11 Minutes and Counting

Until the Opening Ceremonies.

So, enjoy.  (Dang it.  I uploaded the wrong video the first time).  This one's better.

Beans Don't Burn On The Grill

"Took a whole lot of tryin'.
Just to get up that hill."

Sounds like George Jefferson was an evil capitalist.

Now imagine if someone told Mr. Jefferson,

"Look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own.  I'm always struck by people who think, 'Well, it must be because I was just so smart.' There are a lot of smart people out there. 'It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.' Let me tell you something: There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help."

I applaud you George.  You DID get there on your own and you ARE entitled to enjoy that DEluxe apartment in the sky. 

"Now we're up in the big leagues,
Gettin' our turn at bat.
As long as we live, it's you and me baby,
There ain't nothin wrong with that."

No there is NOTHIN' wrong with that.

God love ya George.

(Dang it.  Andrea Tantaros beat me to this.  I wrote this the other night when Sherman Helmsley passed away and I didn't publish it.  Tonight's One More Thing on The Five included the theme song and talking about George being a capitalist.  I could have claimed she stole my idea if I had only published it first.)

My New Job Opportunity

Just received in the email today.  Yeah, I think I'll jump right on this one.

Hello,  (No, I didn't even blank out my name, there was no name after Hello)

We would like you to pay attention to the following job offer.

Our company is called Worldwide Electronic Retailing Shipper incorporated. We are currently recruiting employees to fill in the position at courier service department. We have an online department looking for employees on the internet, so if you have received this letter, that means that your CV has been seen on the web by the online recruiting department managers.


WERS inc is a European company based in Poland that provides retail sales of products(mostly modern electronic devices) and selling it to European customers. We are growing and continue to develop since 2005.

The position we offer you will include receiving the products and shipping them out.


You will be required to receive shipments via FedEx, UPS, and send through USPS.


There are no investments from your side. Company provides pre paid shipping labels. Your pay is monthly and it is $60 per each package rate with $1500 minimal guaranteed amount. After first and second month of successful cooperation, we provide the modern devices as a bonuses for each of our employees. (Apple iPhones and Mac laptops, Blackberry phones and Sony Vaio laptops).


The requirements are:


- be available to work on PC with internet access
- have day time contact phone number
- 18 years old minimum
- constant shipping address

Mostly all packages are not big and will not require any special storage place.
If you are interested, please contact us via email.

Imagine If You Will

That you are sitting at your desk one day when your assistant walks in terribly upset.

He begins to tell you a story about witnessing a horrible act, an obscene act.  One that would bring shame to your organization.  But you hesitate.

Surely your assistant is wrong, surely a guy you've known for years is not doing something so unspeakable to young boys.

So you do what your position requires. You tell your immediate boss.  And that boss decides to do nothing. 

Nothing.

That's best, right?  Why would you want to jeopardize your organization's reputation? 

But deep down, you know that's not right. 

MAYBE, perhap just maybe you might go along with that.  Assuming that the problem would not be allowed to continue.

But it does. 

And you do NOTHING to stop it.

Nothing.

Maybe you could justify one instance.  Maybe someone has a talk with the bastard who could not only do something so vile, but do it openly, in the showers of the school.  Maybe you could talk yourself into believing that it would stop.

But then you could not blind yourself to the other boys that came along.  Those that were becoming close to the monster you KNEW would rape them.

If you were a "good man".  If you were truly someone to be admired.  If you did not believe your almighty football god outweighed the evilness of permitting more rapes of innocent, needy young boys.  If you were not even a good man, but at least a decent man, an average man. 

What would you do when you realized the second boy?

What would you do when you heard another story, of someone else realizing what was going on?

What would you do when you are discussing the situation in email exchanges with your bosses?

Would you justify that you did only what was required of you?  Would you say to yourself in the mirror each morning that you should not report the incident to the cops because it would embarrass your school and ruin the school's reputation?

Would you know all that and still watch another young man's life be ripped apart and you did NOTHING?

For THIRTEEN YEARS???

Were those 111 wins THAT important to you Joe?  That you would not just sell out your own soul, but you offered up to the football god you loved so much innocent children who only needed help?

I might believe Paterno was a decent man, not a good man, but at least a normal human being IF he had said with the second boy, ENOUGH.  But he didn't.

And neither did the administration.  Or the assistants.  Or the janitors. 

NO ONE said anything.

What kind of evilness/vanity/ego must you possess to sell off more young boys to be raped in honor of the football god?

May the Good Lord have more mercy on your seemingly untortured soul, Joe.  He would have to be more forgiving than I could ever be. 

Please, for all you college football fans, do NOT tell me how unfair it to the school or the kids that were in those winning games.  They still got the "glory" of winning.  They still have their championship rings.  They just lost their "hero".  Who was never a hero at all.  He was a man who cared more about his reputation than preserving the innocence of a young boy.

I can sympathize with their loss when they realize their idolized coach was only driven by ego, but I cannot understand how they could be more upset over having their wins recorded as losses over what they must realize was the sacrificed young boys to the ultimate football god.

Visitor From Aurora

I'm not quite sure who it is, but occasionally I get a visitor from Aurora, Colorado.  I've wondered if it could be Lili, but that's just a guess since I know her IP address used to appear from Denver. 

Whoever you are Aurora, I just want to tell you that my prayers are with you and your community. 

Just devastating. 

I'll Keep An Eye Out For You

It was something I had considered numerous times, but I always dismissed it fairly quickly. 

Why would I want to spend several thousands of dollars on risking a surgery when I could have the same thing by pushing some contacts into my eyes every morning with no risk?

Listening to the details of having some laser slice into your cornea versus throwing on my Coke bottle type glasses that I had been wearing for more than 30 years left me feeling a bit icky whenever anyone I knew talked about how wonderfully they could see.

Years went by.  Technology improved. More nearsightedness was sliced into non-existence.

I got older.

And so did my eyes.  

I began wearing glasses in the 5th grade.  My first pair were the ugly cat's eye type.  But I was amazed at how clear everything was.  It was odd that words on the board and leaves on the trees were so......crisp.

Over the years my eyes grew weaker and weaker.  By 2006, my contacts were -9 and -8.  In clear sightedness terms that means I was practically blind without my glasses.  When I was 20 and we had a fire in my parents house, I actually ran back into my bedroom to get my glasses because I couldn't see enough to move around the house.

When my best friend had her eyes done several years ago, I was more intrigued than ever.  I swayed back and forth.  I weighed and assessed every option.  Even to the point of thinking that having my eyes work all on their own would be taxing, straining even.  I thought about the short periods of time I would not have contacts or glasses and think about how the fog of extreme nearsightedness was somehow comforting.

I know that probably sounds odd, but being nearly blind was also a security blanket.  Except for those times when I might have stepped out of the shower or gotten up out of bed and forgotten where I put my glasses.  At those times I would realize what an incredible handicap my eyesight was.   I could walk my way around the room, but I would have to feel along the counter or nightstand hoping my hands would touch the glasses so that the world could become focused again.

When I made the appointment for the consultation I asked Bob to go with me.  Normally I would never do that, I'm a big girl, I don't have to have my husband escort me to and fro.  But even making the appointment I was nervous.

The doc explained all the risks.  The odds of something going wrong are so incredibly low.  They have been performing Lasik hundreds of thousands of times (I'm assuming).  In all the years of knowing people who had had the procedure, I had only heard glowing reviews.

But listening to the risks was a bit more upsetting than I expected.  One of the risks was that the micro-flap they slice into your cornea not be complete, even though it's precisionally calculated by a machine.  If that was the case, they lower the flap and do not perform the procedure.  Bob asked him if they would go ahead and do the other eye if that was the case.  The doc explained that my eyes were so poor that he would not perform the procedure on one eye because the difference in sight would create a significant issue with my eyesight.

On the way home, my mind is screaming at me, "Just WHY are you considering this move when you can see perfectly with your contacts or glasses?"  Well, I had been needing to don a pair of cheap reading glasses in the past few years since my contacts were so strong and my eyes were getting so old.  But with plopping a pair of contacts in my eyes, there was virtually nothing I could not see far away

While I was pondering that question, Bob asked, "WHY do you want to do this again?"  It was a hard question to answer.

But I booked the appointment.

And one February morning in 2006, I gathered up my courage and walked into the Doctor's office to have my eyes sliced and lasered. 

My nerves were on high alert.  I longed for a doc who would have given me some mild sedative prior to the procedure, but that was not to be.

The procedure is performed in a reclining chair and I can't recall if there is something that might strap your head down to keep from moving.  I don't remember that, but it seems logical.

To ensure your eyes do not move, they drop some numbing drops and then have a circular suction ring literally lift your eyeball just slightly up from it's normal comfortable sitting position inside your eye socket.

Get the drift?

No?   Well, here's what it looks like.

That is the most uncomfortable part of the entire surgery.  It feels like your eye is gonna just pop right out.  This image doesn't accurately reflect the feeling of that ring lifting up your eyeball. 

Anyhow.

The doc lifts up my right eye.  The one with the worst vision.  One eye had horrible vision and the other was worse than horrible.  As he narratives the entire process, he begins to pull up the worse than horrible one.  The microkeratome then hovers over practicing the flap slice.  Doc thinks it looks good, and lowers the microkeratome to make the flap.  There was no real feeling, other than being a bit creeped out knowing it was slicing into my cornea (I'll be damned if I almost typed Corona. ;)  The doc then takes a light version of plastic tonges and lifts the flap.  The laser then comes over and precisely singes the cornea according to the pre-programmed prescription.

Down the flap goes and we move on.

Now comes the eye gouger.  Ooops, I mean that thingy up above that sucks up your eyeball.  The microkeratome again does a hover over the eye it's about to perform some micro-thin slice of cornea for the flap. 

Practice hover looks good, lower and slice into my left cornea.   At least I thought it sliced.  But for some reason the Doc reaches over and does a hover with the slice-o-matic over my left eye again. 

Then in the same tone of voice I hear him say, "The flap is not complete.  We'll have to do this later." 

Dead silence.

I think it was the tone of his voice that threw me off.  What?

After 10 seconds or so, he repeats, "We'll have to do this later, the flap did not cut completely."  This time the tone of his voice was different.

It had a tone of........dare I say it.....PITY.  With maybe a bit of regret/guilt thrown in.  The tone of his voice was what I grasped far greater than his words.

I remember laying there, with my eye still sucked up into that nasty eye-sucking equipment and thinking what I was hearing was not what he was saying.  I was trying to stay calm and NOT allowing myself any thought about how I might have just made the biggest mistake of my entire life.

I said very slowly, "WHAT does L.A.T.E.R mean?"  I was somehow trying to convince myself he was talking about 30 minutes, an hour, something OTHER than LATER.

He said, "About three months."

Looking back, I can tell you what I felt was probably shock.  I just took a pair of perfectly good eyeballs, sliced them both, singed the hell out of one and left the other in it's near-blinded state.

While I'm still trying to process his words, he steps on the pedal to push the reclining chair upright.  The nurse comes in, she missed all the excitement and he more or less repeats what just happened. His voice,  again was dripping with regret. 

The nurse made some sound that one makes when they hear bad news and have nothing they could possibly add to make things better.

If I had been in a better frame of mind I would have yelled at them to STOP with the pity tone.  That was so hard to hear.  And, of course I couldn't see much.  The correct eye would have a normal blurry vision for a day or so, the uncorrected one would normally be legally blind and now had some half-assed sliced flap.

They led me out of the operating room across the hall to the exam room.  I hear them call Bob into the room.

Bob's voice was light and had his normal "about to make a joke" tone.  As soon as he sits, the doc explains what happened.  Again he uses the horrible pity tone.  While I understood the doctor's regret, the tone reminded me of how the nurses talked to us after they diagnosed my dad with liver cancer.  I wanted to just run away from "needing" pity.   The doc explained that microkeratome had performed a perfect practice slice but yet did not fully open the flap when it cut.  That was why he moved the machine back over my left eye again to see if the machine was set correctly.  It had been, but it just "blinked" on the actual slice and left a half-flapped flap.

I could barely see across the room to Bob, but he just simply said, "Ohhhh." after the doc told him what happened.  The sound of that "Ohh" was like another slap in the face.  It was another sound that made me think I had just ruined my sight forever.

After the doctor explained that after the slice of the flap would heal, they could perform PRK (on top of the cornea, not under a flap) in about three months, the nurse walked me and Bob out of the office.  She said, "I'm so sorry." as we were leaving.  I was more than shocked that she "allowed" herself to say that. 

From the doctor and nurse's reactions I could tell it was very rare that things went wrong on Lasik.  I was just one of the lucky ones. 

We drove home in near silence.  I knew that I could not see out of my left eye uncorrected at all.  They had explained that I could not insert a contact into that eye for a couple of weeks.  I had a "correct" right eye which was actually only corrected to about 20/300 because it had had such poor vision prior to Lasik.  I went home to rest (recommended even IF things had been perfect) and Bob took my cell phone with him and called my family.  I didn't want to even imagine what was going through their minds. 

Without a contact in my left eye and 20/300 vision in my right, I would not be able to drive until my left eye was partially healed. 

I attempted to use my old Coke bottle glasses with the right lens pushed out to see if I could drive, but the difference in vision and the distance of the left lens made the whole world swirl around as soon as I would move. 

Bob drove me to work the next week and when I was finally able to put a contact lens into my left eye I was able to drive. 

But I couldn't SEE.  Yes, I could see enough to drive, but judging distances was horrible and the lack of perfect vision in my right eye left clear vision something I had taken for granted.

During that time, I realized that communication is not just about hearing what people say, but about what their face is doing, where their eyes are looking.  During those three months, I found myself becoming so incredibly withdrawn at work. 

Since I could not tell who I was meeting in the hall until they got close and even then I could not tell IF they were looking my direction, I just became silent.  I rarely talked to anyone, including my friends at work.  I loved trading jabs with my co-workers, but I realized that I had relied on that entire communication skill by seeing the reaction on my friends' faces.  Without that clue, I became a recluse.

Three months later, I was again strapped into that chair of hell and they lifted the right eye flap to do a bit of correction on it and they then performed the melting PRK on the left cornea.  By the next day I had vision that worked, uncorrected.  Something I had not experienced since third grade or so.  The nurse told me later that the only other problem they had ever seen in hundreds of Lasik surgery was with the wife of a prominent Indianapolis attorney.  She never said whether they sued.  The risks were graphically detailed before I ever signed on the dotted line and I read enough to know that some doctors would have just gone ahead and performed the Lasik on the BACK of the cornea flap and would have permanently impaired my vision.

Because my left eye was corrected only once, the vision far away was not perfect, but I could read without any aid.  For the last several years I used my right eye mainly for distances and my left eye for reading.  Only at dusk was it difficult for me to see out of my left eye.

A couple months ago I finally bought myself a pair of prescription glasses.  Since it's been a few years, reading was becoming difficult and the glasses help my left eye with distances.

But instead of wearing Coke bottles, I now have a pretty pair of glasses, thin lenses with hidden trifocals.  And I don't HAVE to wear them.  Not like before, when I was wrapped into a fogged cocoon of nearsightedness without glasses or contacts. 




Yeah, that IS the right lens of my old glasses.  And this was after technology allowed the lens to be "thin".  And the picture at the top of the page is my right eye after the first surgery.  The bruising is normal after being attacked by the great eye-sucker machine.


Would I do it all over again?  I'm not sure I can answer that even now.  Those three months of feeling like I had just f'd up my vision is still hard to forget.  And the lack of being me, communicating normally with friends and family was something that stays with me.

But it feels so weird even now to have good vision without aid.  And when I put on my new cool tiny glasses, I don't feel like a nerd, I feel like I'm one of those hip chicks on TV that wear glasses to look good.

OK, maybe not QUITE that like that, but a girl can dream.

Not Just Another Pretty Face

I just happened upon this when I was researching what I thought was just a silly update I posted on Facebook about Mike Rowe making all the Captains from Deadliest Catch cry during every After The Catch episode.

Just when I gave up thinking anyone on TV had a lick of sense.



And here.



I always thought Mike Rowe was one of the sexiest men on TV, but somehow he just got even sexier.  Women love a man that can fix things, but we love men who are smart even more.

And he's one of those guys that look sooooo much better in his dirty job than he does a suit.

♪ ♫ How in the heck are you gonna wash your neck ♪ ♫

Yep.



AND the well pump's out.
Don't look behind my ears Ma.

I Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

This morning a guy I knew from high school posted a rant of his facebook page about the "wingers" reaction to the Supreme Court's decision last week over the "Affordable" Care Act.

His wife is severely chronically ill and without health care.  She is back in the hospital requiring surgery.

In his very nasty bashing of everyone that was against the act, he stated that his payment under the act would only be $250 a month to cover he and his gravely sick wife.  I have no idea where he got his calculation, but sadly, he honestly believes it.  Of course he would be supportive of the decision because he has no concept that covering a pre-existing condition will be so expensive he will not be able to afford it.  And on top of all that, he'll be charge a "penalty", this new tax because of it. 

Today I found an article that, although I disagree with the doctor's reasoning behind thinking the act will leave us worse off, her logic of what will happen under ACA is right on the money.

And I found the article at HuffPo of all places.  Here it is below in it's entirety.

Did John Roberts Give Mitt Romney A Gift

By Marcia Angell, MD

The Supreme Court's decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, puts me in mind of the old proverb: Be careful what you wish for. Democrats on a victory lap should watch their step, because John Roberts may have given Mitt Romney a gift. The impact on the health system will be much smaller than the political fallout, because with or without Obamacare, the American health system will continue to unravel -- quickly if Romney is elected, slowly if Obama is re-elected.


First the policy, then the politics:

Obamacare is simply incapable of doing what it is supposed to do -- provide nearly universal care at an affordable and sustainable cost. The problem is that three years ago, in his futile efforts to win over Republicans (remember the embarrassing courtship of Olympia Snowe?), Obama gutted the law before it was even passed. He made the private insurance companies the linchpin of the new system, and promised them millions of additional customers and billions of taxpayer dollars. He also did nothing to rein in the profit-oriented delivery system that rewards providers on a piecework basis for doing tests and procedures. So with all the new dollars flowing into the system and no restraints on the way medicine is practiced, the law is inherently inflationary.

Although there are some provisions to curb the worst abuses of the insurance companies, such as excluding people with preexisting conditions, there is nothing in the law that would stop insurers from raising premiums. A senior executive of the industry's trade association, America's Health Insurance Plans, told me privately that that's exactly what the companies will do if regulations cut into their profits. Thus, costs under Obamacare will almost certainly rise even faster than at present. No reform can work well or very long if its costs are unsustainable.

In fact, it is unlikely that Obamacare will ever be fully implemented as it stands. If Romney is elected, with a Republican Congress, it will be quickly overturned. If Obama is re-elected (and I hope he is, despite my disappointment in his health plan), it will come apart more slowly. But unravel it will, as costs rise and it becomes clear that there are still tens of millions of Americans priced out of the system.

Here's how the unraveling will look:

Many of the uninsured who are subject to the mandate to purchase private insurance will choose to pay the penalty/tax instead. That will lead the insurance companies to raise their premiums, demand that the penalties be greater, or both. Deductibles and co-payments will increase to the point that many people will have insurance they can't afford to use. (This is the case in Massachusetts.) Many employers will simply stop offering health insurance, since our high unemployment means workers no longer have the leverage to demand it, or they will stop insuring dependents (thus avoiding having to cover grown children to age 26). In addition, because insurers have a strong financial incentive to evade the new regulations requiring them to take all comers, it will take a huge bureaucracy to monitor them.

Next year, states are supposed to set up insurance exchanges to pool risks and offer a menu of approved insurance plans for individuals and small businesses. But they are unlikely to be functioning by 2014, as called for in the law, either because Republican states simply refuse to set them up and hamper federal efforts to step in, or because of the administrative complexities. Some states may also refuse to accept the funds to expand Medicaid, as called for in the law, since the Supreme Court found that they could opt out without losing their existing federal Medicaid funding. Here again, the bureaucracy necessary to aid and monitor state compliance will be huge, diverting resources from health care. In addition, there are likely to be multiple legal challenges to nearly all provisions of the law.

Obamacare partially offsets the costs of federal subsidies to insurance companies and Medicaid costs by cutting Medicare reimbursement to providers. That means hospitals and other health facilities will take a hit, and many are already struggling.

So that's how it will unravel. There will be efforts to patch it up as we go along, but because Obamacare leaves our current inflationary system largely in place, they are unlikely to be successful.

Now for the politics. Even though the Supreme Court decision will have little long-term effect on our health system, the political ramifications will be great. To be sure, it's a victory for Obama, but that will be evanescent. Now the Republicans are on the offensive, and greatly strengthened by John Roberts' insistence that the mandate is a tax, not a penalty. Remember how hard Obama tried to avoid the T-word? Republicans are adept at painting Democrats as tax-happy, and Roberts has helped them to do just that. Pundits wonder what got into the Chief Justice. Was he just trying make the Supreme Court appear to be above politics, given all the recent evidence that it's not? Or did he do a favor for Romney and the Republicans?

It's very hard to read, but I think the Democrats would have been better off if the Supreme Court had overturned Obamacare, and I think it would have been better for our health system, as well. The base would be energized, and Democrats would take the offensive. More important, no one would be under the illusion that the health system has been successfully reformed, as many good liberals now are. That mistake will become clear as the system unravels. Democrats will suffer the death of a thousand cuts, rather than a quick blow that could be blamed on our politicized Supreme Court. If the law had been struck down, we could have started right away to work on an effective reform.

The only way to provide health care to all Americans at an affordable cost is by instituting some form of publicly-administered nonprofit system like those in other advanced countries. After all, they manage to provide universal care at less than half the cost, on average, and their costs are rising more slowly. I have long advocated expanding Medicare (which is a single-payer program) gradually by lowering the eligibility age one decade at a time, while phasing out for-profit health facilities and changing doctors' fees to reward primary care more and specialist care less.

On July 22, 2009, Obama said in a press conference, "Now, the truth is that unless you have what's called a single-payer system in which everybody is automatically covered, then you're probably not going to reach every single individual." Bingo. Too bad he didn't hang on to that insight, and use his rhetorical skills to make the case strongly to the American public. If he had fought for single-payer health care at the beginning of his administration, while he had both houses of Congress, and mobilized public opinion behind it, he might have made it. After all, the only thing members of Congress need more than industry money is votes.