Where Have I Been?

Since Sunday I have been in the hospital.  At 3:00 Sunday morning I awakened my husband and asked him to call 911.  The ambulance took me to the ER.

I had pain in my abdomen like a kidney stone pain but much more widespread.  It was an 8 out of 10, I estimated.  They did CT scan and diagnosed as diverticulitis.  They treated me with pain medication and two antibiotics.  My temp was like a roller coaster, one time 99 and the next 102.  Them they diagnosed bacteria in my blood.  Finally on Wednesday they let me go, with medicine to take orally.

This is the short version.  I am glad to be out!

Treehouse in Peril

This treehouse is amazing, with beautiful views.  You will see it in the video.



This treehouse is on Holmes Beach, on Anna Maria island in Florida.  The property owners built it themselves; now they have been told to tear it down.  The details are in the video.  They have put up a petition online, hoping for support in their case.

Transition is Coming

Currently, our cable company is Insight.  We have our internet, phone and TV through them.  We have been informed that Time Warner Cable has bought Insight.  That means we have to "transition" to a new cable company.

It sounds ominous.  We have to go online to set up an account then wait for further instructions.  The change is supposed to happen sometime in June.  When they implemented this transition in Indiana earlier this year, there were all kinds of problems.  People could not get their phone or internet service for days.

We have to set up new email accounts, then "sublet" our old email accounts to it.  I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds like trouble.  (Am I being a pessimist?)  This blog was set up partnered with an AOL email account that no longer works.  I hope my blog doesn't disappear.  If it does, I will find another way to produce it.  (Maybe another trip to the Apple store.)  If that happens, I hope you will find me.  I've seen others change their blogs to a different blog service and they provide a link to the new one.  I need to find out how to do that (just in case).

Another change!  There are always changes, aren't there?  Sometimes I wish things could just stay the same.

It's Not Funny

I know I've posted this before, but I'm feeling it again:

Actually, it does make me laugh.  The truth behind it, though, can be oh so serious at times.  I had to go off hormone replacement for health reasons, so the hot flashes are coming back again.  It's amazing.  I can be in a cold room and my skin feels the cold, but I'm still burning up inside.  It feels like a nuclear reactor inside my body.

The hot flashes are the most noticeable, but the other six dwarves have been known to visit me on occasion, as well.

I ran across this topic on Google:

When I saw it I thought "there is nothing funny about it".  Notice the lady in the picture.  She looks so calm, cool and collected.  If she were having hot flashes, her hair would be hanging down in messy pieces, there would be sweat running off her chin, and she would have a fan in her hand.

In A Playful Mood...

I once sent a copy of this song to a man.  Enough said.

Note:  This is a kind of family business.  The guitar player is his son, one of the singers is his daughter, and another one is his younger, second wife.  I think he is smiling at them at one point in the song.

Still On My Soap Box

The news set me off again this morning.  In Kansas, a 27-year old convicted felon has been arrested for the murder of three people whose bodies were found on a farm on Monday.  The victims included two men and a woman, who had an 18-month old baby girl.  There have been no signs of the baby, and now she is "presumed dead".  Police have not  identified any motive for the killings.

The suspect previously served time for shooting a former employer in 2005 after being fired from his job.  That man was shot five times, seriously injured and never able to work again.  He died in 2011.  The suspect was sentenced to five years for attempted murder and released on parole in 2009.  Now he has been arrested for killing three people, possibly four.

In another case, William Spengler killed his 92-year old grandmother in 1980 by beating her with a hammer.  He was convicted of manslaughter and served 18 years in prison.  In December, 2012 he set fire to seven houses in a small New York town.  He had several kinds of weapons with him as he laid in wait for firefighters to appear, then ambushed them.  He killed two firefighters.  These killings took place on Christmas eve.

Those are two cases that have been in the news recently.  I also remember several cases locally in which convicted felons were paroled, only to kill again within months.  How can this happen?  As I grew up, I thought if you committed murder your freedom was gone.  To me, a murder conviction meant automatic life in prison with no parole.  Now I know that isn't true.  I wonder, how can a man beat his 92-year old grandmother to death with a hammer, serve 18 years and go free to kill again.  It was reported that when this man returned to his community neighbors were fearful because he was a known troublemaker.  Why was a known troublemaker who killed his own grandmother paroled?

I understand there is an overcrowding problem with prisons.  But shouldn't there be a more reasonable standard regarding who is set free?  It seems to me that the most violent offenders should be kept away from society.  Non-violent offenders can be paroled if need be.  For example, those convicted of possessing a small amount of drugs.  I have read that a large percentage of the prison population are in this category.  It seems like common sense to me to have a "triage" system by which to parole prisoners.  Non-violent offenders go first, and keep the most violent offenders behind bars.

My Soap Box

You know how you start out in the morning, just checking your email and the news online, and one subject leads to another, and before you know it it's been an hour or more?  Things come up that you weren't even thinking about in the first place.  That's what happened to me this morning.

I read that Hamid Karzai has told us he will allow the U.S. to establish nine military bases in Afghanistan.  That got my attention.  In the first place, why do we need nine bases there?  I thought we were getting out.  How much will maintaining and staffing nine bases cost?  Won't those bases be targets for terrorists?  Won't the populace resent them being there?  In the second place, I've recently been reading how the CIA has been handing over "bags full of cash" to Karzai.  Why did we do that?  What was the cash for?  Did we care what he did with it?  Is that the reason he is "allowing" us to build bases there?  Are we bribing our way around the world?

I was 15 years old in 1961.  Strangely, I remember hearing President Eisenhower speaking about the "military-industrial complex".  He warned about the "disastrous rise of misplaced power".  I thought about this at the time of the Iraq war, with V.P. Cheney being so closely involved with Halliburton, a contractor that made tons of money from the war.  Is this an example of what Eisenhower was talking about?

It seems we are thinking of entering an era of austerity in our country.  Teachers are being cut.  Public safety is being cut as police and fire units are reduced or closed down.  Municipalities are going broke all over the country.  Yet we can give "bags of money" to Karzai for unknown purposes, and we are considering building, maintaining and staffing up to nine military bases in Afghanistan?  This is all taxpayer money.  Don't we have a say in how it's used?  It seems we have very little to say about anything anymore.

That's me on my soap box today.  That's what happened when I sat down to look at my laptop.