.: bistan.net :.

This has had to be one of the worst weeks of my entire life.  Until yesterday, I had no transportation to or from work or anywhere else.  That means the kids had to stay at day care a little longer while Kimberlie chauffeured me from home to work and vice-versa.

I didn’t have very good days at work on Monday and Tuesday.  Actually, they were the worst days I have ever had at Mercer.  In a conscious effort to not ruin my professional career by blogging negatively about my job and/or colleagues, I shall spare you the details.

Tuesday, I finally received the police report with the other guy’s insurance, thinking that things would start moving along.  On the police report, the officer noted that the bike that hit me was a 2008 Harley Davidson.  I looked up the model number online and learned that it was a $20,000 motorcycle.

Wednesday, I stopped by a body shop to get an estimate on the amount of damage to the CR-V.  It came up to right under $6,000 worth of damage.  If that wasn’t enough, Mackenzie had another ear infection so we had to take her to the after hours pediatrician.  Only 3 more weeks to her surgery.

Yesterday, the director of employee wellness stopped by to let our department know about employee fitness and wellness programs offered by Mercer.  During her talk, my phone rang.  I could see that it was Progressive so I left the meeting to take the call.  They informed me that the other driver’s coverage had lapsed and that the claim would be filed under my policy (causing me to owe a nice deductible).  I told her I would call her back and re-entered the meeting — just in time for blood pressure, weight, and BMI screenings.  Of course, my blood pressure was sky high — right into the hypertension range on the chart.  Clearly those numbers were inflated due to stress.  I’ve never had anything but normal blood pressure in my life and I’ve actually exercised (ran) more in the last few months than ever before.

Why would you buy a $20,000 Harley, act like a hotshot on it, and let your insurance lapse?

I finally got a rental car yesterday.  It’s a black 2009 Buick Lacrosse.  If you can imagine a funeral, this would be the minister’s car at the beginning of the line.  I feel like I am 70 years old driving it.  The car is pretty nice — leather seats and all of the bells and whistles that an old man would need.  I can even crank it and warm it up by pushing a button without going outside.  It’s so new that Enterprise doesn’t even have a tag for it.  My cop friend’s wife says that I’m bound to get pulled over — not because of the tag, but because people my age don’t usually drive cars like that.

Today I am chasing the lions.  I am going to make this be a better day no matter what.  After all, it’s Halloween, Friday, payday, etc.  My biggest dilemma is whether to take the kids Trick or Treating or hit up another festival or two tonight.  I have a 10K in the morning, which should help my blood pressure.

Happy Halloween!

I saw one of these last week while in Atlanta and I think this is one of the COOLEST toys ever!  Why didn’t they have these when I was a kid? 

If you haven’t seen it, Pleo is a robot baby dinosaur.  It has a camera-based vision system, two microphones (naturally for its two ears), an amazing combination of touch sensors, tilt sensors, and infrared sensors and detectors.  It is configurable via mini-USB and even has an SD card slot for downloads.  There is also an API called PDK (or Pleo Developers Kit), which means some script kiddie (maybe even me) is eventually going to program the dinosaur to eat your child!

It’s like a pet that doesn’t need food and doesn’t crap on the floor.

Will Tristan get it for his birthday?  Absolutely not!  If Daddy couldn’t have a $350 toy when he was 5, neither can Tristan.

Yesterday evening, a motorcycle attempted to pass me as I was making a left turn on my way to our small group. Either he was on something or he didn’t see my blinker from the sun. Of course, it happened in the middle of nowhere, but RIGHT in front of a biker bar. At first I thought this might be one of their friends and then imagined them coming out with aggression. The bikers were cool though. I was so shaken up that I couldn’t even dial 911 and I couldn’t think of my age or kid’s birthdays or any of the other details for the reports.

Here is the damage to my CR-V . . .

This is the bottom of my door. After the incident, I had to thrust all of my body weight against it to get it open and get out.

Another shot of the door and damage to the wheel/tire.

Here is where the guy’s helmet hit my door. Another two inches and glass would have been all over me. Another three feet and glass would have rained all over Mackenzie.

Another shot of the helmet damage to my door. The guy was bleeding from the face when the ambulance took him away. The EMT told me was extremely lucky and that he would likely be fine. That’s good news!

More damage.

My power mirror isn’t looking so powerful now.

Technically, the car is drivable, but the door doesn’t shut all the way and I have no rear-view mirror. The sheriff said I should only drive it home and to a repair facility. Looks like Kimberlie will be my chauffer for now.

Tristan says that my car is “All Boomed Up” and he actually woke up last night having nightmares about the whole ordeal.  Mackenzie keeps saying “that man break daddy car”.  The kids are fine though.  I’m sure they have some great stories to tell at school today.

I don’t know how, but somehow we are going to reduce the stress and drama in our lives in 2009.  That’s my first new years resolution.  This year has been full of disaster and I don’t know why its happening to us all this year.  So far this year, I have had to file claims with travel insurance (trip cancelled due to my mom’s death), life insurance (Mom’s death), and now auto insurance and health insurance (Mackenzie’s upcoming surgery).  The only thing left is homeowner’s insurance.  Let’s just pray my house doesn’t burn down or blow away.

I guess if we didn’t have bad days we wouldn’t appreciate the good ones.

Today, the kids enjoyed a long day of fun.  We started at Lowe’s, where Tristan participates in Build and Grow every other Saturday.  Then, we headed to Liberty United Methodist Church where Pam, the 4K director at the kid’s preschool, happens to be the children’s director.  It was a nice little Fall Festival with plenty of games and prizes. 

After that, we headed to our church, The River.  It was a great “first” Fall Festival and the hot air balloon would have been a really nice touch, but unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate.  The kids did enjoy the face painting, inflatables, fire truck, and their second horse ride of the day.

On the way home, we drove past the Centerville Mall, where New Hope International was having their Fall Festival.  We couldn’t resist a brief stop to let the kids ride Thomas the Tank Engine though the mall parking lot.  Of course, here are pictures . . .

Actually, I found three cameras . . . one on my cell phone, one on Kimberlie’s cell phone, and on my MacBook.  I knew they were there, but they suck compared to my Canon.  See, I told you my kids weren’t going to be cute today . . .

Actually, I’m live from Marietta this morning.  Kimberlie has a professional conference today and I’m tagging along.  We usually tag along with each other to these sorts of things, just to have a nice family getaway — usually at our employer’s expense.  She has been to Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and soon to be Colorado with me, and I’ve been to Atlanta, Marietta, Helen, and Atlanta again with her.  I’m obviously clearly getting the short end of the stick here.  Anyway, she is skipping the Saturday sessions because we have way too much going on this weekend in central Georgie.

I feel sort of “naked” because I left my camera at home.  It’s not like there’s anything to take pictures of — it’s raining and the kids aren’t doing anything cute and the most exciting place we plan to visit is IKEA.  

Kimberlie’s foot seems to be doing better.  We should have just waited it out instead of going to the urgent care place, but then again hindsight is 20-20.  That urgent care place is clearly a pill-mill (and maybe a work-excuse mill too).  They offered her all kinds of good prescriptions, which she promptly turned down.  Her mother is a hypochondriac who is addicted to prescription drugs so we’ve seen first hand the impact it has on families.  After turning down the opioids, the next thing the doctor wanted to do was offer work excuses.  Luckily, we don’t work at places that require documentation every time we need to be out of work.  I can’t imagine a job like that.  Anyway, if anyone wants some narcotics or a work excuse, be sure to visit Houston Health Care’s Med Stop.

By the way, one of the best feelings in the world is when your toddler wakes up and runs to you and jumps in your arms — even if it pauses your blogging.  Happy Friday from a drizzly Marietta!

After multiple ear infections and months of congestion, Mackenzie’s pediatrician finally sent her to an ENT yesterday.  It turns out she needs her adenoids and tonsils removed and tubes put in her ears.  This is nothing new for us — Tristan went through the same surgery twice, at age 1 and age 3 — but I’m still not looking forward to seeing her go through it.  

If that’s not enough, for some reason Kimberlie’s right foot is all swelled up and is causing her lots of pain and discomfort.  Tonight we gave in and took her up to Houston Health Care’s urgent care place.  The doctor tonight was worthless (and we better get used to it if Obama becomes president).  He did x-rays, which were fine, but couldn’t think of a single reason that her foot would be swollen and painful.  Basically threw his hands up and said “I don’t know” — and still charged us an arm and a leg.  Perhaps he should use the WebMD Symptom Checker, because they gave me 20 possibilities.

I have spent about 4 hours in medical facilities in the past 2 days and have spent a ton of money on prescriptions and healthcare.  Here’s the ironic part: I haven’t been to a doctor since I got my 14 year old immunizations — that’s 15 years!  And I’ve never even swallowed a pill in my life.

Yesterday, we visited The Rock Ranch.  It’s Truett Cathy’s farm about an hour from here (Truett Cathy is the founder of Chic-fil-A).  Basically, you could either describe it as (1) a church fall festival on steroids or (2) a farm version of Disneyland.  In either case, the kids had a great time.  Lots of photos are below:

I finally made up my mind on who I to vote for: John McCain.  Actually, my vote isn’t for John McCain as much as it is AGAINST Barack Obama.  Here are a few reasons I don’t like Obama:

1. He has numerous associations with shady people/organizations: Louis Farrakkan, Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, ACORN, Tony Rezko, and more.  Come on now, if your own pastor isn’t with you, why should I be?
2. He is a socialist.  I took real issue with him when he told the plumber that we need to “spread the wealth”.  With governments around the world buying significant stakes in the banking system, this just seems a little too scary for me.
3. I’m not wealthy by anyones standards, but I don’t like the fact that he wants to tax the wealthy disproportionately.  Bill Gates and Warren Buffett shouldn’t be penalized for success.
4. In the final debate, Barack kept trying to take the “high road” and back out of an argument by simply declaring that they weren’t going to agree.  That might be fine in any other setting, but this was a debate.  This was the time and place to duke it out.  We don’t need that elitist attitude.
5. He has a funny name.  We need to get these folks with funny names out of America.  Let’s take back the Dairy Queens and Subways, the taxi companies, and the Holiday Inns from these people with funny names.  We need to return these American insitutions to Americans.

   (That last one was a joke by the way.  I’m not racist and I have lots of friends with funny names.)

For the record, I’m not happy with John McCain either, but I do believe that he is the lesser of the two evils.

Another Wal-Mart employee ticked me off tonight.  I don’t know why we continue to shop there.  The stores are a disaster, the people aren’t friendly, the lines are always long, and some of the other customers are somewhat scary.  Ahhh . . . the things we go through to save a few dollars!

Below is a letter I had published in the Macon Telegraph editorial section last September, which parallels with my experience tonight:

Dear Editor,

With the shopping season approaching, retailers are gearing up for a profitable quarter.  As a shopper, however, it is your responsibility to understand your rights and resist the anti-consumer practices becoming more and more popular among the major retailers.  These anti-consumer practices treat everyone as shoplifters by asking to inspect products, shopping carts, bags, and/or receipts – after the customer has already “checked-out”.

Some local big box retailers employ retired or physically challenged people to man the exits, while others (including a local electronics retailer) prefer a more intimidating approach by placing a large masculine male by the exit with a physique that resembles that of a strip club bouncer.  They may even go as far to tell you that the practice is in place to “ensure you have received everything that you paid for”, which is clearly not the case.

According to the National Retail Federation, only about 30 percent of retail shrinkage stems shoplifters.  The bulk of loss is the result of employee theft, administrative errors and vendor fraud, making these anti-consumer methods a waste of time and a violation of privacy.  After you leave the check-out stand, the merchandise is yours and no employee has the right to search your stuff or ask you to produce paperwork (such as a receipt) to verify that fact.  This applies to bagged and loose merchandise, as well as items that you owned before entering the establishment — such as your purse, wallet, pockets, etc.

After you pay for your merchandise, immediately place your receipt in your pocket.  As you exit the store and pass the little old lady shaking her highlighter at you, simply pass her and politely wish her a good day.  Feel free to ignore anything else she may command you to do.  Even if the embarrassing magnetic scanner alarms sound, you are under no obligation to submit to a search. 

If a store wants to accuse you of shoplifting, the burden of proof is on them to prove your guilt, not on you to prove your innocence.  A retailer has no legal basis for stopping and searching customers and any compliance on your part is strictly voluntary.  If a retailer (or a bystander who considers themselves acting heroically) physically touches you or attempts to detain you, it might be appropriate to call law enforcement on them.

Most stores have a “don’t pursue” policy anyway, making the entire anti-theft system — including the “greeter” and the merchandise scanners — a ruse.  The only real purpose of the system is to remind everyone that they are being watched.  All innocent shoppers should reject these anti-consumer practices and bypass the “greeters” without feeling remorseful.

Jonathan Brian Davis
Macon, Georgia

I included “PART ONE” on the title because I am pretty sure there will be a forthcoming part two.