Moving on and ever onward

I have moved my blog to Word Press mostly because I can. I have my other history blog over there and really like the way it works. So, please feel free to try this spot.

Imperfect Reason <---- this is a link, although it doesn't show very well. See, an issue.

Please stop this now

I rather feel sorry for President Obama. I don't like the way his running the country into the poor house and I would never, ever vote for him. But, I feel sorry for him.

His defenders can't stop noticing he's black. Any time someone – like me, say – dislikes his policies and disagrees with his over abundant spending habits, that person is all of a sudden a racist. Maybe we don't like his policies because we don't like his policies. However, his defenders come to his "aid" and call anyone not backing up his ridiculous propositions as being racist.

The poor man can't win for losing. He is a socialist and therefore I don't like him. He wants to tax and spend not only me and my children, but my grandchildren and great-grandchildren into oblivion. He had the most liberal spending record of anyone in the Senate prior to arriving at his new office. It isn't surprising he is willing to spend us all into nothingness. But I can't like him for it; I can't support his policies.

This has nothing to do with his skin color. It has to do with his fiscal irresponsibility. Saying a national health plan won't increase spending or taxes is ludicrous. Where is the nearly trillion dollars coming from? It is coming from the taxpayers. Right now, people without insurance can continue to buy food and clothing while paying for shelter and forego the purchase of insurance. They can also buy vacations and what-not while foregoing the purchase of insurance, but that's a different story.

If there is a national health plan, it will need to be funded. And it will be funded by taxes. Taxes aren't optional. They just take the money and spend it without any conscience whatsoever. The people who are going to be funding this program are the people who can't afford to buy their own insurance. Taxes are withheld before you buy your groceries or pay your rent. You don't even get to decide if you want to buy what the government is buying. They just take your money from you and buy what they think you want.

It is how the government works. Telling me any different is lying. They make a program that looks good on paper without thinking of all the side effects. It is like the law in Nebraska allowing children to be safely dropped off at hospitals after birth, except without a cut off date. Someone drove from Florida to drop their kids off. Lawmakers didn't think it through adequately.

Same with most socialist programs. President Johnson decided we would have a Great Society and instituted plans to make sure no one was neglected who could not care for themselves. What he and Congress didn't realize was the devastating side effects. Instead of fathers/husbands working to support their families, they abandoned them so the government would pay for the dependent children. And what we got was the destruction of inner city families.

Congress is good at looking at their programs intent without looking at loopholes or unintended side effects. There are plenty in the health care plan. But, since we are so focused on the health care plan, no one is watching the borders of our country. Instead of making sure we have safe borders, we are going to be giving amnesty, along with lots and lots of money to illegal aliens who ask for it. I'm not sure if the health care plan is even the real plan, or just a smoke screen to be able to pass a whole raft of stupid laws allowing a whole bunch of stupid things to happen.

And I say all this knowing I don't like the current President's policies. I don't really care what color his skin is. I can dislike what he says and does just fine regardless of his tan. And I wish his defenders would come up with something other than accusing anyone who disagrees with him of being racist. It isn't a racial thing; it's a socialist thing.

Family Saga

I can't be the only person who is tired of hearing what a saint the late Senator Edward Kennedy was. Because I don't wish to incite a riot and all that, I've kept silent. But every time someone mentions his death, I want to hear how Mary Jo must be "so happy" to see him again.

Mary Jo Kopkechne died on July 19, 1969 when a completely sober (according to the Senator) man lost his way and drove his car off the Chappaquiddick bridge. This completely sober and caring individual claimed to have been lost and still managed to be driving fast enough to not only drive off the bridge, but to flip the car over.

He managed to extricate himself from the wreck. He claims he dove several times to find the passenger in the car. Unsuccessfully. He was able to contact several people, however none of them were authorities. One assumes it was his father, the bankroll, and some cronies. When the car was discovered, well, good old Ted had answers.

Since enough time had passed, there was no sense in doing a blood alcohol level. Ted Kennedy, known for his ability to drink somehow was not drinking on this one night. He was given a two month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident. Most people who kill someone in a car accident are charged with manslaughter, but if you have enough money, that's not always true.

Mary Jo was an only child and 28 years old at the time of her death.

Forty years later, Ted the Saint, is dead. This incident has haunted him all his life, poor baby. And it was instrumental in his inability to launch a Presidential run. Poor man. His political dreams dashed all because he killed someone. What unjust punishment.

All I want to do is scream. The rich, white guy killed someone and left the scene. If any of us regular folk did that, we wouldn't be walking around free, let alone sitting in the Senate making laws for only other people to follow.

The Kennedy saga continues with his son, the cocaine using OxyContin abusing Representative from Rhode Island. The guy who helped his cousin get away with rape, the guy who keeps getting drunk and wrecking his cars, although admittedly, he isn't the man his father was, he doesn't kill anyone.

How does a family go from the PT-109 to this?

Dying to be Healthy

I'm getting older by the minute. We all are, but it starts to catch up with us after a certain point in time. The aging process is inexorably moving toward entropy. And it is my job to stave off that finality for as long as possible. Or something like that.

Mostly I'm worried about my clothes. I have a lot of clothes. Many, many pieces of clothing fill a walk-in closet, a double closet, a dresser, two chests of drawers, and a smaller antique washstand. Then there are Christmas sweaters stored under my bed, a few items in storage upstairs, and my coats.

I have lots of clothes because I've stayed relatively the same size for most of my adult life. Many of my clothes are over ten years old, but still look like new. When you have this much stuff to choose from, you don't need to wear the same thing all the time. So stuff doesn't get worn out. That, and I'm old and take good care of my possessions. So, my clothes last a long time and I keep buying more. I could off load some, but … I'm sure I will want to wear it some day, some where for some event I might have to attend. Although I rarely attend events anymore, this is always a looming possibility.

My clothes are important to me. And so, my self has to stay the same size as my clothes. This isn't as easy as it once was. I used to be quite active. Now – not so much. My fingers get a great workout as I type and my right hand is "awesome" after a brisk workout with the mouse. Otherwise, I'm pretty stationary. I just sit here and – well, sit. Unless I bring a snack into my office and eat while I sit.

This is not working out as well as I might have hoped. I'm gaining weight. I stopped drinking coffee all day long and instead of two pots per day, I'm down to three cups – okay, mugs. But still only three. But I keep going into the kitchen, looking for coffee, and find food instead. Also not a good dieting plan.

I was religiously using the elliptical until I hit some sort of brick wall in February. Then I stopped. A trip to the doctor's office revealed a bit of an anomaly with my blood work and a repeat test reiterated the fact. I'm getting older and all this sitting isn't the best exercise plan in the world. I would be healthier if I moved more.

So I fired up the elliptical again. I began slowly and have gotten a bit more aggressive with time. I'm up to P4 or the fourth preset program. There are thirteen of these. I was up to P8 when I quit in February. So five times a week (I have Fridays and Sundays off) I do thirty minutes of self torture. I'm not seeing that it is really doing me any good. I'm not losing weight – although that probably has a lot more to do with intake rather than expenditure.

I've taken to hooking up the Wii again and doing the step routine for ten minutes. It gives me nearly a thousand steps up and down. I can manage ten minutes of absolute boredom, but just barely. I'm not sure what else I could do while marching up and down; back and forth. But it is mind crushingly boring to do this. It also helps me focus when I sit back down, so it isn't all bad.

I wear a heart rate monitor on the elliptical. The Wii isn't strenuous as it will only let me go so fast and still count the steps. I have my heart rate set to yell at me when I get over 160 beats per minute. It does, on occasion have to tell me to slow down. Some days I watch it more closely than others.

Today, the alarm never went off. However, I was getting light headed by the end of the thirty minutes. I had to power my way through the last few minutes, telling myself it would soon be all over. I went slowly and didn't get my usual mileage in. I have no idea why some days are so difficult. Two days ago, my heart rate monitor beeped at me three times and I never felt bad. Today, I felt bad and the monitor was happy.

I just keep forcing myself to do this. I hope my next trip to the doctor's office shows some improvement. Otherwise, I have no idea how I will bribe myself to continue.

Keep America Beautiful

That was a slogan years ago to stop Americans from littering. We were supposed to care enough about our country to want to keep the roadways, highways and byways, and country lanes all clean and free of clutter. It has mostly worked.

There are, however, some people who flaunt the rules of the general population and purposely set up roadside litter. They call them "memorials" or some such thing. When someone dies in a motor vehicle accident, it somehow means "you are permitted to litter here" and society has come to accept it.

I don't.

Get your memorials out of here. If you don't die on a road, you don't get a second cross or angel set up in your honor. When we sold Mom's house, we did not demand the new owners keep a cross to her memory set up in the house. We have Mom buried in a cemetery and there is a memorial to her THERE.

I'm not sure which is the more annoying to me. There was a horrible crash up at the corner of our development. An unlicensed, illegal alien was driving a old beat up pickup truck. He rammed into a stopped car so hard, the car was propelled across the median and struck by oncoming traffic. The speed limit is 55 mph there. I'm guess there were three deaths.

It was all horrible. I feel really sorry for the bereaved family. The man driving the pickup is probably in jail now, but that doesn't help them. Neither does the third (possibly fourth) shrine they have set up along the road side. Those of us who know the story still don't really care. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but really – I don't care. I know it is all horrible and I used to be sorry for you. Now, I just wish you would take your trash and grieve on your own time. It has been years now.

Then there are the people who put up a shrine along the road because they are so bereft. Years pass. They never touch it again. It deteriorates and looks even crappier. I would like to see the trash pickers who go down the streets at times take these heaps of litter and dispose of them.

Even more upsetting to me is the outpouring of community support when a small child is killed. Outside the child's home or at the scene of whatever terrible event occurred, there are mounds of stuffed teddy bears or plush toys. This doesn't help the poor child. That kid is gone and beyond the need for toys. I would love to see some enterprising soul come by and take all the donated and useless toys to the nearest homeless shelter or abused women's shelter or the closest welfare office. Give the toys to kids who don't have any but can still play with them.

All in all, this outpouring of public grief is ridiculous. The public doesn't really need to be so involved in your private life. That is why it is called "private" life – it is yours, privately.

If we don't want to just use cemeteries for our remembrance of those who died before us, perhaps we can just do away with them. They aren't being as useful as they can.

Or maybe we can simply stop littering the roads. I don't need to know this stuff. And I'm usually thinking "So that's where the drunk guy was." Unless I'm thinking "So that's where the driver fell asleep at the wheel." Or maybe perhaps, "I guess that speed really does kill." What I never think is "God, bless this soul." I'm too busy being disgusted by the mess.

Love you, baby

I have been derelict in my duties. And I've been feeling really, really guilty about it. I've wasted so much energy feeling guilty, I could have used it all to do what I should have been doing instead of feeling guilty about not doing it. Such is the way of humans.

I have been maintaining daily posts on my Word Press Little Bits of History blog. I have been maintaining daily posts for Examiner.com. For the first, I usually have to polish or add or improve the text before I post it. Little Bits of History is from the first volume, something I've never been that happy with. But to put it out in front of the world, just in case, I have to fix it. Examiner, on the other hand, needs links and pictures. So while I don't have to polish the text, it takes me a fair amount of time to find the extras.

I've been moderating one forum and my DSis/baby – also known to me as Cheri and to the forum as Time Pig) – has gotten me to join another forum. She also talked me into Skype and Facebook. All great ways to spend time. Time I will never get back. Spent and gone. And instead of doing this, writing on my first blog, I fritter away time doing essentially nothing.

And it isn't like I don't have important news. Francesca Rose was born on June 29. She was absolutely perfect and hasn't changed since. Well, she is already getting bigger and stronger, but she is still perfect. She was born via Cesarean section at 7 PM. Cheri was in town visiting (she comes for all my granddaughters' births) and we were at the hospital – after a stop at Carter's Outlet – the very next day.

I got to hold Frankie before she was 24 hours old. Eight pounds, three ounces and 21 inches of perfection. Soft and mushy. Cuddly and wiggly. Eyes startled wide with wonder at this bright place.

The baby and her parents were home by the weekend and not having the sense God gave spit, we descended on them again. Nothing a new mother wants more, especially after surgery, than to have in-laws drop by. But … I needed a baby fix. And so I got one. I was a baby hog and monopolized our time with the sweetest newborn on the planet.

The next weekend, the new parents and the old parents were requesting a break. We stayed away from the babies and luxuriated in old cootness. We even went out to dinner using our gas money for a meal out.

But this past weekend, we were back again. We celebrated Morgan's birthday, which is always fun. Little kids have no trouble with expressing greed. Pure greed. It's great. Oh, to be young again.

Before we hit that party, we stopped by Frankie's house and talked to her parents while I held and stroked and kissed and loved this new member of our family.

Frankie, we are your people. We are here for you. Today, tomorrow, forever. You are the best newborn we got. And I should have told you that sooner. I did whisper it to you. Now I will shout it to the world. Love you, baby.

Friends

My best friend from childhood lived in the house behind mine, diagonally. A quick run through our back yards and we were together. 

My best friend from high school lived about two miles from my house, as driven in my car – okay, my mother's car. Closer as the crow flies, but neither of us were crows, so we drove or had to be driven. 

My young adult friends were neighbors or coworkers. Close at one part of the day or another. 

In 1996, we got our second computer and it had a modem. I was not very computer savvy, but I did have AOL and could finally send and receive e-mail and met many nice people in chat rooms. My community of friends now spanned the globe. 

This new phenomenon, friends you have never met, isn't really entirely new. In ages past, there was something called "pen pals" and people who had never met would write long letters to each other with weeks or months or even years passing between correspondence. They knew they were separated by distances too great to travel, but they still wrote.

Some were established in school days as a teacher's project and kept going. Some were people interested in some topic and writing to others who were like minded, some famous and some not. Some of these pen pal letters blossomed into more. Elizabeth Barrett met Robert Browning this way. 

Beginning in 1996, my insular world became global. I could instantaneously communicate with people on every continent. It was amazing. You can't imagine the speed of a 2400 baud modem as compared to the Pony Express.

With this new method of communication came a new set of problems. For me, a word person, one of them was what in the hell do I call these people? They aren't acquaintances since I've never met them. In fact, one could have walked past me at any time and I wouldn't have known. They weren't friends for I hardly knew them. I mean, how much of what we say online is the honest, to goodness, all out truth. 

I never told about the stupid things I did. I never confessed to being less than the picture I wanted to paint. This realm was a world where I could remake myself in my own image. I wouldn't be petty or mean spirited. I wouldn't be a klutz or graceless. I would deliver the perfect bon mot or riposte in each verbal dual. Who would know any different? And how many other people were going to reveal their flaws and so why should I? So, how well did any of know each other. That's not real and it's not friends. 

That's what I told myself.

But I've been online for over a decade now. I'm a little more comfortable calling my long standing … I still don't know what to call them, really. We write back and forth. We celebrate and commiserate. We share successes and console over failures. 

And now, I not only have e-mail, I'm involved in forums where people are dear to me. I know so much about so many of my friends, but not how they look. They could still walk right past me and I wouldn't know them. But when something happens, it is real. Cyber is the way we converse, but cyber isn't where my heart lies. 

I still care about people and there are real people on the other end of the electron stream. Many of them I have come to know. I'm still talking to people I first met in an AOL chat room over a decade ago. I'm closer to my online friends than I am with old neighbors from places where I used to live. I still e-mail with them, but not as frequently. Unless I have no e-mail address, then it's once a year Christmas letters. 

But I still feel funny. Some of my best friends, some of the people I run toward to share my happy moments, reach toward for consolation in sad times, and offer a virtual shoulder to when times are tough for them … these people are "virtual" in the world of electronics. But they are real in my heart. 

What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas. What happens online remains with me cherished and tended. My friends. Yes, they are my friends. 

Sied, I've know your first name for a long time, but you are sied to me and always will be. Dear friend, I miss you already. Though we never met, we talked on the phone a couple times and we were … what? Internet Idiots? Cyber Sidekicks? Network Ninnies? Friends. Coworkers. Supporters. Cheerleaders. Always just a click away.

Sleep well. Your friends are still rooting for you.