your choice, they will offer you aid in the form of loans only.
When you fill out the FAFSA form to determine your "expected family contribution" the government WAY overestimates how much you can afford to pay for college. Basically the government assumes that every dollar you earn should go to pay for this one child's education and if you have any money left over, maybe you can rent an apartment, drive a beater car, and eat store brand boxes of mac and cheese for 4 years while your darling lives in the lap of luxury (?) at your local university. HAH? And for FAFSA to come to this determination, you have to tell them every cent you have, every bit of equity, every investment, every dollar you have ever earned, and where you have been your whole life!
How long will the rate of college cost inflation keep going up until it reaches critical mass? There will come a point where even the richest families may not be willing to shell out this much money for a child's education. There will definitely come a time, a lot sooner, that the lower and the middle class families will have already reached that critical mass, and they will be looking at other options.
I predict that in 20 years, or less, most lower and middle class students will get their college learning from online schools while still living at home.
How will the prospect of this sea change (online degrees) affect the lives of college aged teens in the long run? I am not sure. A college campus is a microcosm for a small city or a small society. Things happen and students that are away from their parents have to learn to fend for themselves and cope with whatever happens. This is a growth experience. If all college students (or a majority of them) stay at home during this time in their lives, it may delay the maturation process and may delay the development of independence. Still, I am not sure if this is a bad thing or a good thing, or somewhere in between.
Reports are always bandied about on how much a person can expect to earn in a lifetime. It usually goes something like this...you can expect to earn X in your lifetime with a high school diploma, and you can expect to earn X + $300,000-$400,000 if you have a bachelor's degree, and so on. Let's face facts here. If the cost of a Bachelor's degree keeps rising, eventually the cost of obtaining one will surpass the increase in your expected lifetime earnings and that is when going away to school will cease to be a viable option for most students. It looks like we are fast approaching that time! These 50+ schools will cost you over $200,000 for a Bachelor's degree that is assuming you can finish in the 4 year time slot. Many students are struggling to "git 'er done" in 4 years now so the overall cost could be higher still.
What will happen to all of these private college campuses when they become ghost towns due to their price rising above the maximum affordability limit?
Having just gone through the whole college search/application/acceptance process last year with my older son, I am aware of all of the games that schools play with the numbers. They don't call it all tuition. They call it tuition and fees and then they make tuition the smaller part of that fraction. But the thing is, fees are not negotiable, and you cannot cherry pick the ones you want, or the ones you think apply to you. You pay for all of it whether you use the services they relate to or not.
I cannot believe that the education you receive these days at any college is worth $50,000 a year!
For some prospective students whose families are at or near the poverty line, there are no worries. They will receive a full ride if they have the grades and resume' to be accepted to the school. The full ride may contain grants, loans, scholarships, or any combination thereof. I tend to think those people will get the lions share of scholarships and grants, and have some small loans peppered in. Those in the highest income brackets of all will not have to worry about the price of school. It will not be an issue whatsoever. Getting into the best school of their choice will be the only worry for these people.
Those of us who lie in between these two extremes get screwed in every way. When you get accepted to the schools of your choice, they will offer you aid in the form of loans only.
When you fill out the FAFSA form to determine your "expected family contribution" the government WAY overestimates how much you can afford to pay for college. Basically the government assumes that every dollar you earn should go to pay for this one child's education and if you have any money left over, maybe you can rent an apartment, drive a beater car, and eat store brand boxes of mac and cheese for 4 years while your darling lives in the lap of luxury (?) at your local university. HAH? And for FAFSA to come to this determination, you have to tell them every cent you have, every bit of equity, every investment, every dollar you have ever earned, and where you have been your whole life!
How long will the rate of college cost inflation keep going up until it reaches critical mass? There will come a point where even the richest families may not be willing to shell out this much money for a child's education. There will definitely come a time, a lot sooner, that the lower and the middle class families will have already reached that critical mass, and they will be looking at other options.
I predict that in 20 years, or less, most lower and middle class students will get their college learning from online schools while still living at home.
How will the prospect of this sea change (online degrees) affect the lives of college aged teens in the long run? I am not sure. A college campus is a microcosm for a small city or a small society. Things happen and students that are away from their parents have to learn to fend for themselves and cope with whatever happens. This is a growth experience. If all college students (or a majority of them) stay at home during this time in their lives, it may delay the maturation process and may delay the development of independence. Still, I am not sure if this is a bad thing or a good thing, or somewhere in between.
Reports are always bandied about on how much a person can expect to earn in a lifetime. It usually goes something like this...you can expect to earn X in your lifetime with a high school diploma, and you can expect to earn X + $300,000-$400,000 if you have a bachelor's degree, and so on. Let's face facts here. If the cost of a Bachelor's degree keeps rising, eventually the cost of obtaining one will surpass the increase in your expected lifetime earnings and that is when going away to school will cease to be a viable option for most students. It looks like we are fast approaching that time! These 50+ schools will cost you over $200,000 for a Bachelor's degree that is assuming you can finish in the 4 year time slot. Many students are struggling to "git 'er done" in 4 years now so the overall cost could be higher still.
What will happen to all of these private college campuses when they become ghost towns due to their price rising above the maximum affordability limit?
- Many towns are looking to build schools...elementary through high schools...maybe some smaller campuses will be utilized for that.
- Senior centers and over 55 communities are springing up more are needed. With the baby boomers taking over, maybe they can go back to these campuses and use them as senior facilities. That would be ironic. The same places many of them went as students could now be used as senior facilities!
- Maybe the state college systems will take over some private college campuses that are not being used anymore and they can become satellite campuses that are more affordable.
Most of the bullet points were a tongue in cheek exploration of what I see as the future of many higher educational facilities.
It sickens me to see schools getting away with raping us for an education. I know it is a privilege to go to college, but if our country is to compete in the modern world in the future, we need to find some way to make it more affordable for all to go to college, not a way to make sure fewer and fewer can afford to go. Something will have to give in this system, I am just not sure what that is yet!
Meanwhile, I offer a hearty "congratulations" to the most recent inductees into the 50+ club for college costs (many are in the New England Corridor). I am sure you have already sealed your fate!
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Waste not....
I read an article today about some strawberry farmers in Florida that are destroying 1/2 of their own crops due to having a bumper crop this season. Apparently because of the cold weather conditions in January, many more strawberries than usual are ripe now and the price the farmer can get for them has gone from $1.00/lb to .25/lb. The farmers claim it is cheaper for them to destroy some of the crops than to pay to have them picked and delivered to market.
WHAT?? Why not donate the excess fruit? Why not let food pantries and soup kitchens come and take what they want of the surplus? How can anyone in good conscience destroy food knowing there are starving people within a 10 mile radius? The article did say that a couple of farmers were allowing others to pick whatever they wanted of the surplus strawberries themselves. The main concern farmers have about having strangers on the farmland is liability. If someone gets hurt while picking strawberries on the farmland, the farmer is liable.
All the farmers need to do is to make people sign a liability waiver and let them then pick the fruit. Imagine how happy a food pantry patron would be coming to receive the usual canned and boxed goods and being given a fresh package of strawberries, ripe and sweet. That would be a wonderful addition to the dreary cans and boxes and it would solve the surplus problem. And then imagine how nice it would be for a person to come to a soup kitchen and see some lovely strawberries put out with the daily soup and meal.
I can't understand how this can happen in America. We have starving people, we have malnourished people, we have people eating loads and loads of junk food because it is usually cheaper to eat than wholesome fruits and veggies. There has to be a better way here!
Anybody?
WHAT?? Why not donate the excess fruit? Why not let food pantries and soup kitchens come and take what they want of the surplus? How can anyone in good conscience destroy food knowing there are starving people within a 10 mile radius? The article did say that a couple of farmers were allowing others to pick whatever they wanted of the surplus strawberries themselves. The main concern farmers have about having strangers on the farmland is liability. If someone gets hurt while picking strawberries on the farmland, the farmer is liable.
What makes this situation even more exasperating is that back in January when temperatures in Florida were hovering around the freezing point, these same farmers took to watering these same strawberry crops around the clock to prevent them from freezing. The result of doing this? The people that live in the towns that surround the strawberry farms saw such a drastic drop in the water table from the farmers using so much water, that some residents were without water for weeks and some saw large sinkholes open up on their properties causing damage and destruction!!! And now those overly watered strawberries are being plowed under because they won't bring in enough money to make it worth the farmer's time and labor to harvest them.
This whole scenario makes no sense at all. They are throwing perfectly good fruit away! Fruit that people should be eating! Fruit that should be included in school lunches, and on the plates of every consumer in America! Think about all of the smoothies, daiquiris, margaritas, shortcakes, jam, frozen pops that these strawberries could make! I love strawberries! (Can you tell?)All the farmers need to do is to make people sign a liability waiver and let them then pick the fruit. Imagine how happy a food pantry patron would be coming to receive the usual canned and boxed goods and being given a fresh package of strawberries, ripe and sweet. That would be a wonderful addition to the dreary cans and boxes and it would solve the surplus problem. And then imagine how nice it would be for a person to come to a soup kitchen and see some lovely strawberries put out with the daily soup and meal.
I can't understand how this can happen in America. We have starving people, we have malnourished people, we have people eating loads and loads of junk food because it is usually cheaper to eat than wholesome fruits and veggies. There has to be a better way here!
Anybody?
Friday, March 26, 2010
The Hardest Job in the World?
We have all heard the cliche, “Parenting is the hardest job in the world.” This is true, but with one caveat. If you are doing it right, it is the hardest job in the world. If you are not doing it right…well, then, maybe not so much!
There are so many parents that have adopted the parenting model of being their child’s best friend. On the surface there seems to be nothing wrong with that idea. You get along better, there is less arguing, you know what they want, you give it to them, the lines of communication are open.
HELLO! These are junior human beings we are talking about! They were not born with all the life experiences they need to make good decisions. They don’t automatically know right from wrong. They don’t know where the boundaries of acceptable behavior are. They only learn those things by being taught by parents and loved ones, and by having been given boundaries in their everyday behavior.
When my children were very small, a friend of mine with no children told me that she thought I ran a “tight ship,” because I put my kids in a time out when they did things that they knew they were not supposed to do. The theory behind, time out is that eventually the child will understand the consequences of their actions and not do it anymore. This approach worked well with my second child, but failed with my first child. My older child constantly asked to get down from the time out and had tantrums during the time out. He needed more drastic measures to get the point across. I had to take a favorite toy or a privilege away from him when he exhibited the bad behavior. That seemed to get the point across with him.
Back to my friend; since she had no children, my reactions to my children’s bad behavior seemed excessive to her; she thought that if I just asked my children to stop the bad behavior, they would comply with my request. I don’t know about your children, but my kids NEVER complied when I simply asked them to. They needed to know how badly I wanted them to comply and what they would lose if they did not comply. This was the system we had for dealing with unwanted behavior and it worked for us. They learned that their behaviors had consequences both good and bad. If they were playing nicely at the playground and asked to stay longer, many times they did get to stay longer. If they cleaned up their toys when they were done playing, then they got to watch a video on TV. When they hit each other or were acting out, if they did not stop doing it they got a time out or had a toy or privilege taken away. My children learned that there are rules that need to be followed. Period. There was no grey area there.
From the time I became a Mom, I saw immediately how difficult parenting could be. It was exhausting, emotionally draining, and surprising how mad such a tiny creature could make you! Some days it took a lot of extra emotional strength to conquer the day. I also saw some examples of people around me who were taking short cuts on their parenting duties and it was really surprising to me. I never thought about how those parenting short cuts would manifest when those children became adults.
Some parenting short cuts are probably the result of exhaustion. These are the people that have children that have worn them down, thus they let the children do whatever they want because they are too tired of arguing about why they cannot do it. These children learn early on to keep nagging for what they want until they wear the parent down!
Some parenting short cuts are the result of not having enough hands or not paying enough attention to your children. These are the parents you see in the store parking lot who have a toddler following 20 feet behind the shopping cart. Both parent and child are oblivious to the danger that a 36 inch tall child can be in while walking by himself behind a parking lot full of SUV’s that can’t see him. I feel like screaming when I see these parents but they are usually too busy chatting on their cell phones to notice. This child is under the false impression that nothing can hurt him; if my Mom or Dad thinks its ok for me to walk (almost) alone through a parking lot, then it must be ok. They are relying on the parent to be a parent and make a decision on their safety. This results in a false sense of security.
Other short cuts are the result of an attitude of “we did it when we were kids and we turned out fine.” These are the people who hold the baby on their lap while driving ala Britney Spears. If your child is crying while strapped into a car seat in the back of your car and you are driving, there is not much you can do. You can ignore it, or you can pull over and try to calm the child. Those are your only safe options. When we were growing up as children, there were no car seats or seat belts. Guess what? Back then, many more people, including children, were injured and died in car crashes. It is not rocket science that car seats and seat belts save lives a lot more than they take lives. The children who grow up having been taken onto someone’s lap in a moving car will undoubtedly be the people who don’t think they need to use seat belts when they grow up.
This week, a news story appeared in Massachusetts that was stunning. There was a couple in East Bridgewater that had left for a trip to Paris and had left their teenage son with a neighbor for the week. He invited a few friends over for a party at his parent’s house and it turned into a total calamity. A few local troublemakers heard of the party and invited many, many more people via texting, twitter and Facebook. The local troublemakers went there on a mission to destroy the house. You heard it right. They went there with the sole purpose of wrecking a stranger’s home for fun. And they did a good job of it. They kicked and punched holes in walls, urinated on every bed, carpet and pillow in the house. They spilled beer and blood everywhere. They tore carpeting, pulled down ceiling fans, broke lamps, antiques, carved profanity into wooden headboards, left cigarette buts, beer cans and litter everywhere. In total, they did about $45,000 damage. Needless to say the couple returned from their Paris trip to find their home in a state of ruin.
To me, the part that is so shocking in this story is not that the son decided to have a party when his folks were away. That has gone on as long as we can remember. Did you see the movie Risky Business? The part that blows me away is that these kids (all are between 16 and 21) made a conscious decision to go to someone’s house and wreck it for fun. All I can conclude about these kids, who have since been arrested, is that they had to be the result of either bad parenting or no parenting. They have no sense of right and wrong, no sense of consequences to their actions, no sense of knowing better than that. I am really hoping that the judge on their case acts in a parental way and throws the book at all of them. They need to learn these basic life lessons and better late than never. They also need to repay the homeowners for all of the damage and maybe pay a punitive damage fee for mental anguish they caused.
So where am I going with this? I am not saying that if you don’t give your child a time out they are going to go out and destroy a stranger’s house for fun. But I am saying that good citizens, good students, good friends are not created in a vacuum. Their parents did all the hard work to teach the lessons of life (that one can learn as a child) and these children grew up applying these teachings to all aspects of their lives.
Not every axe murderer has had a bad parent and not every Mother Theresa type has had a saint for a parent. It’s just that the odds are in your favor if you have parents that behave as parents and leave the friend area to work itself out.
A potential bonus of behaving like a parent is that for a lot of people, eventually your child will be your friend. They just have to get through the business of growing up first before they can give you kudos for all you did for them :-)
Parenting is hard work, it is physically tiring when children are small and it is mentally taxing when they get older. It is the hardest and most important job that anyone can do. Putting a good human being out into the world shapes that world in ways we cannot even imagine.
There are so many parents that have adopted the parenting model of being their child’s best friend. On the surface there seems to be nothing wrong with that idea. You get along better, there is less arguing, you know what they want, you give it to them, the lines of communication are open.
HELLO! These are junior human beings we are talking about! They were not born with all the life experiences they need to make good decisions. They don’t automatically know right from wrong. They don’t know where the boundaries of acceptable behavior are. They only learn those things by being taught by parents and loved ones, and by having been given boundaries in their everyday behavior.
When my children were very small, a friend of mine with no children told me that she thought I ran a “tight ship,” because I put my kids in a time out when they did things that they knew they were not supposed to do. The theory behind, time out is that eventually the child will understand the consequences of their actions and not do it anymore. This approach worked well with my second child, but failed with my first child. My older child constantly asked to get down from the time out and had tantrums during the time out. He needed more drastic measures to get the point across. I had to take a favorite toy or a privilege away from him when he exhibited the bad behavior. That seemed to get the point across with him.
Back to my friend; since she had no children, my reactions to my children’s bad behavior seemed excessive to her; she thought that if I just asked my children to stop the bad behavior, they would comply with my request. I don’t know about your children, but my kids NEVER complied when I simply asked them to. They needed to know how badly I wanted them to comply and what they would lose if they did not comply. This was the system we had for dealing with unwanted behavior and it worked for us. They learned that their behaviors had consequences both good and bad. If they were playing nicely at the playground and asked to stay longer, many times they did get to stay longer. If they cleaned up their toys when they were done playing, then they got to watch a video on TV. When they hit each other or were acting out, if they did not stop doing it they got a time out or had a toy or privilege taken away. My children learned that there are rules that need to be followed. Period. There was no grey area there.
From the time I became a Mom, I saw immediately how difficult parenting could be. It was exhausting, emotionally draining, and surprising how mad such a tiny creature could make you! Some days it took a lot of extra emotional strength to conquer the day. I also saw some examples of people around me who were taking short cuts on their parenting duties and it was really surprising to me. I never thought about how those parenting short cuts would manifest when those children became adults.
Some parenting short cuts are probably the result of exhaustion. These are the people that have children that have worn them down, thus they let the children do whatever they want because they are too tired of arguing about why they cannot do it. These children learn early on to keep nagging for what they want until they wear the parent down!
Some parenting short cuts are the result of not having enough hands or not paying enough attention to your children. These are the parents you see in the store parking lot who have a toddler following 20 feet behind the shopping cart. Both parent and child are oblivious to the danger that a 36 inch tall child can be in while walking by himself behind a parking lot full of SUV’s that can’t see him. I feel like screaming when I see these parents but they are usually too busy chatting on their cell phones to notice. This child is under the false impression that nothing can hurt him; if my Mom or Dad thinks its ok for me to walk (almost) alone through a parking lot, then it must be ok. They are relying on the parent to be a parent and make a decision on their safety. This results in a false sense of security.
Other short cuts are the result of an attitude of “we did it when we were kids and we turned out fine.” These are the people who hold the baby on their lap while driving ala Britney Spears. If your child is crying while strapped into a car seat in the back of your car and you are driving, there is not much you can do. You can ignore it, or you can pull over and try to calm the child. Those are your only safe options. When we were growing up as children, there were no car seats or seat belts. Guess what? Back then, many more people, including children, were injured and died in car crashes. It is not rocket science that car seats and seat belts save lives a lot more than they take lives. The children who grow up having been taken onto someone’s lap in a moving car will undoubtedly be the people who don’t think they need to use seat belts when they grow up.
This week, a news story appeared in Massachusetts that was stunning. There was a couple in East Bridgewater that had left for a trip to Paris and had left their teenage son with a neighbor for the week. He invited a few friends over for a party at his parent’s house and it turned into a total calamity. A few local troublemakers heard of the party and invited many, many more people via texting, twitter and Facebook. The local troublemakers went there on a mission to destroy the house. You heard it right. They went there with the sole purpose of wrecking a stranger’s home for fun. And they did a good job of it. They kicked and punched holes in walls, urinated on every bed, carpet and pillow in the house. They spilled beer and blood everywhere. They tore carpeting, pulled down ceiling fans, broke lamps, antiques, carved profanity into wooden headboards, left cigarette buts, beer cans and litter everywhere. In total, they did about $45,000 damage. Needless to say the couple returned from their Paris trip to find their home in a state of ruin.
To me, the part that is so shocking in this story is not that the son decided to have a party when his folks were away. That has gone on as long as we can remember. Did you see the movie Risky Business? The part that blows me away is that these kids (all are between 16 and 21) made a conscious decision to go to someone’s house and wreck it for fun. All I can conclude about these kids, who have since been arrested, is that they had to be the result of either bad parenting or no parenting. They have no sense of right and wrong, no sense of consequences to their actions, no sense of knowing better than that. I am really hoping that the judge on their case acts in a parental way and throws the book at all of them. They need to learn these basic life lessons and better late than never. They also need to repay the homeowners for all of the damage and maybe pay a punitive damage fee for mental anguish they caused.
So where am I going with this? I am not saying that if you don’t give your child a time out they are going to go out and destroy a stranger’s house for fun. But I am saying that good citizens, good students, good friends are not created in a vacuum. Their parents did all the hard work to teach the lessons of life (that one can learn as a child) and these children grew up applying these teachings to all aspects of their lives.
Not every axe murderer has had a bad parent and not every Mother Theresa type has had a saint for a parent. It’s just that the odds are in your favor if you have parents that behave as parents and leave the friend area to work itself out.
A potential bonus of behaving like a parent is that for a lot of people, eventually your child will be your friend. They just have to get through the business of growing up first before they can give you kudos for all you did for them :-)
Parenting is hard work, it is physically tiring when children are small and it is mentally taxing when they get older. It is the hardest and most important job that anyone can do. Putting a good human being out into the world shapes that world in ways we cannot even imagine.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Like Wild Kingdom.....in my yard
Tonight I had plans to grill some Norwegian Salmon on my gas grill, located on our deck. However, my plans got slightly derailed. I uncovered the grill, and was started to see a large pile of acorns on the side tray. Now, I am the only one in my house that does the grilling, so I know I did not put 50 acorns on my side tray. Hmmmm....I pondered whether a squirrel thought that was a good place to hide acorns. Anyway, why would any squirrel need to hide them now? Winter is over, and my backyard is practically wall to wall acorns. No need to stash anything at this point. I was a bit confused. Then I opened the top of the grill only to find a lovely little igloo shaped nest made of sticks, leaves and feathers. How nice! That was not mentioned in the salmon recipe.
Nothing seemed to be moving in or out of the nest, or making any noise, so I closed the cover back up and brought my husband outside to have a look (and do the removal part). When he opened the cover, a little mouse was staring up at us. It was a cute mouse. It was a very industrious mouse and apparently it had babies in the igloo nest. GREAT! I had to admire this female, though. I had grilled 3 days ago and there was no sign of her. So, in 3 days time, she dragged 50 acorns up to my grill counter, dragged all of the nest parts inside, formed the nest and gave birth. Let's face it, Women Rock!!!! Even if they are women mice!
The most ridiculous part of this little tale (tail??) is that this is not the first time this has happened to us. A few years ago, the exact same thing happened and after removing the mice, nest and acorns and bringing them 1/2 mile into the nearby walking trail, they were back in the grill in a new nest within 2 days. My husband finally relented and brought the whole family about 5 miles away to a state forest and finally they left us alone. Alas, now THEY'RE BACK!
Over the years, our yard has been a veritable Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, Suburbs Version. We have had interactions with mice, chipmunks, squirrels, many birds, snakes, fox, rabbits, wild turkeys (the kind that fly!), deer, raccoons, toads, and a baby mole. We don't live in the forest either! I am constantly amazed how many creatures choose our property to call home.
We had a small bird that lived in our garage for about 6 months. We named him "Tweet."Every day, when I would open the garage door for the first time, Tweet would fly out. I have no idea where he was living inside the garage, but he was always there. He would tweet as soon as I would open the door from the house...almost to tell me he was ready to leave for the day. Just like clockwork, every afternoon he would fly back in because one of us usually left the garage door open. He was with us for about 6 months before we found him dead one winter day. We were kind of sad about it because it was funny hearing him tweeting every day.
I have been both exasperated and entertained by the rabbits in the yard. They LOVE to eat my Hostas. I see them hiding underneath the large leaves, munching away. They eat the plants unevenly though so they never look as good as they did when they first bloom. They are really cute rabbits so it is hard to be mad. The usual suspects, the squirrels, chipmunks, and birds are around us every day. They are used to our dog, Lily chasing them around the yard so they don't panic much when she is out there, and their antics are pretty amusing to watch.
I am an animal lover, so even though it was inconvenient, and kind of gross, they mouse was really cute and was a reminder to me that all creatures struggle to survive. She found a warm safe place to have her babies and had provided plenty of food for them. She was just doing what her instincts told her to do. We have had some very cold nights still so it is not surprising she would seek out a warmer location. This was one of the times I realize how glad I am to live in a place that I am allowed to share with the natural world that surrounds us. I am not a city person, per se. I don't think I could get into socializing with pigeons!!
One other positive note- this incident gives me a good reason to get new grill grates.
Hopefully Ms. Mouse will stay under the shed where my husband put her full nest and all of her acorns. It will be better for both of us if she does!
Nothing seemed to be moving in or out of the nest, or making any noise, so I closed the cover back up and brought my husband outside to have a look (and do the removal part). When he opened the cover, a little mouse was staring up at us. It was a cute mouse. It was a very industrious mouse and apparently it had babies in the igloo nest. GREAT! I had to admire this female, though. I had grilled 3 days ago and there was no sign of her. So, in 3 days time, she dragged 50 acorns up to my grill counter, dragged all of the nest parts inside, formed the nest and gave birth. Let's face it, Women Rock!!!! Even if they are women mice!
The most ridiculous part of this little tale (tail??) is that this is not the first time this has happened to us. A few years ago, the exact same thing happened and after removing the mice, nest and acorns and bringing them 1/2 mile into the nearby walking trail, they were back in the grill in a new nest within 2 days. My husband finally relented and brought the whole family about 5 miles away to a state forest and finally they left us alone. Alas, now THEY'RE BACK!
Over the years, our yard has been a veritable Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, Suburbs Version. We have had interactions with mice, chipmunks, squirrels, many birds, snakes, fox, rabbits, wild turkeys (the kind that fly!), deer, raccoons, toads, and a baby mole. We don't live in the forest either! I am constantly amazed how many creatures choose our property to call home.
We had a small bird that lived in our garage for about 6 months. We named him "Tweet."Every day, when I would open the garage door for the first time, Tweet would fly out. I have no idea where he was living inside the garage, but he was always there. He would tweet as soon as I would open the door from the house...almost to tell me he was ready to leave for the day. Just like clockwork, every afternoon he would fly back in because one of us usually left the garage door open. He was with us for about 6 months before we found him dead one winter day. We were kind of sad about it because it was funny hearing him tweeting every day.
I have been both exasperated and entertained by the rabbits in the yard. They LOVE to eat my Hostas. I see them hiding underneath the large leaves, munching away. They eat the plants unevenly though so they never look as good as they did when they first bloom. They are really cute rabbits so it is hard to be mad. The usual suspects, the squirrels, chipmunks, and birds are around us every day. They are used to our dog, Lily chasing them around the yard so they don't panic much when she is out there, and their antics are pretty amusing to watch.
I am an animal lover, so even though it was inconvenient, and kind of gross, they mouse was really cute and was a reminder to me that all creatures struggle to survive. She found a warm safe place to have her babies and had provided plenty of food for them. She was just doing what her instincts told her to do. We have had some very cold nights still so it is not surprising she would seek out a warmer location. This was one of the times I realize how glad I am to live in a place that I am allowed to share with the natural world that surrounds us. I am not a city person, per se. I don't think I could get into socializing with pigeons!!
One other positive note- this incident gives me a good reason to get new grill grates.
Hopefully Ms. Mouse will stay under the shed where my husband put her full nest and all of her acorns. It will be better for both of us if she does!
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Why do THEY keep trying to run my life?
When I think back to the earliest example I can remember of “They Say,” it was about saccharin. My grandmother used to put a tiny little pill in her coffee. It was a saccharin pill. She didn’t want to use sugar so she used saccharin. In the 70’s and early 80’s “They” told us that saccharin was bad for us and could cause cancer, as it had in rats that were fed massive quantities of saccharin. Then in 2001, “They” reversed their thinking and took saccharin off of the list of chemicals KNOWN to cause cancer. OK, so did that mean it doesn’t cause cancer or that it may and They just don’t want to warn us about it? I don’t think They really know. I do know this, most humans that consume saccharin, do so in very small quantities. It is not found in many foods today and if you use it at all, it is in the form of Sweet and Low packets that you put in your coffee; a far lower dose than the lab rats received. They should be telling us to use it in moderation!
They always strike again. They have told us over the years about the various food items that if eaten are bound to kill us. Let’s see…there is the saturated fat found in butter, meats, eggs, and dairy products-that will clog your arteries, then there is the transfat that is produced by hydrogenating oils, let’s not forget the sugar we are all getting fat from consuming, the white flour/potatoes/pasta that is bad for our blood sugar regulation, the alcohol that is going to increase women’s chances of getting breast cancer. Lately They are targeting high fructose corn syrup, sodium, hormones in meats, pesticides on produce, things that are not “organic.” If you took every one of their recommendations to heart, there would be many, many empty shelves in your pantry and very few items to choose from to eat. Also you would make yourself and everyone else crazy!
Coffee, over the years has been labeled bad, and good. It seems every year or two They reverse their thinking about coffee. It raises heart rate, it increases concentration, it is addictive, it is bad for pregnant women, it is good for decreasing your chances of getting Alzheimer’s but is bad for sufferers of Acid Reflux; it is better to drink filtered coffee. Again, moderation would be a good prescription here.
The Atkins diet is a bit of a conundrum. It espouses low (or no) carb eating along with the high fat, mostly meat, dairy, and nut consumption goes against everything we have ever been taught about healthy eating.. It would stand to reason that anyone eating this way would harm their heart. You are supposed to lose weight rapidly this way. Apparently after Dr. Atkins died from a slip on some ice that caused a brain bleed, his wife admitted he had coronary artery disease. The coronary artery disease may not have caused his death, but all the years of eating low carb, high fat had in fact taken a toll on his heart after all. Maybe a recommendation of lowering your carbohydrate intake and slightly increasing your LEAN protein would be a safer middle ground for Atkins fanatics.
Foods are not the only area of conflicting information from “They.” Exercise is another area in which we are constantly getting mixed information; information on how much, what kind, how intense. This is a field rife with new inventions to give you six pack abs, rock hard guns (arms), and a solid core. The problem is you have to USE the apparatus regularly to achieve any results at all.
Twenty years ago, it was thought that you needed to bring your heart rate up close to it’s maximum to get a good cardiovascular workout. Thus, high impact aerobics came about. Workouts were very strenuous and exhausting. Many people took up running for long distances to achieve the perfect level of fitness. In 1977 author Jim Fix wrote a book that started a running/jogging revolution. Suddenly couch potatoes and armchair athletes were outside running in their parachute pants everywhere you looked. Jim Fixx was an avid runner but oddly, he died of a heart attack at the age of 52! That fact was really controversial and stunning to his exercising throng. It was discovered that he had 3 blocked arteries that caused his heart attack. Here was a thin, vigorous fitness icon who died of a heart attack.
The most recent outbreak of “They” fitness advice came over the airwaves last night. It was a study by the Journal of the American Medical Association that revealed that older women need to exercise an hour a day to maintain their weight! You can extrapolate from that information that if you want to lose weight, you need to exercise for more than an hour a day. Who is really going to do that much exercise regularly for the rest of their life?
In 2005-2006,in an effort to lose weight, I went to the gym a minimum of 5 days a week and worked out for an average of over 60 minutes. Some days I worked out for closer to 90 minutes. I would use machinery first, an elliptical, a stair master, a stationary bike, then I would go up to the track and walk for a half hour or more depending on what friend I saw while I was there and how much catching up we needed to do. Where did all of this hyper exercising for over a year get me? It got me a very painful case of Plantar Fasciitis that lasted for over a year. The pain was so bad that I went through every treatment known to medicine short of surgery. I even wore a walking cast for a month to alleviate symptoms. I doused my foot in ice baths, I stretched, I went to physical therapy, I had cortisone injections. Nothing helped to cure this condition.
The irony of it was that I could not exercise at all during this year of pain. As a result, my weight went up instead of down. What finally helped my situation was that I got a job where I was sitting for long periods at a time and not standing on my injured feet. That ended up resting the tendons and after a few months, the pain subsided and I could have a life again. What is the moral of this part of the story? Moderation would have been the way to go here too! If I had stuck with 30-45 minutes and had stopped when I initially felt the pain in my feet, it may have saved me a year of agony and maybe I would not have gained any weight.
So, to wrap this in a neat little package, They don’t always know what They are talking about. They often change their recommendations after some time goes by. First They tell us something is bad for us, then They back off of that claim a few years later. What is a person to do with all of this conflicting information bombarding us?
This is what I do and what I think makes the most sense. Use the “They” information sparingly. If you like to eat a certain thing that They have deemed as bad for us, eat less of it and eat it less often. If you can, get some exercise every day. Don’t kill yourself doing it. Do something you like; you can get added exercise by taking the stairs instead of the elevator, parking further away from your destination, getting outside and working in your garden. Diet fads come and go, so do exercise fads. Anything that sounds too extreme usually is too extreme. They will keep telling us what to do but we can choose to listen or use our best judgment.
They always strike again. They have told us over the years about the various food items that if eaten are bound to kill us. Let’s see…there is the saturated fat found in butter, meats, eggs, and dairy products-that will clog your arteries, then there is the transfat that is produced by hydrogenating oils, let’s not forget the sugar we are all getting fat from consuming, the white flour/potatoes/pasta that is bad for our blood sugar regulation, the alcohol that is going to increase women’s chances of getting breast cancer. Lately They are targeting high fructose corn syrup, sodium, hormones in meats, pesticides on produce, things that are not “organic.” If you took every one of their recommendations to heart, there would be many, many empty shelves in your pantry and very few items to choose from to eat. Also you would make yourself and everyone else crazy!
Coffee, over the years has been labeled bad, and good. It seems every year or two They reverse their thinking about coffee. It raises heart rate, it increases concentration, it is addictive, it is bad for pregnant women, it is good for decreasing your chances of getting Alzheimer’s but is bad for sufferers of Acid Reflux; it is better to drink filtered coffee. Again, moderation would be a good prescription here.
The Atkins diet is a bit of a conundrum. It espouses low (or no) carb eating along with the high fat, mostly meat, dairy, and nut consumption goes against everything we have ever been taught about healthy eating.. It would stand to reason that anyone eating this way would harm their heart. You are supposed to lose weight rapidly this way. Apparently after Dr. Atkins died from a slip on some ice that caused a brain bleed, his wife admitted he had coronary artery disease. The coronary artery disease may not have caused his death, but all the years of eating low carb, high fat had in fact taken a toll on his heart after all. Maybe a recommendation of lowering your carbohydrate intake and slightly increasing your LEAN protein would be a safer middle ground for Atkins fanatics.
Foods are not the only area of conflicting information from “They.” Exercise is another area in which we are constantly getting mixed information; information on how much, what kind, how intense. This is a field rife with new inventions to give you six pack abs, rock hard guns (arms), and a solid core. The problem is you have to USE the apparatus regularly to achieve any results at all.
Twenty years ago, it was thought that you needed to bring your heart rate up close to it’s maximum to get a good cardiovascular workout. Thus, high impact aerobics came about. Workouts were very strenuous and exhausting. Many people took up running for long distances to achieve the perfect level of fitness. In 1977 author Jim Fix wrote a book that started a running/jogging revolution. Suddenly couch potatoes and armchair athletes were outside running in their parachute pants everywhere you looked. Jim Fixx was an avid runner but oddly, he died of a heart attack at the age of 52! That fact was really controversial and stunning to his exercising throng. It was discovered that he had 3 blocked arteries that caused his heart attack. Here was a thin, vigorous fitness icon who died of a heart attack.
The most recent outbreak of “They” fitness advice came over the airwaves last night. It was a study by the Journal of the American Medical Association that revealed that older women need to exercise an hour a day to maintain their weight! You can extrapolate from that information that if you want to lose weight, you need to exercise for more than an hour a day. Who is really going to do that much exercise regularly for the rest of their life?
In 2005-2006,in an effort to lose weight, I went to the gym a minimum of 5 days a week and worked out for an average of over 60 minutes. Some days I worked out for closer to 90 minutes. I would use machinery first, an elliptical, a stair master, a stationary bike, then I would go up to the track and walk for a half hour or more depending on what friend I saw while I was there and how much catching up we needed to do. Where did all of this hyper exercising for over a year get me? It got me a very painful case of Plantar Fasciitis that lasted for over a year. The pain was so bad that I went through every treatment known to medicine short of surgery. I even wore a walking cast for a month to alleviate symptoms. I doused my foot in ice baths, I stretched, I went to physical therapy, I had cortisone injections. Nothing helped to cure this condition.
The irony of it was that I could not exercise at all during this year of pain. As a result, my weight went up instead of down. What finally helped my situation was that I got a job where I was sitting for long periods at a time and not standing on my injured feet. That ended up resting the tendons and after a few months, the pain subsided and I could have a life again. What is the moral of this part of the story? Moderation would have been the way to go here too! If I had stuck with 30-45 minutes and had stopped when I initially felt the pain in my feet, it may have saved me a year of agony and maybe I would not have gained any weight.
So, to wrap this in a neat little package, They don’t always know what They are talking about. They often change their recommendations after some time goes by. First They tell us something is bad for us, then They back off of that claim a few years later. What is a person to do with all of this conflicting information bombarding us?
This is what I do and what I think makes the most sense. Use the “They” information sparingly. If you like to eat a certain thing that They have deemed as bad for us, eat less of it and eat it less often. If you can, get some exercise every day. Don’t kill yourself doing it. Do something you like; you can get added exercise by taking the stairs instead of the elevator, parking further away from your destination, getting outside and working in your garden. Diet fads come and go, so do exercise fads. Anything that sounds too extreme usually is too extreme. They will keep telling us what to do but we can choose to listen or use our best judgment.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Census, Government business as usual
Today, I got a simple little postcard in the mail that pissed me off. It was a postcard reminding me to fill out my Census form. It mentioned that if I had difficulty filling it out, I could call a number listed and they would help me. This all seems pretty innocuous until you realize that the government also sent me the actual census form 2 weeks ago and a week before that they sent me a form telling me to look for the Census form to arrive soon. How may pieces of mail does it require for me to simply answer a few questions? I don't remember ever receiving a pre-Census notice and a post-Census reminder. All I ever got before was the actual Census form. The bigger question is WHY IS THIS ALL DONE ON PAPER, USING THE US MAIL, AND NOT ONLINE? The overall cost of the 2010 census is estimated at $14billion dollars!
During the Super Bowl and the Olympics, I saw some television advertisements for the Census and then I heard on the news that those advertisements cost the government millions of dollars. That would be millions of our tax dollars that the government does not have to waste. How much did it cost them to send 3 different mailings to 300 million Americans? I am sure it was hundreds of millions of dollars to do those mailings. This is a prima facie example of government waste. Does the government think that the general public is stupid? Do they think that we will get an official looking envelope and just disregard it or throw it away unless we have prior notification of it's pending arrival?
Folks, we live in the Internet Age. As I mentioned before, I worked at a job,until recently, helping companies sell products to our government, so I had access to the information detailing what the government bought for the last 3 1/2 years. The government does own computers, and lots of them. It buys them almost daily. Why can't the census be filled out online? If you go to the census website, it specifically states that it may not be filled out online.
One could argue that the government is afraid of massive fraud if people are allowed to fill them out online. OK then, what if each household that has a computer and pays taxes has to register 1 email address and then a unique passcode is sent by the government via postcard to that house address to access the online Census questionnaire. That will greatly cut down on fraud and also cut down on the pieces of paper that have to be mailed out for Census business. I realize not every family has a computer (although it is hard to believe that some people have NO computer access at all-most libraries have Internet access and computers to use for free). The families that opt to can have the Census mailed to them. What if we are able to check a box on our tax form telling the government that we want to fill out all future Census forms online so they have our contact information stored for the next Census? These seem to be reasonable solutions that would only require an IRS agent to input an email address into a database to be used in the future.
This is a simple concept-- saving money and resources (trees, stamps, gasoline for postal vehicles to deliver these mailings). It does not require any out of the box thinking to see how this would cut down on wasteful spending. Our country is in debt to the degree never seen before. If we could cut costs like this one down, there is no down side for anyone. It goes against our common sense that the largest agency in the world, the US Government, is not the most streamlined, high tech ,efficient agency anywhere. It has certainly purchased all the tools it needs to be that efficient and streamlined.
Alas, we are forgetting one thing. JOBS. How many government jobs will be lost if we fill out the Census online? A lot of jobs will be lost. There are the people producing the advertisements for the Census.There are the people producing the actual mailings. There are the people inputting all the data from the forms that get filled out and sent back. There are the people hired to go door to door to collect Census data for the forms that were not returned. On their own website, the Census Bureau states that it costs $75 million to employ the door to door Census takers. They reason that it is cheaper to send the 3 mailings out than to have to hire even more door to door reps and that doing 3 mailings increases the response rate by 7-10%.
I understand why we need to have the Census statistics. It helps us to know where the populations are moving to and from, where the education money needs to go, etc. But there is a better and more efficient way to gather this information. Again, I revisit the IRS Tax forms we are all (most of us anyway) required to file every year. Can't this Census information be included on our tax forms ? The people not required to file taxes can be sent a stand alone Census form. This would alleviate so much paper waste, time waste, and job waste.
Unfortunately, there are so many areas of Government where this type of waste is evident. There are job duplications everywhere. There are antiquated systems being used that take many personnel to run them when the same job could be done either by fewer employees with better computers, or by computers alone.
This type of streamlining of our Government could go a long way into chipping away at our current Deficit/Debt problems. Maybe our Government should do what they do best in these situations-appoint a blue ribbon commission to study the issues and come up with a series of recommendations that will then never be followed!
During the Super Bowl and the Olympics, I saw some television advertisements for the Census and then I heard on the news that those advertisements cost the government millions of dollars. That would be millions of our tax dollars that the government does not have to waste. How much did it cost them to send 3 different mailings to 300 million Americans? I am sure it was hundreds of millions of dollars to do those mailings. This is a prima facie example of government waste. Does the government think that the general public is stupid? Do they think that we will get an official looking envelope and just disregard it or throw it away unless we have prior notification of it's pending arrival?
Folks, we live in the Internet Age. As I mentioned before, I worked at a job,until recently, helping companies sell products to our government, so I had access to the information detailing what the government bought for the last 3 1/2 years. The government does own computers, and lots of them. It buys them almost daily. Why can't the census be filled out online? If you go to the census website, it specifically states that it may not be filled out online.
One could argue that the government is afraid of massive fraud if people are allowed to fill them out online. OK then, what if each household that has a computer and pays taxes has to register 1 email address and then a unique passcode is sent by the government via postcard to that house address to access the online Census questionnaire. That will greatly cut down on fraud and also cut down on the pieces of paper that have to be mailed out for Census business. I realize not every family has a computer (although it is hard to believe that some people have NO computer access at all-most libraries have Internet access and computers to use for free). The families that opt to can have the Census mailed to them. What if we are able to check a box on our tax form telling the government that we want to fill out all future Census forms online so they have our contact information stored for the next Census? These seem to be reasonable solutions that would only require an IRS agent to input an email address into a database to be used in the future.
This is a simple concept-- saving money and resources (trees, stamps, gasoline for postal vehicles to deliver these mailings). It does not require any out of the box thinking to see how this would cut down on wasteful spending. Our country is in debt to the degree never seen before. If we could cut costs like this one down, there is no down side for anyone. It goes against our common sense that the largest agency in the world, the US Government, is not the most streamlined, high tech ,efficient agency anywhere. It has certainly purchased all the tools it needs to be that efficient and streamlined.
Alas, we are forgetting one thing. JOBS. How many government jobs will be lost if we fill out the Census online? A lot of jobs will be lost. There are the people producing the advertisements for the Census.There are the people producing the actual mailings. There are the people inputting all the data from the forms that get filled out and sent back. There are the people hired to go door to door to collect Census data for the forms that were not returned. On their own website, the Census Bureau states that it costs $75 million to employ the door to door Census takers. They reason that it is cheaper to send the 3 mailings out than to have to hire even more door to door reps and that doing 3 mailings increases the response rate by 7-10%.
I understand why we need to have the Census statistics. It helps us to know where the populations are moving to and from, where the education money needs to go, etc. But there is a better and more efficient way to gather this information. Again, I revisit the IRS Tax forms we are all (most of us anyway) required to file every year. Can't this Census information be included on our tax forms ? The people not required to file taxes can be sent a stand alone Census form. This would alleviate so much paper waste, time waste, and job waste.
Unfortunately, there are so many areas of Government where this type of waste is evident. There are job duplications everywhere. There are antiquated systems being used that take many personnel to run them when the same job could be done either by fewer employees with better computers, or by computers alone.
This type of streamlining of our Government could go a long way into chipping away at our current Deficit/Debt problems. Maybe our Government should do what they do best in these situations-appoint a blue ribbon commission to study the issues and come up with a series of recommendations that will then never be followed!
Monday, March 22, 2010
The Squeaky Wheel Rides Again!
Yesterday, my husband attempted to use our credit card at Home Depot. It was declined. That has never happened to us and it was surprising. I was at home when this occurred so I immediately thought that someone may have stolen our credit card information and charged it up to our substantial credit limit. I logged into our account and was puzzled. There were no rogue charges, no notification about possible stolen account numbers. All that was there that looked amiss was a tiny red note saying our account was past due (5 days past due!)
I normally pay my bills through online banking Bill Pay. This is a good system that can virtually insure that your payments arrive on time. I get the paper bill in the mail, I sit at my computer, log into BillPay and enter the payment information, then I am DONE. I had to retrace these steps to figure out why our payment was late. There was no payment in my bill payment queue. There was no payment that had already gone out for this month. HMMMMM...and lastly I didn't have the paper bill at all. AHA! That was the problem with my system. The bill never arrived so I never sat down and scheduled a payment for this card. What still bothered me, although it was my fault it didn't get paid, was that we have been cardholders with this bank for 18 years, we have a high credit limit, pay our card off monthly, and still they declined the card for a small unpaid balance. I was fixing for a fight with my credit card company this morning.
Customer service people are not always helpful, not always intelligent ,and don't always speak clearly enough to be understood. With this in mind, I dialed the customer service number and hoped to get a smart, English speaking customer service rep who had the authority to remedy this situation. I was irritated by the $39 late fee, and $16.50 in interest charges, but mostly that we were declined. I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised. Nancy answered my call after I got through the labyrinth of prompts and "pressed 6 for customer service." She was apologetic, she had authority to wipe out those charges, she asked politely if she could put me on hold to check out why we were declined even though we were less than 10% into our credit limit.
FYI, if you are late with a payment, a credit card company is compelled to put a hold on your account until you pay at least your minimum payment. Query: If this is common procedure amongst credit card companies, why are so many people in so much credit card debt trouble? Are they just making minimum payments every month just to keep the credit flowing? STUPID! These are the people that need to be declined!
Nancy got rid of the late charges and the interest charge. I thought since I was on a roll, I would ask for a lower interest rate. WHAMMO! I got it. We were at 14.99% and they lowered us to 7.99% for a 6 month period. I will ask again when it resets in 6 months. In my case, this morning anyway, the squeaky wheel got greased so well it is rolling down the Autobahn.
I have not always been as happy with my customer service experiences. Two slightly more negative examples come to mind.
I had ordered a leather jacket from Wilson's Leather online. With special online promotions and free shipping it came to about $180. When it arrived, it did not fit well, so I decided to try to return it to a Wilson's store and get a different size. Before I could do that, a few days later, another of the same jacket arrived in the same wrong size. I checked my credit card statement and was only billed for 1. Strange. I called the toll free number for Wilson's and told the rep of my situation. She said they had no record of shipping the second jacket. She had no idea what to do about jacket #2. She was not helpful in any way. I knew I had 2 options and one was the right thing to do, the other was the fun thing to do. As I saw it my options were to either go to the Wilson's store with both jackets, return both and get (1 of )the right size jacket. The other option was to exchange jacket #1 for the right size and keep jacket #2 and sell it on Ebay. Believing in Karma as I do, I opted for the honest path. One thing bothered me though. When I returned both jackets to the sales person at the Wilson's store and explained the situation to her, it is entirely possible that she could have chosen my second option and sold it on Ebay herself and the company would have been none the wiser. I only know that her karma will take care of her if she did that!
My second example of a bad, and really odd customer service experience I had was a bird feeder I bought my husband for Father's Day 2 years ago. I ordered the Droll Yankee Flipper in order to watch it spin squirrels off of it when they attempted to eat the bird seed. It is a very funny thing to watch . We have had a lot of laughs watching them spin. We actually counted and one squirrel spun around about 20 times before jumping off. See Yankee Flipper here:
http://drollyankees.com/products/product-videos.html choose Video number 4
I had seen this feeder in a store for $125 and saw it on Amazon for $89.95. The catch was you had to opt for a free one month membership to Amazon Prime and you could have next day delivery for $9.95. So I did that. Well, Father's day came and went and no Yankee Flipper arrived. I called Amazon on Father's Day eve to complain (squeaky wheel rides again) and try to at least get my $9.95 refunded since it didn't show up on time. There was a long pause and a strange sound when I connected to the customer service department of Amazon. Oh no! INDIA! The customer service rep had an extremely thick Indian accent and didn't understand common American speech patterns. He could speak English, but clearly didn't understand what I was telling him about my situation. I explained it 3 times; I told him I wanted my shipping costs refunded. At the end of the call, I was not sure what would happen. He did say that I would get my shipping refunded, or at least that is what I thought it sounded like he said. The next day, Monday, the feeder arrived. On Wednesday I checked my credit card statement online and saw that Amazon had credited the entire $89.95 plus $9.95 shipping to my account! I don't think that is what he intended to do but this time around karma be damned, I was not going to spend another 20 minutes on the phone to India explaining how they needed to charge me back for the feeder.
I think between the leather coat drama ($180.00credit ) and the bird feeder fiasco($100debit ) karma was still mathematically in my favor!
I have one last homage to questionable customer service. Two years ago, my family had dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse in our town. It was a nice meal and we were had just finished eating. In fact we were waiting for the waiter to bring us our check ,which we estimated would be about $90.00-$100.00. The restaurant was full and it was taking him a long time to bring our check. All of a sudden , a loud alarm began going off and we saw smoke pouring from the kitchen. The manager told all of the patrons to leave the restaurant in an orderly fashion, no need to run, but there was a fire in the kitchen. We went outside and stood there for about 1/2 hour. Some of the patrons left right away driving off in the middle of their dinners. A few stragglers like us stayed behind to pay our bill. The fire department told everyone to leave the parking lot and that nobody would be let back in for hours. Reluctantly we left. We debated what to do. There was no way for them to know who we were since they had not taken our credit card yet. The next day, my husband called Longhorn to say we wanted to pay our bill from the previous night since we had eaten the whole meal. The person that answered the phone looked up our bill and told us we could come in at any time that day. I was half expecting the manager to say "forget it, nobody else paid and insurance covers it" but he took our credit card and swiped it, and let us pay for our dinner. He also told us that out of a full restaurant, only one other patron had come back to pay. There was no offer of a gift card, no extra thanks, no nothing! Looking back, I think this was very poor customer service on his part. We were honest, when no one else was, and he failed to recognize that. It is not that I was looking for a freebie, but under the circumstances, it seems to me that this manager should have encouraged us to return to his restaurant.
Over the years I have always been a squeaky wheel to right wrongs and correct problems. There are so many little frustrations that come into our lives every day! It is almost a part time job to get other people to correct their mistakes.
My moral for today is (back to my credit card scenario) complain, but politely. Let people know, in a calm way, what you expect, and what you want to happen. They will be much more receptive to calm than to cranky. If they cannot meet your expectations, you can tell them you will shop around for other services, products, whatever. At least then you will feel you did whatever you could to remedy a wrong and you won't stew about it.
I normally pay my bills through online banking Bill Pay. This is a good system that can virtually insure that your payments arrive on time. I get the paper bill in the mail, I sit at my computer, log into BillPay and enter the payment information, then I am DONE. I had to retrace these steps to figure out why our payment was late. There was no payment in my bill payment queue. There was no payment that had already gone out for this month. HMMMMM...and lastly I didn't have the paper bill at all. AHA! That was the problem with my system. The bill never arrived so I never sat down and scheduled a payment for this card. What still bothered me, although it was my fault it didn't get paid, was that we have been cardholders with this bank for 18 years, we have a high credit limit, pay our card off monthly, and still they declined the card for a small unpaid balance. I was fixing for a fight with my credit card company this morning.
Customer service people are not always helpful, not always intelligent ,and don't always speak clearly enough to be understood. With this in mind, I dialed the customer service number and hoped to get a smart, English speaking customer service rep who had the authority to remedy this situation. I was irritated by the $39 late fee, and $16.50 in interest charges, but mostly that we were declined. I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised. Nancy answered my call after I got through the labyrinth of prompts and "pressed 6 for customer service." She was apologetic, she had authority to wipe out those charges, she asked politely if she could put me on hold to check out why we were declined even though we were less than 10% into our credit limit.
FYI, if you are late with a payment, a credit card company is compelled to put a hold on your account until you pay at least your minimum payment. Query: If this is common procedure amongst credit card companies, why are so many people in so much credit card debt trouble? Are they just making minimum payments every month just to keep the credit flowing? STUPID! These are the people that need to be declined!
Nancy got rid of the late charges and the interest charge. I thought since I was on a roll, I would ask for a lower interest rate. WHAMMO! I got it. We were at 14.99% and they lowered us to 7.99% for a 6 month period. I will ask again when it resets in 6 months. In my case, this morning anyway, the squeaky wheel got greased so well it is rolling down the Autobahn.
I have not always been as happy with my customer service experiences. Two slightly more negative examples come to mind.
I had ordered a leather jacket from Wilson's Leather online. With special online promotions and free shipping it came to about $180. When it arrived, it did not fit well, so I decided to try to return it to a Wilson's store and get a different size. Before I could do that, a few days later, another of the same jacket arrived in the same wrong size. I checked my credit card statement and was only billed for 1. Strange. I called the toll free number for Wilson's and told the rep of my situation. She said they had no record of shipping the second jacket. She had no idea what to do about jacket #2. She was not helpful in any way. I knew I had 2 options and one was the right thing to do, the other was the fun thing to do. As I saw it my options were to either go to the Wilson's store with both jackets, return both and get (1 of )the right size jacket. The other option was to exchange jacket #1 for the right size and keep jacket #2 and sell it on Ebay. Believing in Karma as I do, I opted for the honest path. One thing bothered me though. When I returned both jackets to the sales person at the Wilson's store and explained the situation to her, it is entirely possible that she could have chosen my second option and sold it on Ebay herself and the company would have been none the wiser. I only know that her karma will take care of her if she did that!
My second example of a bad, and really odd customer service experience I had was a bird feeder I bought my husband for Father's Day 2 years ago. I ordered the Droll Yankee Flipper in order to watch it spin squirrels off of it when they attempted to eat the bird seed. It is a very funny thing to watch . We have had a lot of laughs watching them spin. We actually counted and one squirrel spun around about 20 times before jumping off. See Yankee Flipper here:
http://drollyankees.com/products/product-videos.html choose Video number 4
I had seen this feeder in a store for $125 and saw it on Amazon for $89.95. The catch was you had to opt for a free one month membership to Amazon Prime and you could have next day delivery for $9.95. So I did that. Well, Father's day came and went and no Yankee Flipper arrived. I called Amazon on Father's Day eve to complain (squeaky wheel rides again) and try to at least get my $9.95 refunded since it didn't show up on time. There was a long pause and a strange sound when I connected to the customer service department of Amazon. Oh no! INDIA! The customer service rep had an extremely thick Indian accent and didn't understand common American speech patterns. He could speak English, but clearly didn't understand what I was telling him about my situation. I explained it 3 times; I told him I wanted my shipping costs refunded. At the end of the call, I was not sure what would happen. He did say that I would get my shipping refunded, or at least that is what I thought it sounded like he said. The next day, Monday, the feeder arrived. On Wednesday I checked my credit card statement online and saw that Amazon had credited the entire $89.95 plus $9.95 shipping to my account! I don't think that is what he intended to do but this time around karma be damned, I was not going to spend another 20 minutes on the phone to India explaining how they needed to charge me back for the feeder.
I think between the leather coat drama ($180.00credit ) and the bird feeder fiasco($100debit ) karma was still mathematically in my favor!
I have one last homage to questionable customer service. Two years ago, my family had dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse in our town. It was a nice meal and we were had just finished eating. In fact we were waiting for the waiter to bring us our check ,which we estimated would be about $90.00-$100.00. The restaurant was full and it was taking him a long time to bring our check. All of a sudden , a loud alarm began going off and we saw smoke pouring from the kitchen. The manager told all of the patrons to leave the restaurant in an orderly fashion, no need to run, but there was a fire in the kitchen. We went outside and stood there for about 1/2 hour. Some of the patrons left right away driving off in the middle of their dinners. A few stragglers like us stayed behind to pay our bill. The fire department told everyone to leave the parking lot and that nobody would be let back in for hours. Reluctantly we left. We debated what to do. There was no way for them to know who we were since they had not taken our credit card yet. The next day, my husband called Longhorn to say we wanted to pay our bill from the previous night since we had eaten the whole meal. The person that answered the phone looked up our bill and told us we could come in at any time that day. I was half expecting the manager to say "forget it, nobody else paid and insurance covers it" but he took our credit card and swiped it, and let us pay for our dinner. He also told us that out of a full restaurant, only one other patron had come back to pay. There was no offer of a gift card, no extra thanks, no nothing! Looking back, I think this was very poor customer service on his part. We were honest, when no one else was, and he failed to recognize that. It is not that I was looking for a freebie, but under the circumstances, it seems to me that this manager should have encouraged us to return to his restaurant.
Over the years I have always been a squeaky wheel to right wrongs and correct problems. There are so many little frustrations that come into our lives every day! It is almost a part time job to get other people to correct their mistakes.
My moral for today is (back to my credit card scenario) complain, but politely. Let people know, in a calm way, what you expect, and what you want to happen. They will be much more receptive to calm than to cranky. If they cannot meet your expectations, you can tell them you will shop around for other services, products, whatever. At least then you will feel you did whatever you could to remedy a wrong and you won't stew about it.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
A Fair Weather Fan, I am not
As someone living within a 25 mile radius of Fenway Park, I am surrounded by the fans of "Red Sox Nation." I see how rabid these fans are no matter whether the Sox are up or down in the standings. I was raised in a suburb of NYC and so was more of a NY Yankees fan. Baseball is not my passion when it comes to sports but I do admire the die hard attitude of the Sox fans however. They stick with their team for better or for worse. To me, that is what being a true fan is all about. The Red Sox don't seem to have any fair weather fans. You either love them or hate them!!
The sport I have always been the most connected to is hockey. I was a huge New York Rangers fan in my teens. I watched or listened to every single game every season for several years. Those were the days in which if there was a home game at Madison Square Garden, it was blacked out on local TV so you could only listen to it on the radio. The only Ranger games that were televised were the away games, and I always watched those on my 13" black and white TV with a hanger for an antenna! My how far we have come. HD now makes it possible to actually see the puck and follow where it goes! HOOOOOAAAAHHHH!
I was a fan of the Rangers during the good years and the bad. I knew who all the players were, I knew their stats. My dad took me to some games at MSG and we got to watch from the cheap seats. He would cup his hands over my ears so I wouldn't hear all of the swearing going on up there!! The Rangers never won a Stanley Cup while I was a fan. But I watched every season no matter what. A family friend even nicknamed me "Hockey Puck."
As I got older and had a job and a life, I didn't have as much time to follow hockey. I was busy doing other things. Then I moved to Maine. There was no NHL hockey team there and by that time, I was rarely watching hockey at all.
We had children and then we moved to Massachusetts. BINGO. Now we lived in a Boston suburb. There was a NHL team here and I don't remember how or why I started watching again, but all of a sudden after the hockey lockout was over, I became a Boston Bruins fan. Let me tell you 1975 Ivy would kick 2010 Ivy's ass for being a Boston Bruins fan. I hated the Boston Bruins when I was a Rangers fan. I hated them with the white hot passion of a Red Sox Nation fan.
I have been a Bruins fan for several years now. This is all starting to feel familiar to me. They break my heart from time to time. Last season was awesome. The Bruins finished in first place in the Eastern Division and went to the second round in the playoffs. That is the furthest they have gone since I have watched them. Last season, their coach won the Jack Adams award, for being the best coach, their goalie won the Vezina trophy for top goaltender, the team captain won the Norris trophy for best defenseman. Other than than winning the coveted Stanley Cup, those are some pretty high honors. After they were beaten in the 7th game, in OT in the 2nd round of the playoffs by Carolina Hurricanes, the public found out that several Bruins key players had been playing in the playoffs with serious injuries. I guess the staff likes to keep this info under wraps in order not to give any advantages to the opposing team. Overall I was extremely impressed by the Bruins last year. I had great hopes they would continue their successful style this year.
This fall, one of their best scorers from the last few seasons, Phil Kessel, was traded to Toronto. He was recovering from summer shoulder surgery and was not slated to play until the season was 2 months underway. I am not sure why he was traded. I read reports of personality conflicts, and also salary demands that were not able to be met due to the NHL salary cap. He was a force to be reckoned with and would be sorely missed for his goal scoring acumen.
This season the Bruins have had a substantially LESS SATISFYING performance and it is kind of a mystery to us fans as to what changed from last year. It is almost the same group of players, less Phil Kessel, and less a few players that had been much less prominent last year. It is the same coach, the same goaltender, with the addition of a rookie goalie who has turned out to be better than his Vezina winning counterpart. On paper, overall, not that much has changed. But in reality, much has changed. They Bruins have scored the fewest goals of any team in the NHL this year. Last year, other teams feared the Bruins, and most teams, even the most elite teams, lost to the Bruins at least once. Last year, the Bruins hustled and played hard for 60 minutes. This year, they can barely scrape together 40 solid minutes of play.
That being said, it would be easy for me to be a fair weather fan and just say, "the Bruins suck" and stop watching the rest of the season. There are 11 games left until playoff time. The Bruins are currently in the 8th and last playoff spot fighting to hold on. If they stay in that spot, they will face the 1st place Washington Capitals with Alex Ovechkin in round 1 of teh playoffs. I predict that will be 4 games and out for this year's Bruins. It would be nice to make the playoffs but the Bruin's chances are slim for any progress beyond round one, if they make it into the post season at all.
My head tells me this season was over weeks ago during a 10 game losing streak (or was it an 11 game losing streak....I lost count). My instincts however, have to keep watching these last few games. I am a fan through thick and thin and sometimes it is painful to watch!
This year has not been the best year for Boston sports. I have a New England Patriots player living in my neighborhood. He has a Super Bowl ring, but I am sure it has some dust on it by now! The Patriots have not been the winning team they once were for a couple of years now. The Celtics are looking kind of shaky this year. There will probably not be a championship in their near future either.
Still the fans that love these Boston teams will continue to pay big bucks for the pleasure of seeing their team, good or bad. We will wait in long lines in the parking garage, pay $4 for a bottled water at the Garden, pay $40 to pay for parking at Gillette Stadium, and hope for the best at the end of the season. We will stick by our team and hope for a better season next year. There are always free agents and off season deals to be made that can change a team's dynamic and spark something that will make it a great season again.
In the meantime, this afternoon the Bruins just beat my former favorite team, the New York Rangers 2-1, so maybe this is the turning point!! :-D
The sport I have always been the most connected to is hockey. I was a huge New York Rangers fan in my teens. I watched or listened to every single game every season for several years. Those were the days in which if there was a home game at Madison Square Garden, it was blacked out on local TV so you could only listen to it on the radio. The only Ranger games that were televised were the away games, and I always watched those on my 13" black and white TV with a hanger for an antenna! My how far we have come. HD now makes it possible to actually see the puck and follow where it goes! HOOOOOAAAAHHHH!
I was a fan of the Rangers during the good years and the bad. I knew who all the players were, I knew their stats. My dad took me to some games at MSG and we got to watch from the cheap seats. He would cup his hands over my ears so I wouldn't hear all of the swearing going on up there!! The Rangers never won a Stanley Cup while I was a fan. But I watched every season no matter what. A family friend even nicknamed me "Hockey Puck."
As I got older and had a job and a life, I didn't have as much time to follow hockey. I was busy doing other things. Then I moved to Maine. There was no NHL hockey team there and by that time, I was rarely watching hockey at all.
We had children and then we moved to Massachusetts. BINGO. Now we lived in a Boston suburb. There was a NHL team here and I don't remember how or why I started watching again, but all of a sudden after the hockey lockout was over, I became a Boston Bruins fan. Let me tell you 1975 Ivy would kick 2010 Ivy's ass for being a Boston Bruins fan. I hated the Boston Bruins when I was a Rangers fan. I hated them with the white hot passion of a Red Sox Nation fan.
I have been a Bruins fan for several years now. This is all starting to feel familiar to me. They break my heart from time to time. Last season was awesome. The Bruins finished in first place in the Eastern Division and went to the second round in the playoffs. That is the furthest they have gone since I have watched them. Last season, their coach won the Jack Adams award, for being the best coach, their goalie won the Vezina trophy for top goaltender, the team captain won the Norris trophy for best defenseman. Other than than winning the coveted Stanley Cup, those are some pretty high honors. After they were beaten in the 7th game, in OT in the 2nd round of the playoffs by Carolina Hurricanes, the public found out that several Bruins key players had been playing in the playoffs with serious injuries. I guess the staff likes to keep this info under wraps in order not to give any advantages to the opposing team. Overall I was extremely impressed by the Bruins last year. I had great hopes they would continue their successful style this year.
This fall, one of their best scorers from the last few seasons, Phil Kessel, was traded to Toronto. He was recovering from summer shoulder surgery and was not slated to play until the season was 2 months underway. I am not sure why he was traded. I read reports of personality conflicts, and also salary demands that were not able to be met due to the NHL salary cap. He was a force to be reckoned with and would be sorely missed for his goal scoring acumen.
This season the Bruins have had a substantially LESS SATISFYING performance and it is kind of a mystery to us fans as to what changed from last year. It is almost the same group of players, less Phil Kessel, and less a few players that had been much less prominent last year. It is the same coach, the same goaltender, with the addition of a rookie goalie who has turned out to be better than his Vezina winning counterpart. On paper, overall, not that much has changed. But in reality, much has changed. They Bruins have scored the fewest goals of any team in the NHL this year. Last year, other teams feared the Bruins, and most teams, even the most elite teams, lost to the Bruins at least once. Last year, the Bruins hustled and played hard for 60 minutes. This year, they can barely scrape together 40 solid minutes of play.
That being said, it would be easy for me to be a fair weather fan and just say, "the Bruins suck" and stop watching the rest of the season. There are 11 games left until playoff time. The Bruins are currently in the 8th and last playoff spot fighting to hold on. If they stay in that spot, they will face the 1st place Washington Capitals with Alex Ovechkin in round 1 of teh playoffs. I predict that will be 4 games and out for this year's Bruins. It would be nice to make the playoffs but the Bruin's chances are slim for any progress beyond round one, if they make it into the post season at all.
My head tells me this season was over weeks ago during a 10 game losing streak (or was it an 11 game losing streak....I lost count). My instincts however, have to keep watching these last few games. I am a fan through thick and thin and sometimes it is painful to watch!
This year has not been the best year for Boston sports. I have a New England Patriots player living in my neighborhood. He has a Super Bowl ring, but I am sure it has some dust on it by now! The Patriots have not been the winning team they once were for a couple of years now. The Celtics are looking kind of shaky this year. There will probably not be a championship in their near future either.
Still the fans that love these Boston teams will continue to pay big bucks for the pleasure of seeing their team, good or bad. We will wait in long lines in the parking garage, pay $4 for a bottled water at the Garden, pay $40 to pay for parking at Gillette Stadium, and hope for the best at the end of the season. We will stick by our team and hope for a better season next year. There are always free agents and off season deals to be made that can change a team's dynamic and spark something that will make it a great season again.
In the meantime, this afternoon the Bruins just beat my former favorite team, the New York Rangers 2-1, so maybe this is the turning point!! :-D
Saturday, March 20, 2010
From Cyber Wilding to Cyber Terrorism
Today was the second time this school year that my son, who is in college, had his computer attacked by a virus, rendering it almost useless. The first time was move in day in August. He had just done a Microsoft Update and it blew his system. It turned out there was a problem with the Microsoft update. This was not what we needed on move in day. It cost my tech savvy husband 2 hours of his time to fix it and get the computer up and running on the college network.
Today, after allowing a virus protection update from Bit Defender he had a similar system failure. He called and my husband talked him through restoring his system. This time it cost them each about 1 hour and a half in time lost. And there were thousands of online posts about the Bit Defender issue within a short time of the problem occurring.
I am constantly amazed by the cyber world we live in. There are people out that there spend their days hacking and creating viruses for the sole purpose of ruining someone else’s day. WHY? What kind of person is drawn to doing this for a hobby? There are several levels of computer hacking/spying and at each level the reasons people have for doing it are different.
The lowest level of computer mischief would include kids or young adults hacking into other systems, or other people’s Facebook pages, emails, text messages, just to say that they did it or to “mess with someone.” This is a status thing. It is something they can brag about. They can put a nasty photo on someone else’s Facebook page. They can brag about it to their friends and feel important. One could argue some of this is a form of bullying and I agree. It usually is limited in scope however.
The next level is more of a criminal situation. It is the person who wants to wreak as much havoc as they can…..cyber wilding, if you will. They get a kick out of it and don’t worry about who is hurt in the process. They hack for the sake of hacking. They may not target any one person in particular. These people are more than annoying, they are vandals and need to be dealt with under the criminal justice system.
The top tier of hackers is the most worrisome by far. They are the hackers that don’t want any attention. They want to spy and sneak in stealth mode. They want to hack into the Pentagon, the White House, The FBI, CIA, Power Grid, Banking System, Wall Street, or Transportation System and hold our country hostage, or worse, destroy it. These are terrorists, not just criminals. A lot of them are state sponsored by countries we have philosophical difference with such as North Korea, Iran, and possibly Russia and China. These spies have the destruction of our way of life in mind when they work their dastardly magic on a keyboard. It is impossible to know how many of these people are out there. Our laws have not kept up with the internet age and these people know how to get around our firewalls, our encryption and our anti-virus software.
In the last 5-10 years, we have had suspicious multi state power outages, major banks and insurance companies have had their customer’s personal account information stolen through hacking, countless US Government agency computers have been hacked into.
Since almost every aspect of our modern life is controlled by computers, we are extremely vulnerable in many critical areas. Think of these things controlled by computers and how things could change if someone was able to successfully hack into these systems:
Air traffic control and /or airports
Water treatment facilities and delivery systems.
Rail Lines
Traffic Lights in a major city
Hospitals
Colleges
Electrical Grid
Natural Gas distribution
Large Production facilities
Worldwide Satellite signals
Telephone systems (Verizon, AT & T, etc)
Cable TV companies
Any Governmental (State or Federal) agency
The Post office, FedEx, UPS
When you think about how we have come to depend on all of these systems it is almost impossible to imagine would happen if they suddenly started malfunctioning or stopped working altogether.
Computer spying and hacking may be the next battle in the war on terrorism. I hope we are armed and ready. Call me old fashioned but some of these scenarios make me long for the days of plug in typewriters, corded telephones, and paper records stored in filing cabinets. Viva 1980!!
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Suburban Ghost Towns of 2010
We have all become numb to it by now. Eighteen months ago, when a store in a strip mall closed and left, we not only took notice, we wondered why, we asked employees in surrounding stores for the scoop. Now, it is commonplace. Strip malls have become the ghost towns of suburbia in 2010.
Strip malls are, by nature, places where stores set up shop, peddle their wares and when people are tired of buying their wares, they move on to other locations leaving an empty cube in the strip mall. A few years ago, when this happened, usually some other store would take its place within a few months. There were never gaping holes for long periods of time.
Back in fall 2008, I began to notice a trend, a trend that was both sad and disturbing. A trend that has changed our suburban landscape. It started when the local Linens 'N' Things closed its doors for good. That left a large unoccupied store front in a local strip mall. Every time I went to that strip mall I looked to see if there were any "coming soon" signs in the windows. There weren't. Granted, it was a pretty large store, so there were probably fewer merchants willing to take on a space of that size. But it felt a bit odd and scary. This was a time like no other time we had experienced in a long while. Other stores in that strip mall soon followed suit. The next to go were a fitness equipment store and a Foot Locker store. That may not sound like a lot but this strip mall only has about 10 slots so this represents 1/3 of their businesses.
This strip mall was not an anomaly. As I went about my life in our little enclave, I began to see the trend. Every strip mall I visited started to have gaps, some of them had large gaps. Gaps of empty stores. And this emptying was not isolated to strip malls. The upscale mall The Natick Collection fell victim to fleeing stores as did the Wrentham Village Premium Outlet Mall. Free standing stores were not immune either. This recession has caused a giant downsizing of retail life.
I got curious though. Why were so many stores leaving? Was it the obvious reason, not enough business to sustain them? Or was there something else driving this mass exodus? I started to ask questions and was really surprised at some of the answers.
I was in my local Bank of America branch, which is located in a strip mall, and asked my usual teller what was going on. She told me the branch was closing. When I asked her why, she told me the landlord has significantly upped their rent and BoA was not willing to pay the extra. WHAT? He upped the rent in this economy and with so many store fronts in this strip mall already empty? Is he on crack? This too was not the only example of it in this particular strip mall. An Applebees restaurant that had been located in that strip mall for as long as I have lived in town (15 years) suddenly closed up and left a couple of weeks ago. The reason? The landlord had raised their rent too high and they were not willing or able to pay the increase!! OK this landlord must be insane. Instead of looking for new tenants to fill the several empty spots, he is driving out his paying tenants!! Wow, either I have no understanding of basic business or he needs a reality slap!
I thought maybe this situation was isolated to this particular mall. I was wrong. Back in January, I was at the Wrentham Village Outlet Mall browsing around in my favorite store, Le Gourmet Chef, and the inventory looked so low, it looked like a fire sale. I had been there 2 weeks prior and all looked normal. What the heck was going on? At the register I asked the clerk why there were so few products. She told me that one of the fashion stores already located in the Outlet Mall (BCBG) wanted to take over Le Gourmet Chef's store location so the landlord increased the rent a lot on Le Gourmet Chef to force them to move. Le Gourmet's management decided not to cave to pressure to move to a less desirable location within the Outlet Mall and instead they just closed the store for good. The ironic thing is that Le Gourmet was the second highest grossing store in this outlet mall of over 120 stores!! Wow. Another landlord that must be a graduate of the Ass Backwards School of Business!
Recently a TJ MAXX at a different strip mall in my town closed it's store that had been there for many years. I have since been told that a Bob's Store that is in that same mall will close and an Ocean State Job Lot store may take it's place. That made me laugh out loud. The thing is, this strip mall is the oldest and arguably the dumpiest one in our town.The fact that an Ocean State Job Lot may open there is PERFECT!! This just may be a statement of the times we are living in. A lot of people are out of work. Not as many people are shopping at the upscale stores but instead they are looking for giant discounts; looking for ways to stretch their money further and further.
We need to face facts. A lot of stores have gone out of business or have downsized the number of locations during this recession. It is sad but true. It is possible some of these strip malls won't be fully occupied again for a long time, if ever. There are some places I will not miss. There are some that I already miss. That is water under the bridge. This recession seems to be lightening up a little bit and maybe there is a light at the end of the retail tunnel. Maybe all of this weeding out will bring us new stores, and new kinds of stores. That is something I can look forward to.
A spark of hope appeared in my retail world last week. I was in that strip mall where the Linen's N Things had gone out and I noticed a man in a crane attending to a large metal framework being built over where the Linens "N" Things sign used to be. I got curious and hopeful. I asked the cashier at the Whole Foods Market in that mall if she knew what was going on. She told me that a Michael's Crafts store was going to take over the old Linens location. I had mixed feelings on that. I am happy for one less depressing empty storefront, don't get me wrong. I do a lot of craft projects, but there is already an A.C. Moore store one strip mall away. The net result of Michael's opening may be that A.C. Moore could have to close because of the competition. If that happens, Michael's would not be a gain for our area. Time will tell. But, I do hope the trend of filling empty slots continues.
Meanwhile, I have my wish list for some of the empty store fronts and restaurants. It includes: Trader Joe's, P. F. Changs, Bertuccis, Le Gourmet Chef, Crate and Barrel, The Container Store, Guitar Center (for Tyler). I would be very happy if any of these businesses open somewhere close to me :-) Maybe I should contact some of those crazy landlords and drop a hint!
I would love to know your retail wish list...feel free to leave it in the "Comments" box below.
Strip malls are, by nature, places where stores set up shop, peddle their wares and when people are tired of buying their wares, they move on to other locations leaving an empty cube in the strip mall. A few years ago, when this happened, usually some other store would take its place within a few months. There were never gaping holes for long periods of time.
Back in fall 2008, I began to notice a trend, a trend that was both sad and disturbing. A trend that has changed our suburban landscape. It started when the local Linens 'N' Things closed its doors for good. That left a large unoccupied store front in a local strip mall. Every time I went to that strip mall I looked to see if there were any "coming soon" signs in the windows. There weren't. Granted, it was a pretty large store, so there were probably fewer merchants willing to take on a space of that size. But it felt a bit odd and scary. This was a time like no other time we had experienced in a long while. Other stores in that strip mall soon followed suit. The next to go were a fitness equipment store and a Foot Locker store. That may not sound like a lot but this strip mall only has about 10 slots so this represents 1/3 of their businesses.
This strip mall was not an anomaly. As I went about my life in our little enclave, I began to see the trend. Every strip mall I visited started to have gaps, some of them had large gaps. Gaps of empty stores. And this emptying was not isolated to strip malls. The upscale mall The Natick Collection fell victim to fleeing stores as did the Wrentham Village Premium Outlet Mall. Free standing stores were not immune either. This recession has caused a giant downsizing of retail life.
I got curious though. Why were so many stores leaving? Was it the obvious reason, not enough business to sustain them? Or was there something else driving this mass exodus? I started to ask questions and was really surprised at some of the answers.
I was in my local Bank of America branch, which is located in a strip mall, and asked my usual teller what was going on. She told me the branch was closing. When I asked her why, she told me the landlord has significantly upped their rent and BoA was not willing to pay the extra. WHAT? He upped the rent in this economy and with so many store fronts in this strip mall already empty? Is he on crack? This too was not the only example of it in this particular strip mall. An Applebees restaurant that had been located in that strip mall for as long as I have lived in town (15 years) suddenly closed up and left a couple of weeks ago. The reason? The landlord had raised their rent too high and they were not willing or able to pay the increase!! OK this landlord must be insane. Instead of looking for new tenants to fill the several empty spots, he is driving out his paying tenants!! Wow, either I have no understanding of basic business or he needs a reality slap!
I thought maybe this situation was isolated to this particular mall. I was wrong. Back in January, I was at the Wrentham Village Outlet Mall browsing around in my favorite store, Le Gourmet Chef, and the inventory looked so low, it looked like a fire sale. I had been there 2 weeks prior and all looked normal. What the heck was going on? At the register I asked the clerk why there were so few products. She told me that one of the fashion stores already located in the Outlet Mall (BCBG) wanted to take over Le Gourmet Chef's store location so the landlord increased the rent a lot on Le Gourmet Chef to force them to move. Le Gourmet's management decided not to cave to pressure to move to a less desirable location within the Outlet Mall and instead they just closed the store for good. The ironic thing is that Le Gourmet was the second highest grossing store in this outlet mall of over 120 stores!! Wow. Another landlord that must be a graduate of the Ass Backwards School of Business!
Recently a TJ MAXX at a different strip mall in my town closed it's store that had been there for many years. I have since been told that a Bob's Store that is in that same mall will close and an Ocean State Job Lot store may take it's place. That made me laugh out loud. The thing is, this strip mall is the oldest and arguably the dumpiest one in our town.The fact that an Ocean State Job Lot may open there is PERFECT!! This just may be a statement of the times we are living in. A lot of people are out of work. Not as many people are shopping at the upscale stores but instead they are looking for giant discounts; looking for ways to stretch their money further and further.
We need to face facts. A lot of stores have gone out of business or have downsized the number of locations during this recession. It is sad but true. It is possible some of these strip malls won't be fully occupied again for a long time, if ever. There are some places I will not miss. There are some that I already miss. That is water under the bridge. This recession seems to be lightening up a little bit and maybe there is a light at the end of the retail tunnel. Maybe all of this weeding out will bring us new stores, and new kinds of stores. That is something I can look forward to.
A spark of hope appeared in my retail world last week. I was in that strip mall where the Linen's N Things had gone out and I noticed a man in a crane attending to a large metal framework being built over where the Linens "N" Things sign used to be. I got curious and hopeful. I asked the cashier at the Whole Foods Market in that mall if she knew what was going on. She told me that a Michael's Crafts store was going to take over the old Linens location. I had mixed feelings on that. I am happy for one less depressing empty storefront, don't get me wrong. I do a lot of craft projects, but there is already an A.C. Moore store one strip mall away. The net result of Michael's opening may be that A.C. Moore could have to close because of the competition. If that happens, Michael's would not be a gain for our area. Time will tell. But, I do hope the trend of filling empty slots continues.
Meanwhile, I have my wish list for some of the empty store fronts and restaurants. It includes: Trader Joe's, P. F. Changs, Bertuccis, Le Gourmet Chef, Crate and Barrel, The Container Store, Guitar Center (for Tyler). I would be very happy if any of these businesses open somewhere close to me :-) Maybe I should contact some of those crazy landlords and drop a hint!
I would love to know your retail wish list...feel free to leave it in the "Comments" box below.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Healthcare Reform: We Need It, But Not This Way
As a citizen whose family uses the health care system more than the average American family, I am of the mind that our health care system needs some reforms. I am not, however, in favor of the government takeover of our healthcare via the current Obama Health Care Bill (I will call Obmacare)I am especially not in favor of the government trying to put one over on us. The health care bill which is now up for a vote is very long (2000 pages); nobody knows exactly what is in it, and how it will affect us.
Yesterday, the media reported that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was pushing to “deem” the Obamacare Bill as passed without ever having an up or down vote, on the record. This is a little used legislative trick that goes against everything we are about. This is a democracy, and we live by our constitution. I don't understand how this could be considered constitutional. If our legislators vote in favor of something we oppose, we can vote them out the next time around. If they are not forced to vote, but act as if the bill has already passed, then we are unsure how they stand on the issue, and our opinion does not matter.
If this bill is truly as good as the backers want us to believe it is , then let it stand on its own merits. The fact is an overwhelming majority of Americans do not want this bill to pass, and do not want a new Government agency to control of their health care. And for good reason! It seems everything the government touches becomes a disaster. Look at all of the graft and corruption associated with Government programs. Look at Medicare fraud, look at the budget deficit, look at the mess at Fannie May/Freddie Mac, look at people that turn Welfare into a lifestyle instead of a stop gap measure, look at all of the laws that we have on the books that we do not enforce that would make our country safer and more secure. Why would we want these people deciding on what health care we can have and how much it should cost us?
Up until January, I worked at a job that helped businesses sell their products and services to the Federal Government. In my job, I searched Federal Government websites daily to find business opportunities for our clients. In doing this, I saw first hand what the government buys and how much it spends. It was a very eye opening and maddening experience. The amount of waste is incredible.
In fact, even though we have been living in the Internet Age for more than 10 years, the government, until 2 months ago, still required companies to submit paper applications for all GSA (General Services Administration) contracts and for many of the government bids. GSA contracts can be 150 pages or more! Bids can be anywhere from 10 pages to 100 pages. Think of the waste of paper involved here! And often, they require a company to send 2 copies! In the case of bids, the government agency putting out a bid usually receives offers from multiple companies for one bid. If the paperwork for that bid is 100 pages long and 25 companies bid on that contract, the agency that put out the bid will receive 2500 pieces of paper for one bid. Talk about waste; waste of paper, waste of trees, and waste of space to store all of that paper! They have just now, in 2010, begun to consider GSA applications online in lieu of paper. This new program is not by any means complete so reams and reams of paper continue to be wasted while the transition is made. Why has it taken the government 10 years to realize we can save so much paper by using online applications? Shouldn't they be taking the lead in conservation measures?
Yesterday, the media reported that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was pushing to “deem” the Obamacare Bill as passed without ever having an up or down vote, on the record. This is a little used legislative trick that goes against everything we are about. This is a democracy, and we live by our constitution. I don't understand how this could be considered constitutional. If our legislators vote in favor of something we oppose, we can vote them out the next time around. If they are not forced to vote, but act as if the bill has already passed, then we are unsure how they stand on the issue, and our opinion does not matter.
If this bill is truly as good as the backers want us to believe it is , then let it stand on its own merits. The fact is an overwhelming majority of Americans do not want this bill to pass, and do not want a new Government agency to control of their health care. And for good reason! It seems everything the government touches becomes a disaster. Look at all of the graft and corruption associated with Government programs. Look at Medicare fraud, look at the budget deficit, look at the mess at Fannie May/Freddie Mac, look at people that turn Welfare into a lifestyle instead of a stop gap measure, look at all of the laws that we have on the books that we do not enforce that would make our country safer and more secure. Why would we want these people deciding on what health care we can have and how much it should cost us?
Up until January, I worked at a job that helped businesses sell their products and services to the Federal Government. In my job, I searched Federal Government websites daily to find business opportunities for our clients. In doing this, I saw first hand what the government buys and how much it spends. It was a very eye opening and maddening experience. The amount of waste is incredible.
In fact, even though we have been living in the Internet Age for more than 10 years, the government, until 2 months ago, still required companies to submit paper applications for all GSA (General Services Administration) contracts and for many of the government bids. GSA contracts can be 150 pages or more! Bids can be anywhere from 10 pages to 100 pages. Think of the waste of paper involved here! And often, they require a company to send 2 copies! In the case of bids, the government agency putting out a bid usually receives offers from multiple companies for one bid. If the paperwork for that bid is 100 pages long and 25 companies bid on that contract, the agency that put out the bid will receive 2500 pieces of paper for one bid. Talk about waste; waste of paper, waste of trees, and waste of space to store all of that paper! They have just now, in 2010, begun to consider GSA applications online in lieu of paper. This new program is not by any means complete so reams and reams of paper continue to be wasted while the transition is made. Why has it taken the government 10 years to realize we can save so much paper by using online applications? Shouldn't they be taking the lead in conservation measures?
For Obama to claim Obamacare will reduce costs is absurd.
- For those that are not insured right now (and some are uninsured BY CHOICE) they will be forced to be on some kind of insurance and it will cost them to be on a plan.
- For those people that are homeless, illegal immigrants, or otherwise on the fringes of society, I suspect they will not comply with any new regulations and will still somehow get care if they show up ill to the emergency room. This will cost all of us that are insured, as it does right now, by increasing overall health care costs and spreading this increase around.
- For those of us who have health care through our employers and are paying a large price for it, we will see a steep increase in our costs. We already face rising premiums and higher co-pays and deductibles every year. The only saving grace is that the portion that our employer pays is calculated before taxes are taken out of our paychecks. Under Obama, these employer sponsored insurance plans would be considered "gold plated health plans" and not only would the before tax deduction for our premiums be eliminated, our premiums would rise even more. As an example, at the current time, our family’s health care plan premiums cost us about $650/mo. It is a PPO plan and the employer pays the other $650/mo. We have a $250 deductible per person per year and an out of pocket maximum of $3000 per person per year. This means theoretically we could pay $19,200 out of pocket in one year for our coverage if every member of our family uses the maximum. That is unlikely, but I am using it as an example. And, that is calculated using the model that the employer’s contribution is pre tax! Under Obamacare, without that pre tax deduction, we would owe tax on $7,800 more in “income”. There is also speculation that there are other added taxes on the “gold plated plans”. Basically all this reconfiguring of costs does is punish those people who have managed to achieve enough success in life to hold a job which offers a health care plan by making those people pay for everyone else’s health care.
- Medicare patients should be concerned as well. This bill purportedly cuts Medicare spending by a lot! What happens to all those who are at the age where they need the health care system more than the rest of us? How will they pay for the care that is not covered anymore?
The bottom line is that we do need some form of health care reform. Costs are out of control and there is no end in sight. Insurance companies raise premiums every year and they raise them a lot more than the cost of living or inflation go up.
This Obamacare Bill, as it stands, needs to be scrapped. The government needs to use experts from the fields of finance, insurance, medicine, and gurus of business to come up with workable solutions for each broken aspect in the system. It needs to be reformed one step at a time, and in clear view of all Americans. No pork projects or back alley deals should be associated with health care reform. If they work a solution to one area, say, reforming malpractice laws, they can pass legislation that covers that area, and move on to the next area, i.e. how to handle health care for illegal immigrants. We will all see exactly how each piece will affect us and we will be more willing to go ahead with the needed changes.
As I said, my family uses the health care system more than many families, so I am pretty concerned as to how reform, now or later, will affect the health of my family. I can only hope that clearer heads will prevail and that our Government, the Government we put our trust in, will keep our best interest in mind when going forward with any Health Care Reform.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Getting Old Sucks!
There are oh so many ways in which getting older is a downer.
Let's start with the obvious. Our looks start to change as we get older and for many of us that is not a good thing! You wake up one morning in your mid-thirties and look in your fluorescent magnifying make up mirror to see a wrinkle that seems to have appeared overnight. Where in the heck did THAT come from? Was that there yesterday? Did I just not notice? Then you dig up some recent and older photos of yourself to figure out when that happened. Somewhere between your 30th birthday and now, that stupid wrinkle made itself known and you just didn't take notice .You obsess about the wrinkle, you buy creams, lotions, masques, concealer. All to rid your face of that sign of aging. You scan your friends' faces to see if they have any wrinkles. They do, but either they don't know about it or they don't care. You are NOT going to be the one to tell them they have a wrinkle. That goes against all girlfriend codes in every culture!
This obsession continues until the next wrinkle, freckle or broken capillary appears. YIKES! All of a sudden, in your 40's it seems like this affliction has spread and is running amok all over your face and, gulp, other areas of your body. How will you fight the toll aging is taking on your looks?
I guess it all comes down to this. If you eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, stay away from smoking, drinking, and other looks busters, you are pretty much doing all you can to preserve what looks are left !! Genes play a role, but that isn't anything we can control.
Once you get into your late 40's you can start to notice the difference between the people who take care of themselves and those who really don't. This is where the signs of aging on your looks begin to diverge. We all have wrinkles and age spots; things are positioned lower on us than they used to be due to 40+ years of gravity working against us. As we enter 50's and 60's unfortunately, many people will begin to experience health related issues that will also take their own toll on appearance. I guess we need to conclude that at a certain point, good health is more important than trying to fight the appearance related ills of aging, and you can only do as much as you can do! We need to remember that even though we would love to look 20 again, it ain't going to happen without significant new scientific discoveries :-)
Let's move inside our face to our brain. That is the next thing to go, or so it would seem. Sometime in my late 30's when I was busy raising my sons, taking care of the home, managing my child's diabetes, my memory seems to have taken a leave of absence. It used to be so reliable. I never needed any electronic gadget to remember a phone number, an appointment, a birthday, a forgotten grocery list. I always remembered where I parked, what books I have read, what movies I have seen, where I left my keys. That is all now kaput! I rely on my phone to tell me someones phone number. Most of the time I don't bother to try to learn them. I park in the same aisle at the stores I frequent so I will never be one of those people wandering around aimlessly looking for my minivan in a sea of minivans! I rely on my paper calendar to tell me when I have appointments, and I also write them on a whiteboard on my fridge. Birthdays...those are sketchy. For close family and friends, I still manage to remember most of their special days. I really think what has happened is that at some point in my 30's my brain (memory) reached critical mass and now there is a kind of memory triage system in place. The really important stuff gets remembered. All the fluff--where did I park, have I seen this movie before---gets pushed out and I have to scramble for it! This is not Alzheimer's. Everyone I talk to that is my age is in this boat with me!! Hopefully while we are sailing in this boat, we will at least recognize each other!
Now let's talk about the real pain of getting older. That would be the PAIN. So many things that we have always done in our lives now cause us pain after we do them. I have always raked my yard, and tended to the shrubs and flowers. Yeah, I used to be tired after a day of doing that. Maybe I even had some aches in my arms after raking. That was years ago! Now, it is a given to wake up with a backache every day, no matter how many chiropractor visits I take and no matter how much exercise and stretching I do. Also, after a day of yard work, I am toast. I take a pre-emptive Tylenol or 2 and hope that I can get out of bed the next day. Hauling all of those laundry baskets up and down the stairs never used to seem like such a chore back in the good old days! I really like to paint; I paint rooms, I paint paintings. The room painting is what really kills me now. I am too short to use the 2nd step on the step ladder to paint along the ceiling. I am too tall to use the 3rd step. I am in the lousy position of either having to stand on my tiptoes or scrunch down. Neither is a good plan. My hands ache after a couple days of painting. And remember, I am a person who eats well, sleeps well, exercises! I feel sorry for those of you that don't. Tylenol probably doesn't cut it for you!
They eyes are another problem for some of us. I have had poor vision most of my life, so it has been an issue. Last year I got a new contact lens prescription that made it so much easier to see at night, and while driving. No more squinting to read road signs. This wonderful change in prescription had a MAJOR drawback. My far away vision improved, but close up vision became worse than ever. I am now stuck with those darned magnifying glasses. Try looking young with those at the end of your nose!
Hopefully once we accept that everyone goes through this process we can make peace our changing bodies. After all, there are positives to getting older. We are wiser than we ever were. We have a lot of life experiences that make us more interesting. We are less afraid to stand up for ourselves and we tend to stick to our convictions. Our priorities change and we can focus on what is really important. We realize that if we are healthy we are are better off than many of our contemporaries. And, lastly, we still look young to the REALLY old people!!
Think of these positives next time you are looking in that awful magnifying mirror. Or better still unplug that mirror and look at yourself in a more flattering light. You deserve it!
Let's start with the obvious. Our looks start to change as we get older and for many of us that is not a good thing! You wake up one morning in your mid-thirties and look in your fluorescent magnifying make up mirror to see a wrinkle that seems to have appeared overnight. Where in the heck did THAT come from? Was that there yesterday? Did I just not notice? Then you dig up some recent and older photos of yourself to figure out when that happened. Somewhere between your 30th birthday and now, that stupid wrinkle made itself known and you just didn't take notice .You obsess about the wrinkle, you buy creams, lotions, masques, concealer. All to rid your face of that sign of aging. You scan your friends' faces to see if they have any wrinkles. They do, but either they don't know about it or they don't care. You are NOT going to be the one to tell them they have a wrinkle. That goes against all girlfriend codes in every culture!
This obsession continues until the next wrinkle, freckle or broken capillary appears. YIKES! All of a sudden, in your 40's it seems like this affliction has spread and is running amok all over your face and, gulp, other areas of your body. How will you fight the toll aging is taking on your looks?
I guess it all comes down to this. If you eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, stay away from smoking, drinking, and other looks busters, you are pretty much doing all you can to preserve what looks are left !! Genes play a role, but that isn't anything we can control.
Once you get into your late 40's you can start to notice the difference between the people who take care of themselves and those who really don't. This is where the signs of aging on your looks begin to diverge. We all have wrinkles and age spots; things are positioned lower on us than they used to be due to 40+ years of gravity working against us. As we enter 50's and 60's unfortunately, many people will begin to experience health related issues that will also take their own toll on appearance. I guess we need to conclude that at a certain point, good health is more important than trying to fight the appearance related ills of aging, and you can only do as much as you can do! We need to remember that even though we would love to look 20 again, it ain't going to happen without significant new scientific discoveries :-)
Let's move inside our face to our brain. That is the next thing to go, or so it would seem. Sometime in my late 30's when I was busy raising my sons, taking care of the home, managing my child's diabetes, my memory seems to have taken a leave of absence. It used to be so reliable. I never needed any electronic gadget to remember a phone number, an appointment, a birthday, a forgotten grocery list. I always remembered where I parked, what books I have read, what movies I have seen, where I left my keys. That is all now kaput! I rely on my phone to tell me someones phone number. Most of the time I don't bother to try to learn them. I park in the same aisle at the stores I frequent so I will never be one of those people wandering around aimlessly looking for my minivan in a sea of minivans! I rely on my paper calendar to tell me when I have appointments, and I also write them on a whiteboard on my fridge. Birthdays...those are sketchy. For close family and friends, I still manage to remember most of their special days. I really think what has happened is that at some point in my 30's my brain (memory) reached critical mass and now there is a kind of memory triage system in place. The really important stuff gets remembered. All the fluff--where did I park, have I seen this movie before---gets pushed out and I have to scramble for it! This is not Alzheimer's. Everyone I talk to that is my age is in this boat with me!! Hopefully while we are sailing in this boat, we will at least recognize each other!
Now let's talk about the real pain of getting older. That would be the PAIN. So many things that we have always done in our lives now cause us pain after we do them. I have always raked my yard, and tended to the shrubs and flowers. Yeah, I used to be tired after a day of doing that. Maybe I even had some aches in my arms after raking. That was years ago! Now, it is a given to wake up with a backache every day, no matter how many chiropractor visits I take and no matter how much exercise and stretching I do. Also, after a day of yard work, I am toast. I take a pre-emptive Tylenol or 2 and hope that I can get out of bed the next day. Hauling all of those laundry baskets up and down the stairs never used to seem like such a chore back in the good old days! I really like to paint; I paint rooms, I paint paintings. The room painting is what really kills me now. I am too short to use the 2nd step on the step ladder to paint along the ceiling. I am too tall to use the 3rd step. I am in the lousy position of either having to stand on my tiptoes or scrunch down. Neither is a good plan. My hands ache after a couple days of painting. And remember, I am a person who eats well, sleeps well, exercises! I feel sorry for those of you that don't. Tylenol probably doesn't cut it for you!
They eyes are another problem for some of us. I have had poor vision most of my life, so it has been an issue. Last year I got a new contact lens prescription that made it so much easier to see at night, and while driving. No more squinting to read road signs. This wonderful change in prescription had a MAJOR drawback. My far away vision improved, but close up vision became worse than ever. I am now stuck with those darned magnifying glasses. Try looking young with those at the end of your nose!
Hopefully once we accept that everyone goes through this process we can make peace our changing bodies. After all, there are positives to getting older. We are wiser than we ever were. We have a lot of life experiences that make us more interesting. We are less afraid to stand up for ourselves and we tend to stick to our convictions. Our priorities change and we can focus on what is really important. We realize that if we are healthy we are are better off than many of our contemporaries. And, lastly, we still look young to the REALLY old people!!
Think of these positives next time you are looking in that awful magnifying mirror. Or better still unplug that mirror and look at yourself in a more flattering light. You deserve it!
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