I have to have a talk with the Mennonites. As I sat in the airport yesterday I observed a large party of Mennonites hanging around also, seemingly, waiting for a flight. I get it that the Mennonites aren’t Amish and don’t shun modern conveniences, but here’s my confusion. As I watched this group of people dressed like a bad episode of Mayberry RFD, I also noticed that they all had cell phones, the kids were listening to iPods and the adults had gathered around sipping some Starbucks. What’s the point in dressing like it’s still 1890 if that’s your only concession? I also noticed that the women were not wearing any makeup, but if you have to wear a potato sack what’s the point? I respect different beliefs and ways of life, but it’s all or nothing people.
It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is boring.
Last Saturday I decided to treat myself to a Starbucks coffee, a bike ride to get me there, and some Kindle time reading a new book. Everything was going great until Rain man dropped by. I took me only a minute to realize that I had met this guy about a year prior (during my last quiet vacation to Starbucks). Like most people of his…ummm…type, he didn’t really care that I was reading a book or that the other two guys he decided to regale with his abilities were conversing. His shtick was the following:
- He could tell you the number of counties in any state of the union
- What day of the week any date that you gave him fell on.
- Year that each state joined the Union.
He proceeded to ask me and these other two guys a million questions simply so he could answer them and theoretically amaze everyone. The problem is that I didn’t want to be amazed and I’m also a skeptic. I theorized that all of this guys “knowledge” could be had by most people if they decided to waste a lot of time memorizing useless facts. What day of the week was March 13th, 1967? Monday. You know how I know? Google. I didn’t have to spend the better part of a portion of my life figuring out how the calendar works and factoring in leap years.
I kind of felt sorry for the guy and especially sorry for the other two guys as I clicked the power off on my book and said goodbye. I realized on the bike ride home that these “Rain men” are not so cool anymore since the proliferation of the internet and instant answers to everything. Like me, others are not as impressed that off the top of his head he knew that there were 102 counties in Illinois. Oh well…chalk it up to another lost art form humbled by the internet.
Larry update
I just realized that I haven’t done a Larry update in quite a while, but I guess that’s a good thing. My mom doesn’t list me off a bunch of appointments or test results, so I don’t ask. I talked to him on the phone a bit ago and he seems quite Larry’ish. We talked baseball and pianos, which brings me to the subject of pianos. My mom and dad bought a piano about a thousand years ago when I was forced into excruciating lessons that forced my fingers into ungodly and un-musical positions. I quit taking piano lessons about 30 years ago, yet they still have this piano. The funny part is that my dads favorite joke is that he is sending me this piano. Do me a favor…can someone buy this thing off of them? They don’t actually know that I’m offering some of their “stuff” for sale, but make me an offer.
Since I’m posting a Larry update I might as well attach a picture.
A visit to Kansas City last month. Must have been a sale on Yankee hats.
Armadillo by morning
Check out what I spied on my morning walk today.
Add this to the list of creatures that creep me out. I’m starting to think that anything short of a dog or cat and you can keep it. Do people start not liking things as they get older? (There are about 50 jokes there if anyone is inclined)
I don’t think in all my time here in Florida I have seen one of these alive. Usually they are something that Dr. G would have to explain to me from the middle of the road. (In my best Cliff Clavin voice: Interestingly these little guys get run over a lot because when you startle them they jump to bumper height.)
365 degrees
Well…one year ago today we were making our way to London as the final stop off on our way back to the states. You might not believe this but not a day goes by where someone in the family doesn’t mention some aspect of our trip. I have no doubt that this family will be up for another adventure as soon as life settles down just a little bit more.
Here are some references / memories that stay with us.
- The Kubb set that we are waiting to use on a fall day, or when the temperature gets below 37 degrees. (Another nod)
- Sam still calls hot dogs “polse”
- We still call some things Norwegian food…some in a good way, some in a different way.
- We lament our ability to walk down to the ocean / fjord or into the hills depending on what we feel like.
- When the TV breaks we remember that we only watched TV huddled behind the laptop to catch our favorite shows for free.
- Sam saw a commercial or something about the London Olympics in 2012 and asked if we were going.
I know my blog posts are down about 50% over last year, but stay tuned. We are inevitably setting off on another adventure. We are going to spend a little more time figuring out what it is.
Phone-a-Jon
So get this. I have a fear of the phone. It’s not an actual fear of the physical phone, it’s a very specific fear of the phone ringing any time, lets say, past 11:00 pm. There have been few times in my life that a phone call past that time of night has resulted in anything positive. No one has ever called me at 2:00 am to tell me they won the lottery or that they just got engaged, nothing like that. Imagine my condition when last night the phone rings at 12:02 am. I run around the house looking for the phone and here is what I get when I finally get the phone:
(Slurred) “Hello? Hello?”
Me: (Slurred for different reasons) “Hello”
“Is this 503-9961?”
That’s really as far as I need to go with this. First, my number is 421-0355. I don’t think I’ve ever had a wrong number that didn’t at least contain part of my phone number. Second…I give the lady credit. She did two things that people who dial wrong numbers rarely do. She said she was sorry. She also said goodbye and also said she was sorry for waking me up.
Swim, Swam, ….Zzzzzz
This post is mostly for the grandparents, but I’m sure my vast network of readers will find it cute.
Sam takes one nap per week. Why? You might ask. Well he actually doesn’t take any naps, but he goes to swimming lessons on Tuesdays. Like clockwork this kid falls asleep 15 minutes before we arrive at swimming. He recently has decided he doesn’t like swimming lessons. I think it is because every time he experiences his lesson he is waking up from a slumber and isn’t quite sure where he is until about halfway through.
The whole point of this little entry was the picture. I could take this same picture every week.
I saw 3 ships come sailing in…
Ok, so I only saw them sitting there like lumps in the water, but I saw them nonetheless.
This past weekend a group of ships labeled as “Tall ships” visited the Port of Tampa for the first time. “The Eagle” – the Coast Guard training ship, the “Capitan Miranda” – from Uruguay, and the “Gloria” from Columbia. We stood in a couple of decent lines to be able to wander the decks of two of the ships. The third ship fell victim to child indifference and hot humid weather.
The cool observation of the day occurred as I was watching an older gentleman make his way up the gangplank of the Gloria. As he hit the top step to board the ship, both officers that were there to greet everyone snapped to attention and saluted him. He was wearing some sailor related garb and I was inspired by these two guys who had no idea who this man might be, but if by chance he was one of them they were damn sure going to pay him respect. It took the old man a while to return the salute, but these guys were not about to drop their hands until he did. I’m sure it made his day.
Anyhow…here are a couple of pictures.
Ok…I only had one on my computer. The other is the gang jacking around in front of the “”Home of the Tampa Bay Lightning”
Here’s a stock photo of “The Eagle”
It just keeps flashing “12:00 a.m.” !!!
I was just wondering aloud the other day…”Where the hell am I going to get a VCR to copy these ancient video tapes to my computer?” I filed that question away until WHAM…the answer hit me right between the eyes. Apparently Goodwill is where old VCRs go to die.
Who is buying these things?
Now all I have to do is scrape up the $5.06 that each of these is going for.
Goodwill hunting…or rejecting
As I was checking to see if my local Goodwill store accepted books for donation I ran across some other more interesting things that they don’t accept. The list seems to have been built off of bad experiences with people donating the wrong things rather than just common sense. Here are some things that you CANNOT give to Goodwill.
- Ping pong tables / slate pool tables
- Swords
- Animals
- Chairs
- Barber
- Beautician
- Dental
- Snack or Soda machines
- Urinals
- Swimming pools
- Ammunition
Ok…a few questions / comments.
I guess swimming pools and urinals are pretty much the same thing to a kid.
Chairs – You think they would take an electric chair?
Why wouldn’t you take a ping pong table? or a pool table. Heck, I would set those bad boys up in the Goodwill itself to have a little fun.
Feed me Seymour!
I wish I had a picture of this…but the other day I took Sam to McDonalds to get his once a month Chicken McNugget fix and I overheard this lady, get this…
Ordering a pizza, while standing in line at McDonalds, WHILE her kid was tugging at her purse begging for a candy bar. For a minute I thought she was going to get to the front of the line while she was talking to the pizza joint. I was watching intently to see how that was going to go down, but Pizza Hut was just too damn efficient that day.
I guess I’ll head out to Wal-Mart and go people watching there. People of Wal-Mart
Try not to be patient…
Sorry if this is way off topic or seems out of place…but Jen and I talk quite a bit about patient care and the state of our medical system in the U.S. for many reasons. Here is a writing from the guy just appointed to head Medicare and Medicaid. Maybe he can reverse the slide that patient care has seen over the last (insert time period here). This article hits home from one line you will read if you keep going. Of the time I spent with my father in the hospital, it hit me that maybe people weren’t paying him enough attention or doing things for my dad simply because they all called him “Lawrence”. I do not remember a single person who stopped to ask him what he would like to be called…it certainly wasn’t Lawrence, although he would never say anything. He was just 8/16/1940.
From Dr. Berwick
I freely admit to extremism in my opinion of what patient-centered care ought to mean. I find the extremism in a specific location: my own heart. I fear to become a patient. Partly, that fear comes from what I know about technical hazards and lack of reliability in care. But errors and unreliability are not the main reasons that I fear that inevitable day on which I will become a patient. For, in fighting them, I am aligned with the good hearts and fine skills of my technical caregivers, and I can use my own wit to stand guard against them.
What chills my bones is indignity. It is the loss of influence on what happens to me. It is the image of myself in a hospital gown, homogenized, anonymous, powerless, no longer myself. It is the sound of a young nurse calling me, "Donald," which is a name I never use—it’s "Don," or, for him or her, "Dr. Berwick." It is the voice of the doctor saying, "We think...," instead of, "I think...," and thereby placing that small verbal wedge between himself as a person and myself as a person. It is the clerk who tells my wife to leave my room, or me to leave hers, without asking if we want to be apart. Last month, a close friend called a clinic for her mammogram report and was told, "You have to come here; we don’t give that information out on the telephone." She said, "It’s OK, you can tell me." They said, "No, we can’t do that." Of course, they "can" do that. They choose not to, and their choice trumps hers: period. That’s what scares me: to be made helpless before my time, to be made ignorant when I want to know, to be made to sit when I wish to stand, to be alone when I need to hold my wife’s hand, to eat what I do not wish to eat, to be named what I do not wish to be named, to be told when I wish to be asked, to be awoken when I wish to sleep.
Call it patient-centeredness, but, I suggest, this is the core: it is that property of care that welcomes me to assert my humanity and my individuality. If we be healers, then I suggest that that is not a route to the point; it is the point.
- Dr. Donald Berwick