There is a canned pumpkin shortage going on – MY GOD what has the world come to?

My Sister called me last evening to ask if I knew anything about a pumpkin shortage. I told her I of course had no idea what she was talking about. She continues the story, she is in Kroger and there is nary a can of pumpkin to be had. She then goes on to tell me that the manager tells her of a canned pumpkin shortage going on. Sometimes I wonder if my Sister and I were actually born in Missouri, the show me state. Although that is not an official slogan of the State of Missouri it is common throughout the state and is used on Missouri license plates. He could have been speaking directly to my Sister and I when congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver declared, "I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me." Regardless of whether Vandiver coined the phrase, it is certain that his speech helped to popularize the saying. To me it seems to display a certain self-deprecating stubbornness and devotion to simple common sense.

Sorry I got sidetracked there for a moment. Anyway, my Sister and I both have an undiscussed relationship with that slogan. I knew before she even said it, she had gone to Wal-Mart looking for that canned pumpkin. Not believing the story of only one store manager she was off, exactly the same thing I would have done. I would be off to the next place that might have the product I am looking for. Of course the Wal-Mart was fresh out of pumpkin as well and she got a similar explanation about the lack of canned pumpkin. She called me on her way home to tell me of this. I got on the internet and found that there is indeed a pumpkin shortage. Seems that Nestlé, whose Libby brand is far and away the nation’s most popular canned pumpkin, announced that it might not have enough pumpkin for our pies. How in the world could this happen. I thought for sure there was enough geographical redundancy in our food supply to eliminate such things. I mean, some times the Red Delicious apples I eat come from South and Central America – how could we possibly have a shortage of anything.

Seems that their calculations indicated, on November 17th, that there might not be enough inventory of canned Libby’s pumpkin, this as we were approaching the Thanksgiving. That is according to Paul Bakus, the vice president for Nestlé’s baking division. I am quite stunning that this guy still has a job. It seems that the heavy rains in the Midwestern states caused the problems. I was also unaware that most commercial pumpkins are grown in those Midwestern states. I am told that soggy fields have made it difficult for farmers to get harvesting equipment to the pumpkins. Really, really that is the answer they have – hell monster trucks have flotation tires that come from the agriculture industry. It is really hard for me to believe this. Seems that as a result, the harvest that usually begins in the Midwestern pumpkin fields in August, was late in coming. Acres of pumpkins sit still unharvested in Morton, Ill., which the company calls the “pumpkin capital of the world.” Fungus is a big problem, so it is likely many of those pumpkins will be plowed under. Plowed under, Really…. Really?

Because the supply was already dangerously low, in part due to the lousy pumpkin harvest of 2008 there is just not a lot of stock left in the warehouses. As is always the case, one man’s pain is another man’s pleasure. Seems that what is bad news for the commercial growers has been fantastic news for the organic pumpkin concerns on the West Coast. Since Nestlé controls 85% of the canned pumpkin market so when things go bad for Nestlé things go bad for consumers. The organic pumpkin market makes up only about 3 or 4 percent of the overall canned pumpkin market, a fraction of the market really. I found that in Oregon the crop was so good that organic pumpkins are able to fill at least a little of the gap left by the Libby shortage. Good for them. Some might even say, so what. I will use my family’s traditional pumpkin pie recipe and you can make your own purée. I hear it is not a fast process, but some say it will do in a pinch. Do in a pinch my ass! Like I am going to go through whatever process that takes a whole pumpkin and turn it into a pie, right. I order my pies from those who make them, if they have a supply shortage they can tell me I can not have that pie or just charge me more for it. Like I am going to make a pie, makes me laugh just thinking about it.

In a day when corporate backups of data reside in two different parts of the country and this Nestlé’s guy can’t figure out how to ensure a single event in one geographic area does not destroy the canned pumpkin part of their business. If this fellow worked for me he would be looking for a job. We Americans are due canned pumpkin anytime we want it and I am righteously indignant that in the year 2009 that I can’t have every damn thing I want! Seems that my Missouri born Sister, while I was writing this, drove to a small store in West Liberty and has found some canned pumpkin. The Thoman’s Market was the store that saved her life. While she did pay 2.49 a can, for something that is a buck at Wal-Mart Thoman’s was the store able to provide the product and she bought 16 cans. Yes that was sixteen cans of pumpkin. I can say without a doubt that I have never bought a single can of pumpkin, let alone 16. She tells me that they were in line with a couple of cans when she realized that with a shortage on she better stock up and went back and bought all 16 cans that they had on the shelves. 16 cans of pumpkin, I am not sure what is wrong with her.

Well if you need pumpkin you may have some problems getting it. Seems that 2 years of problems with the crop volume have decimated the supply. I am hopeful that the small organic growers can take advantage of the big dogs blunders.

I am quite sure that I will not hear anything else about a pumpkin shortage, unless my Village Inn tells he I can’t get one when I go in to order it.

Do these little phlegm characters gross you out?

I am convinced that we, as a society, have flushed the last modicum of our decorum with these commercials. We all get snotted up and have to blow our noses and cough up nastiness, we all get that way at some point. I was taught to get up, go to some secluded place and take care of it. If it did require medication to clear up, we looked for something called an expectorant. I do not ever remember talking about it with family, let alone others. It is just one of the myriad gross little issues that we deal with, our bodies have many of these functions we do not bring into the light of day, or at least we did not used to. So, what has happened to our society that we have allowed this nasty and sometimes gross advertising, it seems to me should still be whispered about in the comfort of our doctors office or our own homes.

The little booger man, who is the spokesperson for one brand of expectorant is but a symptom of a larger openness that I am not sure I like. I have to change the channel when those commercials come on because I find them disgusting! We are introduced to a little green man, Mr. Mucus is the name given me by the company. We find that he has a family, so it is not good enough to gross us out with just booger man, we have to be introduced to his bride and his children. GROSS! We even to a look at the furniture and the living conditions he sets up, inside our chest cavity. We can see by his attire that Mr. Mucus is a working man, not a white collar guy although no one is immune from needing an expectorant but for some reason they chose a working man. Can you imagine if he were wearing an Armani suite and tie – how would we feel about that? On their web site I even found his Bride wearing a grass skirt. Are you seeing the ridiculousness of this advertising campaign?

A bit more time on their site and I found little mucus men picketing, like striking workers, the use of the product they were advertising. I also found Mucus Maximus, I assume a take on Russell Crow’s character in the movie Gladiator. Really, really? I see that mucus man gives pep talks and has gone on a world tour as well. I see another where he is wearing a tee shirt that says Mucus Power – I think that is a take on the Black Power movement of the 60’s but I am not sure. In another the kid is wearing a shirt that says “Daddy’s favorite mucus”. And yet another has him spinning a basketball and it indicates team mucus. This ad campaign is one of the nastiest things I can recall. I think we should relegate Mr. Mucus back to the foggy and shadowy existence on little placards in doctors’ offices! I believe I would die from being congested before I would buy an expectorant from this company.

Mr. Mucus seems to be the culmination of many topics that I thought were better left for the privacy of the home or the clinical setting of the doctor’s office. Maybe I am just old fashioned, hell I am only 44 and never thought my sensibilities were that far off track with my demographic. Maybe they are not, as I still have not talked with others about any of this. Not sure if you are comfortable sitting watching an advertisement for vaginal itching or erectile dysfunction with your kids, boy or girlfriend or spouse, I am still not and do not ever want to be. Why do these ads persist then? Only thing I can come up with is the drug companies. They are driving this stuff on us and acting worse than a heroin pusher keeping a junkie hooked and supplied. They have dreamed up problems for which only they can offer assistance and then have some advertising agency dream up a campaign to make this new medication part of our lives.

I believe they have taken over the world and are on a quest to make each and every one of us beholden to them for EVERY part of our lives. Think about it, when was the last time you watched a commercial break that did not include a medication spot? Could be anything, from a birth control pill to a cure for restless leg syndrome to a depression medication that will solve all your woes. All of which have a list of side effects that are startling to hear. Even the cure for Mr. Mucus can cause, headache, dizziness, vomiting and there are reports of a rash. A rash where? Those are mild compared to some. If you read the pages of side effects of the H1N1 vaccine you would not normally wish that on someone you did not like. Seems we are somewhat masochistic when we treat ourselves for our problems. Just look at the side effects of one of the erectile dysfunction medications. You know it is bad when that description starts out with the following, very few drugs work perfectly, and “blank” is no exception. Just about every drug has side effects that arise because the drug is flowing throughout the body and may affect parts of the body unintentionally. For example, aspirin is a drug that relieves pain, but this same drug can also erode the stomach lining and thin the blood. And those are just the side effects of aspirin. Yes all of that was listed before the side effects of the erectile dysfunction medication. My favorite for this drug was it could cause color vision problems and potentially an erection lasting more than 4 hours.

Oh well, I guess I am just on a soap box for now that I should just get off of, I believe I may start a Facebook group called “Ban Mr. Mucus from all advertising”. This whole thing has given me a headache, I better go take something for that.

Losing Friends is hard……………………..

As I get older I realize that I have been to more funerals than I wanted to at age 44 and it sucks. One of the last funerals I went to was for a good friend of mine who committed suicide and if I were to grade funerals to go to, that one SUCKED bad! My friend was in his 50’s, had, what appeared to me, a good life, wife, kids in college and doing well and a good job in sales.  He lost weight during that last 6 months, at one point it was very noticeable and I was concerned. We talked about that and the challenges and struggles that come with taking psychotropic medications, it was all very new to him and he was not accustomed to the side effects. The medications had a negative affect on him and his personality and that forced me to stay in touch with him more often. The last time I spoke to him was the day before Thanksgiving 2008 and we spoke for about a half hour. Small talk really, what we were doing for the holiday, what we were having for the feast the next day and we touched briefly on the medications and how he was doing with that.

I received a call the day after Thanksgiving 2008 telling me that my friend had committed suicide in his office at work. I almost hit the floor, literally. I went over that conversation I had with him in my head a thousand times trying to find a sign that I should have caught, something that told me my friend was struggling. I could not find anything, and trust me I looked, over and over in my head that conversation went round and round to the point I have to resolve that there was nothing and it was not my fault for not catching anything. I no longer run that conversation in my head anymore, I just miss my friend. We used to go to lunch every few weeks and talk about all manner of topics from how the Gators were doing to the state of the broadcast industry. Knowing that he took his own life leaves so many questions that can never have any answers.

He is the second friend I have lost to suicide, that sucks because you have to accept that there will never be any answers to your questions. The positive that comes from it though is that it has made me more attuned to my friends, I want to know them as well as I can. Suicide of a friend is a reminder that no matter how well we think we know someone, we really just don’t. Everyone has those secret demons buried at different levels, some of them you may know about but there are always those that people never let loose. I have resolved to never hold back when talking to my friends, I do not want that dark corner that no one knows about. I want my friends to be able to spot the troubles, if I am having them. I can not imagine life wearing me down to the point of contemplating suicide but I thought the same about my friends so ya just never know.

Several years ago I lost another one of my good friends to Melanoma, skin cancer, that was especially tough for me as well. We had worked together and when he first contracted the disease, he thought it was a spider bite on his neck. He made light of it and I even jumped in on the thing, copying a story from CNN.com about spiders being launched into space and then doctoring it to include a paragraph about some of them getting away and how they lay there eggs under the skin. It was an elaborate paragraph and I then printed it out and placed it in his inbox. I remember him running around with that piece of paper confirming his diagnosis of a spider bite. It was all quite amusing, until it finally was diagnosed as melanoma. That day sucked, well it was not long before this vibrant 53 year old was reduced, reduced from the daily chemo and radiation therapy. It was very hard to watch my friend withering away and even harder to keep a smile on my face and be optimistic when I was around him. I remember we took turns taking him to his appointments, at this point he had broken his hip, or leg (I hate that I can not remember) and was in a rehab facility that he HATED so we would go on field trips after the treatments.

We would go to the beach on some days, some days we would drive to places his friends worked. In some way, I know he was acutely aware of his own mortality and wanted to do and see whatever and whoever he wanted. He was always funny and it was great to go on the trips with him, my favorite was a trip to the Krispy Kream donut shop in Mandarin. He was in a wheel chair at that point and we get there I get the chair from the trunk and we get inside and he orders I think 4 donuts. A plain cake, a glazed, a key lime pie and I do not remember the fourth. Anyway he had undergone a couple of surgeries so his mouth was only really half working, I never thought that would be funny but it turned out to be funny. He is eating the donuts and having a time with the cake one but then he gets to the key lime one and I almost pee’d myself laughing with him eating that donut. He was attempting to cram this donut in his mouth and was getting key lime filling all over his face. He looks at me and says “I know I got it all over my face but I do not care, this is a great donut” we laughed about that for the entire rest of the visit. I was blessed, I got to spend the day with him the day he died, he was not conscience but a few of his friends and family were there telling stories from his childhood all the way through the key lime donut story. I cried and laughed for the whole day and left the hospital around 8pm and by midnight my friend was gone. I miss him terribly, both personally and professionally to this day.

Unexpectedly losing my friend Evelyn was especially tough on me, we were together for most of the day before she died. Evelyn was a great woman that I met through Bride, her and bride both worked for Barnett Bank back in the day and Evelyn was one of their IT people. She had a great heart and was a kind and giving woman who loved cats. We would find little packages of cat treats by our back door, out of the blue and we knew she had been by. Evelyn was having a house built in Ibus Point on San Pablo, hers was about the 5th or 6th house in that development. I was helping her with the inspections and walk throughs as they built it, she was moving from the home she shared with her ex-husband and was excited by the newness of life after the divorce. She came to me asking about teaching her woodworking, she could learn anything and had a lot of hobbies and interests and I felt honored she trusted me enough to teach her a new skill. She was not by any means timid and our first lesson was a set of mahogany dining room chairs, ambitious I thought but I knew she could pull it off. We put together a set of plans and a materials list, I picked it all up from a hardwood supplier on the west side. We were working on the chairs on the weekends and her last Saturday we spent preparing the pieces for finishing before assembly.

Now Evelyn had huge boobs and was only about 5 feet tall, I tell you that because on this day we were using a floor mounted stationary belt sander. The table for this sander was about chest high and I remember telling her to be careful not to get her boobs to close to the belt. We laughed as light red sawdust covered her jet-black hair making her look much different. I wish it had been the age of digital cameras because I would have taken some pictures of the scene. So after 4-5 hours of work she cleaned up and bride joined us just BS’ing for a while and she jumped in her Toyota Forerunner and took off for home. We had another walk through on the house the following weekend and more work on the chairs. We found out the next day that she went home, drew a bath and died. We were to find out later that the doctors had misdiagnosed heart problems as asthma and that was the day I stopped having blind faith in doctors. Some of them squeaked through with D’s just like people in every other profession. I still have some of the mahogany lumber and every now and again I pull some out and make something out of it, something that is not chairs. The last pieces I used created a computer table for my Niece, I enjoy just looking at the lumber but am happy when I get to build something with it. The happiness is twofold, I get to remember my friend and I make something that will always remind me of her.

This is by no means a complete list of friends I have lost in my life – and I am sorry for the buzz kill at Christmas time but for whatever reason, I have been thinking about them and I miss the joy they brought to mine and so many others lives. I feel honored that we got to ride along for awhile together on this crazy ride.

What in the hell is Osteopenia and how did it become a multibillion dollar profit machine for Merck?

I am not talking about Osteoporosis, that is a disease that causes bones to become thinner, more porous and break more easily. That is actually a disease that mostly affects elderly women, who can be devastated by a fall that breaks their hip. In fact, I learned, one in five elderly women who break a hip will die within a year. The same bone density tests that are used to properly diagnose Osteoporosis are also used to diagnose the more shadowy condition called Osteopenia. This new condition, Osteopenia, is a perfect example of a made up thing and this crazy train started in 1995. As it turns out Osteopenia is a slight thinning of the bones that occurs NATURALLY, as women get older. It DOES NOT typically result in disabling bone breaks, as does Osteoporosis. The woman who was being interviewed, Katie Benghauser’s doctor recommended that she go on treatment for this condition she had never heard of. After Benghauser asked around her office she found that 4 of the seven women in her office take medication for it. Half of those 7 women are in their 20’s and 30’s, which is long before normal Osteoporosis may be expected to strike.

I was intrigued with the story and listened on, the story was on NPR. Interesting enough this was a story of how pills for Osteopenia have ended up in millions of women’s medicine chest. When I say millions just as a reference in the 90’s when Flomax was introduced sales were zero, and by 2004 sales had topped 3 BILLION, yes billion with a B. How could it be that a disease that previous to 1995 did not exist create such GIGANTIC sales numbers for the supposed cure? This is the story of how the definition of what constitutes a disease evolves, and the role that drug companies can play in that evolution and it is CRAZY. Osteopenia is a condition that only recently started to be thought of as a problem that required treatment. After all the human race is so fragile to have only made it this far in our evolutionary arc. It is after all part of the normal aging process. Osteopenia was transformed from a non problem into something that is now requiring millions of women to swallow pills for treatment. The story went back to the beginning, to a place very far away from any sane persons rational thought processes may take them.

It all started, we are told in the NPR story, in a small hotel on top of the Spanish Steps in Rome in 1992. That was when a group of osteoporosis experts gathered under the auspices of the World Health Organization. The meeting had been organized because professional opinion about how to diagnose and measure osteoporosis was all over the map. Doctors and researchers didn't even have a shared view of how osteoporosis should be defined. All well and good so far I thought, trying to forward diagnosis and treatment of a real disease. In the days before the 1990’s, all the way back to the early days of evolution, or when Eve of Adam and Eve fame got it all started the only way for doctors to properly diagnose osteoporosis was to look at the inside of the broken bone, after a woman had broken it. Through a miracle of modern medical technology in the early 90’s we were able scan bones. Anything that would allow us to potentially diagnose osteoporosis before a broken bone would be fabulous. The main question before the experts in Rome was simply, after the age of 30 all bones lose density, how much bone loss was normal? They were trying to determine a baseline. Once a baseline is established they would then needed to determine when, exactly, would the risk be high enough to be considered someone having osteoporosis.

There needed to be a line drawn that said, here is the point that we will call it osteoporosis. It Ultimately was just a matter of – the line needs to be drawn somewhere. Anna Tosteson, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and Dartmouth Medical School was in attendance in that meeting acting as an expert. And she recalled, it was very hot in the meeting room, and people were in shirt sleeves and, you know, it was time to kind of move on, if you will. She can't quite remember who it was who stood up and drew the picture and said, 'Well, let's just do this. I bet she can but has decided not to recall the name. So there in the hotel room someone literally stood up, drew a line through a graph depicting diminishing bone density and decreed: Every woman on one side of this line has a disease. Seemed pretty arbitrary to me. Especially since the original idea was to develop a baseline. Being an engineer I know a thing or two about baselines and there is a methodology in their development. I can’t imagine just arbitrarily deciding where the baseline is. It would literally invalidate everything that happened from that point on, if the baseline if wrong nothing else will work. Seems to me, just like we use a methodology to develop a baseline there is a similar path that the outcomes will follow if you bullshit the baseline. That is what happened with the arbitrary line on a graph.

How did we get from there to here? The answer to that question starts with a man named Jeremy Allen. He has a long history in the pharmaceutical industry and in 1995 the drug company Merck approached him. This is where things started down that wrong path. The pharmaceutical giant had just released a new drug called Fosamax. A drug that represented a sea change in osteoporosis treatment. It was the first nonhormonal drug that could credibly make a claim to stop the progress of osteoporosis. Fosamax could become a blockbuster drug, if only people would take it. According to Allen after its release Merck wasn't selling the drug. David Anstice, the president of Merck America, came to him with a proposition: Figure out this problem and then fix it – so says Allen. He also claims his job description read: Provide some out of the box thinking. He knew the way to get sales up was to get more women to get their bones scanned and diagnosed –with something. Not as common in 1995 as it is today. At that time ehe machines were rare and as such the procedure was expensive. Allen needed to get the number of machines up, which would reduce the cost of procedure. Allen, now armed with the firm conviction that he was about to do good in the world, and coincidentally sell a ton of drugs for Merck. His out fo the box thinking lead Allen to completely rework the way the American health care system measured bone density.

He quickly realized the first thing he needed was an institution, an entity whose mission was not just to sell drugs, but to serve the public good. Some slick sounding things that brought credibility to the project. He decided to create one and in 1995 he persuaded Merck to establish a nonprofit called the Bone Measurement Institute. On its board were six of the most respected osteoporosis researchers in the country. But the institute itself had a rather slim staff, there was no payroll, there was no building, there was no office with the name 'Bone Measurement Institute on it. A complete sham that was being backed by the drug company with the most to benefit. Makes me wonder how many other named institutions are shams as well. Now on to the cost of machines, it had to come down. How to do that? He determined it could be done with machines called peripheral machines. These machines were small, often portable units that measured bone density in the forearm, heel, wrist or finger rather than the hip and spine. At the time, few bone measurement companies manufactured the machines, because they didn't measure the hip and spine. From Allen's perspective, they were the perfect solution: They wouldn't take up much office space and they cost only a fraction of the big machines, which meant that doctors would be able to afford them.

Allen started a campaign to ensure that peripherals were both manufactured and promoted. Several of the machine manufacturers were less than enthusiastic about this seemingly nefarious activity. According to Allen, two of the big dogs in the medical equipment manufacturers were downright hostile. One company, Lunar, was not about to go ahead and tell physicians to use the new smaller and less featured diagnostic equipment simply because Merck wanted them to., Richard Mazess, founder of the Lunar Corp Mazess says because Lunar refused to cooperate and his company was threatened. He says Merck told him, You're not going to get support from Merck and we will support your competitors, and we will tell people working with Merck not to use Lunar machines. The long and short of it Merck got its way and the machines were made and proliferated. This was a Tipping Point for Osteopenia, Merck's work to restructure the market didn't stop there. Merck worked to change the very economics of measuring bone by getting bone scans reimbursed by Medicare.

So what we have is a drug company deciding baselines, creating organizations that seem independent - when they are not, manipulating manufactures, creating hysteria, and selling a TON of drugs. All that for a non-problem, for something that happens as the normal aging process in women. Because of the fear mongering we now have what appears to me a pandemic. Seems crazy to me that this insane series of events lead to millions of women being diagnosed with normal aging. It lead to BILLIONS in profit for the drug company. This is another example of how crazy the world is and how much power big pharmaceutical companies actually have. What ya bet there is no verbiage in the current health care bill that will address this kind of nonsense. This is a lot longer story than I have condensed here, you can research it for yourself. It is crazy.

Of course this is compiled information I gathered from the internet and it could all be nonsense and if you are Merck - I am harmless.

So we gave up Comcast cable yesterday, we are without cable for the first time in 20 years.

It seems like I am still in shock to tell you the truth. So, what has lead me to this lowly crossroads you might ask, and even if you didn’t I will tell you anyway. Bride and I are struggling with the crappy economy, like most everyone I know. In some ways, it has been enlightening and other ways it just plain sucks. The enlightening part is that we are now making it with less income than we have since we were first married, 20 years ago. Bride and I have always been the stereotypical DINK’s, dual income, no Kids. We never worried about money, if on Friday night we wanted to go to Daytona or Jekyll Island for the weekend, poof – we went. We have always been blessed, we have lived very a good life for the last 20+ years we have been hanging out together. What we found was that we had a bunch of crap that somehow weaseled its way into our lives and tricked us into thinking they were necessities. We looked at many of these wanton irrelevant lifestyle items as something we actually “needed” to get by. What a bunch of shit that turned out to be. You could always count on the Oatmeal’s to have everyone of the latest and greatest gadgets, from TV’s to cell phones to surround sound to the fastest cable modem that could be had. Our immersion into the materialist American attitude that we are continually bombarded with by advertisers is a big part of our countries problems right now, and we found it to be one of ours as well.

It has been enlightening to even recognize it, let alone start stripping away the “needed” gadgetry that swirls around our lives. We no longer have new cars, new cell phones, new televisions, new appliances, new this, the latest that. And you know what, I feel enlightened by the lack of it all. We would work our butts off to get all the stuff that we were told we needed. Only thing is we didn’t really need it all! Our society is geared towards consumption, our economy needs to peoples gross consumption to work correctly. Our recent economy woes are just one example. I can hardly blame us, we are indoctrinated at a very young age and from many different fronts. Happy meals with action figures for movies, new bicycles with 854 gears and shock absorbers, come on shocks on a bike we really need that? When I was a kid we got our bikes second hand from some guy in Westville, Ohio. You know what, we were happy to have a bike, it did not need shock absorbers, hell it did not even need a good paint job. When I was stationed in Annapolis I used to find old junk bikes and fix them up, and sell them to folks on the base. In the military everyone is somewhat a transient so if they left the bike, no biggie if it was used and cheap anyway. To this day I have never bought a new bike, and I have had many.

As I sit here pounding this out on my computer, I am reminded, I am one LUCKY dude. A LOT of people in this country do not have it as lucky as me, let alone when compared to other places in the world. I guess it has been harder for me to truly “get it” than I thought. Even with the problems that we face, we are still better off than many. We used to give a lot more to charity, lately there just has not been as much money so I try hard to volunteer my time to worthy causes. I am also now convinced that organizations that help folks need both the people who give money to keep programs going and the folks to actually do the helping. I like doing the actual helping more than the financially supporting my causes. It is a lot harder for me but I get more satisfaction from it then just penning a check.

The one thing that still gets in my craw is the fact the government has not even considered downsizing. While most normal folks have been forced to cut back here and there, turn off cable, wait on buying that new car, our government has been spending like a drunken sailor. At our expense by the way! I want my government to cut back, at the city, state and federal level. I have seen none of it, not anything that is significant anyway. They continue to tax us, add fees and any other manner of jackin’ our money from us to pay for all of it. BULLSHIT I say. We have all had to make hard choices, it is time for our elected officials to do the same, make the hard choices. While this program or that project might be terribly important maybe, just maybe we can’t afford to do it, we got to cut the cable off. That is part of the problem, most of the programs are gems, they offer many benefits to our elected officials. Benefits that will help them get reelected. Things like bringing jobs and money to his or her district and of course they have to scratch the back of the corporations that put them in office to begin with. Someone needs to say – BULLSHIT, we are turning the cable off. It would most likely end that political career, that is why they will not do it, with anything, no soup for you (spoken like the soup Nazi from Seinfeld) is what we need to say to our elected officials.

I suppose the whole thing is messing with my sense of fair play. Yes, I still believe that life in the United States should be fair, I may be in the minority but I still believe it can be – or at least it can be again. I know fair is what you pay to get on a bus and where you go to get a funnel cake, but I still believe. Maybe that is why I get so frustrated with all levels of government. Maybe, just maybe I need to become an activist, not a Politian because I do not want to become part of the problem. I am convinced that there is some secret room that new politicians, from the smallest city councilman to the big white house in DC, are taken into. That small little room someplace where they are indoctrinated into some secret club. I would guess the lineage could be tracked all the way back to the Templar Knights from the days of the crusades. I think, we the populace, should develop another little room for them, one that can track its lineage back to the days when folks were bled to heal them. In our little room, we would be performing a BUNCH of plexiotomies. Yes, I say we give them all plexiotomies. That is where they remove the skin around the belly button and install a small piece of plexiglass. Why you might ask? Well that will allow them to see when they walk with their heads up their asses.

Bride has, at more times than not, been the primary breadwinner in our house, and I liked being a “kept” man by the way. She is not working right now, I am not saying that is a bad thing, it is just a thing and not by our choice. I love her being able to be home more, more home cooked dinners and whatnot for me. The decision was made for her to stop working before all hell broke loose with the economy. She struggles some with feelings of inadequacy, not bringing in an income after being a breadwinner is very hard. She is a rock though, I do not think I could do it. Having to Give up a life that gave her so much satisfaction has been the hardest thing I have ever seen anyone do, but for medical reasons it had to be done. For those who know Bride you know she is not a knitter so she also struggles with finding a hobby that can keep her as interested in the life she had to give up. I have never been prouder of my Bride, I just love her so much and consider myself the luckiest man alive that she actually said yes when I asked her, 20 years ago now to marry me.

Who needs cable, there is nothing but crap on TV anyway – turn them off, it saved us 150 bucks a month! And write your elected officials and tell them to turn off cable as well!

Some of Dad’s things, the ones I kept.

When my Dad passed away back in October, we cleaned out his apartment and divvied up his belongings. I selected a small cardboard box full of my Dad’s things, nothing of any real value just some trinkets. I wanted to talk about some of these items now that I have had time to contemplate them. The most intriguing item, by far, is a book about Catherine the Great. In case you are unaware, she was the Empress of all the Russia’s from 1762 through 1796.  That was a time when we were fighting the Revolutionary War.  She was born a princess in Germany, Catherine the Great converted to Orthodoxy and was married to the heir to the Russian throne, the Grand Duke Peter of Holstein, grandson of Peter the Great. Anyway, here was a book on her life in my Dad’s possession. I have started reading it and am about half way through and still for the life of me, I can not understand why he had this book. If you know Dad you know what I mean. It is another example that I did not know my Dad at all. When I mentioned this book to my Sister, she was as shocked as I was that he had it. At first, she thought it may have been Mom’s but the printing date on this book was after their divorce so we know Mom did not give it to him. It made me wonder, had he ever read it. I consider myself an amateur history buff and am truly enjoying reading it, I have never really investigated her or that moment in time in Russia. I am finding the book fascinating, even more than that every time I pick it up I laugh, I laugh because I can not for the life of me figure out why Dad had this book and would love to know if he read it and what his thoughts were on her rein over all the Russia’s so long ago.

There are many other items that I have in my little box of goodies that I would like to talk about. One is a sharpening stone, an old one with different grits on each side. I remember it from when I was young, Dad would pull it out with a bit of three in one oil to sharpen his pocket knife. I remember watching him sharpen it, long slow strokes, back and forth on each side of the blade. When I was younger, I somehow remember it was a Case XX knife, the XX indicated the quality control on the blade hardening had been completed. The first tempering they stamped the first X and during the second treatment they stamped the second X – hence the XX. Dad told me once about what those XX’s meant and with a moment on the internet I found his explanation dead on. I have no idea what happened to that knife but in my box, I have the last knife he had, an Old Timer with three blades. When I first saw it, I remember smiling, because I have the exact same make and model of this knife. When I got back home and was able to pull it out of my box and compare it to mine, I was surprised to find that we must have picked them up around the same time because the wear on each was very close. How funny I thought. Another item that I always remember him carrying was a little metal lighter cover for his Bic lighter. It was silver and had some turquoise stone attached to the front in an American Indian motif. I remember one of my Aunt’s had picked it up for him on a trip out west a long time ago. I also found a ring that she had gotten for me, I remember the ring but can not remember how or when I gave it to Dad.

Another thing in my box was a set of 4 Audels books. Audel published books that were training manuals for many of the different trades. These were the original how to books. This set, Audel's Carpenter & Builders Guide 4 vol. set, circa 1946 were in perfect condition. They are the leatherette bound hard covered pocket sized books. I read all four volumes and found them truly fascinating. Here in simple, easy to understand terms was a guide to becoming a good Carpenter/Builder. The depth of knowledge inside these leatherette covered volumes was incredible and I am positive that Dad used these often. I can assure you he could teach a class about all the information contained here in this four volume set. Some of the information was, of course, dated and while most of the tools available have changed but most of the techniques remain the same. Some other key differences between 1946 and now are we no longer use asbestos for insulation and we no longer mix our paint from scratch using white lead, boiled linseed oil, turpentine and coloring pigments. I had to laugh reading some of the things that were common practice then. A good carpenter was good and hard to find and that is still the case today. I remember talking to dad, after I was living in Florida, about how to use a rafter square. I was building a shed and needed to construct my own rafters and wanting to do it right so I asked the only expert I knew who could explain how to use the myriad markings on a rafter square to produce perfect rafters. Of course, after a few long distance calls and many questions I was able to use a rafter square to produce the desired results. I still have that square as well.

There are a few other little things in my box from Dad’s place. My dog tags, from my years in the US Navy. No idea how he wound up with them but he had them. I also found an OLD pair of nail trimmers, not like the normal clippers that are sold today. These were more like a pair of lineman pliers and were manufactured by Revlon. Never wanted to used them but I knew he likes them. The first step was to boil them for about 15 minutes to kill anything that may have been on them. I also picked up an original invitation to my own wedding. Bride designed it and had it printed, along with matching matchbooks, of which he had one as well. Matchbooks? Bride and I can not remember what we were thinking with that addition to our wedding reception. I also found pictures of different things, some of me, some of him and some of other family members. I even found a picture of a friend, one whom I have not seen since high school. Oddly enough, I have recently reconnected with her on Facebook – weird huh? There were pictures of Dad as a young man serving in Europe while in the Army. He looked very much the same and at the same time, very much different. I found some pictures from my Boot Camp graduation, I do not even remember these pictures even being taken let alone me giving them to Dad. No one from my family made the trip to Orlando Florida to watch my graduation from Boot Camp so I am still confused as to where the pictures came from. I remember no family coming sucked so I made sure, when my brother went to Boot Camp in Great Lakes Illinois I convinced Mom and we both made the trip.

There is also the triangular draftsman scale, they are rarely used anymore but it was used to make accurate measurements when drafting – it was not to used as a straight edge for drawing lines. This one is the only one I have ever seen made of wood and not plastic. I also found a very old slide rule concrete calculator. It was used by picking how wide you want the slab to be and then slide down length in feet and the other scale would ask the thickness and it would tell you how much concrete to order. All very simple math, the answer could be provided in seconds with the simplest of pocket calculators, but this was made before there was any such thing as a pocket calculator. There is also, in this box, the lighter cover with a different American Indian motif that belonged to my Aunt. Dad’s Sister was killed in a house fire on my birthday in 2000. That was a horrible thing and a horrible time. I remember being glad that Granny was not around to witness the loss of another of her children. I got the early morning call that day, expecting Dad to be on the other end wishing me a happy birthday. It was my Sister giving me that news, that is horrible news to get at any time but on my birthday it was a particularly bitter pill to swallow. I will say that every birthday since that day I wake up thinking about my Aunt.

There are also some other odds and ends in my collection of Dad’s things, nothing of any value but important to him in some way so that makes them important to me. Seems weird that my Dad’s life has been reduced to my memories of him and a little cardboard box of goodies that make up the sum of the physical mementos I have to remember him. I have been thinking a lot about Dad lately, Mom as well and I am sure that my memories of them will live within me for the rest of my life. I loved each of them, in different ways at different times but I always loved them. I am sure that I was loved by them, in different ways at different times but I know they always loved me. I do not think the death of both my parents this year has completely sunk in yet. When Bride’s Mom passed, her Dad was killed in a car accident some time ago, she told me she almost felt like an orphan. Her family has no Aunts or Uncles or cousins and no Grandparents so her family is pretty flat starting with her generation. I have Aunts and Uncles left but no Grandparents and I have not had the feeling of being orphaned with both Mom and Dad gone. Not because there are other family members still around though, I do not think anyway. I have never been close with 99% of my family, when I joined the military I took off and never looked back. Never looked back, mainly because I was not living my life for anyone at that point, except myself. I suppose that is the ultimate tribute to my Mom, Ashley Jeane Woods and my Dad, Marlin Alden Smith. They raised me, like all parents should, to jump in with both feet and live your own life. That is what I have been doing since I left all those years ago and I have never been happier in my life – in a bizarre way, they prepared me well for the trip.

I love and miss my Mom and Dad.

I was watching the weatherman on the news tonight and it dawned on me, he is full of shit!

With all the fancy tools available these days it would seem that they should be able to tell us the temperature and weather conditions down to an accuracy of 1 inch. For example, at the stop sign on Beach blvd and Parental home road the temperature is 71.23 and the humidity is 78.34% and the barometric pressure is 900 millibars and falling. Now at the stop sign on beach blvd and Foster (one block away) the temperature is 72.18 and the humidity is 71.65% and the barometric pressure is 900.02 millibars and falling. With the gobs of fancy gadgetry they show us on the news cast there should be no reason that they can not provide that level of detail in that granular a fashion. Come on Man! The graphics that are displayed are phenomenal, they show northeast Florida in amazing detail. I can see it in real time from a satellite, it will then zoom in to see the landscape, almost a creepy 3D that they may actual be able to look at the front door on a house, like you can my house using Google earth. They have all manner of other graphics zooming in and out. Things flying in showing me that I will have scattered showers in one flying block, another tells me that we will be experiencing chilly wind on Wednesday and yet another is telling me that we will have heavy rain on Friday.

I sometimes wonder if our guy is some bizarre automaton, secretly controlled by the machine creating and displaying these graphics. He tells me that if I combine the temperature and the wind tomorrow compared to today and he thinks it is going to feel about 30 degrees colder. Yes, I had to listen to that about 10 times to get the wording down, that is what he said. Why not just say that I think it may be so hot tomorrow that your skin may melt. I think a lot of things but as a weatherman I would think we could get more than what he thinks. Why does he have to say all that to say take a jacket tomorrow it is going to be a bit cooler. With the millions of dollars of very technical gadgets he has at his disposal he “thinks” it is going to be cooler tomorrow. If that guy were working for me he damn sure better come off sounding more intelligent than that. “I think” my ass! Immediately following that he tells us that another soaking rain event “looks to be on the way come Friday”. No I have not been trained in the meteorological field but I can look on the internet in no less than 4.8 trillion places to see a satellite shot of the southeastern United States and tell those clouds that are coming this way, those damn things will be here soon. The only resources I have available to me are a piece of crap computer running Vista and IE version 8.0.6001.18865.

He showed us the visual satellite from this morning that showed all the fog that was here this morning. Now anyone who lives in Jacksonville and peeked outside today knows it was foggy, again no need for millions of dollars in gadgetry and a well dressed weatherman to tell me that. I have the two eyeballs in my head and even with the glasses I wear, I could tell it was foggy this morning, and I did not have the luxury of a view from space. CRAZY! A stalled front in the gulf of Mexico is, I am told, significant for us on Thursdays night. He never really explained why but with his high tech graphics I could clearly see the line of clouds moving this way. Is it important that some front is stalled someplace. Who cares why, tell me when I need to bring an umbrella or a coat. I sometimes think they are purposely trying to dazzle us with the equivalent of electronic bullshit. He goes on to tell us of a gulf of Mexico low pressure system and how he told us about that happening during a el Niño year, which this is he reminds us again. Again, not sure what that has to do with telling me what the weather is here in Jacksonville. I also learned that the signature of an event developing in the gulf, is that despite the fact we have the front heading our way the heavier showers and thunderstorms are out over the northwest Gulf of Mexico.

Weatherman, what are we going to do with them? I am not sure how the local stations can afford all the gadgetry and the well-dressed weatherman. I use the term weatherman but I have on numerous occasions heard this guy correct someone when they called him a weatherman. He is of course a meteorologist. I suppose he deserves to be called a meteorologist, he has a Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology. He is also a member of the American Meteorological Society and carries that groups important seal of approval. How important is it that he carries that groups seal of approval? I wonder sometimes how hard it is for him to keep up with all the gadgetry. Sometimes I bet he hates having to learn some new gadget that tells him some new piece of information about the weather. I wonder if he longs for the days when in his profession he was called a weatherman and he just told us what was going on, with the weather, where we were at. That was before the days of Doppler radar systems and computerized graphic systems that produce these stellar pictures for us to look at. I bet he does. I am not picking on this guy in particular, they are all full of it and I just wonder if they realize that we all know it as well, I know they know it.