Dr Copa

I was reading an article on the Reuters website earlier today; a friend sent me the link and told me to read it. The article was talking about how solar energy will be cost competitive with fossil fuels by the year 2013. Well, if that is true, I think that the US government should just stop even talking about drilling for oil off the coast of Florida and in Alaska. I understand that even getting that oil drilled and refined will take at least five to ten years to reach the gas pumps, so what’s the point of spoiling the environment when we will have perfectly good alternative fuels ready by then? Now I understand that solar energy will not be able to run everything that needs gasoline, but there ARE other sources of fuel out there that could be used to replace fossil fuels that will be ready to be on the market by then and will be cost competive too.

I received an email from my sister who recently returned from a year long visit to Western Oklahoma. She was telling me about how life was out where she was living. She was telling me that she was staying over an hour’s drive away from the nearest Wal-Mart, which was in a town called Kingfisher. I can’t imagine having to drive that far to get to a Wal-Mart! Anyway, she was also telling me that during hunting season the farmers there “posted” their “no hunting” signs by painting old tires with the words “No Hunting” and hanging them on their fence posts along the road! Now THAT is a creative use of old tires! Chances of the hunters “ripping down” those signs and tearing them up are pretty slim, don’t you think?

Recently I had my truck fixed at a local Chevrolet dealership. Turns out that the owner of the dealership is a local celebrity – a country singer. He produced his own CD, and sings at local functions.

I bought one of the CDs and brought it home. We really like it a lot! The artist is Andy Budd. He wrote his own songs, and we like the lyrics, the music, and his voice. We played the CD for my sister shortly before she was shipped to Iraq, and she asked us to get her a copy. We went into the dealership and told them that we were buying the CD to send to Iraq, and they GAVE us ten CDs for free to send over there! How great was that!?

If we get the chance to see him perform, we will see him for sure! The title of his CD is Saints & Scoundrels.

Well my brother and sister have decided that they want to have a family reunion vacation this summer at a Myrtle Beach Resort.  My brother has spent several vacations over the past few years at various North Myrtle Beach Resorts and he thinks that the whole family could have a great time and catch up on some family visiting at the same time.  That way the family visiting won’t get too intense – the individual units could have their own suite at the North Myrtle Beach Resort and be able to do some activities that they enjoy on their own in addition to doing “big” family time.

I’ve been looking at the list of activities that are available to do in the area, and I think I’d love to see Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede show.  I’m sure my wife would love it to – she is a big horse fanatic!  And I’d like to see the Medieval Times Dinner show too.  We saw it once in Orlando and thoroughly enjoyed it, I’d love to have the chance to take my sister to see it too!

We’ve lived in this area for almost three years now, and we are still learning our way around. We have a jet ski, but I don’t know where there are local public boat landings to launch it for us to use it. I have looked at maps and see lakes, but don’t know if any of the lakes are better for jet ski use than other lakes are, or if any of the lakes restrict the usage of jet skis! So, I want to learn some of that information so we can have some jet ski fun this summer!

When my wife and I lived in New England, we ran a grounds keeping business together.  I loved that work!  I love to work outside and mow lawns, trim hedges, install fences, plant shrubs, clear brush and all of the other activities associated with working outdoors.  One of the reasons that I loved it so much was that I loved working with the different kinds of garden equipment.  I love my tractor, my back hoe, my loader, my zero turn mowers, my chain saw, my  skid steer attachments, and my weed trimmers.  I even have more than one post hole digger - I have three of them!  One for me, and one for each of my hired help!

After a long day’s work I even enjoyed cleaning off the tools and making sure that they were ready for the next job.  Somehow I feel like this is what I was born to do!  And that is one reason why I love living here where we moved; there are several acres of land waiting for me to tame!  When we moved here I sold off some of my equipment (like my loader) but I kept most of it.  I expect I’ll be using it here in my own back yard!

I like the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. I like it because it cleans the floors and carpets while I can be doing something else, like laundry. I don’t like having to drag/push a standard vacuum cleaner around, it is hard on my back.

Having said that, there is a lot of room for improvement. The Roomba gets stuck frequently on the air vents that are in my floors and carpets. And when I say stuck, I mean it is really stuck, it stops there and signals its distress call. There are several of these vents in every room, so that is a pain in the neck, having to rescue the Roomba many times. In addition, there are several pieces of furniture that the Roomba seems to be smart enough to get under to clean, but can’t figure out how to get back out, so it gets stuck under the furniture a lot, too.

The small motor does not do a very good job of cleaning, so in order to keep the house looking good, the Roomba needs to be run every day. In contrast, if I pull out the standard vacuum to clean house, the carpets look clean for a week.

The Roomba tends to push pet fur “tumbleweeds” around floors rather than pick them up, so that is a disappointment. The little brush that “cleans corners” does not really do a very good job of cleaning corners. Having said that, my standard vacuum’s “corner cleaning” feature doesn’t do a very good job of that, either! Another drawback is that every time I use the Roomba, I have to spend ten minutes or more sitting on the kitchen floor, cutting pet fur away from the brushes and other areas of the machine. I learned to do that before letting it run, when it is fully charged so it could clean up the mess I made. If I do it AFTER it has run, I make a mess and it has no energy to clean up the mess and then I have to get out the broom and dust pan to clean it up myself. After I bought my Roomba, they came out with a different version that they claim is made specifically for pet hair. I’ll have to buy that one next and see if it does a better job than the one I currently have.

And, even though I have a docking station for the Roomba, for it to go back to by itself to recharge, as often as not, the Roomba will run out of energy in a different room and simply die somewhere else rather than docking itself. And as often as not, when that happens it is under a bed or a dresser, so it can be difficult to find it to bring it back to the docking station.

The warranty is way too short, considering the expense of the unit. They wear out/break way too quickly/easily. Even thought I tell people that I love my Roomba, I’m not sure if I’d tell my best friend that she should go buy one if she happens to be having financial difficulties and needs a vacuum cleaner. I’d be tempted to tell her to buy a regular vacuum cleaner that does a better job and lasts longer.

If you eat, sleep, and drink golf, then you should check out the Myrtle Beach Golf Vacations for your next vacation.  You could stay and Golf Myrtle Beach courses every day for a month and not play the same golf course twice!

I have never heard of an area where the concentration of golf courses is so dense!  And in that area, in addition to Myrtle Beach Golf Packages to entertain yourself and your family, you can enjoy the ocean’s sandy beaches, great restaurants and amusement parks.  There are great shows you can go to for an evening’s entertainment.

There are a wide variety of lodging accommodations to stay in as well.  From standard motel rooms to luxury condominium suites, whatever suits your fancy you are sure to find it there!  And what is really great about this is that you don’t even have to leave the country to enjoy every minute of your vacation!

Technology just amazes me more and more everyday! My brain hurts from learning all the new technology that is out there! Ipods, MP3 players, Blu-Ray, Bluetooth, Iphones, podcasts – all stuff that didn’t exist until a short time ago! I’m still learning how to use the DVD player!

My wife and I recently got new cell phones – my goodness they do everything except wash the dishes and make toast! I’m still trying to figure out how to get the phones to vibrate instead of ring! These things get more complicated every year!

When I meet new people around here, many of them ask me about where we used to live before we moved here and they ask about the logistics of how we got here.  This is such a transient area, it seems that people are always moving.  Living near the Washington DC area, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  There are a lot of government-related jobs that dictate that people move around! 

Many people ask me which one of the moving companies we used to get all of our possessions here.  We moved from almost 700 miles away, and it was a major effort on our part to get here.  My wife and I had spent a lot of time trying to find one of the budget van lines to use to get our possessions down here, but in the end we decided to use a one way truck rental instead.  Nothing against any of the budget van lines; I’m sure that they are all well qualified.  It’s just that we decided to move in stages over a several month period of time, so it worked out best if we did it ourselves.

This morning my wife told me that she wants to make an appointment with an eye doctor as soon as she can. She says that she is seeing a lot of black spots in her left eye. She thought that at first it was just dirty eyeglass lenses, and she kept trying to take off her glasses and clean the lenses. Then she would put the glasses back on and get annoyed that the spots were still there! Finally she started looking around the room while cleaning her glasses and noticed that the spots were still there – in her eyes, and not in her glass lenses! She has seen some floaters before, but she doesn’t remember seeing this many of them, so she is concerned that maybe she has a detached retina. I told her that I thought that the doctor would just tell her that she is over-using her eyes and need more rest. I think that he will give her eye drops to put into her eyes, and in a few days she will feel better.  Anyway, I think she is overdue for an eye exam anyway, so I told her to make an appointment soon – we need to keep her eyes in good shape!

My wife and I have been thinking about taking up golfing.  My wife says she used to play golf before we met, but she quit playing when she became pregnant with her last son (prior marriage.)  Something about working full time, taking college classes and raising a family left her precious little time to play golf!  Well now the kids are grown and I’d like take her on a vacation – just the two of us. 

My doctor has recommended that I get more exercise, and my wife seems to think that I would enjoy learning how to play golf.  She has been talking to her brother about the possibility of him and his wife, and us, signing up for a Myrtle Beach Golf Package.  Myrtle Beach is close enough for us to drive to in a day, and there are a lot of Golf Packages Myrtle Beach options that we could choose from.  We could sign up for one of the Myrtle Beach Golf Vacations where we combine golfing with a hotel room, or we could stay with friends that live nearby and just sign up for tee times.

My wife is positively thrilled. Our son called her last night to say hello. It’s nice that he does that – I know that there are many kids who are off in college who only call home to ask for money. But not “J.” He just keeps in touch. Anyway he has been offered a summer internship overseas (that’s NOT the part my wife is thrilled about) which is great for him. What my wife is thrilled about is the fact that he told her that he is considering a graduate school that is in-state. That means that he would only be a three hour drive away instead of a six hour drive away. THAT’s the part my wife is thrilled about! She misses him dreadfully, and I know if she saw more of him (like an occassional weekend) she would be a much happier woman!

As a child growing up in a remote area of New England, I did not have many opportunities to go to any amusement parks.  Now that I’m older and not dependent on my parents to drag me along to wherever they want to go (or not) for vacations, I really like to go places where there are amusement parks to go visit.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to spend all day every day in an amusement park, but I like to spend SOME time there!

My wife says that she just discovered that there are several amusement parks near many Myrtle Beach Resorts.  One of them is a NASCAR amusement park!   She’s been trying to figure out what we could do on a vacation there if we accepted her parents invitation to joing them for a few days at the Myrtle Beach Resort that they have booked for their vacation.   I like NASCAR, so we’d have to check out that one!

She has also been looking at the many different websites of the different Myrtle Beach Hotels to see what amenities are included. She says she wants to have a place where the master bathroom has a private spa tub in it.

My wife loves the automatic shower cleaner from Scrubbing Bubbles. I can’t blame her, I like things that make my job easier too. The shower cleaner seems to do a good job. The biggest trouble that we’ve had with it is that it does not have a long usability life. It only lasts for a few months before it dies and we need to buy a new one. Yes, we’ve changed the batteries in it a few times; it is NOT a simple case of dead batteries. It just seems to wear out too darn fast!

I’m glad that we get coupons frequently for $5 or $7 off of the new dispenser unit because it is expensive to buy. If it were up to me, we wouldn’t buy it. But then again, I don’t clean the shower anyway, so what do I care? Since my wife is the one who would get stuck doing it, I have to trust her judgement, and if she wants to keep buying new ones, then that is what we will do. She works hard and she deserves a break when she can get one!

I find it very interesting to see how many different ways people use the Internet.  My 80 year old mother uses it only for reading emails, and only when my daughter goes to her house and opens it up for her to read them!  She is definitely NOT one to be talking with about the technicalities of computers and the Internet!  When she wants to type a letter, she drags out her old manual typewriter!  Yet there are many people who are her age who are “fluent” in their use of computers and the Internet.

My niece uses the Internet essentially for entertainment.  She is not interested in learning anything – ever!  My wife uses it constantly as a resource to research things that interest her.  She LOVES the Internet – it is her security blanket!

One of the more fascinating ways that college students are using the Internet is to form social networks to help each other with their courses. There is one website called Course Hero  that is designed to do just that.  They have support study groups and cheat sheet exam preparation papers.  If you need a Biology Exam Study Guide and you go to UT, you can join the community and type in “UT Biology Exam Prep” and chances are good that you will find that some other student has uploaded their study guide to share with the community.

I have a few antiques that I’d like to sell. The problem is, I can’t seem to find any buyers! I’ve been going around to all of the local antique stores and asking them if they buy antiques, hoping they would buy my stuff. Their answer has always been “no.” I find that hard to believe, if they are selling antiques, they had to come from somewhere, right? So where do they come from? They don’t just wave a magic wand and antiques magically appear, do they? My wife had heard that the antique dealers in this area usually travel to New England to buy their antiques because all of the antiques in this area were destroyed in the Civil War. Well, here I am, trying to save them a trip, but they are not even interested enough to ask what it is I’m trying to sell! Geez Louise!

When my cousin was a teenager, he had acne so bad that the other kids referred to him as “the Pizza Man.”  That was a mean spirited reference to how badly his face was marked with his acne.  He must have tried every acne Product  that the stores sold.  They did no good at all.  It seemed to me that the poor guy had very few friends, and I don’t know if it was because of his geeky personality, or his physical appearance.  Before we hit the teenage years he was a good looking guy!  But the acne had to have had an ego-damaging effect on him.

Now that we are older, and science has advanced, we know that there are many products available that could provide a successful acne Treatment for teenagers with that severe type of acne.  Which is a good thing because teenagers today are even meaner and more egotistical than they were when I was a teenager!  The right acne Solution is not that hard to find anymore; the Internet is a great place to find information about successful products. 

In this time of financial crisis, I keep hearing the suggestion that the people who have lost their jobs should go back to school and get their college degrees, with the thought that this higher education will lead them to new jobs that pay well.  I really have to question whether that is the answer!  I heard on the news today that the local universities are increasing their tuition rates by at least 6% this fall.  How in the world can the unemployed worker who has already maxxed out their student loans on their first round of college (and is still paying them off) going to be able to afford to return to college at all?  And if the unemployed worker is already being turned away from jobs because he or she is “over qualified” then how is getting MORE education going to help them at all?  And if this same worker is the only financial support for their family, who is going to support the family while this worker is not making money, but is going to school?

I am fascinated by the advances in technology.  It seems to me that the advances are moving in great leaps and bounds in the past couple of decades.  When you take a look at how many centuries it took mankind to develop things such as railroads, cars, electricity and the like the progress was very slow going.  I can remember going to the Epcot Center when it first opened in the 1980s and went through the ride in the big globe and thought about how futuristic the scene was of people talking face to face from across different continents to each other using computers and web cams, and how that technology is in widespread use in my own lifetime, it just amazes me!

And I can remember when mobile telephones first came out, how large and cumbersome they were.  The first mobile phones that my wife and I had were hardwired into our cars, were about the size of a lunch box, and they actually had cords to attach the telephones to the base!  And even having those phones was considered a major luxury!  Now the cell phones are a necissity of life – if my wife leaves the house without hers, she goes into a panic!  And all of our kids have to have cell phones, too, so my wife and I can reach them, and they reach us, in case of emergency!  My goodness, how life has changed!  Now my cell phone fits in the palm of my hand and is completely cordless.  I think it is truly amazing how quickly the cell phone technology has evolved.

My sister in law is in the real estate market part time, and she has been telling me about a new use for her cell phone.  She uses it for Mobile Marketing. She says that Cellit Mobile Marketing provides a wide variety of marketing tools that can be used by her cellphone. She says that it makes her computers almost obsolete! She said that they can help her promote her business with games and contests that keep her clients interested and her company name in the forefront of their minds.  She said that she can use couponzap.com to create coupons that help her to promote her restaurant business too.

She says that she loves their House4Cell services for her real estate business – she can send and receive information about properties for sale from her phone to her client’s cell phone. Information such as photographs, square footage, and pricing information in her client’s reach within seconds! She says that’s a great service to have.

It has been raining pretty steady for about a week now, and our grass is growing like crazy!  I don’t like it when the grass gets this tall – I think that the dogs get too many ticks when the grass is tall.  I think that it is too wet to mow, but when I look out the window I see my next door neighbor riding his rider mower in the rain, mowing his lawn. My own experience with mowing wet lawns is that it just isn’t worth the trouble – the lawn doesn’t look good afterwards, and the wet grass clogs up the mower. I’ve heard that Sunday is supposed to be nice – I guess I’ll try to mow the lawn then.

My wife has been encouraging me to consider buying some gold coins as an investment.  We both have been very disappointed in the performance of the stock market as of late.  We own a little bit of stock; hoping it would make our lives easier when we retire a few years from now, and the loss of value in the plans recently has been very discouraging.

So as I was saying, my wife thinks that we should buy gold coins and maybe buy gold bullion and put them into a safe deposit box.  She says it is a good idea to diversify that way; not putting all of our eggs in one basket.  She said that maybe we should even do a gold ira transfer from one of her IRA accounts that isn’t performing up to snuff.  I’ve never heard of a gold ira transfer so I guess I need to do some research about what that is before I try to talk to her about it with any kind of intelligence!

I’m hoping that my wife and I can go see the movie Wolverine and Star Trek when they come out. I’m a big fan of science fiction movies, and my wife loves Star Trek, so I’m confident that she would enjoy at least going to see Star Trek with me. Maybe my step-son will go see Wolverine with me; my wife isn’t a big fan of the mutant movies. I think it’s just because she doesn’t really have the time to get interested in them because she spends a lot of time working. But I’d love to have her go to the theater with me and share a big bucket of popcorn and a giant soda. We’ve lived here for two years now and I don’t thinks she’s gone to the local theater with me yet! And that needs to change!

My wife and I have been talking about things we’d like to do and see before we die.  My wife keeps telling me that she would love to go see the glaciers of Alaska.  She is fascinated by pictures she has seen of the glaciers and would like to see them for herself.  I’ve even caught her looking on the Internet for information on Denali Park and other things to do on an Alaska Travel vacation.

She tells me that her grandmother has told her that she has cousins that live in Alaska, and she’s been thinking it would be nice to look them up while tying it into a Travel Alaska trip. Maybe even go on a whale watching and glacier cruise with the cousins. I’ve told her to try to pull it all together and see how much it would all cost and then we’ll talk about it and see if we can work it out.

I really need a new pair of shoes. Actually I need a couple new pairs of shoes. I’ve been wanting my wife to go shoe shopping with me, but she keeps telling me to just go buy some. I went to the shoe store about a month ago and took pictures of a couple of pairs of shoes to show to my wife and have her tell me which pair to buy. She picked out a pair and told me to go get them.

I keep procrastinating, and over the past couple of weeks I’ve actually used super glue to re-glue the soles of my shoes to the uppers. So today my wife agreed to go to the shoe store with me and help me pick out a pair of shoes. We were disappointed because the shoes I was hoping to buy are no longer there! And all of the shoes that were there now are a lot more expensive than we wanted to pay!  Very frustrating!

It seems to me that almost every family that I know has at least one member in it that has some kind of addiction.  Some people are workaholics (which for some strange reason is socially acceptable) and some are addicted to video games.  Since neither of these addictions seem to pose a threat to society, however, there really is no kind of addiction treatment program that I’m aware of that is geared towards treating those two types of addiction.

More often, however, I hear of family members who are addicted to drugs or alcohol.  Many times I only hear about these family members having these problems after they have been admitted to alcohol rehab or some drug rehab program.  I think it is very sad that so many people are plagued with these types of problems, but I am glad that there are so many resources out there on the Internet, and through many other sources such as doctors that these people can get the help that they need to recover and kick their habits.