Category: Trials and Tribulations

Whatcha think, Joe was perfect?

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Homophone Challenged

That is homophone, not homophobe, you silly goose.

On the off chance that you do not know what a homophone is and did not parse out the Greek – homo meaning same, phone meaning voice or utterance – here is the dictionary definition:

One of two or more words pronounced alike but different in meaning or derivation or spelling (such as the words to, too, and two)

Common examples of homophones include:

      • berry – bury
      • bread – bred
      • lead  – led
      • cell – sell
      • sent – scent – cent
      • flex – flecks
      •  weather-whether
      • guessed-guest
      • band – banned
      • and many, many more

I do not recall having an issue with homophones in Continue reading “Homophone Challenged”

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Almost an Ace?

Yesterday turned out nicer than they had prognosticated, still a little chilly, definitely a little windy, but no rain.  I decided at the last minute that I would take advantage of the day and play some golf.  Not being nice enough for Lil Blu, I threw my golf clubs into my pick-em-up truck and headed off to the course.  I ended up playing by myself which was okay. I don’t always enjoy my own company, but most of time I find it reasonably acceptable which is more than most folks find my society.

Being early in the golfing season, having done a fair amount of yard work Tuesday, I was a little rusty and more than a little stiff.  I struggled a bit on the front side, but my game started to come around towards the end of that nine.  I arrived at the twelfth hole  after going bogey, bogey, par, par on the last four holes.  That is good for me.  The twelfth hole is Continue reading “Almost an Ace?”

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After 3 Years – Medicare Success

It only took the freak’n government – well, Medicare – three, count ém… 1… 2… 3… years to find the ‘i’ that they lost.  Perhaps if it had been a capital ‘I’ they could have done it in two years.

For reasons completely unknown to either one of us, Señora’s last name became misspelled in the Medicare system when she became Medicare eligible.  Somehow it went from Weinhaus to Wenhaus.  It was correct in the Social Security’s system, but wrong in Medicare.

No biggie, right? Wrong.  This has caused claims from doctors, hospitals, laboratories, etc. to be Continue reading “After 3 Years – Medicare Success”

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3rd Time is the Charm    

If you have ever studied any human anatomy, you will know we are pretty much the same under the hood.  However, there are a multitude of recorded variations and abnormalities from the standard model.  I once had a physician, a D.O., who would frequently give shots and draw blood himself.  He called the veins in the antecubital fossa – the area where they normally draw blood – in one of my arms, alien veins. He went on to state that only about five percent of the population had my particular venous configuration.  Heaven forbid I should adhere to a convention like bilateral symmetry.

Several years ago I was in a doctor’s office and they needed Continue reading “3rd Time is the Charm    “

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I Want To Live by Helen Imagene (Jean) Jones Felfe

This was an easy book to read.  This was a hard book to read.

It was an easy book to read as it was well written.  The first part of the book started off a little slow for me, but persevere, it picks up quickly.  After reading the whole book those initial chapters almost seem written in a different style.  Perhaps that was intentional.  Once I got into the meat of the memoir I found it to be a real page turner.  It was an easy book to read as there was Continue reading “I Want To Live by Helen Imagene (Jean) Jones Felfe”

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The Year I Almost Went to The Masters

When I moved back to Oklahoma from Rhode Island I went to work for Coburn Optical.  Their main line of business is the manufacturing of the machines that other companies use to modify lenses to mount in eye glasses.  They also have a division that takes orders to modify and mount lenses.  I was young, still working on my education, and my work experience had been in restaurants, factories and warehouses.  I was a warehouseman there.  I worked there from 1973 to 1976, leaving to move to Oklahoma City to pursue my educational goals.

My father had left his position with Kaman Aerospace and moved back to Muskogee, OK where my mother had been living for a while.  Looking around for a job he found one with Coburn and started there shortly after I left.  He moved up rapidly and after a while was managing the division that prepared lenses for other companies.  Part of his responsibilities involved making Continue reading “The Year I Almost Went to The Masters”

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Just call me Dr. Frankenstein

Señora and I went for a short stay a Pere Marquette Lodge to celebrate the February triplet of her birthday, Valentine’s Day and the anniversary of when we met, all happening within five days of each other.

Dr. Frankenstein’s Most Current Operation

For reasons inexplicable, early in this couple’s fiesta I related to Señora a behavior my ex developed late in Continue reading “Just call me Dr. Frankenstein”

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A Southern, Jewish Tradition – Revisited

I originally published the article below  in 2014, and since it is about to be the first of the year, I thought that it would be a good time to revisit it.  One thing that has changed is that instead of Señora doing the cooking on New Year’s Day, it is yours truly.  And just for the record my collard greens are to die for… if I say so myself.

I performed this tradition when I was single, but then it consisted of the opening up a can of black-eye peas and a package of frozen turnip greens and Continue reading “A Southern, Jewish Tradition – Revisited”

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My Retirement in Crypto-Currency?

“In fact, even today coins and banknotes are a rare form of money. The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion. More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers. Accordingly, most business transactions are executed by moving electronic data from one computer file to another, without any exchange of physical cash.”

The above quote is from the book Sapiens – A Brief History of Mankind by Yuval Noah Harai.

I started wondering if for some reason electricity generation became an issue then all those 1s and 0s, those bits and bytes in a myriad of computers around the globe would be naught.  There goes 35 or 40 years of hard work, saving , investing and retirement dreams. Of course if electric generation went away there would be logarithmically worse problems on the third rock from the sun.

60 trillion dollars worth of money in the world and 50 trillion of that is in digital form… talk about your cyrpto-currency.  Have you ever noticed the first 3 letters of this new fad in “money” is C-R-Y said the Curmudgeon channeling his inner Seinfeld.

And so it does not go… I hope.

And here is a country worried about electricity: Winter is coming: The ‘best country in the world’ is planning to ban electric cars amid the energy crisis. Is it time to revisit oil stocks? Here are 3 big plays

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I Taught Señora a New Cuss Word

I taught Señora a new four-letter word.  Well I might have had she been home.  All couples have their origin stories; our tale involves a lot of off-color words.

What got me scandalizing the neighbors Saturday was that one of the rear drive wheels of my new Toro lawnmower came off.  This mower is so new that just yesterday my check to pay off the credit card I charged it on cleared. I had ordered it online from Home Depot as they did not have it in stock at the Chesterfield store.  When I unboxed the mower I was glad to see Continue reading “I Taught Señora a New Cuss Word”