Wasting Money

There is a restaurant sensation based out of Belgium. It can, however, for a small fee, be brought to you. The whole restaurant. Well, what there is of it.

Dinner in the Sky is a covered table and chair outfit that is hoisted by a crane to 150 feet in the air. At that height, you can see forever while you dine. If you aren't so frightened that you squeeze your eyes shut and start screaming in fear.

The crane and specially built table can travel for a small fee. For instance, moving the thing from Belgium to England would cost £10,000 and then you would have to purchase your dinner. It is scheduled to appear in New York and Niagara Falls. No word on the cost for getting it across the ocean.

The table itself seats 20 in chairs that resemble seats for sports cars, complete with racing style seat belts. The chairs tilt and swivel and are attached to the metal frame with solid bolts. The table is heavy plastic. There is no floor underneath your feet as the diner. However, there is a dropped or sunken floor in the center of the cut out table so that the waiter may serve you.

The table itself measures about 30 feet by 16 feet. The entire structure weighs 6 tons, or as much as an elephant. It is hoisted into the air by the attached cables when the crane operator flicks the switch.

Forbes magazine lists this as one of the top ten nifty ways to spend money when you have too much of it. The view is remarkable, a full 360 degrees. Nothing in your way.

On a calm sunny day, as you rise to new heights in dining pleasure, there are some drawbacks. As you soar into the sky, the winds aloft meet you, blowing away napkins from the unwary person not deft enough to hold on to them. And the wind doesn't actually whisper, making it difficult for conversation UNLESS YOU DON'T WHISPER EITHER. In fact, YOU SHOUT.

If your dining companion isn't much of a talker and you are waiting for the next course, it is impossible to roam the room, table hopping for better conversation. But the biggest drawback is that should you need to placate your nerves by drinking large quantities of alcohol, you better have an excessively large bladder because you will be unable to stroll to the Ladies or Gents.

It would seem that the rich and famous have to spend their money somehow or else why acquire it. Sometimes you just can't find enough $10,000 dresses or $5,000 shoes. Spending money on ridiculous items can be a way of life.

So, are you up for dinner?

Squaring Off For a Fight

Sheryl Crow is a singer. A fairly good singer and composer. And a breast cancer survivor. And no longer with Lance Armstrong. I'm not certain where in that litany things went wrong for her, but apparently she has lost her mind.

Sheryl Crow and a her friend, Laurie David have been touring the country to tell people personally that they are wasting energy. It's not clear if the waste of energy is powering the bus to get from location to location or the cars, vans, and SUVs who powered their owners to the large stadiums where the two impart wisdom on global warming to a rapt audience.

Crow is a college graduate with a major in music. I doubt there was much science involved in that type of degree. Laurie David is political activist who wants to stop global warming. She does not practice what she preaches and has been fired from jobs for her environmental dis-acumen? un-acumen? poor acumen? And no one can tell me why, if humans are responsible for Earth's getting warmer, then why oh why, is Mars also getting warmer.

Neither of these women seem to have a clue – to that or many other issues.

I live very close to MeadWestvaco's South Carolina holdings. I've watched the trees cut down and noted that the hardwood trees are spared and only the pines are taken down. Then the land looks raw and ugly. But, nature tends toward life and the forest becomes a field. Then the field is planted again. Trees grow again. Fast growing pines. The only way for a paper manufacturing concern to continue growing is to continue growing the trees.

There is a wide difference between cutting down old growth forests for larger houses. However, that's a different issue and why we need more square footage while family size is shrinking can be an entire book.

Cutting down pine trees, fast growing trees, rotating crops – as it were – is quite different. While it is okay to want to save paper and recycling is a great idea. One square of toilet paper at the end of 15 minute "reading session" is too much to ask. Even 2-3 pieces of paper would be insufficient to the task.

And then there is the awful tissue paper type toilet paper that is in public bathrooms. It is narrower than regular stuff, one-ply rather than two, and melts if it is anywhere near moisture.

I can only assume the Sheryl Crow is full of shit. If she weren't, she would know that after getting rid of that stuff, more than one square is absolutely essential.

Here Kitty, Kitty

Jeffrey Francis Cullen is 59 and really should know better. He lives in Kingman, Arizona and he owns a cat. And a gun. And he drinks. These things don't all mix well.

Last August 17, Mr. Cullen phoned the fire department saying a tree was on fire. A three-man crew responded to his call. They must have noticed a lack of smoke as they approached the reputed scene of the fire because – there was no fire.

Instead of a fire in the tree, the highly trained team found a cat in the tree. Instead of rescuing the cat (or charging the man with calling in a false alarm) they advised the cat owner to call the animal control folks or even to just wait for the cat to get hungry and come down by itself.

Nope. Not Mr. Cullen. His cat was stuck in the tree and the firemen were already there. Something needed to be done.

Mr. Cullen went into the house, retrieved a small handgun and came out shooting. The firemen fled, taking a 12-year-old boy who had come by to check out the cool truck.

When the police arrived, they also did not retrieve the cat from tree. But it now seems there may have been a reason for the cat to flee to the tree. Apparently Mr. Cullen didn't mind shooting guns. At people, anyway. Perhaps the cat was safe. Who can say.

What Mr. Cullen did admit, and this is really not too difficult to comprehend, was that he had been drinking. That probably accounts for the false alarm, the firing of the handgun, and his inability to hit anything.

Mr. Cullen received a five month jail term along with five years of "intensive probation." This is a way to cut down on prison enrollment while still keeping a closer eye on criminals. It is similar to house arrest with the individual unable to leave home for unnecessary trips, doing community service work, and paying restitution for criminal behaviors.

Mr. Cullen could have received 3.5 years for each count but was given the lesser sentence instead.

One can only hope that he doesn't share his drinks with his cat.

Cheap Beer No More

Germany is facing a national disaster. The price of beer will be increased. Not as a revenue scheme because of a Value Added Tax, but because more land is being used to grow crops for biofuels rather than the barley needed to make beer.

Supply and demand. The demand is increasing and the supply is decreasing. Price goes up. The only law you really need to know about business or economics. Supply and demand drives price.

And for what? The hybrid cars are more expensive and more eco-unfriendly. While buying less gas makes one think that overall cost may be lessened, it is only one of the many costs incurred in running a car.

The biggest reason hybrids cost more is because they don't last as long. They break down. And when they do, they have to be discarded, filling up old car graveyards at a faster clip.

When factoring in the cost of producing the vehicle, getting it to the dealer, your purchasing the thing and running it until the wheels fall off (or reselling it until it finally has the wheels fall off) and then disposing of the carcass, the price of a hybrid is greater than the cost of running a Hummer. This galls environmentalists no end.

We can't all ride motor scooters or even walk to where we need to be. We should be as efficient with our use of energy (nature's and our own) as we can be. Raising the price of beer seems an odd way to keep any country happy.

Make Up Our Minds

A flight was delayed for 13 hours when the crew refused to fly the plane. There are regulations that stipulate how many consecutive hours a flight crew can work and what the recuperative time between flights must be. The crew had spent the night in a hotel.

It seems that the hotel was on party mode and the flight crew did not get the requisite rest. When they reported for duty, they claimed they were unsafe to pilot and crew a long flight – from New Delhi to London. If it were a direct flight, it would take a little more than ten hours to get from India to England.

There are reasons to take safety measures before cramming a bunch of people into a tin can and launching them a few miles above ground level to wing across the globe for most of a day. There were 210 inconvenienced people who were put up in hotels, some of them having to share rooms with total strangers. They are outraged.

They are alive.

If the tired crew had taken off and winged westward and then crashed the dang plane, 210 grieving families would be suing the pants off British Airways. They would be demanding that BA take some action and also pay them lots of money. Because the pilots and crew did what they were supposed to do, 210 angry people are probably going to sue BA and demand they take some action and pay them some money.

While not trying to be trite, I'm looking at this past week. There are over 30 people dead in Virginia. Some people who have thinking quirks are asking why the school didn't do more to "help" the murderer. He was a troubled young man and he was not treated with kindness, caring, and dignity. The fact that he was nuts but laws made it impossible to physically incarcerate him are of no importance. It is society's fault. We let this troubled young man down. Oh yeah, and all his victims. He was not responsible for his choices.

School officials worked the system as much as they could. The guy was whacko and probably a schizophrenic. He should not have been free to walk around in polite society unless and until he was able to adjust his behaviors into something resembling normalcy.

It is my opinion that the glorified dude who will not be mentioned here by name made preplanned and psychotic choices and they he, and he alone, is responsible for them. He was offered help but it wasn't enough. The taunting from high school, it seems, festered for eight years and then …

So on the one hand, we have a flight crew that wouldn't fly against regulations and BA apologizing all over itself because they didn't crash and kill 210 people, and on the other hand, more should have been done to prevent a tragedy. Odd.

Why I Am Against the Death Penalty

On April 24, 2007 James Filiaggi is scheduled to die. He murdered his ex-wife in January of 1994 and was sentenced to death in August of 1995.

What purpose will his death serve? When he dies, his ex-wife will not be resurrected. Instead, when he dies his children will become orphans. Is this in some way going to help the secondary victims of the first crime?

Jim and Lisa had a stormy marriage and even stormier divorce. They were each cruel to the other. This was not good for them or for their children. Some of what I know about Jim and Lisa I learned from gossip and from friends of Lisa and friends of Jim. Some of what I know I learned from the papers.

Jim killed Lisa. Her misbehavior was not a cause for the death penalty. Jim's institution of same is not, in my opinion, cause for the death penalty, either.

My mother was Jim's sixth grade teacher. A favorite teacher, he claimed. He began writing to Mom after his arrest and she wrote back. He continued to write prison censored letters to her until she died. He sent a make shift condolence card telling us how much she meant to him.

I spent two years at a private school as the computer coordinator. Jim's daughters went to school there. Jim's mother worked there. The cousins were there, as well.

Jim did a very bad thing. Jim should be punished. Jim should have his freedoms revoked. Jim should not be permitted to live in the society that protects his children, parents, siblings, and extended family.

How will Jim's death help his children? How will it benefit the society which is demanding it? What possible good will be done when they pull the switch? All that will happen is that his children will be orphans, never able to see or speak with any parent ever again.

It is a crime.

To My Sisters, With Love

I've just spent three days with my sisters. It was lovely.

I've heard that half the fun is getting there. Not so much for me. I hate to drive where I don't know where I'm going. But I got a map printed out and thought I would be okay. I have little sense of direction. I was to get off at exit 434. I kept looking for the name, it wasn't showing up, I looked at the directions again. It was exit 443 and I was past that.

Turn around, go back. During the week there are lots and lots of trucks on the roads. In the South, they don't waste extra money on anything as stupid as signs about upcoming events. One sign per exit. If you are passing a truck and miss it, too dang bad.

I backtracked, found the correct exit and continued on. I was on the correct road, I turned on to the correct road. I was looking at my directions and watching for signs. I apparently missed a sign and ended up driving several miles of twisting roads while thinking that it was all so very unfamiliar. I came to a sign that said the next 7 miles were more than twisty and narrow besides. The road simply ended at the Appalachian Trail. Backtracking again through the miles of narrow and very twisty roads.

I was more than an hour later than I needed to be. My backtracking was time consuming. I was doing okay until I saw my sisters who weren't allowed into our room because the reservation was in my name and I was late and they were on the porch and I had been so nervous and I hated it and I just burst into tears. And they didn't even mind. They let me cry.

Our hotel wasn't quite seedy, but it surely wasn't new and luxurious. It was also only $40 per night. But really, it wasn't seedy.

It had a kitchenette included. In a time of gadgets and with all of us used to higher standards of living, it was shocking to find no microwave. There was a stove and refrigerator. But no microwave. I brought my own coffeepot because I'm not going without coffee. There was a coffeepot and a toaster. But no microwave.

It is impossible to reheat my coffee without a microwave. That was disappointing. Somehow we survived.

The room had a slightly musty smell to it. One sister keeps Frebreeze in her car. I don't understand that but no one asked me to. The other sister purchased a candle. We spent our first full day shopping. The candle was purchased later in the day and then … we realized we had no way to light it.

Outlet Malls are not going to carry matches. I don't know why. We had to stop at Walgreen's to get some matches. And I stayed in the car with my sore feet. They came out to tell me that Easter candy was 75% off. I went in and the two people who already had bags of candy went in for a refill. We helped to get rid of the out of date stock.

We played games and shopped and ate. We had stuff from the estate to go through. We argued over who had the worst hairstyles over the years. Hard to decide, the pictures were all so bad.

We were going to have pancakes for breakfast because it appears to be mandatory, a law in Tennessee, that you have them while you are on vacation. But we refused to wait in line for an hour for pancakes. We drove to a different pancake place and had our pancakes without waiting.

Then we shopped some more. It is much more fun to shop with someone else than it is to shop alone. It is especially sweet to shop with sisters because we can laugh at the same merchandise. We did that, too.

My sisters have taken up beading as a hobby. We found a bead shop and (surprise, surprise) shopped there. The owners tried to include me in this shopping spree, but I maintained my position of NO BEADING. It is apparently quite expensive to bead.

We had a funnel cake for supper one night. Isn't is wonderful to be on vacation? You can do just about anything on vacation. We got our powdered sugar encrusted funnel cakes and sat on a bench outside eating our treats. Powdered sugar was everywhere. And yet … we didn't die or anything. Not by the diet or by the mess.

It was time to leave and we had to go our separate ways. Since I was driving alone, I had to call in and check with the people who cared enough to worry about me that I got back to the main road without traveling to the Appalachian Trail again.

I'm home now. It's very quiet again. My sisters both made it home safely, as well. I can't wait until we can all get together again.

Sisters

Well, son first. He is bugging me to write. Like I've had nothing else to do lately. I've been traveling back and forth to Hilton Head Island. I've cooked a feast (not nearly as big as some years, but a feast nonetheless) and now I'm packing for a road trip.

Not quite like Thelma and Louise, but a nice getaway. My sisters and I are going to spend some family time. Some time laughing and slapping thighs and giggling and telling funny stories and just having fun.

Last week someone sent a quote about the moments in time that take one's breath away. That was Sister Mary's theme for the eulogy at Mom's funeral Mass. It was lovely then. I copied it and sent out the entire thing to my group of friends. It made me cry, but it also warmed my heart. It's still lovely today.

Mom left us many things. She left us money, house, car, annuity, investments, CDs, and a beneficiary IRA. That last is not cashed out but used for financing yearly trips so that the sisters can get together and honor a mother who left us one more thing – family devotion.

Our aunts, our mother's sisters, do not speak to each other. They fought years ago and stopped speaking. Neither came to Mom's funeral so they couldn't make up there. She continued to talk with both sisters and never would let herself be placed in the middle of their fight.

Now one uncle is dead and the other is very ill. The sisters' fight was a family thing and whose husband did what to whom, when and how. The sisters may never speak to each other again and it makes my heart hurt to think that.

And then I think of my own sisters. The women who have been with me since forever. The ones who share the same stories. The ones who remind me of stories I've forgotten. The ones who are the reason I'm traveling to Gatlinburg, which is much better than going to Beaver. The people who are anchors in my sometimes chaotic life.

I can't believe that we live so far away from each other. I can't believe that we have to plan and scheme to see each other. I'm certain this isn't what I thought we would do when we were squabbling over who got a window seat in the car or who got to choose the piece of cake first.

I can't imagine how dark my life would be without my sisters. I reach for the phone to call Mom on a regular basis even yet. I know I can't and my heart sinks when there is no one who can answer. Then I think, well, I will call a sister. And I do. And I can. And I am so grateful that I have my sisters in a world full of transient people and hurtful and hateful things.

My husband and my sons and my daughter-in-law and my grandchildren are all special to me. They are unique to the world and to my heart. My sisters, however, have been with me longer and know more of my life history than any of these late comers.

Tomorrow I'm going to get a chance to play with my sisters. Both of them. All three of us together. I'm so excited. Now I have to finish packing.

Moving

I think that I am calm enough to write about this now. Robert Burns who wrote that the best laid plans of mice and men do often go awry (although he spelled it funny) must have been thinking about this past weekend.

Moving is stressful. It is an arduous task that sucks the life out of anyone. It not only means taking stuff from one place to another, but it is usually the time when that stuff is evaluated for future usefulness and either put into the "move" pile or the "toss" pile. We are an acquisition oriented society. We have lots of stuff.

The move was not a surprise for any of the participants. One son purchased a house that was standing empty and so his movement from condo to house could gracefully take it's time. No rush, no hurry. The same arduous task, but spaced out over days to weeks. Not that the time difference made the actual task easier, but the time element made the task less compact.

He is taking in a boarder at his new house and that person knew well in advance that he would be moving as well. He began to move his stuff and then inexplicably … stopped. His furniture was moved and his clothes were mostly in his new home. He was busy.

Now the best laid plans going awry part. My other son is renting the house from his brother's boarder. One person is both tenant to a son and landlord to the other son. While it may be confusing, it's just all logistics.

The son renting the house had dire time constraints. The condo he had been renting was already leased to another person. Moving wasn't going to be a casual week long affair. It needed to be as instantaneous as moving can be. On top of this, he wasn't moving a bachelor and one or two pets, but a family with three children – aged three, two, and eight months – along with the family pets – a dog, a cat, and a turtle in a 100 gallon aquarium.

Having been blessed with an active mother who helped me move twice, it was my turn to be the active mother and help move. I drove to the island intent on "getting things done." That was the plan that went awry.

I arrived on Friday morning ready to get started. The plan was to get the kitchen moved from condo to house and the beds set up in the new house and then on the next day, finish moving all the stuff. In that vein, the kitchen was packed into the van and taken to the house while I stayed put with the three kids.

Instead of a tired but motivated daughter-in-law returning for more stuff, she came in the condo and cried. The kitchen of the new house was already full of stuff. There was no room for the stuff we wanted to move in because the stuff of the landlord wasn't moved out yet. This presented a huge problem. Instead of moving at a reasonable clip and getting our plan moving forward, we were in a holding pattern.

The newly minted landlord said he would remove his stuff that evening. Great.

Saturday morning, Grandpa showed up to facilitate this whole move thing. We loaded up four vehicles because we had four drivers and hauled bunches of stuff to the new house. It was exactly as it was Friday afternoon or Wednesday afternoon or perhaps any time in the past. Every cupboard was still full. Even dishes in the dishwasher needed to be unloaded and then packed away. Some stuff was still in the closets. And the house was not only not empty, but not cleaned.

So while I packed up a kitchen for a landlord who was fully capable but too busy to do his own work, my daughter-in-law cleaned the bathrooms so that the kids could take a bath without nestling into adjectival hair that was resting in the drain. The kids were still the same age and we were still under time constraints, although at least the time became a tad longer. The new tenant for the condo wasn't moving in until Friday. We had a space to breathe again.

What should have been a two day job, and actually was a two day job, took longer because somehow I became the packing person and cleaning lady (I was in charge of cleaning the kitchen while the bathrooms were undergoing their approach to Godliness) for a person who should have done this long ago.

Since we couldn't finish packing up the landlord, cleaning up after the landlord, and actually moving in our own kids, my husband and I drove home Saturday, and then spent two hours in the car again Sunday morning driving back to finish the move. My planned four hours in the car became eight, and my planned two days became three because I was forced to do someone else's work.

And the topper, as far as I am concerned, is that my son had to pay a security deposit which is money he needed to borrow from his parents. So I wrote a check to someone for the sheer pleasure of being his slave. I've hired packers and I've hired cleaning services. Both come at a cost. It is inconceivable that this newly minted landlord could charge me for services that I've paid for in the past.

I sure hope the whole landlord thing is soon thoroughly explained to him and that he takes part of his security deposit and pays his tenants for the services they rendered to him – hours of packing and cleaning. I can send him a bill if he can't figure out a fair amount to reimburse the workers.