Ace Wisdom

The lightning strike we had on our red maple tree keeps generating surprises. If something doesn’t work in the house we blame it on the electrical strike. A piece broke out of our fiberglass shower stall upstairs. It had to be the lightning. A sink stopper fell apart for no apparent reason. Yep, the lightning. Your Mom lost the crown to a major tooth (a huge piece). I’m sure it it was an electrical surge. I can’t understand why the insurance company keeps turning down those claims. What will we discover next?
Football season is beginning in earnest. Grasshopper No.2’s oldest son is now a sophomore in high school. He played football last year. I talked to him early in the summer. He was emphatic that he would not play football this year. He still intended to play basketball. Guess what? Grant is again practicing with the school football team. Somehow when you are 6’4 and solidly built, coaches have a lot of interest in you. It ain’t fair. I remember at the same age being around 5’8 and 150 pounds. Nobody was recruiting me!
Grasshopper No.4 is again coaching in the Sheboygan Youth League. It is the last year he have son Dominic on his team. Dominic has been “working out” during the summer (I wonder if painting the family home counts as exercise). Of course No.4 thinks this is going to be the best year ever. Why do all coaches think “this will be the best year ever”? I guess it is better than entering the season thinking “we suck”.
Also Grasshopper No.4 has Tommy playing in the Youth League. As a Dad, how do you manage being in two places at one time.
The UW Badgers are rated 10 in the country. Again, lofty expectations.
Coach McCarthy for the Packers is disgusted with the Team’s practice performance. Yep, things are going as expected.
People can’t find jobs, the State can’t resolve all their problems and the Federal Government is a joke in it’s effort to balance the Budget. But, we have football. Thank goodness we have football. Ready! Hut 1! Hut 2! Hut 3! Hike!
Love,
Dad

Our government gets money from us. The management of that money is just like your personal budget. Money coming in. Money going out. If you spend more than you make, credit card debt increases until you hit your “credit limit”.
Our government reached it’s credit card limit recently. They arbitrarily increased their own limit on credit by several trillion dollars. I wish I could increase my own credit limit! Now the government can spend more money. Things are good! At least until the new credit limit is reached.
The solutions are pretty simple. The government needs to stop spending more money than they have coming in. It is called a budget. It means we need to prioritize our national needs. They’ve promised to cut expenses. Yeah, right.
Next we need to cut up our credit cards. No more increases in national debt. We are drowning in debt.
The government needs to stick to their budget. Do it just like “real” people.
On another note, the mystery to our recent electrical spike has been solved. We have a beautiful red maple tree in our front yard. It has been dropping dead leaves off one side in recent weeks. Upon examination, it looks like lightning struck the tree and killed branches and the front part of the trunk. Now the question is “will our tree survive”? Stay tuned. Ranger Dan is coming to look.
Upon further reflection, the lightning that struck our tree was less than 30 feet from where I was sleeping. It missed me this time.
Love,
Dad

Four years ago, my regular doctor had me submit to a battery of blood tests. One reading was for blood glucose (AC1). If the numbers are between 6.0 and 7.0, it indicates you are pre-diabetic. I think my reading was 5.9.
I was told to watch my diet, avoid sugar products and of course the obligatory speech on losing 20 pounds. I was not diabetic but family history with my Mother put me in a higher risk category. I asked the doctor how I would know if I was making progress. He gave me a “free” meter for testing my blood glucose so I could check myself daily. The meter indicates how close I am to normal 100. Most people fluctuate between a low of 80 and can spike into the high 100’s after eating. The body is supposed to metabilize back to 100 hours after eating.
You need a prescription for tiny paper test strips for the free meter. The strips cost $1 each. The presciption is for 100 strips or $100. A typical diabetic may use 3-4 strips per day. I was only testing myself once per day to determine trends. $1 per day. After 4 years of testing my morning blood glucose, I was usually around 115 which I understand is fairly typical after sleeping.
I stopped testing for blood glucose levels.
It took about 1 month for a call from the prescription service department of Walgreens. They noticed that my purchase of blood glucose strips had fallen off and they were wondering why. I should have said “none of you damn busines” but I wasn’t quick enough to go into my nasty mode. I told Walgreens that I was no longer testing for diabetes. The next question was “was that my decision or my doctor’s”. I continued my “stupid interview” by saying that it was my doctor’s” (it really wasn’t, it was my decision)). Walgreens responded with an “oh” and hung up.
Here comes my rant! It really annoys me that Walgreen’s and the drug companies are montoring my use of diabetes test strips. It is none of their business. The truth is that diabetes is big business. My guess is that the test strips cost less than $.05 to make and there is $.95 in profit. My decision to stop testing myself was screwing up the profitability of the “drug cartell”.
My personal medical information is between me and my doctor. Walgreens is just a supplier of medication. I suspect the doctor (who gave me the free meter), the drug company who makes the free meters available to the doctor and the Drug store (Walgreens) are all in collusion. Is there anyone out there that really cares about me as a person?
Love,
Dad

Yesterday I devoted time to the Green Bay Packers. As you know I am one of 112,000 stockholders. Yesterday was the annual stockholders meeting at Lambeau. Estimates were that 15,000 to 20,000 of us stockholders were in the stands. I told them I thought a dividend to owners was appropriate.
Laugh if you want but my investment made $12 million last year. Of course winning the Super Bowl helped with selling T-shirts and other memorabilia. Also my Packers paid off their loan that financed the new stadium 6-7 years ago. That is 4 years early. Paying off a loan early? That is unheard of.
Then last night I got to attend a “reading” of the play “Lombardi” at the PAC. It covered the championship years, in particular 1965. The lead character was an actor named Dan Lauria (he played Lombardi). He was excellent. The person who stole the show was Lombardi’s wife, Marie. She was funny, insightful and the one person who could always tell Vince he was full of sh–. Because I lived through the championship years, the stories were reminisent of those told at a family reunion.
Last, I have been talking to Ted Thompson about all the personnel changes we need to make. We let Cullen Jenkins go. We let lots of linebackers go including Poppinga. Our back-up running back Jackson is gone. We are going to re-arrange our offensive line. Tausher probably won’t be back and we lost Colledge (?) to free-agency. How am I ever going to get my fantasy football team right?
The Packers are part of the “fiber” of Wisconsin. Devoting a day to the green and gold occasionally is kind of fun!
Love,
Dad

I recently mentioned that a Grandson from Sheboygan “zapped” me with his response to my question “where do I put this soda to keep it cold”? His reply was “they call it a refrigerator”. Smart A–. Well, shortly thereafter, he was told he could have a dessert of ice cream cups or frozen chocolate bars. He asked “where are they”? Oh ho, this is too good. My answer was “they call it a refrigerator”! Ha!
I keep hearing words of explanation and they don’t make sense. The NFL (National Football League) has announced that the longest work stoppage in their history is over. What work stoppage? The packers won the Super Bowl and the practice for the new season doesn’t start until next week. Who stopped working? What is all the commotion about? Nobody cares about football during the summer. Confusing words!
Our fearless leader in Washington (President Obama) announced yesterday afternoon that the Democratic Members of the Senate had reached an agreement to balance the national budget by cutting expenses. No new taxes or new sources of revenue. Four hours later, Obama went on national TV announcing that we need to find new sources of revenue. Did I miss-understand the words? Shifting words!
Finally, I had my semi-annual visit to my doctor yesterday. I do get nervous, anticipating a dramatic turn in my health. Actually, I finally have a doctor I can talk to and he “listens”. Yep, he listens. During our visit he suggested a heart scan to determine calcium levels in the blood. It was just a suggestion; after all, I was his customer and it was my decision. Did I hear right? A doctor referring to me as a customer. I am a medical customer, not a patient. There is hope.
I seem to live in a shifting world of word meanings. It gets harder and harder to trust the words that people say to me.
Love,
Dad

I recently brought along a cold 12 pack of soda while visiting one of you Grasshoppers. I asked my Grandson what I should do to keep the soda cold. His answer was “I believe they call it a refrigerator”. Imagine that. A Grandson with a smart answer.
Our house was struck by lightning almost two weeks ago. We are down to getting a new door bell and a new motion sensing light for outside the garage. It is in the hands of an electrician who refuses to commit to a specific date.
I know most people wouldn’t think twice about oversleeping but I never, never over sleep. This morning I missed my normal wake up time by almost an hour. Now my whole day is out of sync. It changes my breakfast, my exercise program and anything else I have planned. Damn.
Strangest of all was I had a dream. I dreamt I was attending a wedding and I was sitting in a pew near the back of the church. An usher said “they were ready for me in the vestibule. I was escourted through the back of the church and it dawned on my that I was the Groom at my own wedding. In the vestibule I was fitted with a tux with a white top. I was told that after the service, a special little band would lead our wedding caravan down the street. I had to go across the street to a church office to sign some papers first. On the way across the street, I passed a welding shop. I need to use the rest room so I hustled into the shop and handed my white tux jacket to a guy with dirty hands. Upon leaving I noticed that my jacket was cluttered with spots of oil and dirt. My next recollection is I was headed back to the church and I was sure I would get sh– about my dirty tux. The organized wedding musical band was marching to the church and it ran into a formally organized City parade that happened to be coming down the street. The bands collided and there was total chaos. I found myself apologizing for the screw-up to the band leaders. Then I woke up. I have no idea whether I made it back to the church. I have no idea if I ever got married. I have no idea if the “bride-to-be” would marry a guy with a dirty jacket? A psycho analyst would have a ball with the dream.
Getting zapped with a smart-ass comment from a grandson was strange. A stray electrical strike damaging our house was strange. The dream was strange. Sleeping late was strange. I can hardly wait for the next strange thing. Maybe I’ll win the lottery.
Love,
Dad

Somehow your Mom and I commited ourselves to a very expensive movie habit.
It started with our cable company offering premium channels at reduced prices and then increasing the prices slowly over time. We had HBO. Then we could subscribed to Showtime and Cinemax “free” for 90 days. Then the freebies turned into $4.00 per month each and evolved into $10.00 per month each. We are currently paying $32 per month for premium stations (versus $10.00 per month originally). I guess you call that “getting screwed slowly”. We are dropping the premium channels today!
Along came Netflix. Your Mom decided she wanted to subscribe for “free”. This was the mailing of DVD’s through the mail to get the latest releases of movies. If we liked the service, “free” evolved into $7.99 per month. Grasshopper No.1 along with my favorite Son-in-law gave us a DVD blue ray player that downloands movies directly from Netflix. Presently we get Netflix by mail and the internet for the new total of $15.95 per month. Again we seem to be getting screwed slowly. Our decision is to drop the instant download via internet and keep the mailing of the disks going. I guess we can swing $7.99 per month.
Throw in an occasional movie at the local cinema and the costs go up in $20 increments ($35-$40 if you have the popcorn and treats).
Our movie library keeps increasing as Grasshopper No.1 keeps downloading popular movies onto DVD’s and giving us copies. That is free.
This whole movie “thing” just kind of happens with creative pricing by Time Warner Cable and Netflix. Also the technology of the internet keeps evolving. The prediction is that Netflix will eventually dominate the movie experience and popular TV programming.
The lesson Grasshoppers is “don’t be dazzled by all the movie offers”. Someone has got their hand in your pocket.
Love,
Dad