Category: Uncategorized

I am Joining the Shutdown. How About You?

no workThe Federal Shutdown, partial as it may be, is now in Week #5. And after much consideration, I have decided to join the shutdown. For the foreseeable future, there will be no more work from me!

What does this mean? This is how the rest of the weekend is going to go. Help make the bed? No way! Barb will just have to handle that heavy duvet and put karate chops in the pillows all by herself. I won’t be bothered.

Sunday is usually a grocery shopping day. But sorry Sunset Foods, Whole Foods and Mariano’s. I won’t be wandering down any of your aisles today, comparing prices, eating free samples or squeezing the produce or the Charmin. I won’t even take advantage of 24/7 Woodman’s Market. I am on SHUTDOWN!

A lot of snow on the ground. You think that I am going to shovel? I am not going out in THIS cold. And I don’t know what to tell you, Milo. No dog walking for me today. It’s a Shutdown Day.

How about my usual job of clearing the kitchen table and washing the dishes after supper? Sorry, it just isn’t in the cards. Although I am willing to compromise. If we use paper plates, I will agree to personally toss the used dishes in the recycle container. No matter what else is going on I do whatever I can for the good of the planet.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. Students and teachers have their day off, but it is a work day for me. HA! I will certainly still be on shutdown. Look at biopsy slides? I think not. Sign out all those Purchase Orders that end up on my desk? Good luck with that! Keep on preparing for my quarterly Lab-Clinical Quality Assurance Meeting. You are joking, right? It’s going to be just another shutdown day for me.

So I think I see the next few weeks or even the next few months. I’ll be sitting around watching television, surfing the Web, eating fast food, and sending ridiculous pieces to social media. Just call me Dr. President!

The opinions are those of the author and not of UroPartners, LLC.

 

Everything Old is New Again

balloon
Up, up and away!

It’s time for a trial balloon. For the last 3 years, the Blog has been written and published as part of ChicagoNow, the digital media arm of the Chicago Tribune. And I am still an official contributor there. But like many of the other wonderful writers on the ChicagoNow site, the number of ads that are run, and their placement in the multiple spots in the blog, have been driving me just a little crazy. It is also frustrating that comments to the blog can only be added to registered Facebook users.

So I am giving WordPress another try. WordPress is where the blog started, back when it was a mirror and sounding board for our home building experience. As regular readers know, the blog has evolved from those early days, with anything being fair game. I just hope that every blog gives readers at least one “AHA” moment–that feeling that “this has happened, or at least it could happen, to me.”

It will take me a little while to get my feet wet here. The format for creating blogs is a little different, and some editing errors may creep in from time to time. But I hope the changes will be worthwhile. If not, I can always rejoin the ChicagoNow gang. As Barb knows I’ve never been one to slam a door when it can be left open just a little bit.

I promise that with my next post I will be back to my regularly scheduled content. Since comments should be easier to post, let me know what you think. And if you are a new reader, please take a moment to subscribe, using one of the various means the site provides. And thanks for taking the ride with me!

 

photo credit: Mr. Greenjeans via photopin (license)

Is the Next Best Generation Saying Goodbye?

for-anniversary-sepiaI had a getting-to-the-end-of-the-year tax planning phone meeting with my long time accountant the other day. Well, actually it wasn’t with my longtime accountant. The meeting was with a perfectly capable younger accountant to whom he has transferred the nuts and bolts of my financial life. It’s a phenomenon that I am experiencing more and more. It’s not about me; it’s about the aging of my generation.

The changes were presaged when my dentist merged his solo practice with a larger group a few years ago. My dentist was assuredly NOT of my generation. He has been taking whacks at my teeth since I was a pre-teen. He has always been good for a lament about the White Sox (except in glorious 2005) and one awful off-color joke. But Florida fairways have been calling to him with ever-growing frequency and it has become hard to schedule my 6-month visits with him. Through no active choice of my own, I have become a patient of the youngster in the practice, who will now be responsible for my continued ability to chomp on granny smith apples as my old fillings begin to crumble.

Next, my internist, another White Sox fan, announced his imminent retirement while spreading the word that his nephew would be joining his practice. The implications were clear. This time I took action, reasoning that as long as I was going to need a new internist, I might as well choose one closer to home and with more experience than a newbie (I know, I know, I was once a young physician too.) So I made the switch, even though in the interim Internist #1 has delayed his retirement. I’ve had some nice conversations with my new practitioner, though I have not yet broached whether she is a Sox or Cubs fan.

Oh, and Barb and I had a nice Greek dinner with our financial advisor the other evening. Let me clarify. It was with our financial advisor and his son. Yup, the transition there has begun there as well, as Advisor Père spends more time roasting in Arizona while Advisor Fils assumes the duties of safeguarding our future retirement. I hope the young whipper-snapper knows what the word means, and the fears that can accompany approaching it!

There have been a few exceptions to the hand-over pattern. When my corporate attorney passed away at a much-too-young age, his office mate declined to take over our file. But since my new corporate attorney is older than I am by a year or three, I expect I will be introduced to a young go-getter the next time I need a legal consultation. My hair-stylist still has three kids in grammar school. I suspect I will be her client as long as there are hairs on this head–at least another year or two. As for my tennis trainer, he will never retire; he’ll still be telling me to get my toss up higher when he is six feet lower.

As my contemporaries say sayonara, their gravity exerts its pull on me. We aren’t the “Greatest Generation,” but maybe we are the “Next Best Thing” and it will soon be time to relax.

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Ten Headlines You Never Will See-It’s No Joke

no-guns

You won’t see these headlines in your morning news feed any time soon.

  1. Archer Arrows Kill 10 in Crowded Club
  2. Crazed Slingshotter Stones 15 on School Playground
  3. Upset Jockey Whips Seven to Death in Paddock
  4. Frenzied Fencer Fatally Fragments Five
  5. Neo-Nazi Lumberjack Axes Four to Death at Rally
  6. Slighted Sumo Wrestler Stomps Eight
  7. Ancient Mace used in Mass Murder
  8. Crowbar Criminal Kills Nine
  9. Former Spy Wielding Poison Tipped Umbrella Kills 17 at Festival
  10. Beleaguered Butler Bashes Seven at Gala Dinner

And one headline that never seems to go away

Mass Shooting in (fill in the blank). (Pick your number) Dead

Isn’t it time we do something about it?

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photo credit: wuestenigel <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/30478819@N08/43016009525″>Blacklist</a&gt; via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

The Election is Over. Now Thinking Outside the Box for Amazon HQ2

election-and-amazon-2
Maps of congressional districts (left) and Amazon HQ2 choices (right.)

Amazon must be seeing blue.

One election is over. It’s the big one, with decisions on federal, state, and local elections. There will be a change in our next Congress with the Democrats winning the majority in the House of Representatives. But what I see when I look at an electoral map is lots of blue on the coasts, but a big red middle. Oh sure, there are some Democrats away from the Atlantic and the Pacific, but it is mostly in urban areas, our own metropolitan Chicago for example.

But one more election, or more properly, a selection, is coming. Amazon will soon choose HQ2,  the second headquarters of one of the biggest success stories of the last 20 years. The pins in the green map above are areas that have met Amazon’s list of requirements, from available big buildings to abundant labor to transportation to quality of life. These are the 20 locations still in the running for the billion dollar Amazon lottery prize.

Put one map on top of the other and what do you see? With the exception of Toronto (and do we really think the headquarters will be in Canada?) all of Amazon’s choices are rolling in the blue. That’s where the facilities, labor, and culture that Amazon wants for its headquarters seem to be located.

But what if Amazon had taken a different approach? What if Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had said “We want to be pioneers. We want to find a city, a region, a state that needs us more than we need them. We can bring jobs, help create infrastructure, attract top-notch engineers. We can provide a stronger tax base that will lead to better schools and improved healthcare. We might not have a symphony overnight, but we can learn of, and support, the local culture. We can be the new frontier.”

And what if Amazon were only the first? What if all those new unicorns looked beyond Silicon Valley and Wall Street and brought their economic might to all areas of the country? They could stop making “liberal elite” dirty words to half the population.

Oh, I know it is a terrible short-term business proposition. Sthareholders would hate it. They would want to replace the Board of Directors, cast out the CEO. The Dow Jones would feel the ripple.

But wouldn’t it be nice if the world were a little more purple?

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