Tag: thumbed-down

More than secure

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I know staples are a staple of office life (I’ve been waiting all my life to write that phrase), but I’m a firm believer in the “one stack, one staple” concept. It’s an obsession. It raises my sense of self-righteousness to supreme being levels.

Then there’s the lazy stapler. Every office has one.

How many times has this happened to you? You’re removing a staple to make a copy, only to find an embeded staple waiting in ambush. I’ve run into stacks with as many as ten embeds. It’s maddening.

So please, for the sake of the little fishies down stream – don’t add another staple if you’re adding to the stack. Pull the first one out before you reach for your trusty Swingline.

If you can’t see the symmetry or beauty of a lovingly aligned stack of paper with a single, elegant fastener… think of me. Think of all the other obsessive people out there. We may be a little weird, but we have feelings too.

One fine whine

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One of the advantages of US style health care is being able to obtain services without having to wait until the sun goes supernova (which could be a really long time, since our sun doesn’t have enough mass to go it alone).
– common wisdom in the US. When I say common wisdom (an oxymoron in the US) I’m refering to the part about waiting for healthcare, not the part about the sun. Most Americans probably don’t know the sun is a star just like the other pretty lights in the night sky.

My doctor wants me to see a neurologist about my headaches. Well, one of my doctors. I have several. In fact I’m seeing another one today, one I’ve known longer. She referred me to a practice in Tampa, the only one in the area specializing in headaches (so she says).

I held my breath as I checked with my insurance to see if this neurologist, the lone sentinel standing against the headache blight, was blessed by the managed care gods. She was, so with a renewed sense of faith and optimism I called to make an appointment.

They can squeeze me right in between Christmas and Thanksgiving – assuming they can get all of my medical records right away. Hah! Me and what army of copiers? Trees standing under the threatening eyes of pulp mills weep at the thought.

How do you spell “ouch?”

I’ve heard chronic headaches are pretty common in the US, though I haven’t taken the time to do the google for this post. That begs the question: where’s this free market everyone speaks so highly of? With all of this pent up demand, why isn’t there a headache clinic on every corner (next to Starbucks)?

Oh capitalism! Why has thou forsaken me?

Bad taste and butchery

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I get a little uncomfortable when people start talking about “trimming” trees. My reasons break down like this: any jackass with insurance and a chainsaw can get a licence to trim trees in Florida, and Floridians in general don’t seem to like trees. That’s what I gather from the results anyway.

I’m not against all forms or reasons for tree trimming. There are times when a tree needs to be trimmed for saftey’s sake, or for the tree’s health. But that’s not what’s happening here.

I work(ed) in a large office complex on the water (Tampa Bay) with a lot of trees. The shaded, peaceful walkways felt more like a park than a place of business. Between the waterfront and the quiet atmosphere, I thought the setting was darn near perfect.

That was before someone decided things needed to be “opened up.”

Now my office feels like it ought to be a crime scene. There are dozens of formerly magestic oaks giving little or no shade, resembling palm trees more than the full hardwoods they once were. Now they look like pieces of modern art. Tall trunks stripped of all their limbs with any reach, with narrow, broccoli spear tops dot my view. Shaded court yards are now reduced to air traps – solar collectors for Florida’s already hot sun. Now we can go out and cook… or more likely, the once vibrant centers of congregation and conversation will be abandoned.

People around me are oooing, and ahhhing over the new, open feeling. I feel like I’m the only one who sees the incredibly poor taste, or recognizes the crime taking place above our eyes.

Why do I hate thee, DST? How about I tell you

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  • What was good for 1918 isn’t necessarily so great 90 years later.
  • Contrary to common wisdom, some studies show it causes an increase in energy consumption (especially for us poor folk down south) – partly because of a little thing called air conditioning.
  • How often does common wisdom lead us astray?
  • Shifting high noon to lower noon is just asking for trouble.
  • We have nothing to fear but time itself.
  • My microwave shows the wrong time half the year.
  • You ever try riding your bike to work in the black of night?
  • Do we really need another hour to play frisbee?
  • Do you know how freaking hot it is here when the sun is up? My time feels more leasurely in the relative cool of dusk.
  • As someone who rarely, if ever, strays from the good ‘ole EST zone, that hour really fracks me up.
  • EDST doesn’t have the same ring to it.
  • Loosing sleep, even if it’s once a year, and made up later, is a crime against humanity.

Digging for pain and finding a vein

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Whining about your dentist is a blogging stapple. Lucky for you, I’m pro-staple.

“Are you ok?”

This is the great rhetorical dental question of our time. I love it.

No offense to any women dentists out there, but this is the point in the post where I pretend to be something I’m not, and slip into the vernacular of the “real man.”

I love it because I think it takes some real stones to ask it. Sure, you’re lying prone with sharp – and often powered equipment in your mouth – but they don’t know you from the criminally insane. That question, under the wrong circumstances, could be a real problem.

Alas, I am not criminally insane, though I am reminded of something Salvador Dali said: “The only difference between a madman and myself is I AM NOT MAD!”

Back to my dental encounter…

“Oh yeah. The veins in my neck bulge out like this all the time. My lips and jaw quiver like they have a life of their own sometimes. I have no idea why.”

Of course, that’s not what came out of my mouth. I was counting on it. I’m non-confrontational by nature. Instead, a series of grunts and seemingly random noises on the low end of the register came out of my mouth (along with a slurry of drool, chemical run-off, and blood). Folks in the biz call it “chair-speak.”

Although I wonder, have dentists and their minions (aka hygenists) evolved the ability to understand chair-speak? Is it like the way parents learn to understand their children’s early attempts at communication, long before others can? Or is it a more innate ability of the species – like a mother’s ability to interpret a baby’s cry and instantly know what’s wrong.

Either way, I was obviously not relaxed, and I owed it to the latest quiver in my dentist’s arsenal.

I don’t know what it’s called. I think of it as “Satan’s Pickax.” Think of a combination tool of discomfort, a Swiss Army Knife of dental torture if you will: a razor-sharp pick, high-pressure washer, and a carpenter’s router. Plus, it also comes with mood music… it wails like a banshee who stole your coach’s wistle from high school phys-ed.

Good stuff.

To their credit, they did try swathing my gums with a numbing gel. To their discredit, they used a little extra elbow grease. It reminded me of folks who eat food with “half the calories,” but eat four times as much of the stuff.

Step right up folks! We’re offering one half the sensitivity while achieving two times the pain!

Otherwise, it was a routine visit. I don’t need major surgery. In fact I was congratulated on my superior brushing technique – which almost masks the fact I don’t floss enough.

I’m a big fan of the backhanded compliment, so I can appretiate it when someone works at their craft.

Six months of billing futility, revisited

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Something about that call isn’t sitting right with me. I finally got through to my insurance company, only to be told the problem: “we’re getting bills.”

Now, as some poor shmuck with little more than a family and a mailbox, this sounds like something perfectly resonable to say… if it was born of my lips. As my insurance company – whose sole purpose in the universe is to disburse healthcare dollars for – drum roll please – healthcare, this sounded fishy.

Hold onto your skull caps frends, I’m not done yet. You see, I wasn’t exactly speaking to my health insurance company. I was speaking to the company with a subcontract for the work with a certain medical specialty. No, this wasn’t an error on my part – we were both on the same medical specialty page. The problem was, the subcontractor didn’t handle claims/billing/money.

If I had it to do all over, I would have asked a few probing questions – with a pinch of sarcasm for flavor.

So what do you do when you get a bill? Do you forward it to the correct recipient? Do you notify the Doctor’s office about the error? Do you do both? Do you just ignore it, hoping it will go away? If you don’t process claims, what the hell do you do? What value do you add to my healthcare?

Alas, I felt cowed, and for no good reason. Maybe it was a case of learned helplessness. Either way, I just said thanks and called my Doctor’s office to let them know what I learned. Of course, I had to leave a message with their billing department. They were on the phone assisting other patients.

They were assisting with other insurance problems, no doubt.

Fun with labels

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I was picking up Adam from my in-laws’ place after work last week, and Adam had a little picture they gave him. It was a picture depicting Jesus and Mary.

“Do you have your picture Adam?” my mother-in-law asked as we were leaving. “Yes Memere,” (that French-Canadian thing again) Adam replied.

Later, as we were backing down the driveway, Adam asked, “why does Memere want me to have this picture so much?”

Now keep in mind I’m sort of a lapsed Lutheran, but I try really hard to be respectful. Since l wandered off into the wilderness from church, Cheryl has been taking the kids with her and her parents to Mass.

“Well, maybe it’s because she wants you to be a good Catholic” I replied.

“But I don’t want to be a Catholic, I want to be a veterinarian.”

You gotta love my little guy.

It’s an IKEA world

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Note: the opinions expressed or implied in this post do not necessarily reflect those of the author, or the individuals described herein. The events are dead on though.

IKEA came to town six months ago. A month after it opened, we drove over the bridge to see if reality recognized hype in the mirror. We got a sense of the hype and a smidge of the reality, but we never got out of the car. The Tampa police closed the parking lot (it was full). People were parking along the side of the highway. Folks were leaving their cars a mile or so away, moving in groups through vacant lots surrounding the store like flocks of migratory birds. There was a queue out front, promising entry at some unspecified time in the future, business hours permitting.

We didn’t stop. I’m not that interested in furniture, Swedes or no Swedes.

Weeks later, I read an article where an IKEA spokesperson described their wares as stuff to keep around for a little while, then replace. Maybe his statement was taken out of context. Maybe something was lost in translation.

Maybe you take the statement as a given – for everything you buy. I don’t. When I buy something, I’m not thinking about what will replace it. I buy for keeps, though it occasionally blemishes the marital bliss.

It sounded to me like the IKEA dude was cynically describing planned obsolescence as a feature, even a virtue – and not just for IKEA. You may not know this about me, but I don’t take disappointment well. I had this idea in my head of a progressive, quirky, enviromentally conscious, European company that sold above average, inexpensive, sturdy stuff for the home. Or to put it more succinctly: the perfect fit for Chateau Kauffman. I lost my enthusiasm in a black hole. (Don’t you just hate losing stuff in a black hole?

Fast forward to this weekend. The TV in our living room was nearing the end of its long march towards uselessness. We’d had an HD model in our family room since my cancer days. It was a splurge for those weeks I thought I’d be confined to the house, carrying around my chemo pump. If only we’d known I was going to spend that time in the hospital instead.

But I’ve digressed to cancer talk once again.

Since the Hi-Definition Purchase of 2007, we’ve become video snobs. No merely mortal TV was going to cut it anymore, and that’s where the trouble started. (If you don’t count the aborted trip to IKEA, or countless anecdotes not directly related to this post.) You see, we had (have, if you have a truck and can bring your own brawn) a great piece of furniture for our old TV. It was oak. It was beatiful. It was perfect for a TV with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Was it suited for the 16:9 ratio on the HD beauties? Not so much. We could’ve put one in there – just a really small one. You feel me on this one, right? It would have been like trying to fit a wide rectangular peg into a not so wide, rectangular hole. (Who says I have a problem with imagery?)

Remember, we are newly minted TV snobs. Going smaller would be regressing. How could we face our friends in the face of such obvious failure? No, at worst you tread water, but really you want to go bigger. Always bigger.

So out went the old, and Cheryl went to IKEA.

I got a call from Cheryl last Thursday, asking if I had any qualms with her going to IKEA with a friend of hers. Setting aside my philosophical, epic struggle with IKEA (which is surprisingly one sided), I said sure.

You know what’s coming, right?

After spending the day at the Tampa IKEA Spa, Resort and Shops, she came home with a mother lode of boxes. Big boxes. The kind of boxes you’d expect an unassembled, downtown entertainment complex to come in.

I was in a pissy mood when she got back. I made an unfortunate, under the breath comment about her purchase. I don’t remember what it was (she doesn’t either), but it apparently wasn’t slathered with sugar, spice, or anything nice. The PG version: it didn’t sit well with Cheryl’s dander.

“You know, most guys would be pretty excited about getting a new TV,” she said.

Yeah, but you didn’t come home with a TV. You came home with enough raw materials to build an addition to the house… and expectations.

See how I used the italics there? That was me thinking rather than speaking. It’s not often, but every now and then the filter between my brain and my mouth works.

Well, a funny thing happened the next day. I actually set out to put the damn thing together.

It turns out I am a guy (sometimes), and I did kinda want a new TV. It took me all day but I got it done. The next day I even built some cabinets and hung them on the wall above it.

Then Cheryl went out and bought a TV.

Afterwards I asked Cheryl if she was surprised I’d put it all together and set things up in one weekend. I really got quite a bit done (for me): the construction, moving the old HD to the living room, rearranging the decor to match the new feel of the new furniture, rerouting all the wires to (and from) the TV, computer, stereo, Wii, cable box, Xbox, and UPS, reprogramming remotes, and getting the new (bigger) set settled in the man cave… but I didn’t mean it as a rhetorical question.

“Yes,” she simply replied.

Sometimes you can say an awful lot with just one word.

Sometime I’ll have to tell you how the old TV came to be broken.

Fickle Facebook friends

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Note: I wrote this months ago, so the time references are way off (like someone’s concerned about timeliness… here of all places).

I was a social networking snob. At one time I had a blog, a web site, and all of it ran on a web server under my desk. I had Internet cred, and Facebook was beneath me.

Like everyone else, I didn’t get Twitter.

About a year ago I was talked into Facebook at an Obama event in Dunedin. “We’ll post all of our pictures there,” they said. “Facebook is cool. You’ll be hooked.” So I signed up.

A few days later I got my first friend request – someone who allegedly went to high school with me.

“Cheryl, do you remember a — —- from high school?”

“Um, yeah. I think she was a cheerleader and our class vice president.”

“Why on earth do you think she’d want to be my friend on Facebook?”

“Wait. Back up. Why would YOU want to join Facebook? When did this happen?”

Apparently I wasn’t the only snob in the house.

“I give. I’m weak. I gave in to peer pressure – and they weren’t even really peers – just a bunch of people I met at the Obama thing. Well, I suppose they were dictionary peers, but not my idea of peers. You know what I mean?”

“No John, I really don’t.”

Long story not too long, my prospective Facebook friend was helping plan our 20th high school reunion. I was new to the Facebook scene, and a little vulnerable, so I accepted. (Alright, I was vulnerable long before Facebook. Sue me.) I didn’t think we’d ever spoken to each other, and I knew we weren’t pen palls. I didn’t remeber her from any of my classes, though I’ve repressed most of those memories. Yet, through the miracle of social networking, we were Facebook friends.

Time passed. I voted for Obama. She almost certainly didn’t (more on that later). I had no intention of reliving my adolecent nightmares at a reunion. She posted lots of pictures with spirited captions. She’d been a popular kid. I was something, but it wasn’t popular. Dear Lord, who was this person? Shortly afterwards I ignored Facebook altogether (for a time). The hook hadn’t set.

Two people. Never met (I think). Never exchanged words (spoken or typed). Seemingly nothing in common but a brief bout of geography.

Facebook friends.

A few weeks ago depression eased off a bit and I caught up on the news. I left the house for something other than work. I checked Facebook to see what my friends were up to.

With a little curiosity, plus a pinch of boredom, I looked up that first Facebook friend. What I found was a wall full of political cartoons, jokes, and a pinch of right-wingnut hysteria; all railing against one of my passions: universal health care.

I was feeling frisky. My dander was tingling. The social courage I felt during the election returned. I was ready for a debate, even if I stood little chance of changing anyone’s mind. I had to comment, my fragile ego be damned. I picked the entry with the biggest choir and made my move.

I don’t know if I succeeded, but I tried to be civil. I thought I was arguing with reason and logic, facts and statistics. I made innocent/benign analogies. I made what I thought were reasonable points. They rallied – but not around me. Honestly, I don’t know if I drew first blood, but someone made it personal. One person called poor form. Another questioned my integrity, extolled the virtues of individualism, self-reliance and the boot-strap, implied collectivism in any form was the work of Satan, and suggested if I thought universal health care was so great, I should just move and leave everyone else alone.

I took exception to the moving bit, and said so. Still, I thought I was calm – reasonable. But maybe I wasn’t. Everyone got mad. I was told the move/leave comment was an honest suggestion, not an attack, I was essentially an idiot for thinking it was… and I took exception with THAT too.

Go figure. I’m odd that way.

Am I the only one who finds this kind of “suggestion” offensive? Am I the only one who finds an implicit “love it or leave it” message between the lines, implying I don’t love it? Am I the only one who finds it dismissive? Am I imagining an undertone of “we don’t want your kind here?”

And poor form? Can a guy get a collective: huh? Is it poor form to suggest social change conceived honestly, charitably, without malice, and dog gone it – just the right thing to do? I may not be right, and I gladly debate that point – but poor form?

Some of what follows is very similar to a post one of my favorite bloggers put up recently, only his was much better.

I felt like I wasn’t in it deep enough, so I set out to set mouths a foaming. I told them they were all collectivists. I don’t recall if I used these exact words, but I said something like this: “If not, then I expect you’d never drive on public roads, use public utilities, eat anything made out of corn, fly on planes that rely on the FAA to direct them, call 911 when you’re in trouble, engage in risk sharing via private insurance, support any intervention, under any circumstances, by a publicly funded military, use public libraries, beaches, or parks, or rely on others to monitor your water/air supply to make sure no one’s poluting it or poisoning you.”

I’ll say it again (because it makes me feel smart to use big words): everyone living in this country is a collectivist, to some degree.

At one point I had been accused of unfairly assuming one of the commenters was a Republican – though I don’t recall even using the word, let alone resorting to name calling. I got a little mushy and continued: “If I’ve made inaccurate assumptions, I appologize. I meant no offense. But when you’re trading short messages, with people you don’t know, it’s hard not to make certain assumptions based on what you say. I haven’t come out and said I’m a Democrat, but I’ll wager you’ve assumed I am one based on my stated beliefs.”

I might as well have set myself on fire and saved everyone the trouble. The next morning I was notified by email that another person had commented, once again acusing me unfounded/unfair/insulting assumptions, and self-evident deficiencies in logic conveniently wrapped in a single word rebuttal: socialist. I went online to read it again, to see where I’d gone so wrong, only to find I couldn’t. I’d been de-friended. I was in fact no longer welcome.

In an odd way, I hope I was an insufferable ass. Not because it gives me some sense of retaliation after the fact, but because I don’t want to believe the alternative: people are so closed to opposing viewpoints they huddle in little shelters, protected by a cocoon of agreement. I don’t want to believe we’re a society addicted to ideological insulation.

As for myself, I’m a little too comfortable in the cozy confines of my cocoon of naiveté. So make my day. Tell me I’m a stupid prick.

Oh, I know. There are other, less cynical possibilities. Maybe I broke a generally understood rule of social networking (by everyone but socially awkward me): thou shalt not argue on Facebook. Or I might not be right on this one, let alone persuasive. And then there’s the obvious: people don’t agree on everything. It’d be pretty dull if we did.

Then again, she did put all that political stuff up. You gotta expect a little dust-up when you talk political smack, right?

I know it’s not true for everyone, but I sense a pattern: folks get more cynical with age. I worry there’s good reason for it. Reading the news the last few months – about angry healthcare town hall mobs highjacking civil discourse, roving bands of bloodthirsty liberals hell bent on lowering the median age in this country, and the creeping influence of Satan in government (a place where I work) – hasn’t helped.

I don’t think I’m a pawn of Satan. Maybe I should re-read my position description and contract.

Life is like a box of Splenda

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Stuff never seems to stop coming out of that dang box. I have to say, it’s disturbingly light. What lengths do chemists go to create a substance with so little density? Anyway, I bought one three weeks ago thinking we were almost out, but the old one’s still filling tablespoons for Cheryl’s elixir of life (coffee).

I had a similar experience this weekend. I was a mad cleaning machine Saturday morning. Cheryl was out on some errands, stressing about all the work that needed to be done around the house. So, I gave myself a good kick in the but and took the house by storm.

Some of you may suspect ulterior motives – like a cover-up for a yet to be revealed fuck-up. Or, you may be thinking this was part of “Operation Butter-up” – a vile plot to bend will to my favor. Well to you I say, I like the way you think. But no, as hard as it is to believe, this was a selfless act – though my unconscious mind will neither confirm nor deny the allegation.

Before I get to the meat of this post, let me first warn you: storms can be messy. They can cloud your judgement, drown your spirit, and blow away your energy reserves.

As it happens, I have an example.

I was cleaning the floors throughout the house, and I’d arrived in our livingroom. I knew I was going to have to shake out the rug and sweep the floor, but it was raining outside. So I thought I’d just shake out the rug over the living room floor and sweep up the stuff that came out with the rest of the dirt.

So there I was, 6’1″ with skinny, long arms, holding the folded rug up at shoulder level (bringing the end up just above the floor), using my full wingspan. I was kicking it with alternating feet to spectacular effect. I’m sure it was quite a sight. I’m equally sure it was very effective.

How was I to know a medium sized rug could hold enough sand for a private beach?

“How indeed?” my wife may ask.