The end of the Man Cold

I think men have taken about enough of this so called “Man Cold” abuse.

When we are sick, we are sick.  How about you girls give us a break?

If there is a sound in the middle of the night, who has to grab the baseball bat and go investigate?  

Who has to try to get back to sleep after saying, “I thought you weren’t going to dry your exercise shoes in the dryer anymore.”

If the kid selling candy for his band uniform, space camp, or book of the month club gives you that sweet smile, who ends up pulling $20 out of their wallet?

If you finally settle into a Sunday afternoon nap and a scruffy looking man is knocking on the door, who is awakened abruptly to answer the knock?

Do you want to know if your man is really sick?

Tell him that two of his buddies are at the door with their fishing gear.  If he doesn't get up to check this out, he is sick.

Take care of him instead of making fun of him.

Otherwise, when your car breaks down in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere in the middle of winter and you call your husband to tell him, he might reply:  “Oh how cute.  You have a car cold.”

I think that any woman using the term “Man Cold” should be shot at dawn, but in a genuine act of mercy I would agree to reduce the sentence to daily floggings.

Carnival Cruise Lines: A mixed bag of fun and frustration

I have spent close to a year at sea.  Granted, most of it was courtesy of the United States Navy.  There is something special about falling asleep off the shore of one country and waking up near another country or continent. 

Marines and sailors are billeted in close quarters but time at sea is always fun, well, mostly fun.

There are the occasional plumbing problems, rough seas, or long periods at sea without resupply.  You can only eat so much carrot-raisin salad before you are ready to invade a small country just to get some meat and potatoes.

Having long ago retired as a Marine officer, I decided it was time to go back to sea.  This time it would just all be for fun.  I booked on Carnival.  It offered a 5 day cruise out of Galveston, Texas.  Booking and room selection was fairly easy online.  I added some excursions and then I added their internet service package.  I paid about $90 for internet for this short week but thought that it would be worth it to share some photos as we traveled.

For all of the good things on this cruise, the internet was very disappointing.  I was never able to upload a single photo and received next to nothing in downloads.  By mid-week, I was locked out of the service altogether.

It was sort of like having the ship capsize and nobody really cared about righting it.

The cruise director made a general announcement apologizing for the service going down, but my service was never restored.  I was told by Carnival service people on board that the company would send me a survey to address my concern.

I enjoyed the cruise, have booked more cruises with Carnival but have to say that I am very disappointed at the integrity level of the Carnival operations in general.

After my first contact with Carnival was ignored, I again contacted them about the problem.  A few days later, I received an email that said we are sorry that you were disappointed but we are not going to do anything about it.

As with many things in this life, you get a mixed bag.

The cruise was great and even included a special performance by Matt Gumm.  Matt is a comedian that I have seen many times in Branson, Missouri.  He was the highlight of the cruise and happened to be a guest who just offered to entertain us.

The food was good and the wait times were not long.  Guy’s Burgers and Pirate Pizza were the favorites—even over the fine fare at the evening meals.  The staff was always upbeat and did what they could to make sure that everyone enjoyed the cruise.

Like I said, I booked again but this time a little wiser.

When I was aboard ship as a Marine, integrity was everything; not so much with Carnival.  I am skeptical about any promises made by the Carnival management.

I still expect to have a good time on my next cruise enjoying so many things done in first class fashion, but always with one eye open to see what less than honorable ploys are afoot to make the cruise more profitable by selling something that won’t be delivered, replaced, or refunded.

Caveat emptor

For Memorial Day

The Gettysburg Address is one of the most memorable speeches even given by a world leader.  As we approach this Memorial Day and take a moment to remember those who gave their last full measure of devotion some 151 years ago, let us take a brief moment to remember them.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

President Abraham Lincoln

November 1863

Confessions of a Marine Officer

I have only shared this with a few people, mostly close friends.  It is not something that you normally share with the general public.

This time I make an exception.

During my time in the Marine Corps, I was twice accused of being tactful.

I hope this eases your mind.  I was acquitted on both counts!

A perspective of time and history

It is an ignoble truth that we look at time and history from our own unique but minuscule perspective condemning much from our myopic vista and applauding things of which we know nothing in fact but which have acquired a shiny veneer from an earlier time.

With courage not complaint

Everyone seems to have voiced their opinion about the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare except me.

I have not ventured into this quagmire for the simple reason that it is a quagmire, will surely drain both life and energy from me should I enter the debate.  So I will not enter the debate, but perhaps offer a perspective to relieve the current debilitating gridlock.

The founding fathers did what no other nation on earth had ever done before.  They put forth a government that divided power among a federal government, state governments, and individuals. It further divided power at the federal level among a legislative, executive, and judicial branch.  It was the epitome of government by the people and an enduring model for keeping tyranny at bay.

It did not provide a problem solving organization, but did provide the opportunity for seizing opportunities, solving problems, and committing the full force of the United States to any cause that was resolved by the executive and the legislature.

Looking back, I would have to give these insightful, faithful, creative, and bold men an A+ on the framework for our nation.

That said, they never saw the issue of health care coming.  The first vaccine—ever—came into existence only a few years after our Constitution was adopted.

In the late 18^th century, health care was as much a part of the daily conversation as was space travel.  If your town had a doctor, you were blessed in a very limited sort of way.  Only in the last half century has this idea of health care moved into the mainstay of daily life.

Organ transplants, open heart surgery, placing stints into arteries would have been the stuff of science fiction at the time our Constitution was drafted and for more than a hundred years thereafter.

It has been just over a century since doctors began attempting open heart surgery.  It has been less than half a century since the first heart transplant.

The problem with health care is that we are all rookies.

Taxes have been around forever.

Funding armies and navies is old hat to almost every nation.

Negotiating treaties is as old as government itself.

But health care is a horse of a different color, and we seem to ignore this thinking that we are all experts.

The only thing that seems to progress as fast as modern medicine is modern technology.  Nobody wants to be caught with a phone that is more than 2 years old.  That’s just not the way things work in this 21^st century.

We don’t keep our phones for more than 24 months, but we believe that the existing system of health care is a viable longstanding model or take the other extreme and think that the Affordable Care Act will bring balance to what seems to be an industry that is out of control.

Arguments on both sides have validity. 

Government control of a private industry inherently is problematic.

The availability of certain services for only a select segment of our nation seems un-American.

What are we to do?

We as individual citizens are to tell our president and lawmakers that we elected them to serve the people of this great nation.  We sent them to take on a tough set of challenges believing them to be tougher.

Huddling up with only those who think the same way you do and pointing fingers at anyone else hardly shows the meddle that we need from our leaders at this time.

The budget needs fixed—to include taking on this monster known as the national debt.

Health care must be addressed as an issue unique to the current century.  This is a new challenge.  We should approach it with the same tenacity and dedication and national commitment that got us to the moon.  That hadn’t been done before either.

All elected officials must abstain from acrimony, vitriolic tones, and pity parties.  This is a time for men and women of courage to step forward, and those entrenched in petty politics—no party has clean gloves here—to pack up and go home.

Had our founding fathers suffered the same mindset as our current slate of national leaders, we would still being paying taxes to the Queen.

We are in a mess.

It is not hopeless.  Men and women of courage can come together and tackle our nation’s problems and seek opportunities, and work for the common good.

We all have some sort of political foundation that we believe is best for this country.  Bitterness and blaming while holding fast to my way or not way at all does not befit men and women of courage.

Were these same men and women in the armed forces, they would be considered cowards for running and hiding from hostile fire.  They are not soldiers.  They have chosen a different calling, but have become so entrenched in their positions, that they deny even the very profession to which they are a part of.

It is time for politicians to resign and for true statesmen to emerge.

We can emerge stronger from the current dysfunctional state of our national government, if enough of our elected officials will remember why we sent them to Washington and use the modicum of courage needed to take on the challenges of the current century.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

I practiced on this sentence hundreds of times in typing class (yes, I’m showing my age), but it holds true today.  It is especially true today.

It is time for our president and our legislature to step up to the challenges before them with courage not complaint.

An OSU grad gets biblical with Sports Illustrated

What does an OSU grad who teaches weekly from the Bible have to say about the Sports Illustrated series that attacks Oklahoma State University?

Here is my proverbial answer...