All posts by pajarice

Random Thoughts, Short Shorts

Gillette’s Latest and Greatest Razor, Until Next Month

Oh man.  What in the world is going on?  Gillette has just come out with a new razor.  I guess I have always used Gillette razors.  I’ve written about them before.  But now, I cans hardly keep up with their new models.

Last year at this time, I had winnowed it down to two razors.  One was my old reliable Mach 3 Turbo that I had had forever.  You know it is a winner when Gillette just keeps making replacement blades for it.  Newer models have gone by the wayside, but the old Mach 3 just keeps chugging along.  Then, of course, I have the Fusion ProGlide Power.  Five blades and smooth as could be.  While the blades are expensive, they last a long, long time.  I was really comfortable with my shaving situation.

Then about eight months ago, Gillette announced that they have a new razor for sensitive skin.  It’s called the Gillette Mach 3 Sensitive Power Razor.  My old Mach 3, which I love, has no power and it wasn’t specifically made for sensitive skin.  They also made the razor green so it would be environmentally friendly.  This was a product they were marketing to jerks like me.  “Oh, it’s for sensitive skin.  I have sensitive skin.”  Dah.  So, I bought it and, of course, I needed to buy extra blades because Gillette is too smart to make their old Mach 3 blades interchangeable.  Bottom line is forget about the sensitive skin, I got sensitive every time I used the green razor.  I feel like I was gimmicked (I just made a new word).

So when I run out of the environmentally friendly green blades, I thought I would be back to the two razors I am happy with.  But no!  Gillette won’t leave me alone.  They are now coming out with the “Fusion ProGlide Power Razor with FlexBall Technology.”  Holy cow.  My present Fusion ProGlide flexes up and down to smoothly stay in contact with my skin over my jaw bone and chin.  Now, with the FlexBall, the blade will toggle sideways and if necessary do somersaults to get that last elusive hair.  After my last experience with the environmentally friendly Mach 3 “S” (S is for sensitive and stupid), I had half a mind not to buy the somersaulting  FlexBall technology.  But what if I am wrong.  I didn’t need the Fusion ProGlide Power razor, but now that I have it, I’m convinced that it is the best.  Whose to say that there isn’t a need for a somersault once in a while.

I will probably buy it, but I won’t promise that I will report on it.  That’s the kind of threat that will drive people away from my blog site.  My next blog will be on something more exciting, like tooth paste.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com

Copyright 2014

 

Short Shorts

Don’t Get Comfortable, Life Gets Tricky

Life is really tricky.  Just when you think things are under control, along comes the trickiness.  Maybe you have figured out how not to get junk mail on your computer, but I haven’t.  But I have found the delete button.  I probably get 40 to 50 junk emails a day.  The Jockey Store sends me a sale notice everyday.  Really, how much underwear can you own?

So when I bring up my emails, I go down the list: Groupon, Retail-Me-Not, tickets for the St. Louis Cardinals (even though I am in DC), GoDaddy, Double Take Offers, AAA and Dick’s Sporting Goods and many more.  I generally don’t even look at them.  With my finger on the delete button, I go ping, ping, ping, ping.

Well, life got tricky.  Even though GoDaddy had sent me hundreds of sale notifications, this time, since the first of the year, they have been trying to notify me that all of my blogs were about to disappear.  They were shutting down GoDaddy’s Quick Blogcast, which is the platform I use to support ricequips.com.  On June 19, I was sitting in an outlet parking lot in Lancaster, PA, while Carole and our two grown daughters, Becky and Missy were shopping.  I was deleting stuff from my IPhone.  When I got to GoDaddy, the first two words got my attention.  It said, “Important Notice.”  That is how I found out that they were shutting me down on June 25!

I called GoDaddy on the 21st and they sold me a new platform (WordPress) for all my blogs.  Then with the help of JW Kimbro, a GoDaddy consultant, we transferred all 244 existing blogs from Quick Blogcast to WordPress.  If you are having difficulty understanding this, don’t feel bad.  I have no idea what I am talking about.  I am just repeating what they told me.  However, if you are reading this, you can see the style is different and that is because it was published on WordPress.  So there.

Now, my biggest problem is that Google can’t find me.  If you go to Google and type in Schilling Manor, Ricequips will pop up on the first page.  But, since switching to WordPress, when you click on the article, Google will tell you it is “Not Found.”  And I thought Google was keeping track of all of us.  I called GoDaddy to see if they could help me.  After two lengthy pauses to get help, I was informed by the consultant that Google is a web crawler and it will eventually find me.  I kept having flashbacks to the movie Matrix.  But I am somewhat relieved.  It just hasn’t happened yet.  I hope the posting of this blog does the trick.

I don’t think you can call Google.  They are too busy putting together a cute Google logo for the next day.  But hopefully, when I post this blog on WordPress a light will come on at Google and Bing.  Please keep your fingers crossed.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com

Copyright 2014

 

Sporting Daze

Dad, The Base Ball Player

4 Comments
I was going through some old files the other day and I came across my birth certificate.  It’s a real mess.  I have seen enough of my Dad’s handwriting to be reasonably certain that he filled out the top part with all the particulars.  They had decided to call me Jack, so he wrote in “Jack Paul Rice.”  Then, the “Jack” was scratched out and “Jackson” was inserted high on the line between “Paul” and “Rice.” I had noticed all that years earlier.  I used to kid that if I had been the oldest, I would have been worried about my   legitimacy (back when people worried about things like that).

The thing I did notice for  the first time was the listing of my father’s occupation.  It simply said’ “Base Ball Player.”  Isn’t that something? I suspect not too many people have listed baseball player as their father’s occupation on their birth certificate.  But it also made me feel guilty because I didn’t know much about his baseball career. By the time I started to kindergarden, his career was over and it was just something that never got discussed in great detail.  I knew he had gone  to Spring Training with the Chicago Cubs when he was only 19.  He played for the Little Rock Travelers for a few years, managed and played for the Lenoir Reds and ended his career with the Albany Senators.

Dad was a catcher.  We were all catchers (my brother, Bill, and yours truly).  Dad taught us the footwork to stop wild pitches, to catch foul balls and to throw out runners bunting for a base hit. Footwork is absolutely critical.  So now, as an old-timer, I drive my wife, Carole, crazy talking about mistakes made by catchers on TV. She likes baseball, but sometimes I drive her out of the room by running a play over and over with the remote control.  One announcer said that Yadier Molina (the superstar catcher for the Cards) was such a good defensive catcher because he had confidence.  Confidence?  It’s footwork (and a rocket for an arm).

Dad died over twenty years ago and I still miss him.  After retiring from professional baseball, he became the National Sports Director for the Junior Chamber of Commerce.  He formed what was called the Jaycee League and many kids throughout the nation, ages 10 to 15, played Jaycee baseball through those formative years.

After Dad died, I obtained what would barely pass for his scrapbook. I had looked at it a few times, but never studied it.  So I decided to dig in.  What a mess.  What is so difficult about chronological order? All those great newspaper articles regarding his high school success, Muny League success and professional career glued on to pages where there happened to be room.  Some going up and down, some going sideways.  And, no dates whatsoever.  But I hung in there.

Dad played high school football for East St. Louis Senior High School. He was an All-State left end at 5 foot 8 inches and 167 pounds.  Did I mention that my Dad was tough?  They were undefeated, but lost the Conference championship because they tied two games and Granite City only tied once.  But, as my Birth Certificate stated, he was a base ball player.  While still in high school, he was playing semi-pro ball in what was called the Muny League.  He was 16 and a star.  When he graduated, he went to Alabama and caught for their freshman team.  Dad insisted that they batted him ninth, because he was a Yankee.

When Dad was 19, while playing in what was called the Trolley League (another semi-pro league covering Illinois and Missouri), he was observed by the Chicago Cub manager, Charlie Grimm.  Grimm liked what he saw and invited Dad to Spring training with the Cubs on Catalina Island.  Spring training with the Cubs at 19.  Heady stuff. Most of the players took the same train from Chicago to California. Dad joined them in Kansas City.  One article I read said that “Puffy” Rice was all over the train with his checker board “looking for victims to play him.”  He never lost.  Did I mention that Dad was competitive? 

After Spring Training, Grimm farmed Dad out to the Little Rock Travelers.  He was with them for three years and then moved to Columbia, South Carolina and into the Cincinnati Reds organization. He caught for the Columbia Reds in 1937 and 38.  In 1939, he was catching for the Waterloo Red Hawks in the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League.  In the 11th inning of one game, the opposing catcher interfered with Dad’s bat.  That should have automatically given Dad first base.  However, the umpire insisted that he didn’t hear anything.  Dad told the umpire that he knew he was blind, but that was the first admission from the umpire that he was also deaf! Dad got the rest of the night off.

In 1940, Dad was the player/manager for the Lenoir Reds in the Tar Heel League (managing at the age of 26).  You know you can go on line and find out all about the players for the Lenoir Reds in 1940.  It turned out he hit .329 that year.  He had also been designated a scout for the Cincinnati Reds.  The next year, he was the player/manager for the El Dorado Oilers in the Cotton State League. He hit .348 for the short time he was with them.

Dad was relieved of his duties as El Dorado manager and became a free agent.  A Cincinnati scout named Frank O’Rourke notified the Albany Senator’s manager, “Specs” Toporcer that Dad was a free agent.  He said, “Don’t know whether you can sign him to a contract, but if you can you will get a better than fair catcher.”  He did sign with the Senators and we drove 1,600 miles in three days to join the team in Elmira, New York.  Keep in mind that there were no interstate highways.  And, you could figure that a tire would fail every 500 miles.  Mom used to say that back then, I would scream every time they took me near a car.  After that experience, at age three, I now understand my actions.  

Dad’s lasted two years with the Albany Senators before his career ended.  Back then, catchers didn’t wear hard helmets behind the plate (in fact, nobody wore what is now called a batting helmet). Today, catchers look like hockey goalies behind the plate.  I always believed that Dad got hit by what we called a “second swing.”  The batter swings and then the bat comes around a second time and whacks the catcher in the back of the head.  The catcher is protected back there by a soft baseball cap.  But it turned out to be even worse.  Albany was playing Wilkes-Barre and Wilkes-Barre had a man on first base.  The runner on first attempted to steal second base and Dad moved forward to collect a low pitch.  At that moment, the batter swung the bat and hit Dad behind the right ear. They carried him off the field and he was in the hospital for over a week.

Dad did recover enough that two weeks later, he pinch hit against
Elmira.  The pitcher for Elmira was none other that Sal, the Barber, Maglie, who gained his nick-name with the Giants, by giving out close shaves to the batters.  He nicked Dad in the midriff.  Here’s another little side note for baseball aficionados.  Dad’s roommate on the road with the Senators was Ralph Kiner.

Dad’s vision was never any good after the bat hit him, at least not for a professional baseball player.  So he retired when I was four. However, I did get to see him play once when I was eleven.  My brother’s Jaycee team (ages 14 and 15) had invited a team from St. Louis to come over and play a practice game.  The team that showed up consisted of 18, 19 and 20 year olds.  So they worked out a deal where Dad and the assistant coach (a Muny League pitcher) would play for my brother’s team.  The only thing I remember about the game was Dad batting.  What a beautiful swing.  It was lightning fast.  I was so excited.  The pitch came and Dad swung and the ball went straight up in the air.  When it finally came down, the shortstop had caught it.  I was crushed.  I was sure he was going to hit the ball a long way.  The good news is that I am no longer eleven and all I can see now is that beautiful swing. He was a great dad and he taught me the footwork, but he couldn’t teach me to swing a bat like him.  Not many people could

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com

Short Shorts, The Judge Says

The Judge Says – Help! I’ve Been Burgled!

I continue to go back and pick up articles I wrote when I was the Staff Judge Advocate at Fort Riley.  Even though they are over thirty years old, they still have some relevance (sometimes very little).

Help! I’ve Been Burgled
March 5, 1982

I’m going to give you a very quick course in Criminal Law 101. People are always saying they were robbed, when, in fact, they had something stolen from them when they weren’t even present.  Or, even worse, they will tell someone they have been robbed, when, in fact, they have been burgled (Help, Help, I’ve been burgled!).  On second thought, tell them you have been robbed.

The difference will become clear shortly.  The barracks thief who takes someone’s stereo and sells it is guilty of larceny (he wrongfully took someone’s property with an intent never to return it).  Now the thief who hocks the stereo and holds on to the pawn ticket will tell the court that he was going to get the stereo back on pay day and return it (Hee hee).  Thus, no intent to permanently deprive.  If he can convince the court, then he is only guilty of wrongful appropriation.

The rat who picks up a GI walking down JC Blvd. and takes his wallet at knife point is a robber.  A robber is someone who commits larceny by the threat of or use of force or violence.  The victim who is walking down JC Blvd. late at night is called a dummy, pigeon or mark (or all of the above).  “A fool and his money” – I forgot how it goes, but you get the picture.

The crook who breaks into someone’s home at night to commit certain crimes (such as larceny) is a burglar.  He burgles. (“Help, Help …”)  If it is not at night, or, no one lives in the building, then it is not burglary.  We call it housebreaking.

The only test to be given on the above material involves JC Blvd.  If anyone is walking alone at night on that road, they fail the course.

Written be PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com
Random Thoughts

District of Columbia – A License to Steal

I’m sitting in the waiting room getting my car serviced.  Since I am retired, I can wait for it.  It’s a good time to get things done, if you can get far enough away from the blaring TV.  I’ve noticed a consistent correlation in waiting rooms like this.  The more mindless the TV show, the louder the volume.

Living close to the District of Columbia exposes us to the absolute worst of the worst (and I spent a year in Chicago).  And they want to become a state.  I used to teach types of jurisdiction at The JAG School in Charlottesville, Virginia.  And, the District of Columbia is a Federal Enclave.  Some places, like here in Virginia, are exclusive state jurisdiction and DC is exclusive Federal jurisdiction.  I can’t remember much more than that, except that a number of years back, there was a patch of land called Fort Missoula, Montana that nobody claimed.  Montana insisted it was Federal property and the Feds had exclusive jurisdiction.  The Feds insisted that the state had jurisdiction.  This came to a head when an abused wife blew away her soldier husband.  Both sides insisted the other had jurisdiction, and consequently, neither Montana nor the Federal government would prosecute.  Ladies, don’t lure your abusive male companions out to Fort Missoula because I think the problem has been fixed.

If you’re mad at somebody, take them for a walk in DC.  Medric Cecil Mills, Jr. was walking with his family on Rhode Island Avenue and he collapsed from an apparent heart attack.  The good news was they were right across the street from a fire station with 15 firemen/EMS on duty.  The bad news is that Rhode Island Avenue is in DC.  Members of the family raced over to the fire station to get help.  After an unreasonable delay, they were told to call 911!  It took 15 to 20 minutes to get help and Mr. Mills died.

Generally when the DC EMS takes an hour to get to the location of the emergency, they blame it on broken equipment, bad directions or that they were understaffed.  Kind of hard to do it in the Mill’s case.  Of course, they could blame it on stupidity.  And what will happen?  Oh there will be an investigation.  Someone will be suspended.  Someone will retire early and someone will be reassigned.  Of course the family will sue DC and the city will settle the case for millions. And, we, the taxpayers, will pay.  And life in the city bumbles on.

There is hardly a week that goes by when some DC official isn’t arrested for stealing money from the city.  It doesn’t matter whether then have an important job like awarding DC contracts or whether they just empty the coins out of the parking meters, they have figured out how to supplement their income.  My previous barber’s building was torn down and he had to find a different location.  The new location required reconstruction and the only way he could get his permits approved was to pay off all the city inspectors.  There is a DC license plate that says at the top, “Taxation without Representation.”  Across the bottom it should say, “Ah, But We Do Have A License To Steal.”

Whenever I mention the problems in DC, people immediately mention Marion Barry.  He was the mayor for 12 years, then went to jail, and then was elected again as mayor.  After going to jail for six months, his campaign slogan was, “He may not be perfect, but he’s perfect for DC.”  I love it and couldn’t agree more.  During his second term back in the Eighties, he hired so many DC employees that no DC official could tell Congress how many employees DC had. Congress had to strip DC of its hiring authority and take away budget control.

There were eight years when Barry didn’t pay his taxes.  But to revoke his parole, the government had to proved he intentionally didn’t pay.  And, he was usually so zonked out, it was hard to prove he did anything intentionally.  He is still the Ward 8 Councilman, because he is still perfect for DC!

In the last three years, three council members have pleaded guilty. Harry Thomas, Jr. from Ward 5, stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the DC youth sports program.  Kwane Brown lied and fraudulently altered documents to get a loan to buy a boat that he named “Bulletproof!”  And, Michael Brown was caught taking $55,000 in bribes from undercover FBI (probably the same guys that got Barry).  If they were smart like Barry, they would have pleaded not guilty and relied on a DC jury of their peers to set them free.  After all, they too are perfect for DC.

The present mayor, Vincent Gray, is a piece of work.  He was elected in 2010 and the election is still being investigated.  A number of his subordinates have already pleaded guilty to election misconduct.  Now, deep pocketed Jeffery Thompson has pleaded guilty, admitting he provided $668,000 for a shadow campaign for Gray.  Thompson told the judge who accepted his plea that Gray presented him with a budget of over $400,000 that Gray needed for his illegal election activities.  Gray has now called Thompson a liar. Gray, like Barry, may be perfect for DC.  Gray, of course, is running for reelection.  Gray, unlike Barry, looks exactly like Snidely Whiplash.

FLASH – Marion Barry has just come out and endorsed Vincent Gray for mayor.  I rest my case.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com
Random Thoughts

What Should I Do With All This Stuff?

Isn’t it funny how something that isn’t of any importance one day suddenly becomes all consuming the next?  Now I understand that if someone is involved in a serious car accident or discovers an illness, then everything changes.  But, I’m talking about something much milder.  I’m talking about suddenly realizing that you have more stuff than you can handle if you are going to move into smaller quarters.  Like five times the stuff.

In the military where you moved every two to three years, there was a built-in system to control your amount of stuff.  And while we did gather more stuff, we also got rid of stuff.  If we bought a new couch, we sold the old couch.  But, when we retired from the military in 1990, we moved into a house with lots of room and lots of storage space.  So now when we buy a new couch, we move the old couch to the finished basement or out into the gazebo. When we remodeled the kitchen, we hung the old cabinets in our garage so we could fill them up with more stuff.  We were good! We were very efficient and when the name of the game was accumulate, we excelled.  

So in the blink of an eye, the rules changed.  Now we are concentrating on getting rid of stuff.  It was a lot more fun to accumulate.  The first difficult question is where to even start.  If you just wander from room to room looking at everything, it will drive you crazy.  So we decided to start with our files.  I started with my study and then, will move to the basement.  This is serious work.  I was really doing quite well in disposing of files that I would never use.  Then, I pulled out my desk drawer and focused on on a pile of cards I had been keeping forever.  Some of the stuff I found was amazing.

I found a business card advocating the election of Brunson Hollingsworth for prosecuting attorney in the Democratic Primary on August 7, 1962.  He had been a year ahead of me in law school at MIZZOU.  The front had a picture of him with his dark framed glasses and a big, bushy mustache.  On the back, he had printed some lines which included, “A time like this demands strong minds; great hearts, true faith, and ready hands.”  I scratched my head over the part about “ready hands.”  I’ve observed too many politicians with “ready hands.”  Anyway, Brunson was elected as the prosecuting attorney of Jefferson County.

This wasn’t Brunson’s first run for office.  In 1961, he ran for president of the University’s student body.  Two Greeks were running and Brunson tried to get the votes of the independent students.  He ran on a “do nothing” platform and announced that if he were elected, he would do nothing.  It was great fun.  When you are in law school, any diversion is great fun.  He rented a horse and wagon and had himself driven around campus laying on a bed of straw in the back of the wagon (doing nothing).  He also had a two-foot tree stump that we carried to the center of traffic intersections on campus.  He would then sit on the stump (posing as Rodin’s The Thinker) and, of course, do nothing.  It was a riot.  I guess you had to be there.  He came in third in the election, but insisted that the other two candidates had spent more money than was permitted and declared himself the winner.  The University didn’t buy it.

Going through these cards was not a productive project towards cleaning out stuff.  Each card I looked at brought back fond memories.  I have a Trial Observer card from the late Sixties (signed by the infamous Lew Shull) when I was stationed in Germany.  Also, a Cook County Sheriff’s Correctional Department ID from when I was doing pro bono work toward a Master’s Degree at Northwestern.  And, a press pass issued to me by The Fort Riley Post when I started writing The Judge Says.

I also found my receipt for taking the H1N1 Swine Flu shot in 1976. What a fiasco!  One person died of the flu and at least 25 died from taking the flu shot.  That was 38 years ago, so I am probably safe. Whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.  I’m thinking of getting a tattoo that says “Swine Flu Shot Survivor – 1976.”  I just can’t figure out where I should put it.

At this late stage, I have now satisfied myself that I have probably screened this little pile of cards many times, because everyone is a keeper.  I still have my Red Cross blood donor cards, even though I can no longer give blood.  That is because I was stationed in Germany in the 1980’s.  Something to do with Mad Cow Disease. Mad Cows and Swine Flu.  I think I will become a vegetarian.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com
Poems

Larry Ledbetter’s Seventy-Seventh Birthday

This blog is about a friend celebrating his 77th birthday and a poem that I wrote for the occasion.  But the weather has me so annoyed that I just have to vent.  If you don’t want to be the recipient of my venting, then just skip down to the poem.

I don’t think I mind cold weather.  It makes you feel alive.  But what has gotten to me is this day after day, week after week, MONTH AFTER MONTH!  The understatement of the day is, “It is getting old.”

And we have so many more efficient ways to check the weather.  It used to be the paper in the morning and the local TV news.  Then came along the Weather Channel.  Now, I have a smart phone strapped to my hip.  This should be more efficient – but not when you check the weather 20 times a day.  And, I have three weather apps on my IPhone.  One came on the phone and then I downloaded the Weather Channel and the local Fox Accu Weather. Hot Dog!  And then I spend time comparing them.  How dumb.

It’s such a convenient way for me to waste time.  Once I pull up the weather app, I can look at the current temperature; or the hourly temperature for the next 24 hours; or a 36 hour outlook; or the ten- day forecast.  That’s what has me so upset.  The ten-day forecast looks like ten days ago, which looks like…(You get the idea).

In 2010, I wrote a blog entitled, “My Crepe Myrtle Tree.”  It explained how I trim my Crepe Myrtle every February.  Well, February is almost gone and the ten-day forecast shows no sign of relief.  Rest assured, it will be done.

One of the things that made February a little more tolerable was Larry Ledbetter’s 77th birthday party.  Larry has three avocations, cabinet making, Mercedes vehicles and golf.  My connection with Larry is through golf.  He’s quite a player.  The party, however, gave me a chance to see some of the outstanding furniture he had made and to meet some of his Mercedes club friends.  Just before they cut the cake, I read the poem below.  A number of people came up to me afterwards and told me they appreciated that it was short.





LARRY’S SEVENTY-SEVENTH


A time to celebrate, a time to cheer,

A time for laughter, a time for a beer.

Ledbetter has a birthday, there’s no time to tarry,

David? No not David, it’s our good friend Larry.


If Larry’s your golf partner, hope for a warm day,

That Bama blood’s thin, and he’s been know to say Nay.

Don’t press him if he’s running late, it just makes him churly,

He thinks ten minutes before tee-time is arriving early.


Larry’s a golfer of extraordinary skill,

He can crush the ball clean over the hill.

But, when you hit it that far, some things are clear,

When you’re directionally challenged, you can’t find the sphere.

So when you gather your swing thoughts, here’s one additional,

If you’re going to swing hard, think about a provisional.


So Happy Birthday Larry, we wish you all the best,

Having you as a friend make us all feel blessed.

You brighten up our lives, you’ve never been a boor,

So Happy Birthday Larry, we wish you many, many more.



Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com

class=”MsoNormal” style=”text-align: center; margin: 0in -31.5pt 0.0001pt -22.5pt;”>Copyright 2014

 A

Random Thoughts

Jigsaw Puzzle Therapy for Frigid Days

2 Comments

My goodness it has been a cold winter.  A miserable winter.  We have been in the Washington, DC area for twenty-four years this time and I can’t remember a winter this cold.  I keep waiting for Al Gore to explain this phenomenon.  I’m sure he can explain it.  I’m also sure it is just part of the big picture.  I’m just too damn cold to see it.


We stayed in the DC area after we retired because we had been here a long time and the winters really weren’t that bad.  I would explain to people how the storms that hit the Midwest usually missed us.  It had to do with the “ski board” effect of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  I was the only one exposing this position and I hoped I would be discovered and receive some kind of an award. There’s a lot of stupid people out there giving out awards. However, I think this winter has substantially reduced the chances of my theory catching on.

It was 15 degrees and we still had eight inches of snow on the ground and the bird feeders were almost empty (two were empty and the third was down to the nub).  I gave that a lot of thought.  I could fill the three bird feeders in about 12 minutes.  So I wouldn’t be outside too long.  I bundled up layer on top of layer and headed out to the shed where I keep the bird seed.  Nikki loves the snow and was nipping at my heels (a now useless sheep dog skill).  The shed had an 18-inch snow bank around the door.  So back to the house for the shovel. Nip, nip, nip.  Twelve minutes turned into a half an hour.  I’ve decided in the future to firmly apply a 27 degree wind chill factor rule. To hell with the 12 minute crap.

So what do you do when you are retired and it’s too cold and snowy to go outside?  Let’s see, you can make an idiot out of yourself on Facebook or you can watch TV.  I got a Facebook account so I would know what the grandchildren were doing.  Let’s just say it was a mixed bag.  They don’t get on Facebook to communicate with ole Grandpa.  And, do I really need to see You Tube stunts that didn’t make it?

Well a week ago I decided to drag out a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of the castle at the Magic Kingdom.  It’s a lovely picture done by Thomas Kinkade.  We have been to Disney World a lot and this puzzle is a picture that Carole has taken over 50 times.  Her pictures have a lot more definition than Kinkade’s painting.  Except for part of the castle and the sky, all the pieces were a dark brown (including a lot of the lower castle) or dark green (water in front and the surrounding trees).  After I did the border and the top of the castle, I spent a lot of time wondering why I started the stupid puzzle.

I am now going to set out some basic rules for doing a jigsaw puzzle.  First, you need lots of room.  The puzzle may be less than three feet by two feet, but you need twice that amount of space for laying out the pieces.  You also need good light.  I had to set up in the dining room to have enough space, but the lighting in that room wasn’t so great.  So I’m sitting there with a flashlight looking at the pieces.  After five minutes, the pieces started getting darker. The flashlight batteries were heading for the battery graveyard. New batteries and I was good to go, just looking stupid.

Once you get enough of the pieces placed, you can look for odd shapes and then try to locate the piece with that shape.  I found a location with a very distinctive shape and looked through all of the pieces left with absolutely no luck.  I looked again.  Same result. And, of course, all the pieces left were some shade of gray.  My conclusions was that there was a piece missing.  That was crazy because I had broken the plastic seal on the bag with all the pieces tucked inside.  That bag had been approved by Inspector # 4.  He or she was not going to get away with this.

After you have spent twenty minutes looking for one piece, it’s time to move on to another part of the puzzle or quit for a few hours.  I quit for the night mumbling about Inspector # 4.

The next day (my sixth), I was down to less than 75 pieces and I knew they would fall into place very soon.  I had eight pieces assembled to each other, but not yet attached to the main puzzle. And quite frankly, I was running out of room.  Something had to give.  While trying to figure out where the eight-piece group fit, I noticed one piece attached to the wrong place.  You’re right, it was the piece I had spent 20 minutes looking for the day before!  I rapidly finished the puzzle.

While puzzles are a good way to spend a cold winter day, please remember that jigsaw puzzles, like chess, can become a form of sickness.  Limit your playing time or find a support group.  And, if by chance, you are Inspector # 4, I apologize.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com
Random Thoughts

Is There a Right Way to Worry?

I think we spend too much time worrying.  And the vast majority of things we worry about are out of our control.  I worry about no peace in the Middle East, but I can’t do anything about it.  I worry about John Kerry coming up with some treaty that just make matters worse.  That I can’t help worrying about.  But the bottom line is I should probably use my worry time in a more constructive way.  Like my health.  That’s closer to home and I can do something about it.

Through the years, I have made some very small life changes to make myself more “healthy.”  I switched to skim milk (you can call it “fat free,” but it still tastes the same).  I drink a lot of milk, so I figured that would help.  Hey, after 15 or 20 years it no longer tastes watery.  But, if I continue to drink Nestle Quik ice-cream floats, I’m not sure the skim milk is going to save me.

Back in the early Eighties, I quit drinking coffee.  This was no big sacrifice because I probably didn’t like coffee.  What I liked was all the sugar I dumped in my cup.  And my hand was shaky and someone told me it was from drinking coffee.  I had trouble holding my sugar spoon steady!  So this little life change eliminated about nine spoonfuls of sugar from my daily diet.

I switched to tea.  I still had to sweeten it, but with tea, I could use artificial sweetener.  Then all I had to worry about was the warning on the pink Sweet’N Low packet.  It advised that the use of Saccharin (the sweetener in Sweet’N Low) had caused cancer in rats.  I couldn’t imagine what kind of rat put Sweet’N Low on their cheese.  Anyway, around the year 2000 the warning went away.  I think it had been decided that people were different than rats (at least most people.  I keep getting this picture of former Congressman Weiner nibbling on sweetened cheese.)  But, by then I had moved on to Equal in the blue packet.

The sugar industry was unhappy that the artificial sweetener companies were getting a free ride.  So, The Sugar Association contracted with Duke University to study the impact of Equal and Splenda (the yellow packet) on rats.  The University determined that rats that ate Equal got fatter.  But, even more significant, after 12 weeks of eating Splenda, the rats “exhibited numerous adverse effects.”  There was a reduction in beneficial fecal microflora and an increase in fecal PH.  I clearly don’t understand what they are talking about, nor do I give a rat’s ….  The only thing I took away from this study is don’t be upset with your job; you could be spending you day examining rat feces.

Am I concerned that the study said rats eating Equal got fat?  No. Whenever you evaluate a study, the first thing you need to do is see who paid for it.  In this case, The Sugar Association.  And, gee, the study was unfavorable to artificial sweeteners.  And they say you can’t trust a lawyer.

I ordered tea at a roadside diner not too long ago. Our table had a bowl containing pink, blue and yellow packets of sweetener.  I fished around and found two blue packets.  After I emptied them into my tea, I noticed that they were not Equal.  It may have been NutraSweet but I’m not sure.  What I am sure is that the blue packets were identical to the pink and yellow packets.  The company had something for everyone.  Then again, if the biggest thing you have to worry about is being duped on your sweetener, life’s not half bad.  I am passing this along merely as a public service announcement.

You know, I don’t drink beer or spirits (only on special occasions like Friday or Saturday) and now, people are telling me that Coke is bad for me.  What a bummer.  I thought Coke was somewhere up high in the food pyramid.  So now, I try to limit myself to one Coke a day.  I don’t drink Coke in the morning, so that helps.  But, if I drink one in the afternoon, I am a goner.  I think I will worry about the Middle East and have another Coke.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com
Sporting Daze

The Hapless Redskin Plight

2 Comments
It’s OK to kick me.  I’m a Redskin fan.  Bumps and bruises come with the territory.  We have to have a good memory to remember our Super Bowl victories.  The last was the 1991 season.  But, having a good memory just makes it that much worse to suffer through the Danny Snyder era.

Snyder bought the team in 1999 and has made lots of money off the team.  But, marketing the team to make lots of money isn’t the best way to build a winning team.  Signing a big name player, like Donovan McNabb in 2010 may be great for selling jerseys, but the team was six and ten that year.  McNabb played 12 games and threw 14 touchdowns and 15 interceptions.  He was a Viking the next season (his last).  While Mike Shanahan was the coach with final authority on all football matters, no one will deny that it was Snyder who caused McNabb to come to Washington.

My frustration is that I don’t think we will ever have a successful team as long as Dan Snyder is the owner and I can’t see him selling the team.  He’s like a kid with a gigantic Tinker Toy set.  He can build whatever he wants and then tear it up just for the hell of it. We have seen him do time after time.

Now that Mike Shanahan has been fired (24 & 40), Bruce Allen, our invisible General Manager, steps forward and states that he will interview and select our next coach.  Does anybody believe that? First of all, I accept that the owner has the right to select his coach. The coach is one of his Tinker Toys.  But why have Allen step forward and announce that he is going to make the selection? More smoke and mirrors. 

I am not going to relive some of the stupid, idiotic things that Snyder has done.  Let’s leave it that in 15 years we have won 104 games, while losing 136, and we are now looking for our eighth head coach during the Snyder follies.

Maybe I should find a new team to cheer for.  That’s tough when I have been a Redskin fan for so many years and I live in the Greater DC area.  Maybe I should move to someplace like Jacksonville or Oakland.  I picked those places to encourage me to stay.  Our daughter, Missy, lives in Jacksonville and we felt sorry for her cheering for the Jaguars.  But it turned out that they won more games than the Redskins!  When you have a really miserable year, you then are rewarded with a high draft choice for the next year. But our first round draft choice belongs to the St. Louis Rams, just as it did last year and will also in 2015!  We should at least get a thank you card.

Maybe it’s the indian curse because of our name.  Maybe it is a conspiracy between Obama and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Then I realized that they are both way to screwed up to come up with a successful plan. And, of course, the dissenting indians were beating their drums outside the stadiums while the Redskins were inside winning Super Bowls.

I think the answer is for me to buy the Redskins.  I will need a lot of money.  Please send me a lot of money.  If I am unsuccessful, I will notify you from my villa in the Bahamas.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com