It's been a week since I've posted anything and I'll come to that later. Right now nothing has changed from a week ago. The President has offered to scrap the cost of living index of Social Security, which even Harry Reid and the democrtic senate. Now every time I hot the back space the thing wants to know if I intend to leave the page. That could get old. The President has also offered to raise medicare to age 57, which would impact a lot of people adversely. John Boehner has offered nothing. Mitch Mc Conell has offered nothing. All he says is "We are waiting for the President to get serious about a deal". The Republican on KNX on Saturday spewed out a lot of rhetorical bullshit in which he just lambasted the entire Obama first four years and brought up extranious things like the Canadian pipeline, which aren't relevent. But there was not one proposal of any sort issued in the entire speech. Then John Boehner says on Thursday that he wants to meet Sunday evening because it fulfills a "two day waiting requirement". He can't even count because Sunday was three days away and not two. And so far as I've checked there is no serious work being done. There is only isolated speeches on irrelivent legeslative bills that have nothing to do with the crisis at hand. It's irritating. Now there are just 27 hours left and the odds of anything happening look pretty darned slim.
I felt that the President was a little limp wristed and lacking in resolve on his Meet the Press interview this morning. What the President had to stress was the things in "Tax-Mageddon" that WILL go up at the start of the year and that BOTH sides want these things NOT to go up. These would include the percent rate middle income tax payers pay. There is the two percent hike in the FICA withholding rate. There is "the marriage penalty" I'm a little fuzzy on. There are various other deductions people of modest income make use of that are going away. It's a dramatic hike in the estate tax, which for one wine vinyard will rise from 35% to 55% so I'm told, which ia bit draconian. Also what doctors get paid for a Medicare visit will be reduced, forcing doctors to drop medicare patients. And unemployment coverage people will end for many people. None of these contingencies is tollerable and both sides can and should agree on this. So what is the big stall in congress? I heard that Congress went home for the night. I guess I'll tune in tomorrow morning and check them out then.
The Minisota Vikings won that Stephen King game of "Can You?" by beating a superior team, the Green Bay Packers, and so have gotten into sixth place in the play-offs. Cincinatti was top dog over the Baltimore Ravens today. The Indy Colts bettered the Houston Texans. Washington Redskins have just won their big game against the Dallas Cowboys and they are playing their victory song in the stadium now. The Bears beat the Lions but unfortunately for the Bears, the Vikings held the Bear's fate in their hands. The final week of the regular NFL season is always exciting. My birthday is tomorrow and suddenly 62 is not just a year in my childhood. When I started blogging I was "in my mid fifties" and now I'm wondering whether people would listen to a man in his mid fifties, but someone in their sixties might be considered "too old" and dottering to give advice to the younger readers. All I can say is that I used to be young once, and some day they are going to be older, like me.
On a personal basis I was not in the hospital or anything, though I was sick much of the week, thanks in part to you know who's wife who was over here and coughing up a storm. I got sicker again after she left for several more days. This computer stopped working late Christmas day and for the second week in a row Accronis did not have an oppertunity to back up the drive with whatever it does. I was doing things to try and speed up the computer such as de-frragging and such. I did disk clean-up. But it's when I got the blue screen message and the whole thing went off entirely that I knew I was in big trouble. And for the next two days I could not get the computer to reboot at all. Finally Thursday evening I and Judy took this computer into Staples to have them look at it and they got this thing up and running almost immediately while we were there and it stayed on the whole half hour plus we were there. But they could not find out what was wrong with it, and Saturday evening we collected it in a state of quandry. They ran extensive tests saying it wasn't the hard drive or CMOS or the mother board or RAM or any other conceivable hardware related thing like that. Judy thought that Windows XP had a virus but her solution was a little draconian meaning just wipe the whole drive because there is this mystery virus that will eventually destroy all my files, which is what she wants to do anyhow. But I ran the Full Virus scan that took nearly three hours and it showed nothing. There were nothing but goose eggs in the tally of viruses. This back space control is driving me nuts right now and I'd like to know if there is a way I can fix that. I really haven't had that many thoughts this past week
We now take you to a week ago Saturday afternoon Dec 22nd. I had been intending to
take the coffee grains out of the holder and leave it nice and clean, and
thought I had, but I hadn’t. Dr. Levy
convened the group at about twelve to four sending Augustine up to get me. Earlier I had borrowed a cigarette out on the
west benches and looked in the window at three thirty and already seen people
congregating. Nora once again helped
served. Dr. Levy goes into the bathroom
to look up scrabble words in the dictionary when his wife isn’t looking, and he
still loses. For our first cource we had
crackers and cold cuts and cheese. Then
we had a big piece of really good Lazagna and two pieces of good pizza with
everything on it. I had about a glass
and a half of eggnog. I declined
water. But I excused myself a little
after four twenty to get ready after having been there just over a half hour. I called and Judy and
Wendy were on their way. Wendy really
does have a sense of humor, and seemed open to the theory that Bill Gundersonl gave
me my cold virus. It must have been a
fast acting one. (That theory works for
me) Wendy had some strange stuff on her
dashboard. They said Mom and [a brother and his wife] had been there since three thirty.
The coffee maker was a mess with the undripped water and stuff Wendy got
on her. We ate dinner at ten after
five. We had ham and green beans with
sauce, and dressing (which wasn’t that good) and thee salad Pete Richards made was
excellent and was colorful, and it was a novel flavored dressing. Only the coffee sucked, and that was my
department. I think the Yuban was either
stale, or decaf, or something. I
declined the potatoes, with or without sour cream. I just had the one piece of lemon marangue
pie. I talked to [same brother and wife] very
little the entire time. The cats were
around and one of them sat on my lap on two different occasions. One time I went in the bathroom to gargle that
silver solution for my cough, which Judy said could cut down on infection. The strange thing is that it actually
worked. But I did have to excuse myself
from the table while Wendy was talking.
But I very much wanted to hear what she had to say about her job, and
about John and his one time wife, Jenny.
Apparently Jenny isn’t above telling lies about her relation with Uncle
John to make herself look better in the “public eye”. Wendy gave me a book on Disneyland
fasts. [same brother] gave me a really nice, warm,
flannel shirt. I got a fruit cake from [blank] and Judy. And the most coveted
prize of all was the money, of course, in a Christmas and birthday card (s)
from Mom. I told her I was smoking less
and for physical proof of that you can see the nicotine stains on my fingers
are a whole lot lighter now. The idea
of picking an envelope rather than my pants pocket as a “safe place to keep the
money” was made plainly foolish to me as I frantically searched through all the
envelopes on the table later looking for the one with the money in it and
praying none had been thrown out or misplaced.
I found it. I put the money in my
wallet and now have my wallet in my pants pocket. [brother and wife] took Mom home and someone
suggested that we hold Mom’s hand as she went down the stairs. It was hinting at rain. I was physically spent before seven thirty
and therefore did not contribute to that Christmas “game” where we all were
supposed to share memories of our favorite Christmas. Judy used to be afraid of Santa Clause at a
little girl. Marie actually had stairs
to run down on Christmas morning. I
liked what Wendy had to say as to her feelings of what each Christmas day was
life at her house. It made me feel more
a part of her life. We talked at length
about Dad’s picture taking habits and looked at various photos taken at wide
ranging time frames. I’m personally
heartened that Dad was remembered in our Christmas conversation. Judy read her Christmas poem and today I saw
that she had E mailed me a copy of it.
Judy has real poetic talent. I
did not kiss any of the relatives good-bye, and the situation never came up,
with my germs. [blank] and Judy helped me
pack up everything in the car and Paul took me home and helped carry the things
up to my room.
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