Category Archives: Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts

A New Beginning at The Fairfax

I know, I know, I’ve been delinquent in writing.  And you thought something horrible had happened to me.  Well, it has been an ordeal, but not horrible.   Miserable, yes.  Horrible, no.

For the last four months, we have been preparing to move and then moved.  We had been in the same house for 25 years and without any motive or design, we had filled every nook and cranny of that baby.  When we were in the Army and moved every three or so years, we kept track of what we had.  If we bought a new couch, we got rid of the old one.  In this last 25 year episode, if we bought a new couch, we moved the old one downstairs, next to the couch that was replaced 10 years earlier.

Some years back, we decided that we would eventually move to The Fairfax, a very nice military retirement community near Fort Belvoir, Virginia.  Well, with Carole’s health problems and so many steps in our house (you had to go downstairs to visit all our old couches), we decided this would be the year we would move.

So right after Christmas, Carole went through all of her Christmas decorations.  The problem was that an awful lot of them were magnificent.  How do you get rid of beautiful things?  That would be a good topic for Dr. Phil.  Carole reduced the number of her Christmas wreathes from 11 to nine!  We ended up renting a self-storage area to hold our Christmas decorations.

My daughter-in-law, Sandy, showed me how to use Craig’s List.  That went well.  Everybody warned me about the crazy people on Craig’s List that will come into you house and cut you into little pieces.  Well, they must have been busy cutting up other people, because I didn’t have a problem.

I had one rule for Craig’s List that seemed to work well.  I never gave my address out on line.  I insisted the interested person call me.  I had one woman (who knows if he or she was a woman) email me six times asking for information about the item and requesting my address.  Each time I would give her general information on my location and ask her to call me.  She never did.  In her last correspondence she advised me that since I couldn’t give her an address, I must live too far away.  I decided to leave that logic right where it landed.

Then there was a nice Indian couple who showed up to purchase two benches that converted into a picnic table.  Before they left, they had also bought a kitchen table and chairs (downstairs with the couches), a universal weight machine and two porcelain elephants I brought back from Vietnam (BUFEs).  They also bought a lot of little items we had been assembling for a garage sale.  They came back two-days later to disassemble the weight machine (They brought no tools).   I suspect it weighed 800 pounds and after borrowing my tools, they took it out piece by piece.  I have no idea whether they ever put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Pricing is always a problem.  I didn’t know anything about what to ask.  I know what we paid for something 10 or 20 years ago, but that isn’t much help.  Sometimes I asked too much, sometimes too little.  You can remedy the problem when you asked too much, but when you ask too little, you are screwed.  I had two great big JBL speakers.  I thought big was out and these babies were at least 35 years old.  I just wanted to get rid of them.  I offered both of them for $25.  Big mistake.  The phone started ringing off the hook.  An early caller insisted on giving me $50.  I guess he felt sorry for me.

We had two Lexington end tables that cost us about $500, each.  I offered them for $150, each saying we were moving and they had to go.  I received an email from a woman that told me she would pay $30 for both if I needed to get rid of them.  I wrote her back and told her that before I would sell them to her I would use them for kindling.

So now we have moved and The Fairfax is proving to be everything we had hoped for.  But we are still stepping over things.  I have determined that we have approximately 30 hanging items (pictures, plaques, etc.) for each room.  I’m afraid that the vast majority of them are going back into a box.  The problem is we have  to go through all of them to see which ones will make the cut.  “Sorry big guy, but it is back in the box for you.”

We have a few more critical decisions to make.  Like when we put things back in the boxes to store them, where do we store them?  Anybody got an old garage they’re not using?

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com

Copyright 2015

Random Thoughts

Send in the Clowns

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Sometime, we don’t know when, but sometime, we are going to move.  So there is a need to downsize.  When I walk into a room, I immediately start looking for things that need to disappear.  The whole process stinks.  What I have noticed is that  when I look around, I see clowns.  Pictures of clowns, ceramic clowns, porcelain clowns, toy clowns and clown clowns.

You know the little old lady who likes cats?  So every time she gets a greeting card or a present there’s a kitty somewhere.  Well, I guess I have always been a clown.  I constantly needed attention and clowning around got me what I needed.  I seriously considered whether I could survive in the Army with my “irreverent” attitude.  For years, I had an unrepressed desire to say or do anything that would get me a laugh.  And, fortunately or unfortunately, I am constantly thinking of funny stuff.

The worst thing people can do when I start entertaining is laugh.  That’s the fuel that makes things get more outrageous.  At dinner parties when I was cranking up, my wife, Carole, would reach under the table and squeeze my thigh.  That was my signal that I was getting out of control and needed to shut it down.  At a large gathering in Frankfurt, Germany, Carole was sitting on the other side of the table and some distance away from me.  I got a boisterous laugh out of the crowd and was on my way.  Then suddenly, Barb, the lady sitting next to me, squeezed my thigh.  I looked over and Carole was smiling at me.  Then there’s “Carrie, the Weird.”  She would encourage me until one of us came down with a migraine.  I always secretly hoped it would be her.

Somehow, I survived the Army without being reprimanded for inappropriate behavior.  I had to apologize a few times, but I was usually getting off easy.  While I was the Staff Judge Advocate at Fort Riley, Kansas, in the early 80’s, the post sponsored and hosted a Special Olympics.  Special Services put out an announcement that they would hold classes for those people who wanted to volunteer to be clowns at the Special Olympics.

The G1’s wife, Meg Ionedias, suggested that we sign up for the classes.  We did and it turned out to be four hours every Saturday for six weeks.  I had no idea that clowning took that much preparation.  Anyway, I graduated as a full face Bozo clown.  My instructor said I was a natural.  She said she had met a lot of Bozos, but I was the biggest Bozo she had ever met.

The day of the Special Olympics arrived.  The post had an athletic field with a runner’s track around the outside.  I  had no responsibility except to go around and act silly.  The opening event was a grand march around the track.  Then the “competition” would begin.  It was frenetic getting everyone lined up for the march.  I noticed one young lad in a wheelchair.  He had almost no control of his body and had to be strapped into the wheelchair.  He had to have support to keep his head mobilized.  And with all that was going on, he looked frightened.  My initial thought was that it was a shame that he had been brought out to an event he could not understand.  No one knew what I was thinking because I had a big smile painted on my face.  Then the parade started and I devoted the rest of the morning and some of the afternoon to being a silly, entertaining Bozo clown.

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The event was a big success.  I played my small part.  It was fun.  Where else can a senior Army colonel run around flapping his arms and jump in the air while being goosed by another clown?  What made the event special was that late in the day, I again saw the boy strapped in the wheelchair and he was happy and laughing and having a wonderful time.  That sold me on the Special Olympics.

Children love clowns and that made my spirits fly.  But under a certain age, maybe two, maybe one and a half, clowns look strange and scare the hell out of them.  I learned that the hard way.  I never determined the exact age, but when I got around the little ones, I was very tentative until I saw how they reacted.  When they screamed, I’m  not sure who was scared the most.  But the painted smile protected me.

The Fort Riley Officers’ Wives Club was having a bake sale outside the Post Exchange and the asked me to show up as Zippy (every clown should have a name) and entertain.  After about 30 minutes, the PX manager came over and told me that she would like to hire me for certain occasions at $12 an hour.  I told her it took me two hours to change into Zippy.  She told me she would pay me for that time.  Finally I had to tell her that I was the clown who gave her legal advice.  We had a good laugh.

So like the lady who loved cats, I started accumulating clowns.  I even have a cloth one with a large “Z” on the hat for Zippy.  You can imagine how upset I was when a comic strip “Zippy the Clown” showed up.   And he was anything but a happy clown.  I think he is gone now.  Yippee!

I’m no longer in great shape, but I’m a heck of a lot better off than my clown outfit.  The elastic around the neck, sleeves and feet is kaput and the skull cap has rotted away.  I bought a curly red wig, but I’m no longer willing to spend the time painting my face.  That disqualifies me from being a Raider fan.

So most of my clown memorabilia will disappear.  But I will hang on to the suit, wig and the paint.  Who knows, I may be the life of the party at the old folks home.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com

Copyright 2015

Golf Daze, Random Thoughts

New Year’s Revolutions

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No, I didn’t mean resolutions, I meant revolutions. Because they come around every year and they look very similar to the previous year and the year before. They revolve from year to year.

I decided to try some new ones this year. One of the rules is it can’t have been a resolution from a previous year. My plan started out well but then fizzled. My first for 2015 was not to go into the shower with my glasses on. It’s no big deal when it happens, but it is sort of a helpless feeling. You’re wet, glasses are fogged, there is no place to put them and opening the shower door just creates more problems.

Next, I have decided to learn a new word everyday. No, I have never made this resolution before. But with all the new words entering the English language, like LOL, BFF, and OMG, I thought it would be a good choice. Maybe I will learn how to pronounce them. You know, BFF doesn’t have a vowel. That makes it tricky.

I’m a late comer to the Big Bang Theory. I started watching just a few months back. Of course it is easy to catch up because their reruns are on about 12 different channels and I have now upgraded my Verizon FIOS so that I can record lots and lots of meaningless shows all at the same time. Anyway, I have resolved to watch at least three shows a week. This is to remind me that brilliant people have problems too. People who are brilliant and have no common sense are not uncommon. They are all around us AND easy to spot.

I’ve never had a resolution on dieting. First, I like food too much and weight has not been a problem. I don’t want to sound flippant, but all I have to do to lose weight is not put all those goodies in my mouth. Our house at Christmas time is like a culinary minefield. But it’s Christmas. Come January, things should return to normal.

Well, now I’m breaking my first New Year’s resolution (to not repeat any from previous years). Every year I resolve to exercise more and with a better routine. I generally prepare a chart. The chart very seldom makes it into February. I do keep exercising through out the year, I just don’t keep track of my times. Carole gets on her recumbent bike every day and checks it off on her calendar. Don’t you hate people like that?

I didn’t mention in this year’s Christmas poem that I went back to Leadbetter’s Golf Academy on our December trip to Florida. Bob Lohr, my golf instructor, knows what I need to do to get to the “next level” (that would be holding the wrist angle to the last second like Sergio). I listened to him carefully and I also think I know what I need to do. It’s just that I’m not sure I can get my body to do it. That’s a hell of a note. The answer is flexibility exercises. After Bob was through with me, he turned me over to a physical therapist specialist, Mike Lane. I still remember Mike saying, “You are going to feel great when we are done.” Then he twisted me into positions that a 12-year-old female gymnast would have had no problems with. I did. After we were done, I had to get assistance to get out of my golf shoes! But he did email me a list of flexibility exercises that should get me to the “next level.” I’m hoping it’s not a pine box.

So for my next and last New Year’s Resolution, I have again made an elaborate chart of these “next level” exercises. If I can do them till Spring, I going to treat it as a completed year! Hey, it’s my list and my rules.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com

Copyright 2014

Random Thoughts

Buy Low, Sell High!

2 Comments

I wish I understood the Stock Market better. But I do have some observations that I will pass on for free. No strings attached. Periodically I get something in the mail or on the phone where some financial advisor wanted to send me something for “free.” I only made that mistake once. The advisor would subsequently call me on the phone. We were through with the free stuff. First, it was the friendly sales pitch. When that didn’t work, it was the aggressive “You would be a fool not to buy.” When that didn’t work there was the indignant “It’s your loss Buster.” So my first bit of sage advice is don’t accept “free stuff” from a cold call financial advisor. It won’t make you richer or poorer, but life will be much more pleasant.

People get excited about the Stock Market when it’s really high. It is OK to get excited. I get excited when we are having something special for dinner. But that doesn’t cost me anything. Buying stock when the market is really high will probably cost you. My learned opinion is that the market will go up and it will go down and stocks, to a great extent, will follow the market. So don’t buy when everything is coming up roses. Buy quality stocks when the market is in the crapper. It sounds easy. But it is really hard to pull the trigger when everything looks bleak.

One of the delightful things about the Stock Market is that the day of enormous broker fees is gone. The on-line competition has solved that headache. It used to cost an arm when you purchased stock and a leg when you sold it. That is where the expression “it will cost you an arm and a leg” came from. Today, it’s just a few bucks and the price is the same whether you buy 10 shares or 1,000.

I had a broker at Merrill Lynch back in the late 80s who I liked very much. He would spend time explaining things to me. But I am convinced that his boss or his bosses’ boss had certain quotas that had to be met. Periodically, I would get a call from Mike advising me that they had just been briefed on a sure thing and he wanted me to get in on it. Later, I realized that the sure thing he was talking about was the broker fee!

One of the sure things I purchased was stock in Quaker Oats. The company had been waiting for my meager purchase to start its slide. I never broke even on that one. Mike finally got tired of calling me. So when the next great thing came along, he would have his assistant call me. The assistant would tell me that Mike was busy, but he wanted me to know about this latest hot shot, can’t lose stock ASAP. I told the assistant to tell Mike that I was still having trouble swallowing my Quaker Oats.

I have a good friend who writes a blog on financial matters. It’s entitled “Investmentreflections.com.” Check it out. I’m always impressed. Some of what is written here is probably stolen from Tom’s articles. Sue me. I wonder if any of his clients know that his nickname in college was “Nutty Tom?” It would all come out in the trial.

Hey, I’m getting serious now. Look for stocks that pay dividends AND have been doing so for a long period of time. If the dividends are too high (too good to be true), the company may not have enough capital left to grow the company. You need to look at something called “pay out ratio.” I have a general idea what it means, but I don’t think I can explain it. You’ll have to check with Nutty Tom.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com
Copyright 2014

Random Thoughts

East Side High

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Yea, it doesn’t matter how old you get, some of us will always be High School Harrys.  Still living in those days when life was much simpler.  I went to high school back in the 1950s.  The good news is that as we get older, the stories get better and better.

I grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois.  Right across the Mississippi River from St. Louis.  Back then we were known as a tough industrial town.  Just North of the town was the National Stock Yards (world’s largest hog market) and to the South were large industrial plants like Monsanto and Alcoa Aluminum Ore.  One thing about growing up in East St. Louis, you always knew which way the wind was blowing.

East Side High was a very large, very old brick building.  It wasn’t on the City Tour.  In fact, there was no City Tour.  The high school was located about five miles from my house.  No, I’m not going to tell you that I walked it everyday.  But there was no such thing as a school bus.  We all got to school some how.  My first year, I road with a friend across the alley.  His name was Fred “Ace” Edmonds and his older brother, “Crazy Ace,” had a car.  Each morning I would wait for Crazy Ace and Fred to come out of their house and I would get in the back seat of the car.  That entire year, I never spoke to Crazy Ace.  Fred said it was better that way.  Come to think of it, school buses sounds like a pretty good idea.

East Side High was a three year school.  Our ninth grade was spent as seniors in a junior high.  We had three junior high schools, Rock, Clark and Lansdowne.  East St. Louis was know as a football power house and the junior high system helped that program.  Rather than having a freshman football team, we had three junior high teams battling against each other (I was also a junior high school Harry).  I was the quarterback for the Lansdowne Tigers.  That was so long ago that I could probably get away with telling you that we were undefeated, but we weren’t.  We did play one night game under the lights against Clark.  We were losing until the last play of the game.  I hit Larry Heise with a 20 yard pass and he ran for 53 yards to score the winning touchdown.  Life was good.

So, when we finally got to East Side, we were sophomores competing to make the sophomore team.  That meant we only played varsity for two years.  But then again, we never lost a game the whole time I was in high school.  When I graduated, we were undefeated in 46 straight games.

I suspect the school had about 1800 students.  In between classes, when the students were in the hall ways, you could feel the floor on the second level rising and falling.  I asked a senior about that and he said, “Oh yea, it does that.”  My homeroom was on the second floor, so I got used to it.  When the Washington Redskins were playing at RFK Stadium, the fans used to get the stands rocking.  It always got me thinking of my High School Harry days.

My homeroom teacher was Pick Dehner, the basketball and baseball coach.  He stood about 6′ 6″ and received All American honors when he played basketball at the University of Illinois.  That was about the time I was born.  He must have hand picked who was in his homeroom because he had almost all of the jocks from our class.  Room 201 was a large study room with over 100 desks.  We met every morning for attendance and announcements (which usually there were none) and then we were off to class.

Pick selected me to do all of his gofer duties, so I designated myself as the Homeroom Class President for all three years.  There was never an election.  Outrageous?  You bet.  But it fell into the category of “Who cares?”  But every time I see it in the Eastlian class year book, I have a chuckle.  Wow, Homeroom Class President for all three years.  I must add that after attending law school, I became quite serious about telling the truth.

My senior year, me and Larry Heise were standing outside our homeroom before school started.  The lovely Alice Hoge walked by and we grabbed her and brought her into Room 201.  There was a supply room right behind Pick’s desk and we put her in there and took our seats.  Then Pick came in and sat down.  The room was deathly silent.  Then the supply room door opened and Alice walked right by Pick and left the room.  Not a word was said.  Then Pick looked at me and shook his head.

I can now safely report that Alice did not suffer any lasting trama from the incident.  There was no need to bring counsellors into the school to advise troubled students who had observed the incident.   It was just another day in the life of East Side High.

The reason I am reflecting on this stupid prank is that I wonder how it would have been handled today.  I’m sure I would have been arrested for false imprisonment – maybe even kidnapping.  Lawyers would have raced to see Alice’s parents explaining that she needed to sue not only me and Larry,  but also the school for letting such an egregious thing happen.  And, of course, Pick would have been in deep Kimchi for not reporting the incident.  Then, the media would look into my past and concluded that everyone should have seen this coming.  They would also find out that a few years earlier, I had asked Alice to go out with me and she had turned me down!  Clearly, this was an act of retribution.

Oh well, fortunately it was the 1950s and people seemed to know the difference between a harmless prank and a willful assault.  Life was good and we all survived East Side High.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com

Copyright 2014

 

 

Random Thoughts

Bloggedy Blog Blog, Part 2

The world is racing by me.  I can’t keep up.  As JFK said, “Life isn’t fair.”  But if my biggest problem is that my blog site is out of control, I shouldn’t complain too loudly.

You know how many emails you get everyday?  Well, it’s the same with me.  So I delete a lot of them without even looking at them.  Groupon, Jockey, Golfsmith, Dick’s, Amazon, Facebook and GoDaddy.  Ping, ping, ping, ping.  They disappear as fast as I can hit the delete button.  I get rid of political stuff just as fast.  I have decided that sending $25 to some political hack is not going to save the world.

GoDaddy supports my blog site.  And, it turns out that 90% of their emails were trying to sell me something.  However, for the last few months, they had been trying to warn me that they were going to shut down the GoDaddy platform that supported my website.  They kept trying to notify me and I kept deleting the message without reading it.  Ping!

Something caught my attention one week before blog doomsday.  I was going through my emails and GoDaddy’s subject line said, “Important Message.”  That saved me.  If I hadn’t taken action, all of my previous blogs would have vanished.  So in the eleventh hour we transferred my 244 blogs over to my new “platform,” WordPress.  I’m sure that WordPress is good, but I just can’t make it work for me.

For example, I used to get one or two comments whenever I posted something.  It’s really great to know someone is out there.  Of course, I have to approve the comment before it is published.  I wrote a blog entitled, “It’s a German Thing” and it set out some problems I had with the German people.  One comment I received and promptly deleted was from a German, who in familiar Deutsch gave me the finger.  Now, with WordPress, the damn comment has reappeared.

Since switching to WordPress, I had been receiving 170 comments a day.  Of course, I can mark them for spam or trash, but it is extremely time consuming and frustrating.  Almost everyone was spam and trying to sell something (on my site!).  I was overwhelmed with spam.  I tried to figure whether there was something in the WordPress settings that would help me.  I finally found a place where I could put  “comment blacklist” words.  If the proposed comment had one of these words in it, then it would not pass GO, but would go directly to spam  I studied my submitted comments and  found that 60 to 70 % included Louis Vuitton.  So I put four items on the comment blacklist:  Louis Vuitton, babyliss, Michael Kors and louboutin.  Guess what?  I have had only six requested comments in the last two weeks!

Under my old GoDaddy Quick Blogcast system, I had a place where people could subscribe to my blog and whenever I published something, they would receive an email of the blog.  I also could check statistics and see how many hits RiceQuips had had in the last day, week or month.  Heady stuff.  Now I am flying blind.  And to make me completely irrelevant, Google can’t find what I have previously published.

I’m going to brag for a moment.  I actually had posts listed on the first page of Google.  Now, they are way back on page 12 and if you click on it, it comes up “Not Found.”  I have been told that Google is a creeping search engine, so it will eventually find me.  It’s been two months.  I wish it would creep a little faster.

I have been told that Google Analytics is the best place to get statistics, but now I can’t log on to Google.  I registered with Google about three years ago.  Google insists that my password is wrong (I wrote it in a book and I am looking right at it).  So I told them that I lost my password (not true), and then, they insisted on texting me my password.  I don’t text.  I know, I know, I’m a dinosaur.  So for my last chance, they asked me to tell them when I opened my Google account, AND, when was the last time I was on it.  I didn’t have a clue to answering either question.

If my air conditioner stopped working, I would get professional help.  If my car shut down, I would get professional help.  Get the picture?  You know those commercials where they say, “Don’t try to do this at home.”  Well, that’s where I’m at.  I have found someone who is going to fix me up.  My old subscribers will again be getting my blogs by email.  New subscribers will too.  I should also be looking at some statistics!  Life may not be fair, but for goodness sakes, don’t sit on your hands.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.co

Copyright 2014

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

 

My Military Daze, Political Thoughts, Random Thoughts

Veterans Administration – Take a Number Sucker

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I think it was a year or so ago when President Obama said he was going to fix the backlog problem at the Veterans Administration.  I am pretty sure he also promised to bring the killers of our Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, to justice.  I think his strategy is to say the right thing at the right time and then hope the people forget about it.  The Media is in his pocket, so they won’t remind anyone.

But unfortunately (for him) the present problems at VA have reminded the public that he hasn’t kept his promise.  So now, on cue, it is announced that Obama is “madder than Hell” over the VA allegations.  Well, that makes me feel a lot better.  The Washington Post had a cartoon a week ago Saturday in which a veteran was entering a VA office.  There was one of those take-a-number machines and sitting right next to the machine was a soldier in a Civil Was uniform!  Loved it.

When I was a young officer, Mr. Kenty, a warrant officer whom I worked with, and had been in the military for over 30 years, told me that there was only one person really interested in my military career and that was me. He started in the Army as a Blacksmith Apprentice.  He loved the day the Army got rid of their horses and he didn’t have to feed them at 0600 hours everyday.  His message about my career was clear and I did my best to keep track of what was happening to me.  I also strongly believe that the same holds true for medical care.  Especially in the military.

Upon retiring, Carole and I continued to receive our medical care through the military, always mindful that we were the only ones interested in our health and wellbeing.  A number of military families, upon retirement, got as far away from military medical care as possible.  That was their way of addressing the issue.  We learned how to get great care within the military.  The thought of using the Veterans Administration never crossed my mind.  If VA was the answer, I have no idea what the question was.

I’ve had only a few experiences with the VA.  None has been good. At the time of my retirement from the Army, I was told to apply to the VA for a disability rating.  I was also told to make a copy of my medical files before VA got them, because they would surely lose them.  They did.  Three times!  But each time they lost them, they found them.  So technically, they didn’t lose them, they were just misplaced.

This all happened 24 years ago, so I’m a little fuzzy on some of the facts.  Other parts of the experience, I remember like it was yesterday.  In applying for the VA disability, you have to list all the things that have fallen apart during your military career.  Then the VA gives you an appointment where they can evaluate your problems.  They set it up so I had five appointments in the same day.  I could receive all of my evaluations that day and be done. Sounded too good to be true.

The first evaluation was with an orthopedic doctor.  I was given a couple of forms to fill out while waiting for the doctor.  The forms were so ambiguous and confusing that I left a lot blank.  When the doctor arrived and saw that I hadn’t completely filled out the forms, he became furious with me. He was screaming at me with some Eastern European accent.  I was so bewildered that I just took it.  It was his play pen and I was thoroughly confused.  Here I had just retired  with 28 years of military service and I was being treated like a truant school child.  I thought about getting him in a hammer lock and giving him options.  But, I had come over to this strange hospital with a mission and this jerk wasn’t going to get me off track.  He eventually examined me and sent me on to my next appointment.

I made it to my next appointment which was with an eye doctor. He was young and friendly.  We chatted for a few minutes and then he asked to see my glasses (a reasonable request).  My glasses had been made in Germany which made the bifocal portion different. In the US, you can feel the bifocal portion of the lens extending from the front of the lenses.  My glasses had the built-up portion of the bifocal on the back of the lens.  The doctor noticed this and got all excited.  He asked about where I got the glasses and I explained to him that they came from Germany.  He asked if he could borrow them for a few minutes and I said, “Sure.”  He didn’t come back for an hour.  I just sat there.  I eventually went out to the receptionist and told him I was missing my next appointment.  He told me not to worry.  It would be OK.  The doctor came back as if he had been gone for only ten minutes and sent me on my way.

The next doctor concluded I had high blood pressure.  Duh!  I was delighted I hadn’t blown a leak.  The next doctor was a psychologist who asked me how my day was going.  I smiled at him and said, “Fine.”  Way back in 1962, I had a buddy going to ROTC Summer Camp at Fort Sill (I was also attending).  His car broke down three times on his trip from Missouri to Oklahoma.  He got there late and they rushed him through the physical.  Finally he saw a psychologist who asked him how his day was going.  He went into a rant about the trip down to Fort Sill.  They kept him under observation for three days.  So whenever a psychologist asks me how my day is going, I smile and say, “Fine.”  I also tell them I love my parents.

A year later, after “misplacing” my file a few times, I was notified that I was being awarded a 20% disability.  That came to a little over $100 a month.  Sound great?  Well, not so great.  The $100 they award is subtracted from my retirement pay.  The only benny is that I don’t have to pay taxes on the VA money.  Whoopee!

My only other VA experience was a screw up on my part.  The year I was assigned to Northwestern University to get a Masters Degree in Criminal Law, we lived in Evanston, Illinois.  Every couple of weeks we would go up to the Great Lakes Naval Station Commissary.  We would pass the hospital on the way to the commissary.  I had messed up my knee in my previous assignment in Germany and called up to the Great Lakes Naval Hospital and got an appointment.

On the day of my appointment, I drove up to the hospital and went inside.  I found the room number of the orthopedic section and headed there.  I found the room and went in.  There was a receptionist sitting at a desk.  I told her who I was and that I had an appointment.  She said, “Well the doctor isn’t coming in today, but if you would like to sit down and read some magazines, go right ahead.  Whoa!  I headed back down to the reception section and got in line behind a young kid.  He was big as a house, but the
little woman behind the counter was very upset with him.  He had lost his medical card (and not for the first time).  When it was my turn, I told her I thought I was in the wrong place.  She starred at me and said, “Are you sure?”

It turned out that rather than going to the Naval Hospital, I had gone to a VA mental hospital.  I smiled at her, told her I was fine and that I loved my parents and got the hell out of there.

Written by 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