My Substitute Reality -You're just jealous cause the little voices only talk to me-

Friday November 8, 2013

It’s Not Personal

Filed under: Family,Personal,Politics — don @ 6:48 pm

Honest.  It’s the idea and not the person that I get riled up at.  I know it seems like I’m attacking the person but I’m really just attacking the idea.

Ideas like we should do another stimulus because the first one didn’t spend enough money to really stimulate.  We are $17 TRILLION in debt.  I think it’s time to stop spending.

Take a look at this link sometime.  http://www.usdebtclock.org/  Check out the box labeled “DEBT PER CITIZEN”.  Right now that box reads $54,037.  That’s my share, my wife’s share, my kids share, and even my grandkids share.  That means my 1 year old grandson Emeric currently “owes” over $54,000.

Of course someone on the left will say I’m looking at it wrong.  My answer is you’re looking at it wrong if you can’t understand the simple fact that when you find yourself in a deep hole the first thing you should do is stop digging.

You can’t spend your way out of debt.  It’s logically impossible.  But that’s what the left wants to do.  And that’s what I’m angry at.  Not the people.  The ideas.  Some of the people I love and would do anything for.  Some, not so much.

I watch O’reilly and quite often he has far left people on his show.  He gets into shouting matches with them but at the end of the day they are friends.  I would hope those who’s political leanings are different than mine will do the same.

And finally I’m not a Republican.  I don’t think the Republicans have the answer anymore than the Democrats.  I think the Republicans need to stay out of my bedroom and the Democrats need to stay out of my wallet.  But I do think there’s a lot more damage being done to this country by the Democrats than the Republicans.  I think the Democrats are fundamentally changing this country.  And it doesn’t need to be fundamentally changed.  It needs to get back to what our founding fathers had in mind.

Thursday September 19, 2013

2013 National League West Champions

Filed under: Personal — don @ 6:31 pm

ladodgers

Saturday April 7, 2012

MyFitnessPal

Filed under: Food,Personal — don @ 10:39 pm

Jenny and I use a phone app called MyFitnessPal to track our food, exercise and weight loss. Now you can see how I’m doing by clicking on the link up above. It will likely only update once a week because that’s how often I weigh myself. If I do it too often I get frustrated but I find I typically lose somewhere between 2 and 3 lbs a week or at least I have since beginning my diet.

As of today I’m down 20 lbs with 90 more to go.

Sunday November 20, 2011

8 Years and Counting

Filed under: Family,Personal — don @ 10:22 am

I haven’t made a blog post in quite a while but nothing much has happened around here. I’ve been wondering what I could write about and this morning I decided I should write about a few things but mainly about what November 17th means to me and my family.

As most of you who read this blog know I used to drink quite a bit. That’s an understatement. I used to drink a LOT. I always knew I was an alcoholic but I kept telling myself I was a “functioning alcoholic” because I was able to keep a job.

Of course I kept ignoring the fact my 2nd marriage ended because of my drinking and I was fast approaching my 3rd ended marriage and then something happened that made me realize I needed to change my life.

That thing was a DUI in August of 2003.

The really sad part of this story is that I believed I was innocent and actually took it to trial. Predictably, and thankfully, I lost the trial but the judge was smart enough to know that I needed help and sentenced me to a treatment center and 100 AA meetings. I am a firm believer that he and the people who helped me during that time saved my life. I believe if I had just pleaded guilty that I wouldn’t have had the epiphany that losing a trial caused.

The day I lost the trial and the day I stopped drinking was November 17th, 2003.

I spent a few months going to a treatment center and about 100 days going to AA meeting and during that time I came to realize that many of the bad things in my life were caused by my drinking.

I also came to realize that the woman I was married to was a saint. Thankfully she didn’t leave me although looking back I wonder why.

Last night I went to an AA meeting and took a cake for my 8th birthday. As I told my story to the group it hit me that I really wasn’t embarrassed about being an alcoholic anymore and this morning when I decided to write a blog post I decided it was time to share this publicly.

The last 8 years have been so much better than the previous 30 that I spent half in a fog.

I apologize to everyone that I hurt during that time. I wish that I had been able to see what I was earlier but I can’t change that, I can only learn from it.

Today I have no compulsion to drink. I thank my higher power for that. Today I can think much more clearly and I try to treat people better. I still have a long way to go but I’m taking it one day at a time.

Monday September 12, 2011

Shingles

Filed under: Personal — don @ 4:28 pm

As most of you know I’m recovering from Shingles.

It takes quite a bit of effort to write anything coherent so I’ll just hit the high spots and fill in the details over the coming days.

Two weekends ago on Monday August 29th I stayed home from work with what I thought was a cold. I felt weak and I had a lot of sneezing and sniffles. That went away but the next week around Wednesday I started getting a bad headache. The headache continued and I took Friday off from work.

By Saturday I was starting to feel like a tooth on my left side was becoming infected. On Monday I called my dentist and asked him for some antibiotics and pain medicine and said I would make an appointment on Tuesday.

By Tuesday I was feeling worse and I had a slight “cold sore” on my lip and was starting to get a rash on my forehead on the left side. When I visited the dentist he said he couldn’t find a bad tooth and that he thought I should see my MD because it seemed viral to him.

I went to urgent care on Tuesday night and they diagnosed it as Shingles. They sent me home with some prescriptions that we got filled for Acyclovir.

The next day it was hurting a lot more and my ear was starting to swell. I called my regular doctor but he was on vacation so I dealt with his backup. He gave me a little stronger med but when I asked about seeing him I was told it wouldn’t be until the 26th.

On Thursday it was becoming very difficult to stand the pain and my ear had swelled to the point where I couldn’t hear because the canal was shut. I called my doctor again and asked both for something stronger and if I could come in as soon as possible. When I hadn’t heard back from them I went back to urgent care.

At urgent care I was seen by a doctor in training and a doctor. They agreed that I needed to go to Emergency which I did.

At emergency the doctor said it was shingles with a secondary infection. He said the secondary infection was Cellulitis. He also said he wanted to admit me so they could treat it aggressively.

I went in that night and they ended up putting me in isolation because of the open vesicles.

I spent the next 3 days getting massive amounts of antibiotics, steriods, and various pain medication including morphine and gabapentin. I got out yesterday but am still taking Acyclovir, Prednisone, and Vicodin.

I understand it will likely take from 2 weeks to 2 months to heal. I hope it’s closer to the former but we shall see.

Thanks to everyone who has wished me good luck and said prayers. I’ll take anything I can get.

Saturday June 12, 2010

Michelle’s Disneyland Birthday

Filed under: Camera/Photography,Family,Life,Personal — don @ 10:37 pm

Michelle turned 22 on Thursday so on Wednesday she invited a bunch of us to Disneyland. There were 16 of us that made it. The pictures are posted in my Gallery.

Sunday September 27, 2009

Rice Cooker

Filed under: Food,Life,Personal — don @ 7:01 pm

There’s a store a mile or so away called Mr. Stuff. It’s got all kinds of one of a kind and small amounts of well, stuff for sale. A few weeks ago I was in there and they had a rice cooker for $15. I was on my bike so I had no place to put it. Today Betty and I were out getting a new light for out front and I suggested we should see if they still had the rice cooker. They did. We bought it and I cooked some rice when we got home. I think we got a good deal.
rc850

Saturday July 25, 2009

A Note From Pamela Geller

Filed under: Life,Personal,Politics — don @ 10:51 am

I saw this on a friend’s Facebook wall. It says pretty much what I’ve been trying to say.

I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied history all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes, these exist but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about 10 – 15 years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demanded and then codified into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people whom we knew could never pay back? Why? We learned recently that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September.

Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “We the People,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?). We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about.) The list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x 10. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important.)

Mr.. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change…radical change. Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now. This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning.

I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker.. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully them into submission.

And then he was duly elected to office, with a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe , and across the world.

He did it with a compliant media – Did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and…change. And the people surely got what they voted for. (Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.) Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.

Don’t forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years – a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency – it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong, close my eyes, have another latte and ignore what is transpiring around me.

Some people scoff at me; others laugh or think I am foolish, naive, or both.. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe – and why I believe it. I pray I am wrong. But, I do not think I am.

About the author via Google….

Pamela “Atlas” Geller began her publishing career at The New York Daily News and subsequently took over operation of The New York Observer as Associate Publisher. She left The Observer after the birth of her fourth child, but remained involved in various projects including American Associates, Ben Gurion University and being Senior Vice-President Strategic Planning and Performance Evaluation at The Brandeis School.

After 9/11, Atlas had the veil of oblivion violently lifted from her consciousness and immersed herself in the education and understanding of geopolitics, Islam, terror, foreign affairs and imminent threats the mainstream media and the government wouldn’t cover or discuss.

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