Category: Family

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Drug Problem?

I didn’t write this, don’t know who did, but it’s oh, so true.

Read on:

The other day, someone at a store in our town read that a methamphetamine lab had been found in an old farmhouse in the adjoining county and he asked me a rhetorical question, ”Why didn’t we have a drug problem when you and I were growing up?” I replied: I HAD a drug problem when I was young: I was drug to church on Sunday morning. I was drug to church for weddings and funerals. I was drug to family reunions and community socials no matter the weather. I was drug by my ears when I was disrespectful to adults. I was also drug to the woodshed when I disobeyed my parents, told a lie, brought home a bad report card, did not speak with respect, spoke ill of the teacher or the preacher, or if I didn’t put forth my best effort in everything that was asked of me. I was drug to the kitchen sink to have my mouth washed out with soap if I uttered a profane four-letter word. I was drug out to pull weeds in mom’s garden and flower beds and cockleburs out of dad’s fields. I was drug to the homes of family, friends, and neighbors to help out some poor soul who had no one to mow the yard, repair the clothesline, or chop some firewood; and, if my mother had ever known that I took a single dime as a tip for this kindness, she would have drug me back to the woodshed. Those drugs are still in my veins; and they affect my behavior in everything I do, say, and think. They are stronger than cocaine, crack, or heroin; and, if today’s children had this kind of drug problem, America would be a better place.

~author unknown~

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Ah, the first grass cutting of the year.

It’s usually a special time, getting the mower ready, always finding something wrong, taking the time to fix said issue, then getting it done.

Yesterday was that day.

Surprisingly enough, the mower was good to go, no flat tires to plug, the gas stabilizer did it’s job and what not, it started first crank.

2 and half hours or romping around on the mower and the grass is mowed. The kids did a great job picking up all the sticks and branches that had fallen. We now have a half a dozen good size piles.

The mower of course needs new blades as it does every year but we typically wait until after a few cuts cause you never know what you’re going to run into or over.

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Maria spent most of the evening riding her scooter.

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Even after she crashed and burned this weekend, it hasn’t slowed her down a bit.

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Clutter, getting rid of it.

Well it’s time, time to de-clutter the Disher household. We started last night with the office closet.

I think I inherited the ‘keep it cause you never know when your gonna need it’ from my grandfather. The amount of stuff he had was unbelievable. His basement was comparable to most hardware stores. In fact he bought out a hardware store that was going out of business, as well as had some sort of arrangement with a some guys at a fastener company and he’d often raid their ‘trash’ for packages of nuts and bolts that were fine but weren’t packaged properly.

Yeah, I’m sure that’s where I got it.

Last night we unpacked and cleared out the office closet. It was amazing. Now consider that this closet is roughly 3 feet by 10 feet, but it was fully packed.

Packed with stuff that I in the past I just couldn’t bear to part with.

No less than 3 different sets of cordless phones we’ve used over the years. 3 complete vintage laptop systems, including an original Wall Street G3, and two old Sony’s. Not worth much on ebay, no, but still over the years I didn’t toss them, I just packed them away because “You never know”. I bet all in all we tossed $20k worth of electronics at their original retail price back in the day. Simply amazing.

I had 2 US Robotics Currier v.everything modems from a bulletin board I ran many, many years ago. 3 different ISDN modems/router combos from when we first moved in and ISDN was all we could get. 3Com and a vintage lucent, which in the day was the ISDN router to have.

Boxes of floppy disks from the FPS 1.0 days with GolfTrac on them (400 of them), plus another hundred or so packed away in Jewel cases ready for shipment.

Media, CD media, tons of applications and programs well over 12 years old. Stuff dating back to the late 80’s and early 90’s.

I should have taken pictures.

Believe it or not, we bagged up well over 15 large garbage bags full of stuff, and that’s just a start. We probably need to rent a dumpster to clean out the basement and the barn. If nothing else, it’s proof we know how to pack and get the most out of our storage space.

Our garbage folks are not going to be happy with us.

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Dentists

Dentists it’s hard to find a good one, but I think I have.

Approximately 7 years ago when we moved to our current home we started using a local dentist. He’s been OK, certainly gentle enough with cleanings and what not, but it just wasn’t ‘great’. The office was a bit dated equipment wise, or at least it seemed that way to me.

Throughout my life I’ve had more than my fair share of dental work. I inherited my mother’s ‘soft’ teeth and it always seemed like I couldn’t get out of a dental visit without some cavity filling or something.

Over the last couple years though, I’ve not needed anything past your basic cleaning. Since most of my mouth is mostly metal at this point, maybe that’s not out of the ordinary.

Then about 3 years ago, I ended up with a sensitive tooth, no I take that back, a very sensitive tooth at times. Ever visit to the dentist I’d point it out to him and he’d poke around and take some vintage X-rays. But he could never find anything. He said it’s probably cracked somewhere and I just can’t see it. It will break one day then we’ll fix it.

Well three years later and it was still sensitive, usually when biting down on something hard like a nut or when you get into a steak and find something a bit tough.

On my last visit there I was pretty adamant about getting this fixed, but of course he couldn’t really find the root cause. Again, he said it would break if it was a crack. I decided then I was going to find a new dentist.

Well no less than a week later, it happened. The entire inside half of the tooth came off and it wasn’t a lot of fun. I lived with it for a couple days maybe a couple weeks while trying to figure out what to do about it. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going back to the same guy who a week prior couldn’t figure it out.

About a week after that while chewing some gum I pulled a big junk of filling out of what was left of the tooth. Things only went downhill from there.

I did some digging on our insurance website and found a pretty nice dentist nearby. I made an appointment and went in for a visit. This place was very new and very modern. All of the equipment was great. They took x-rays and immediately showed me the results on an LCD screen in the same room. The tooth was savable but needed a crown. They made a temporary repair and things were better. There was only one problem. I don’t do Novocain, and they don’t do gas. I’m not talking about knock you out kind of stuff, just nitrous or whatever they give you that lest you float around the room. Yeah you still feel that they are working on you and at times it stings a bit, but the bottom line is you don’t care.

So the quest for another dentist began. I asked around the office at work and got a referral, then an appointment.

Two days later and $800 lighter I had a temporary crown, and all the prep work done.

It worked out well. Dr Buchholz did a great job. The office is nice and up to date. While they aren’t as ‘techy’ as the dentist I originally visited, all went really well.

I had the actual crown put on this morning and things went pretty smoothly. I would not hesitate to recommend Dr. Buchholz.

Oh, and no novocain was required. 🙂

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Chicago Style Gymnastics Meet

Well that was fun, visiting Chicago in February. Average temperature while we were there was oh, around -1 not counting the wind chill factor.

We left early Saturday morning, thinking we’d get into Chicago, check into the hotel (The Marriot). Don’t let the photos on their site fool you. The rooms are regular every day hotel rooms at crazy prices; in fact, if you compare it to most normal hotel rooms they may be a tad small. Very nice down comforters though, and this stupid duvet cover, thing on the bed for looks that is totally worthless. It wasn’t even a cover of any type, rather this stripe across the bottom of your bed. I would have much rather had a couple bucks off the price of the room then to have to deal with those. I don’t need anything on my bed that’s just for looks. If there is anything on the bed; it better prop up my head, or keep me warm. These things did neither. Dumb, dumb, dumb…

So after parking the car and unpacking, we decided we’d wander on up the Magnificent Mile to see what’s what. Of course it was -1 degrees out there. We did meander about 5 blocks north or so and found our way to the American Doll Store.

Now I have nothing against the American Doll, or the people that make them, but that store is a crazy. Of course it was full of little girls, most of them gymnasts using the best Sole e95 Elliptical, but it really was freeky. Like Twilight Zone Freeky. Everything was neat and in its place, all the boxes were stacked perfectly everywhere, it was just too, I don’t know, sanitary feeling, like a movie set. It was just weird, and there were dude’s working there. That’s just not right.

After dropping off the broken dolls at the American Girl Doll hospital and adding to their wardrobes, we headed back outside to find a place to eat. We found the most wonderful place for lunch. TheSoupBox. We grabbed some soup, warmed up then headed back out for more shopping. We stopped by the Hershey store, and some other Chocolate place. We wandered in and around the Mall that was nearby too.

By then we were beat and headed back to the room to drop off our goodies and figure out dinner.

For dinner we started to go to the Proform Ellipticals Zone, well we didn’t start that way but someone didn’t think we were dressed well enough for the steak house in the area. We wandered into the ESPN Zone, got a table and , but it was so loud in there we couldn’t think. So we bailed before we even got to see a waiter. (ESPN people, we’re not all deaf).

From there we wandered about and ended up at Chili’s. It wasn’t great, but it was so cold outside we couldn’t wander a whole lot farther. Dinner was good for Chili’s food.

After that we called it a night.

Sunday came pretty early, and we headed down to the Marriot’s Breakfast Buffet. It was most excellent as most of the bigger Marriot’s are.

Claudine then prepped Molly for the meet. We still had a few hours to kill. We headed to the Navy Pier ahead of schedule. The Pier really is a neat place. If we had more time we probably would have taken in the Children’s museum. We ended up having lunch at Bubba Gump Shrimp which wasn’t all that bad. It was expensive yes, but not too shabby. It’s very much like Joe’s Crab Shack.

After getting Molly’s blood sugar back up at Bubba Gump, we headed off to the meet.

The IGI folks really know what they are doing. (Not that the CGA folks don’t) but they put on one hell of a meet. They claim it’s the largest meet in the world with over 4000 female gymnasts competing that weekend on 4 gyms. It was pretty impressive. I can imagine how they train with those ab workout machines at home.

Photos are located in the Google/Picasa Gallery.

If you need any of the photos original high res images, just let me know.