Isn't your Health Worth a Free Lunch?

This post will proabably NOT be a fun read for most folks. However, it's a topic near and dear to my heart. You've no doubt seen the recent headlines proclaiming, "Dr.'s still receiving gifts from pharmaceutical companies." If you read the articles, it's obvious that the intent is to show that pharma company influence doctors to prescribe their medications by enticing them with gifts. But what the articles don't generally tell you, are how these gifts are given and what they Dr. does to get them.

A little history though first: Yes, years ago there was a lot of gift giving and glad-handing going on and yes, watchdog groups did a generally good thing by bringing these practices to light and significantly slowing them down. But we're to a point now where the regulations are adversely affecting the industry, much as we've seen with tobacco industry. I mean, when a company is forced to spend money asking people NOT to use their product, aren't we going the wrong way for a capitalistic society?

The FDA has placed strict limits on what can/can't be given to Dr.'s in return for their ear. Here are the general guidelines--what you won't see in the article:

• Lunch: Sales reps can bring lunch to the Dr.'s office for him/her and their staff. Now here's the thing about lunch. How long do you spend with your Dr. actually talking? 5 minutes? Maybe 7? And when you go home at night, how much time do you spend educating yourself about your industry? personally, I spend almost no time outside the office thinking about work. It's the same for Doctors. The only time they have to educate themselves about new drugs, is when they are in the office. So is it so wrong for a sales rep to say,

  "Hey, I'll bring in lunch and let's you and me sit down for 10 minutes and
  talk about this drug and what it does and does not do."

• Payment for speaking: Every industry hold conferences where you can learn about the latest new widget and how to use it. No difference for the medical field. In fact, I want a Dr. that knows what's going on out there rather than someone who graduated from med school 10 years ago and hasn't brushed up on his skills since then. What happens here is that a pharma company pays a Dr. to speak at a conference on a particular topic. Now, that topic obviously relates to some medical condition that the pharma company has a medication for. But here's the kicker that these "anti-pharma" articles don't tell you: The doctor cannot mention the pharma company by name during his presentation, nor can he pitch their drug. So, even though Big Pharma Company A is paying a Dr. to speak on hemmorhoids and the treatment of said inflammations, they're getting no promotion out of it other than maybe public awareness.

And folks, that's pretty much it unless a Dr. does research for a pharma company, which isn't really anyone's concern since it doesn't influence what medications he or she prescribes.

See, they're not so bad really. Are there doctors who try and abuse the system and will there always be someone out there who lets them get away with it? Yes, but no more so than any other industry. I just don't get these socialists who think that our healthcare system would be better off if Sales Reps didn't promote their products. I don't think they understand how many jobs would be affected (sales, research, general office staff) if our capitalistic healthcare system went the way of our friends up in the great frozen north (Canada).

Next time you're sick and want to see the doctor, try this little experiment. Call a general practitioner in Canada and see how long it takes you to get in. And then call your doctor. And later that day when you're driving to the pharmacy and paying your $10 co-pay for a miracle drug that's gonna fix you up, thank a pharma company. Just try it...

Ok everyone, let's cheer...very quietly

Like many men I know, I am married to a working woman. Society has made great strides towards ensuring that women aren't "wasting" their time raising children, and are instead, in the workplace where they can put their significant talents to work making money driving this grand economy. I personally feel that we can thank today's real-estate prices on the dual-income family, but that's another topic for another day.

At any rate, my wife has been very successful in the workplace. She's educated, having gotten her Master's degree and then after college, when we got married, she went to work for a fairly small pharmaceutical company and has been there ever since.

The company is really close to where we work, which for Atlanta, is a God-send. That's also been a bit of a curse, since, despite it being a huge "good ol boys club", the location makes up for a lot of downsides. However, in her 7 years there, she's gotten 3 promotions, which, if you compare that to how many in-company promotions I've gotten (zero baby!) is pretty darn good.

Other nice things about where she works:

• no cubicles. Even as a newbie, she shared an office. Now has one of her own. I, on the other hand, have always had a cubicle and it looks like I always will
• close to our daycare so she can drop off/pick up kids at will
• they throw a decent Christmas party every year
• yearly bonuses

So, all in all we can't complain.

While my wife was on maternity leave, a position came open as Prod. Manager of a new drug they are coming out with. She was fully qualified and decided to go out for it. So, she went back to work two weeks early, prepared a full launch plan for this new drug (took a week), interviewed yesterday and didn't get the job. The person who did get the job is, not surprisingly, a District Manager who'se job is getting eliminated AND did I mention he plays golf with the VP? Yeah...

But here's the deal...she really wanted this job even though it would have meant a good deal more travel, which is strange cuz she's always going on about wanting to be here for the kids. Now personally, I'm a bit relieved she didn't get it. Yet ANOTHER promotion aside, I wasn't looking forward to schlepping the kids 8 miles (one way) to daycare on the days that she's travelling. So, part of me feels bad that I don't feel bad for her, but part of me is pretty thrilled.

Unfortunately, the excuse they gave her, if you choose to believe it, is because she never worked in the field as a lowly Sales Rep and he did. However, she has an MBA and significant marketing experience launching another product (Androgel), neither of which this guy has. So the question that she posed to the hiring manager is, "So, you're telling me that in the future, if I want to go for a promotion, and anyone with field experience also goes up against it, I won't get the job?" The answer was pretty much "yes." So basically, she's done at this company, unless they come back later and admit it was a bullshit reason for not giving her the job and they really just wanted to keep their golfing buddy eating at the family trough.

Could it be the end of the good locale job? We'll see...

When is a Vacation...not REALLY a Vacation?

There are times in every man's life, when he just has to suck it up and take one for the team. I understand that...even expect it as part of having a family...I just didn't expect to have to do it so often.

Ok, so here's the story. My wife's grandmother is in her 80s and her health is fairly rapidly deteriorating. However, despite the best efforts of her local parish to milk her out of every dime her deceased husband left her, ("Um, yes we went ahead and signed you up to donate $20K this year, OK?") she still has a good bit of money left. With more children and grandchildren than she can count, I figure she thinks she should just spend the money now and have fun, rather than try and figure out whom to give it to when she passes on. So, about every year or two, she pays for the core family to all get together for a vacation. When Megan and I got married, she paid for everyone to go to Disney. We did a beach house a couple of years later. The trend continues this year. Last year it was Disney again (we opted out along with a couple of other siblings) and lo', this year it's a beach house again. This one to be more precise.

But wait! A fairly free vacation at the beach...what could be so bad about that? I dunno, let's see:

• This house sleeps 34 people. We're going to fill it up and overflow into a second condo down the street (folks, that's 34 people, including several crying babies and more than a dozen grandchildren all in one house!)
• The 8 hour drive with two children in a car-seats
• Usually, we all take turns cooking for the night. What? Am I running a restaurant here?
• There will be no rest. There will be no one who wants to help watch our youngun's cause they'll all have their own.
• Logistics, logistics, logistics. OHMYGOD! You mean all four of us are going to have to sleep in a single room for a week? Seriously? You do know that newborns (by then he'll be 4 months old) don't sleep well at night.

What makes it even worse is that instead of it just being the core family (her children and their families), they've also invited cousins and families. Seriously, I can't see this being fun at all. In fact, I remember a couple of years ago when we first did this, my being in a decidedly constant bad mood and my wife and I getting in fights over it. She knows I hate crowds, yet again, she asks me to participate in what can only become a major problem for me. And it's not like I can just go home and get away for a while. At the beach in July, there's no getting away. Even a walk on the beach won't be getting away. There'll be hundreds of other people...

I know I'm just complaining here, but this is a week of vacation I'm blowing to go do something that I'm not just "not" looking forward to...I'm physically dreading this "vacation."

Roxanne!...You Don't Have to Put on your Red Light...

Landscaper Update: After having a heart-to-heart with my landscaper on Sunday morning, he finally admitted that he wasn't holding to the letter of our agreement, which was that, once started, the job was finished in sequential days. Not this, "show up one day, skip a day and show up at 2 p.m. the next day." He "feels really bad" about his behavior and I've given him another chance to make it up. As if me and the $2,000 of mine that he has really has a choice.
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And now a Haiku:
Generation "Y"
There are things that you must learn
About your MySpace

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After a rather revealing conversation with one of the few daycare workers that we actually like, we learned that she only makes $8 p/hour. My wife and I immediately looked at each other and thought, "Damn! We pay more than that for our childcare each week." This immediately prompted a conversation about, "Can we afford a nanny after all?" Which led inevitably to the Internet.

Now, apparently, we aren't the only people to have this brilliant idea as there are literally dozens of Nanny sites out there all claiming to have "highly qualified WhiteBread Nannys for Hire." Ok, I made up the "WhiteBread" part, but really, it's in there between the lines if you look closely enough.

However, not wanting to shuck out $150 for every Nanny for Hire Web site, we turned to everyone's favorite "Craig's List" here in Atlanta. I posted an ad and within a day I've gotten two replies. The e-mail were both very lucent and they seemed like good candidates. But being the savvy techno-Taurus that I am, I went a lookin' on the Internet.

A Google search of the Web revealed minimal details...mostly just their e-mail with some generic conrrespondence. No images to speak of either...what would I do? Then, in a flash of Gen-X brilliance I remembered, "Ah, MySpace."
GOLDMINE! I found them both!

Let's review them as a group shall we?
My comments in yellow Italics

The first potential Nanny...
Name Witheld
Orientation:Straight (always a plus)
Here for: Friends
Gender: Female (yeah, sorry guys, wouldn't hire ya)
Age: 21

Opening line in her Intro: "Wuz good ya'll this Ashley aka Goldie. Im 21 years old and I live in Stone Mountain. I have a 1 year old son... Carson aka Nuk that is the love of my life."

Hmm, she didn't say in her e-mail that she has a child. I might be willing to overlook that though. A playmate for my sons might be welcome.
Continuing...

Some answers to those random questions that apparently MySpace posts:

Q. Are you close to any family members?
A. My Little brothers (aw, that's sweet!)

Q.What's the best feeling in the world:
A. Being a Mommy (good answer for a possible Nanny!)

Q. Let's walk on the:
A. WILDSIDE ha ha (um, what?)

Q. Ran away from home:
A. Yes (ok, you were probably young...whatever...)

Q. Done a drug:
A. I plead the fif (wait what...what just happened here????)


Q.What makes you scream?
A. Bad Ass Kids (Ok, I think that'll just about do it...)

Folks, I can't make this stuff up...it's all true. Maybe tomorrow, I'll post the 2nd one's details. They are equally interesting I promise.

Ya'll come back soon now, ya hear!

Thanks for the Memories

But first, a "landscaper" update: My landscaper showed up yesterday around 2 p.m. and started installing my small landscape timber retaining wall. He also tells me that the dirt that was supposed to come yesterday, and without which, no plants can be inserted into said ground, won't actually come until next Tuesday, and "Is that OK?"

Is that OK? No, actually it's not OK. But what're ya gonna do? He's here because I didn't want to get bogged down in the very logistics that he's getting bogged down in, so it's more than OK, it's friggin just what the Dr. ordered! No, seriously I'm kinda ticked, but I guess I can wait a few more days for my perfect yard.

Now on to today's topic.

You never know what's going to set off a memory and today's path down things best left forgotten comes from a photo mailer. Yes, a photo mailer. You know, one of those moderately rigid cardboard envelopes that you mail photos in...the ones that say, misleadingly "Photos - Do Not Bend!"

Ah, but they DO bend and therein lies today's memory...

When I was in Air Force boot camp (yeah, ha ha! Suck it up jarhead! I might have only been in bootcamp for six weeks, but at least I was smart enough to learn a skill I could actually use in the REAL world!), we had this one big room that we called "The Day Room." Now why we called it the Day Room, I have no idea. It's what our Training Instructor (TI) called it and you don't argue with a TI unless you want to be verbally abused for the next four hours. Anyway, we all gathered our shaven heads in this dayroom usually twice a day--once in the morning and again in the evening. It's where we received any information we needed as a whole, rather than the usual "down the chain of command" information flow that normally presided.

Now, in the evenings we got mail. This was a special time because for the first few weeks we weren't allowed to call or write home. We couldn't eat candy or drink soda either, so the mail brought an opportunity for something special...or so we thought. Those poor saps who received a package were forced to open the package in front of everyone and pray to GOD that it didn't contain anything contraband...which was pretty much anything good! One poor guy's wife and friends thought it would be funny to send him a sexual blow-up doll. Oh wow! Was that a bad decision...

Anyway, if you received food and there wasn't enough for everyone, you had two choices:
A) Eat it all by yourself right there, right then
OR
B) Throw it away without touching it

The smart ones simply threw it away, but the first couple of suckers actually tried to eat a full load of brownies and ended up sick and humiliated.

The best thing to receive in the mail, was a letter. It was simple, it was fairly private and usually safe from prying eyes, though not always. Our TI had this little game he liked to play where he would sit in the front of the room and after calling your name, he'd try and spin the letter across the floor and under the door that separated our Day Room from the group beside us' Day Room. If he was successful, he thought it was hilarious (and quite frankly so did we as long it wasn't OUR letter being launched). If the letter didn't make it, you got to pick up your letter and immediately read it.

Besides the letter, there is our good friend the Photo Mailer. Yes, the very one that says, "Photos-Do Not Bend," to which our TI always replied, "Oh, but they do..." as he proceeded to bend and crease them to his heart's desire. Once mangled, the poor slob who got them in the mail was forced to open the mailer and show everyone the pictures that he was sent of Mom, his girlfriend, whomever; and of course this opened the lucky receiver up to all sorts of derision.

So that's today's memory brought on by a quick trip to my kitchen where I have a stack of photo mailers sitting on the counter. I'll get them out at some point, but right now I'm kinda enjoying just looking at the envelopes and remembering the bad ol' days.

No really, I'm gonna replant!

I've been going on to people at work--because they're the only people I talk to other than my in-home family--about my errant landscaper. He's fairly young and inexperienced, so yes, the term "landscaper" is a bit generous. Let's call him "my yard guy." That might more appropriately represent his help to me.

At any rate, he did show up after not showing up the first day and then not showing up until late the second day, oh and then not showing up yesterday despite having told me that even if it rains he has covers he can work under. Riiiiight.

Here's pretty much all he's done this week:

See all that blank area in front of the house on both sides of the door? Well, if you look closely, you'll see stumps from the shrubs that were there previously. He hacked those out with some power hackers that he was very proud of ("These cost $400!"). He said he'd return the next day with a stump grinder, but I've not seen him since.



However, I do have my plant material that he's purchased for me (below). I'd have hoped to have something a bit larger on the Japanese Maple, but they do get pricey. I got a "Waterfall' variety for in front of the house and a Sango Kaku for the top of the yard and a Seiryu for the far right side.

Can you believe that tiny little pile of rocks cost me $70? I had to go get those myself from Pike Nurseries Stone Center here in town.

So, work is being done, just not too often. The dirt is supposed to be delivered today, but he has to build a small timber retaining wall before he can place all the dirt, so I'm sure I'll be looking at a big pile o' dirt for a few days.

But I'm confident it'll look good when he's done and if not, well, at least I'll have all the materials there to fix it myself. :)

Oh the games we play

My wife hasn't slept well the last couple of nights. For some reason, everyone we know has a baby that sleeps at least 4-5 hours straight each night (around the same age even), and ours is lucky to get in 3 hours of sleep after we put him down for the night the first time, and then each subsequent feeding at night lasts for maybe an hour and a half.

Currently, with her off work on maternity leave/vacation, and me working, we've been doing the following schedule:
- she puts him to bed (usually around 9-10 p.m.) and takes care of him till around 4 a.m.
- I get up around 4 a.m. and take care of him till I leave at 7 a.m. My only complaint about this is that I have to go to bed by 9 p.m. just to ensure that I'll get 7 hours sleep. Anytime after 9 p.m. and I'm just hurting myself the next day. As it happens our older son doesn't go to bed until 8:30-8:45 so I'm never in bed, much less asleep by 9 p.m.

Anyway, I offered to work from home so as to allow her to sleep in the next morning but she opted to go to bed first and get up a 4 a.m. (flip-flop our roles basically). Cool! Whatever.

So, I put the baby down around 9 p.m. and drift off to sleep by 9:30, not cause I wanted to but because I figured I'd need all the sleep I can get. The baby slept till almost 1 a.m. and then after I fed him, he went back down till around 3:30. So by the time my wife got up, I had already gotten about 5 hours of sleep, and then I went to bed and slept for another 3 hours for a total of at least 8 hours of sleep. Which kinda makes me feel bad for my wife, because it appears that she got the shaft last night with only 6 1/2 hours of sleep...or did she.

Let's do the math for a usual night:

Let's assume a few things:
- baby goes to bed by 9:30.
- He usually wakes up around 12:15 a.m.
- It takes at least 30 minutes to change, feed and put back to sleep.

So, based on that, my wife normally gets the following:
- almost 3 hours of sleep between 9:30-12:30
- if baby wakes up every 1.5 hours thereafter, by 4 a.m. she gets another 1.5 hours of sleep.
- uninterrupted sleep from 4 a.m. to 6:30 a.m.
This yields a grand total of 7 hours of sleep each night.

Now, let's do the math for me:
- go to bed at 9:30 and sleep till 4 a.m.
This yields a total of 6.5 hours of sleep each night.

Hmm, now who should feel bad for whom? It all comes out in the end though, but I find it interesting that neither of us really push the whole, "Well I get less sleep than you do" thing because I think we both fear having to swap schedules with the other.

But either way, in two weeks when my wife is back at work, we'll have to devise a whole new plan.
Let the games begin!

Top Ten Random Thoughts for Today

1. Oh My LORD but I couldn't be a stay-at-home dad!
2. See, when the light is flashing yellow, it means you can drive slowly through without stopping.
3. Why didn't I work from home today? Oh yeah, see #1.
4. Even your favorite songs grow tiresome when you listen to them every day in the gym. (OK, every other day)
5. Mother earth made children difficult on purpose so as to keep us from over-populating the planet. But that damn Prozac usurped her power and now look at us!
6. Truth be told, I'd rather rent a motel room and catch up on the movies I've not seen, rather than go out and hang with friends at a party. That's sad :(
7. That first cup of coffee that comes out of the drip thingy is lukewarm and bitter. But it's better than the cotton mouth I woke up with.
8. Choosing to be a parent not only obligates you to your children; it also obligates you to your children's children. Now SUCK IT UP and come help us with the kids!
9. Where's my landscaper?
10. My IM friend said something that, albeit truthful, was also mean, and I'm not talking to her right now.

Fun with Kids

Starting this Monday, I have a guy ripping out a great deal of my front yard to install a new front yard. Normally, I'd do this sort of work myself but as it will require hauling in mass quantities (Coneheads) of fill dirt, I'm gonna bit the bullet and pay someone to do it. The guy seems to know what he's doing, although I've yet to see a real design picture of one of his projects. He seems good with the general yard duties, and I've seen some nice block-work that he's done (you know, those oft-unsightly huge tan blocks you see at Home Depot). So, I'm kinda taking a chance on the guy, but he seems really nice and I kinda wanna help him out. Yeah, and the price is a lot better than the company that actually did my landscape plan.

I'll post before and after pics and let YOU be the judge. That's pretty much all I have for today, it being Easter and all. Gonna do church with the kids. This'll be the first time for all four of us to go to church together.

Pray for us...

Random Story Part 1

Recently, my friend had to "let someone go" at the office. She's a real manager see, not just someone with a manager title like myself who actually only manages him or herself. Anyway, partly because it's just fun to do, and partly because there are legal reasons for doing so, she went through this ex-employee's laptop to see what he'd been spending his days doing, because, quite frankly, he'd not been doing much meaningful work.

In addition to opening every piece of e-mail labeled "porn," he spent a great deal of time searching the Internet for seemingly random things (Yeah, I do that too...does it make me weird?). The top four searches on his Internet history were:

• credit counseling
• Atlanta singles
• Microsoft firewall settings
• cheese

The most obviously funny one here being "cheese" of course. Over the last week, we've applied the use of the single word "cheese" to many situations--most notably when we have nothing else to say in response to a question, "I don't know...um....CHEESE!"

We also took those four search terms and created short situational stories that were just too much fun! Now, I spend all my days either writing about industry terms like, "threat," "risk," "mitigation," and "viruses." All in all, it's pretty boring stuff, so anytime I can flex my creative writing muscle and break out of the ho-hum, I like to do so. In that vein, I thought I'd create my own four random words and start writing short tales to go along with them. Most won't have endings because I simply don't have that kind of time, but it should be fun.

For this exercise, I'm using the random word generator found here. Today's four random words are:

• reckon
• down
• avoid
• caps

Hmm, shouldn't be too difficult, let's see...

After enjoying a few wonderful spring-like days, winter came back with a small vengence. I reckon that the elephant ears I'd planted only the day before just barely below the surface should survive, but there are no guarantees. I'd gotten up early to get the baby when his swing stopped swinging and had hoped to avoid having to change him, thus waking him up any further, but a massive poop blowout, smelling remarkebly like formaldehyde, soaked through his onesy and dripped down my arm. There was no getting out of it...I had to change him!

Trying to keep a crying baby quiet while juggling bottles, diapers, wipes and clean outfits isn't easy. As I pawed through the drawer full of socks and caps, I tried simultaneously propping the bottle up against a stuffed animal to it would stay vertical thus keeping the baby from sucking too much air.

Ok, not much real creativity there since this did, in fact, happen this morning, but it's fun nonetheless. I like this idea...think I'll keep it up.

Have a great Easter weekend all!

Brownie Points Akimbo!

Being Good Friday and all, I took today off to give my wife a break. My
wife, as you may remember, recently gave birth to our second son and she's been on maternity leave for just over 6 weeks now. Seeing as how she's been caring for the youngin' every day for more than a month I felt now would be a good time to bank some brownie points...you know...since it's spring and I really wanna get out in the yard (and um, maybe buy a riding lawn mower).

All in all it's been an easy day. We went to Home Depot, we went to the paint store and picked up some samples for our front door. The previous owners painted it black ("you bastards!"). It's quite the travesty and I just have to paint it.

Anyway, the baby has been asleep for nearly 2.5 hours now and I just know that the second I sit down to blog, he'll start screaming. So far I'm wrong, but we'll see.

Anyway, back to the brownie points...I figured I'd book these major brownie points taking care of the baby today and all till my wife tells me that she booked me a massage for this afternoon at 5 p.m. Dang! Don't get me wrong, it'll be nice, but there goes at least half my points.

So there I am yesterday cooking dinner and the phone rings. I pick it up and the person says, "May I speak to Mr. X or Mrs. X" and I say--grammatically incorrect--"This is he," and the other person says, "This is Massage Envy just calling to remind you that Mrs. X has an appointment at 3 p.m. and you have one at 5 p.m. Thank you."

AH HA! So that's how it played out huh? See, she didn't tell me she also had an appointment booked. That gives me back at least half the points I had lost. A gift of guilt, while appreciated, doesn't quite carry the same weight now does it?

Here comes Peter Cotton Tail...er...Jesus on a Cross...

In my best SNL impression, "Can we tawk?"

Easter is an interesting holiday for Christians. Second only to Christmas, Easter is our most treasured celebration. The really odd thing is, that like Christmas, Easter has been twisted into something geared towards the kids rather than extending the celebration for adults. After all, what are we celebrating here? The death and resurrection of Jesus right?

Ok, now here's where I've split off from my strict-Pentecostal upbringing: I feel that the whole tale of a crucified man rising from the dead is a little heavy to lay on a kid. I'm not even sure a 10-year old should have to bear that kinda guilt, much less our preschoolers. But that's just what many of us Christian parents do in an effort to balance out the bunny.

See, it's OK to do it with Christmas because we're talking about the birth of a baby. Heck, even my three year old can deal with that; but nailing a guy to a cross, stickin' him in a hole and then having him disappear three days later..that's heavy man!

So my wife heads over to the local Christian bookstore and picks out some stuff to give our older son, and ends up getting some little picture-Bible and a Noah puzzle.Yeah, I get it, we don't go to church often enough, but it's both our faults. And quite frankly, other than the music, I don't get much out of it. But enough about me...

My wife suffers from familial peer-pressure to attend church. I'm sure we're the talk of the family for not having our children baptized yet, but neither of us want to go stand up in front of 500 people at church (that's how Pentecostals do it) and have people wonder "Who are they?" while the pastor sprinkles water on our kid's head. I've offered to go the more private Catholic route, where it's a small family gathering and the priest does his thing, but my wife doesn't seem to want to do that either. What's a boy to do?

Anyway, I'm over the whole "attend church each week thing." The Bible says, "When you pray, go to your room and close the door. Pray privately to your Father who is with you. Your Father sees what you do in private. He will reward you." After I read this, it made those long-winded flowery prayers the pastors say in church just seem kinda hokey.

But to be fair, the Bible also says, "Let us not give up meeting together..." Heb. 10:24 and, "...not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together..." Heb. 10:24 KJV so take what you will from that.

But anyway back to the topic of Easter. I never liked the bunny, but if it presents a nice segue into teaching my children about the God I believe in then hey, it can't be all bad right? And if I never teach them, they'll never have a proper basis from which they can make up their own mind.

That's the crux of the parental, spiritual responsibility. If Einstein never wrote down or taught others his theories, we wouldn't have them today, regardless of whether or not we agree with them. The same holds true for religion, and for that, I am truly guilty.

Well, we're movin' on uuuuppp...(movin' on up...)

This blog has nothing to do with the Jefferson's unfortunately; although that was a really great theme song for a show. Nossir, this blog is about everyone's second favorite thing to complain about--work! (the mostest favoritist thing of course being each person's own insane family).

And, it's not so much that I think I'll be moving "up" at work, so much as just "movin'". Let's recap.

• I've been head-honcho writer-guy for about two years now.
• Called outta the blue by old boss to come back to work for him with great new responsiblities and a promise of a "team" of my own in the very near future.
• Deal done, I'm back on board.
• Wait! Re-org within the organization. Boss-man isn't really my boss anymore and the "team" I was brought on to support has been disbanded and spread out among multiple divisions.
• What to do with me? Oh I know, let him fend for himself (and the chorus girls sing, "Hallelujah!")

So, now here I sit with a good bit of work to do, but no real structure to my reporting organization and lo' and behold, wouldn't ya know it. Here comes the marketing group (teeth bared, claws in waiting, I watch...)

Now, let's examine why I feel this way:
A) Could it be because my old boss-man and I discussed certain working situations (e.g., my wife travels and I need to work from home on occasion, AND I need flexible working hours like 7:30-3:30)
B) Because I enjoy a certain amount of anonymity that I just know the manager of Marcom doesn't allow.
C) My old boss was a "hands off" kinda guy as long as the work was getting done, and I just don't see that happening over in the marketing dept. (this is sorta like B, but I felt it worth repeating)
D) If I move over into marketing, I can kiss off any chance of having my own team anytime in the near future.
OR
E) ALL OF THE ABOVE

So then one must ask, is all the stress really worth the 12% raise I got taking my new job? Well some would say, "But Chris, Company X is a huge company and you can always do something else within it."

But see, you're wrong. I'm a writer because I wanna be a writer. I've been a network engineer and I spent nearly eight years hating every minute of it. I don't wanna go be something new. So you see my quandry? Of course, this whole thing could play out totally different, but right now, this is the path I see my career taking and it's not very attractive.

Cha-Ching!

I got an e-mail the other day from my Debit card issuer (read: my bank) with an update on how many points I’ve accumulated towards junk. I couldn’t believe that I’ve charged more than 30K worth of stuff on it. Wow! So, I started thumbing through the ‘catalog o’ worthless crap’ for super-cool merchandise I could use my points on.

My first thought was to just use the thing for several years and then cash in for a Lamborghini right about when I hit my mid-life crisis (that would be next month), but then I saw the small print stating that accrued points must be used within 18 months of acquiring them. Which means that I wouldn’t suddenly lose them all, but if I didn’t start using them, they’d slowly start disappearing.

Which brought up an interesting thought: How do they do that? I mean, if I charge $80 today at the local massage parlor and earn 80 points, do those 80 points just disappear in 18 months and one day if I don’t use them? And then, what if used my points to purchase something. Do they deduct the points from those that I earned first, or do they take points that I earned six months ago? Do they even know for sure? It boggles the mind. All I know for sure is that the whole program was created by people who get paid to come up with mind-boggling stuff for which my mind is simply not prepared. So I'll just move along and do what the nice man says.

By now, I know that the suspense is killing you. “What DID he spend his points on?”

Oh, for my $30K in charges, I was able to get 3—yes, count ‘em 3—Circuit City gift cards worth $25 each. Wooowweeee! We’re rolling in the currency now!

Then, you stop and realize that for $30K worth of charges, I get $75 back. Dang! Oh well, maybe I’ll upgrade my Sirius Satellite Radio receiver in my truck. Oh but I do love my satellite radio!