Paradigms...where shift happens!

Pig roast

We’re cooking a whole pig in a few days and I am responsible for the cooking part. It doesn’t sound so intimidating but I have never done a whole pig before and about 30-40 hungry people are going to show up at noon on the 31^st of August.

The first plan was to bury the pig in a luau style cooking plan. As my friend Rick and I thought about it though we thought that the risk of exhuming a half cooked pig was not one we wanted to take. So instead we are going to rent a trailer mounted cooking rig and at least be able to keep dinner in sight.  To be honest, the prospect of digging a 6’x6’x3’ deep hole in the hard summer soil was also an issue along with the need to haul enough rocks there to line the pit and enough firewood to cook the beast and finally of course having no prior experience at that style of cooking.   Not to  mention that the banana leaves might not be so easy to find here and the river has no seaweed that we could substitute.

Wish me luck and if you have any suggestions please feel free to send them along via the comment function. Any and all advice will be considered and appreciated.

"Listen carefully because...

...our menu options have changed." That's what I hear every bloody time I dial an 800 number for technical support or customer service. And then begins the seemingly interminable list of choices you can make offered to you by a mystery person who has the job of trying to narrow down your question to some impossibly closely defined specialty. If you are fortunate enough to hear something that sounds close to what you want they then want some identifier from you like your account number, last 4 digits of your social security number or for security purposes, your mother's maiden name. If after 53 assurances that your call is important to them you actually connect to a person, that person will usually go through all the previous account number inquiries followed by the pound sign all over again, leaving you wondering why you had to enter them in the first place.

Maybe we need some legislation prohibiting the changing of menu choices more than once a day. Maybe even better we could have the person who is inventing all those menu choices stop doing that and actually answer the damn phone.

To hear these choices in English, press 1, in Spanish press 2, and so on for as many numbers as their are on the keypad. This call is being recorded for quality control and training purposes and finally if my call is so damn important to you, then ANSWER IT!

Forwarding some info many of you may...

...already have seen but it's potentially important enough that I feel as if a forward is justified in this case:

My nurse friend sent this and encouraged me to post it and spread the word. I agree.

If everyone can remember something this simple, we could save some folks. Seriously..

Please read:

STROKE IDENTIFICATION:
During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) .....she said she had just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes.

They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food. While she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening.

Ingrid's husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00 pm Ingrid passed away.) She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today. Some don't die.... they end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.

It only takes a minute to read this...
A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke...totally . He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE
Thank God for the sense to remember the '3' steps, STR . Read and Learn!

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke .

Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:
S * Ask the individual to SMILE.
T * Ask the person to TALK and SPE AK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently)
(i.e. It is sunny out today)
R * Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.
If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call 999/911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

New Sign of a Stroke -------- Stick out Your Tongue

NOTE: Ask the person to 'stick' out his tongue.. If the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other ,that is also an indication of a stroke.

A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to10 people; you can bet that at least one life will be saved.

Gas Prices...hitting back

GAS WAR - an idea that WILL work

This was originally sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. It's worth your consideration.

Join the resistance!!!! I hear we are going to hit close to $4.00 a gallon by next summer and it might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action. Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea.

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them.

BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work. Please read on and join with us! By now you're probably thinking gasoline

priced at about $1.50 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $2.79 for regular unleaded in my town. Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50 - $1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the

marketplace..... not sellers. With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here's the idea:

For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any

gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp out at this point.... keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people.

I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us sends it to at least ten more (30 x 10 =3D 300) ... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 =3D 3,000)...and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers. If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it.....

THREE >>>>HUNDRED MILLION >>>>PEOPLE!!!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all. (If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people.... Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician. But I am, so trust me on this one.)

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!

I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you?

Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. I suggest that we not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $1.30 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN.

THIS CAN REALLY WORK.

Doing the right thing?

Is the term "corporate ethics" oxymoronic? A friend of mine was just laid off from a position with a NYSE traded company after years of service that went way above and beyond the call of duty. The news was delivered by telephone in the middle of a business trip while my friend was far away from any familial support system. The company had enjoyed the benefits of her considerable intellect, her total loyalty and her willingness to work hundred hour plus weeks during which she accomplished what a team of people could not do in a similar time frame. The abilities she had demonstrated over the years had led them to press her to relocate half way across the country to take on a project that no one else could manage and that was so fouled up it appeared beyond salvation. Is loyalty a one way street where the traffic is controlled only by dollars signs and decimal points?

I was reading a couple of speeches delivered by novelist Pat Conroy yesterday in which he mentioned people who did the right thing simply because it was the right thing. Conroy himself paid for Shannon Faulkner's undergraduate education after she left the Citadel. He did it, according to him, as a kind of penance for the shabby treatment she had experienced at his alma mater as the first woman to be admitted. 

Last weekend I watched a movie called "Radio" where Ed Harris played the role of a man who did the right thing simply because it was the right thing to do. When asked by his school principal why he had taken a young black man played by Cuba Gooding under his wing, he said simply that it had seemed like the right thing to do. It was a dramatization of a true story so it wasn't entirely fictional.

Are corporations losing their ability to make these kinds of ethical decisions? Does the term "best practices" now mean only "what's most expedient for the company and the decision makers"?  Maybe I don't understand enough about business and maybe I'm too naive to accept that there are tough decisions that a business must make. I've always been a bit of an idealist though and I hope I never become calloused to the point that I believe that the means justify the ends.

5 minutes

It was back on January 4th that I finished my last pack of cigarettes. Dealing with kicking the habit was easier this time than in earlier efforts, at least it seemed that way. I'm not anywhere near being out of the woods yet but I'm finding it a little easier to put off the urge to burn one for 5 minutes each time that urge strikes. They say that if you fight it off for 5 minutes the desire to smoke goes away, at least for a while; I think it's true. I just have to remember to fight the good fight for 5 minutes...5 minutes at a time...not a lifetime but just 5 stupid minutes. 

There was a pretty strong motivator involved in this effort but I'll tell you about that later...maybe.

Thank you

Thank you for my Christmas present; you have brought back the joy of Christmas. Like many guys, I suspect, my Christmas role had always been more as support staff and financier than anything else. That's a chore and not a small amount of pressure that I used to let overwhelm the spirit of this season. When I returned to singlehood 13 years ago the whole thing was mine to deal with as best I could and I freely admit that I have not done a very good job of it.

You have changed all that this year and that's a present that can't be wrapped. It's too big.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

I want to be like Dooce

Greetings and hallucinations!

Yes indeed folks…he lives, he thrives (sort of ) and for that he is eternally grateful. The hair continues to abandon ship with alarming frequency, kind of like Republican legislators distancing themselves from the administration as the mid term elections approach.

I have no excuses; my muse has been on sabbatical and my web project (www.rivervoices.net) has consumed more than it’s fair share of time. Especially in the last couple of weeks as I have been informed that my hosting company www.godaddy.com has decided to stop supporting the software I have been using to build the site. In light of their nefarious plots against my sanity, I’ve been thrashing around looking for an alternative that I can afford and that can give me the look that I want. I am going to have to go back and redo everything I have done so far and my seat of the pants ‘guesstimate’ is that I have a couple of hundred hours of rebuilding on my horizon. If you google on “unhappy camper” you may well see my picture appear on your screen.

On a cheerier note, one of my favorite bloggers had a terrific feature article published about her in the Salt Lake City Tribune last week. Here is the link to it and to her blog:

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_4492586 and http://www.dooce.com/archives/daily_photo/10_25_2006.html

Heather is a remarkable and driven lady. She is surpassingly funny in both her writing and her photography. Her blog generates between 800,000 and 1,000,000 hits per month. I should live so long as to reach those numbers. Now fair warning…her language is sometimes adult in nature but it is never gratuitously so. It’s all in context. Go read her stuff but beware…don’t ingest any carbonated beverages while reading it. Your keyboard and nasal passages will not love you anymore.  Might want to forego that Oreo cookie as well. If you think carbonation is uncomfortable imagine cookie shrapnel!!!

Also this will be the last e-mail notification I send about blog postings. I have added a subscription link called “Feedblitz” which is fairly easy to set up or you can simply bookmark the site and check it when the spirit moves you. The subscription link is at the top of the leftmost column. You can also pick up the feed of the blog by going to Bloglines and signing up there.

Finally, I am aware that the banner picture has disappeared and I am on the trail of that.

Thanks for reading and tell a friend...or an enemy if you think this blog sucks...maybe your enemy has more patience than you do.

Are we there yet?

Does anyone remember Fizzies? They were a cross between a Necco wafer and an Alka-Seltzer tablet. They came in several flavors and the idea was that you dropped them into cold water and voila, instant soft drink.

I was reminded of them the one night last week when a big Ford Excavation or something like that passed me on the interstate. Glancing at the side windows,  I could see the glow of not one but two DVD screens strapped to the back of the front seat head rests, presumably the travel entertainment for a couple of head setted back seat munchkins while Mom and Dad rode in isolated silence up front, maybe even plugged in to their own individual Ipods.

Seeing that glow took me back to the mid 50's when my family moved from Virginia to Texas. As with most family moves it was summertime. We had an almost new 1955 Desoto that must have been nearly the same weight as a small naval vessel. The car was a two tone green behemoth with bench seats front and back that were large enough to seat all 5 of us comfortably. Other than where our little delinquent butts were planted, every nook and cranny was filled with the stuff a family of 5 needs to endure a 4 day car trip.

What it did not have though was air conditioning. Driving south as we were, the daytime temps were pretty miserable and as with any family of three kids stuck in the back of a car for the day, behavior was a daily issue. Since even back then cattle prods and spiked paddles were not acceptable tools for behavior modification my mother used a carrot instead of a stick. We were rewarded for being good with a treat of a Fizzie every couple of hours.  She kept a fat thermos jug of ice water on the floor of the front seat. It too was two tone in color, cream and hospital green if memory serves. This was before the days of spouts on jugs like that so she had to lift the jug into her lap and pour each cup of water out of the top.

The cups of water were handed back to us and we got to open the little envelope and drop the Fizzies in ourselves. That part of the evolution was good for about 15 seconds worth of amusement. My brother and I would hold the cups very close to our faces so we could feel the spray as they dissolved. Whichever one of us had the cup that finished first would shout out, "I won!" whereupon the loser would immediately look into the winner's cup to verify the results. 

I would tell you about the taste but memory has mercifully blotted that from my mind. I do recall though that if we were lucky enough to get one of the regular flavors it did seem like a reward. The root beer Fizzie was a different matter; we were both convinced that Mom was actually punishing us for something we had done or might soon do.

So,  I wonder as think about the kids in the back seat of that Ford Excavation. Will they share memories of a long vacation trip and yet another rerun of a Disney movie they have seen so many times they don't even need the soundtrack because they can read the lips of the animated characters? I think I prefer reminiscing about Fizzies, even the root beer.

Opposites attract

This morning as I stood by the microwave, waiting for my leftover coffee to be nuked up to drinking temperature, my as yet unfocused gaze fell on the magnets on my refrigerator door. I have a couple that are just clips that hold art work from my grandchildren, one that is a small ceramic turtle and a flat one with the names and phone numbers for all the businesses at Park & Shop directory is in print so small as to be unreadable It is useful though as it does a nice job holding up the cash register generated coupons for products I never use and which always expire before I remember to check them. 

 

I wonder where the American family would be without refrigerator magnets. No way to hang your kids' first art work...you know, the first pages from the coloring books, the ones that turn yellow about ten minutes after they are torn out of the book and proudly handed to mommy or daddy. You have to display them. If you don't you might discourage Junior's creativity, even though the lines on the picture seem to have been seen by your nascent little Picasso as mere random suggestions as to where the purple Crayola should be applied to that picture of a bull frog. There would be no place for the grocery lists or the little appointment reminder cards from your dentist. Where would we put the magnetic business cards with the smiling faces of the dozen or so hopeful realtors who want your listing even though you told them you're not even thinking about selling your home?

 

Every sole proprietor of a business, every insurance agent, even churches see the front of your refrigerator as a marketing tool. Thank God for magnetism since without it we would miss out on yet another marketing effort. Oh, no!