On the Horns of a Dilemma

Image via WikipediaI have always tried to be respectful of the religious beliefs of other folks.  In my past, I have been active in fundamentalist Christian denominations.  Currently, I would say my beliefs are in flux, though I do still consider myself to be Christian.  While a lot of my social views would be in conflict with my former congregations, I still respect and support the right of those congregations to espouse those views.  In the immortal words of John Lennon, "Whatever gets you through the night, is alright, is alright."

The reason I bring this up is because I am facing a bit of a dilemma within the Dickster household.  A few years ago, my wife decided that she was dissatisfied with the Catholic Church and went on a pilgrimage, as it were.  She went with my support.  She ended up deciding to join the Mormon church. Again, I gave her my full support and attended her baptism into that church.  She also understood that I had no interest, and still have no interest in becoming a Mormon.  Nothing wrong with it, just not my thing.

The reason this is now a dilemma within our household is that she has recently informed me that the missionaries in her church want to talk with me.  She has told them repeatedly that I have no interest in joining their church, and she would prefer that they not push the issue.  They are continuing to push the issue.  The first time my wife told me that they wanted to come talk to me, she said that they might be coming by that day and the reason was to talk to me.  She had told me ahead of time not to answer the door.  Sure enough, they showed up that afternoon, and I did not bother to answer the door.

Recently, she informed me that they dropped by again when I wasn't home.  Their purpose was to talk to me. Again, I want to be respectful of the religious beliefs of other folks, but at the same time, I do not want those folks trying to force their beliefs down my throat.  My wife has repeatedly told them not to speak with me.  She knows all too well that I can be a bit of an asshole if I feel that I have been sufficiently provoked.  OK, she would probably say that I can be a bit of an asshole even if I haven't been provoked.

The way I see it, I have two choices.  I can continue to avoid speaking with the missionaries.  This way, I can be respectful of their beliefs and continue to support my wife's decision to be a part of their congregation.  Or, I can speak with them.  If I speak with them, there is a pretty good chance I can be respectful and firm enough to convince them that I have no interest in their denomination.  There is also the chance that if they push the issue to hard that I could say some things that would be less than respectful.  So, if you were me, would you continue with avoidance, or would you talk with the missionaries?

A Bittersweet Day-Update

Image by sofafort via FlickrLast week, I posted about the efforts that my wife and I have been undertaking in trying to get our 16 year old son placed in a residential educational facility on Maryland's Eastern Shore.  After months of battling with the school system, they finally agreed that it would be the best place for our son. I talked about the mixed feelings that I had regarding that decision.

At the time, we were not sure when his start date at the new facility would be.  There were a few more forms that needed to be updated and filled out.  Yesterday, my wife called me to inform me that we now had his start date, Monday, November 8th.  I had just left the office and was on the beltway headed to my part time job.  I wished she had waited until I got home last night because my eyes immediately began to fill with tears.  Less than two weeks away.  My immediate thought was, "I'm not ready."

This morning, I woke up thinking about a lot of different things regarding the situation.  All of which made me tear up a bit.  At times, I wish I were stronger about these things.  There is the question of how to tell him what is going to happen, or whether to tell him anything at all.  If we tell him ahead of time that he is going to a new school, he will drop to the ground and refuse to budge.  I suppose we will take him and try our best to explain it to him when we drop him off.  He loves crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, so hopefully that will get him out the door.

While there is a huge part of me that isn't ready for this to happen, there are times when I want it to happen now.  Those times are when he angers me.  Earlier today was one of those moments.  He asked me if we could go to Borders in Annapolis Mall.  That in and of itself isn't bad, but we have had two bad incidents with him at Borders recently when he wanted me to order a DVD for him that you can not buy, usually it is a DVD of Wheel of Fortune or another game show.

He doesn't fully comprehend that you can not buy everything.  I have recently started downloading game shows for him off of YouTube and burning them on to DVD for him so that he will have them.  Still, he wanted to go to Borders.  He told me he wanted to go there so I could order him a Wheel of Fortune DVD.  I tried to explain that we could not get that there, and we were not going to go.

He immediately went into one of his meltdowns.  For those of you with experience with an autistic child, you know what those can be like.  For those of you who don't, you would think it is a temper tantrum, but it really is more than that. He dropped to the ground and started getting angry.  Anything near him, he picked up and threw across the room.  At one point, his glasses went flying.  Still it is better to have had the meltdown here than at Borders.  I wanted to drop him off to the school right then.

There is so much that needs to be done between now and then.  He is going to need a whole new wardrobe because the school has uniforms.  We will also need to supply him with a fresh supply of his own toiletries and such.  He usually share mine at home.  It would be nice to have a party for him before he left, but we already have plans for the next two weekends, so we won't be able to do that. 

The school usually has a rule that we won't be able to see him for 5 weeks, but with the timing of his start date and Thanksgiving, I think he will only be gone for two weeks before coming home for a long weekend.  When he goes back after Thanksgiving weekend, he would be back at school for four weeks before Christmas break.   Hopefully, the transition won't be too hard on any of us.         

H.R. 4646

Image via WikipediaImagine if you will, that you have a job. For the sake of simplicity, I will use round numbers. Now, lets say that every pay period you make $2000. After the government takes the withholding for federal, state, and Social Security taxes, you are left with a net check of $1500.

So far, so good. Now imagine that you take your check to the bank, or maybe you even have direct deposit to make your life easier. The way the money gets to the bank doesn't matter. Now the bank takes a $15 fee out of the check you brought to cash or deposit.

It doesn't stop there. After you get paid, you have bills to pay. Now again, it doesn't matter if you pay the bills using online bill pay or you write a check. To keep things simple, let's say you write a check to your mortgage company for $750 to cover principal, interest and anything else rolled into your mortgage. Your mortgage company adds another $7.50 to your bill as another fee.

Now you need to eat, right? So you head out to your local grocery store to pick up your shopping for the week. You go to the checkout with your groceries, and after everything is added up, along with any sales tax, the total comes to $100. You swipe our credit or debit card to pay the bill and have to add another $1 fee to the total.

Is this just another way for those greedy banks to profit off of the little man? Not exactly. This is exactly the scenario that Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA) has proposed in H.R. 4646 AKA The Debt Free America Act. Congressman Fattah is proposing a 1% tax on all transactions.  The stated purpose of this tax is to pay down the national debt of $13 trillion within 7 years of passage.  The funds are ONLY to be used to pay down the debt.  In addition to paying down the debt, HR 4646 states as a goal the repeal of the federal income tax after the debt is paid down.

On the surface, the idea of paying down the debt and the elimination of the income tax is appealing.  It is what lies beneath the surface that is disturbing.  First, to pay down the debt in seven years would take about $2 trillion out of the economy every year.  I am sure that will help the already anemic economy, NOT!  Second, the text of the bill states that the "tentative" income tax rate will be 0% beginning in 2018.  Have you ever known Congress to give up any taxes they have coming in?  They will find a way to change the law to allow income taxes to continue. Lastly, we have heard before that certain taxes would be used solely for one purpose, like Social Security.  How is that working out?

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Addictive Personality?

Almost three weeks ago I returned from a business trip to Atlanta.  At that time, I posted this photo that I had the pleasure to have had taken with NASCAR great Richard Petty.  At the time I was particularly proud to post the photo, because when I was a kid, he was my favorite race car driver.  Part of the reason, and maybe the main reason, was that we shared the same first name.

As I said, when I posted the photo, I was proud to do so.  A couple days later I was looking at the photo again, and all I could see was my big belly hanging over my belt and was disgusted.  I decided that I was going to start eating better and try to lose some weight.  If you pay any attention to the BMI charts, which I don't, I probably need to lose between 50-60 pounds.  As much as I would like to lose close to that much, I would be ecstatic if I could lose between 30-40 pounds.

In the past, when I put my mind to it, I can stick to an eating plan fairly well.  When I am following the plan, I often do not feel like I am depriving myself of anything.  Once, I followed the SugarBusters program by cutting out all white sugar and flour.  I was able to stick with it for several months and lost about 30 pounds.  It is only after I stopped following a program that I have problems.  Once I start eating the bad stuff again, when I try to get back with the program that I start to feel deprived.

So, two weeks ago, I stepped on the scale and weighed more than I ever had in the past.  That day, I decided to cut out a lot of the junk food that I had been eating.  I started packing my lunch and some snacks to have during the day.  Lunch basically became a salad, and for snacks I would have some fruit or maybe a protein bar.  Things have been going pretty good so far in sticking with the plan.

The problem comes with my job.  My position is a buyer for candy and snacks for the company I work for.  There is constantly candy or junk food around the office.  The other day, a vendor sent in some samples of some dessert items that he wanted us to consider, some cheesecakes and other cakes.  Some of my favorites.  As part of my job, we were sampling some of the items.  I had a piece of the cheesecake, then tried to go about my day.  I don't know if was that bit of decadence back in the diet, but for the rest of the day I craved junk food.  It made me think I had an addictive personality.

It made me think about other areas of my life.  I don't really think that I am "addicted" to anything, but I see patterns.  Take alcohol for instance.  I can go weeks without having any alcohol to drink and not miss it.  However, if I have it in the house, I will drink it, probably more than I should.  The same with certain foods and even fairly innocuous things like playing games on Facebook.  They aren't even all that fun, but I find myself playing two or three of them every night.

I am going to start taking a closer look at some of my habits and hobbies.  It isn't that any of them are particularly bad, but it just seems like I have a difficult time doing things in moderation.  I can't seem to stop at a bowl of ice cream, I have to have the whole pint.  It isn't just a couple glasses of wine, but four or five.  Instead of going to bed at 10pm, I spend an extra hour on Facebook games or doing blogging stuff.  Time to get some balance back.   

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• Bacon and cheesecake 'alter brain like heroin' (canada.com)
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• Addictive Behavior... Why Do Some People Get Addicted to Things and Others Do Not? (socyberty.com)

Music Monday-Toby Keith "Bullets in the Gun"

I really like songs that tell a story.  This song tells the story of a drifter who unwittingly becomes an outlaw after falling for the charms of a dancing girl.  It doesn't end well for the guy.   I particularly like the way they produced this little mini movie to go with the words to the song. 

Toby Keith   More CMT Music   More CMT Music Videos

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Pharmacy Frustrations

Image via WikipediaFor the most part, I have been fairly happy with my current health insurance.  We have a fairly low copay with our primary care physician.  If we need any vaccinations or tests done, they are all covered.  There is no deductible to meet, other than $50 for our prescriptions.  While a great deal of the premium is covered by my employer, our share is fairly expensive.

Last year at this time, I had the lowest cost option from the options my employer had offered.  Unfortunately, we discovered that there were a lot of things that weren't completely covered, plus we had a deductible that we had to meet.  My current plan costs me nearly twice as much as last year, but it is worth it to not have the deductible.

As I said, I have been fairly happy with the current plan.  There have been some things on the pharmacy side of the coverage that have been a bit frustrating and/or confusing.  We currently have a three tier formulary plan for prescriptions.  Our copay is $10 for generic, $25 for branded drugs that are on the formulary, and $40 for branded drugs that are not on the formulary.

At times, the formulary has been particularly frustrating because it is constantly changing.  I had one prescription that the first time I had it filled was on the formulary, and was charged $25.  When I went to have it refilled, it was no longer on the formulary and they wanted to charge me $40.  Then there was a generic medication that we thought should be $10, but they said it wasn't on the formulary, so we ended up paying close to $40.

Our most recent battles with the insurance company have involved prescriptions for my son.  There have been two occasions where the insurance would not cover the full amount of the prescription that the doctor prescribed.  One involved a medication that came in 10mg tablets and 20 mg tablets.  The doctor wanted our son to take 30 mg per day.  They would only allow one 20mg table per day.

The second one was a little more vexing.  The doctor had been prescribing a 1mg tablet to be taken twice per day.  With some of my son's recent issues, the doctor decided to increase the dosage to one tablet in the morning, and two tablets at night.  In their infinite wisdom, the insurance company will only cover two tablets per day.  I guess they know more than the doctor. 

The most frustrating thing about this one is that the medication comes in 1mg, 2mg, 3mg, and 4mg.  If the doctor wanted to prescribe two 2mg tablets per day for a total of 4mg per day, and they would cover that.  However, they will not cover three 1mg tablets per day for a total of 3mg per day.  To my simple way of thinking, that just doesn't make sense.

Related articles

• Medical Insurance Co-Pays Increase in 2010 (prweb.com)
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Call Me Senator

Remember when (Hopefully soon to be ex) Senator Barbara Boxer chastised General Michael Walsh for calling her "Ma'am" instead of "Senator" during a hearing before a Senate committee?  If you want to see my reaction to that particular incident, you can see it at my post entitled "What a Bitch."

The reason I bring up that matter again is because Right Change has posted a new video by film maker David Zucker of "Airplane" and "Naked Gun" fame.  It is just too funny not to post here.  I heard the audio last night on the Mark Levin Show.  He was right when he said you get the full effect watching the video.

Right Change says that Zucker was upset with Boxer's showing of disrespect to the military and made the video "to apologize for having voted for her in previous elections."  I think the video is hilarious but makes a potent statement as well.  Hope you enjoy it.

Call Me Senator from RightChange on Vimeo.

Related articles

• Zucker: Sorry for backing Boxer (hotair.com)
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• 'Call Me Madam': Let This Video Be My Apology for Once Supporting Sen. Boxer (chicagonow.com)