I Already Have a 'Single Payer' System

The fanatical opposition to health care reform is the latest in a long line of weird behavior that fascinates me.

I am not espousing any health care plan over or any reform over any other. As with the financial debacle, I'm too ignorant of all the facts and of all the possible repercussions to have a solid idea I'd prefer. But I can not understand the knee-jerk, raving opposition to a single-payer system.

For one thing, it seems to work quite well in other places. Better than our current (lack of) system. Other western countries seem to be consistently rated higher than us in quality of care, and in cost.

Plus Medicare and the VA system seem to do okay. The argument that those government plans are in financial trouble doesn't carry much weight with me. It's true, but they also are run on a fraction of insurance companies' budgets.

The argument that they are wasteful is fairly ridiculous. If I make $50,000 a year and you earn only $20,000 a year, does the fact that I have $2,000 left at the end of the year and you are broke mean that you are 'wasteful'?

I'm sure there is plenty of waste in government programs. But I'm convinced they are no more wasteful than the average business.

Finally, I and most insured Americans already have a single-payer system. The payer is our employer, and we use whatever insurance company they decide to use, and pay whatever premiums and out-of-pocket expenses they decide we need to pay. And go to whatever doctors and hospitals are in their system, and get whatever treatment they say is reimbursable.

I am a long way from confident that our government could run this thing well. But when it comes to making sure I have quality health care available at a price that won't bankrupt me, I would not trust the government any less than I trust my profit-driven employer and their profit-driven insurance provider.

Of course, none of this matters because it almost certainly isn't going to happen.

This afternoon I went to the zoo for my walk. I planned to do more walking than viewing, so I didn't take my camera. I figured I'd only stop for a look at a couple of my favorite animals, but mostly just keep moving for a nice, hilly walk.

Then I ended up doing more viewing than walking. The animals are always so active on cool days. Of course, the zoo was extremely crowded, so I guess the animals might have been saying "the humans are always so active on cool days."
Anyway, here are the pictures I couldn't take. I hope you enjoy them. Overheard: Is that camel dead, Mommy?Caption: Don't jump, Mr. Orangutan! You have a lot to live for!
Wow, little Scotty should be renamed Big Willie. Put that thing away, son!



Hey, the human exhibit. Oh, wait, he's just a zoo staffer feeding the porcupine.

I wished I had my camera in the dayroom. The siamangs were really having a good time wrestling and swinging around. There was a handler in there with them, and I have to believe there couldn't possibly be a much better way to spend a work day than playing with the siamangs. It looked like a lot of fun.

One last thing:
I was next to the snow leopard cage when two little girls ran up. They looked at the leopard for a minute, then went to the sign. The older girl read the sign out loud for the younger's benefit (I'd guess they were 8 and 5 years old).
Then the parents showed up and stopped in front of the cat. They looked at it for a few seconds then the dad said, 'Come here, girls, look at this big tiger!'
The girls ignored him at first as they finished reading and the older girl answered a question (correctly) about the snow leopard's habitat.
The dad said again 'C'mon! Don't you want to see the tiger?"
"It's not a tiger, Dad," said the 5-year-old,
"Yeah it is. Right here on the rocks! Come here and see it."
"We've already seen it, Dad. And it's not a tiger. It's a snow leopard." She said this in a tone of voice that implied one word left off the end: "Duh."

The WORST Kind of Dream

This seems to happen to me 5 or 6 times a year, and I always hate it. A lot.

I dreamt I overslept. In my dream I woke up, snug and comfortable and lazing in bed, then suddenly recognized the bright daylight. I looked at the clock and saw that it was 9:30 already and I was very late for work. I jumped out of bed and rushed around to get ready, and nothing was going right.
As tends to happen in dreams, things were out of order...I was in the car rushing, then I was back turning off the shower and realizing I had no towel- my towels weren't all in the hamper or closet, they were non-existent. I cursed, then resorted to drying with a tee shirt. Then I was rushing out the door and back to the car again.
Then I woke up- for real- and checked my alarm clock. That happens a lot, and sometimes it can be a really nice feeling because I see I have an hour left to sleep. Few things are better.
This morning when I looked, though, it was 5:58. There wasn't a lot I could do with those 2 minutes.

Ho Hum, Another Night, Another Tournament Title

Some days I'm more thankful than others that this blog only has a dozen or so followers.

All day today I was somewhat sorry I posted that Pitino joke. I admit I still find it humorous, but I just now deleted it. My poor taste should not be subjected upon others. Not very often, anyway.

Anyway, I arrived at St. Martha tonight at 6:30, ready for a long, difficult evening. I was tired. Very tired. I lacked enough sleep, I was incredibly tight and sore from the long night last night, and I expected we'd be playing the same bunch of jerks we beat last Wednesday- and unfortunately they are a terrific softball team, so I figured we had our work cut out for us.

They lost the loser's bracket final, though, and we won the title with a 15-9 victory. Much easier than last night, but every bit as satisfying. We finished fifth in the Wednesday league, but won the tournament with victories over #4, #1, #2, and #3. I was thrilled. This was a great league with especially strong teams at the top.

We celebrated, but it was subdued. Everybody was worn out from last night. And we all seem to be hoping for rain Thursday night for our first fall game. Still, I'm generally looking forward to the fall.

We always pick up a new player or two for the fall league, and this year it looks like we've got a 3rd baseman and a shortstop. I'll move myself so we can check them out, which means I'll get a nice change of scenery for a while, and probably play a few games at 1st and a few at 2nd.

I'm looking forward to it. I always enjoy playing first base. I like scooping a few throws out of the dirt- then I say "hey, why was our scorer giving me throwing errors on this kind of play all year? They're easy!"

For those of you keeping score at home: I played in three leagues, won 3 league tournaments and two regular season titles. 5 out of 6 isn't bad. Not that I'm gloating or anything...

Win, Win, Win, Win. Yay. I'm Tired.

Sorry. I'm sure that's the most vulgar thing I've ever put on this blog and so I apologize. But how could I resist?

I played 27 innings of softball tonight. I'm tired.


We won 4 games and the tournament. I again don't remember many details. We won the last game 16-10. I remember that much. All four games were fairly close. We had a big 6th inning in the 2nd game to win by the 12-run mercy rule, the other 3 games went 7 innings.

I arrived home 25 minutes ago, showered, ate a bowl of cereal, and now I'm dry enough to go to bed.

One or two games tomorrow and one game Thursday.

Best Weekend of the Summer

Unfortunately, I don't usually notice things like this. I should probably pay more attention to when I'm having a good time because I would probably appreciate things more.

But for once I noticed. I had a terrific weekend. Easily the best of the summer, and I feel I've had a pretty good summer so it had some competition.

It started slowly but pleasantly. I was worn out Friday and had no intention of doing anything at all, and that's what I did. I fixed a good dinner, then read a good book for about 2 or 3 hours and went to bed fairly early. It was nice.

The first half of my Saturday was spent cleaning up a little and doing a little necessary shopping, and when I was done I felt a nice sense of accomplishment for a minimal amount of effort. That was nice, too.

I missed seeing Mom and Kim, but Saturday dinner with Dad, Mark, and the girls was completely pleasant. And then I went to Ron's Saturday night to swim and hang out with his family and Jim's family and we had a very good time (Though I should have eased back on my storytelling a little. Lauren Meyer was a little leery of jumping back in the pool after I told her about the sharks hiding under the rafts).

I lazed around a big chunk of Sunday, which is always wonderful. Then I really enjoyed Erin's birthday party (FIVE! You've got to be kidding me. If I didn't see how tall she was getting I'd swear she was just born a year ago).

Tonight was capped off by a terrific, tournament-winning softball game. We trailed 12-0 before we batted in the first inning but won 18-17 in the bottom of the 7th. Great game, and I played fine. I was 3 for 3 with a walk, and all three hits were with 2 outs and drove in runs. So I was quite pleased with myself.

And it's almost midnight but I've already arranged an 8:00-4:30 work schedule this week rather than 7:00-3:30, so again I'm quite pleased with myself.

I love good weekends. From now on, I'm going to make a point of noticing when I have one.

Softball Lowlights, and maybe I can scrape up a Highlight

Our Tuesday night dynasty stumbled. Our 16-0 regular season team now sits at 0-1 in the tournament and in the loser's bracket. To make it worse, we had to sit 3 hours waiting to play again before they called it a night because it was too late to start another game, and now we have to play at 9:15 Thursday.

If it wasn't our worst game of the year it was close. We led 6-2 after 2 innings and lost 9-8. No hitting at all. Awful.

At least it feels good to be such a big win for the other team. They celebrated like they'd won the whole tournament already, their sponsor was paying for their beer, and they were overheard talking about how great it was 'to beat those old guys.'

I was our third oldest player. And #4 is 4 years younger than me. So I did some quick calculations this evening and determined the average age of our lineup, and it's only 31. 5 years ago- before most of our REAL old guys quit playing- our average age was about 40.

I guess they had a point, though, because I was thinking "I can't believe we let these kids beat us."

Okay, here is the only highlight. It was pretty neat. We turned a triple play.

I don't think I've ever been involved in a triple play before. I might be wrong, but I don't think so.

Here is how it happened:
They had runners on first and second and hit a hard shot up the middle. Our shortstop dove, knocked it down, and flipped to the 2nd baseman, who turned a double play. The runner on 2nd actually dove back in to the bag because at first he thought the batted ball was caught for an out- then he ran on to third, where I tagged him out on a throw by the first baseman. Nifty.

Sleep disorders and Sleeping Injuries

As far back as I can remember, I have suffered frequent bouts of insomnia. Thankfully, they've been much less frequent over the last year or two. Nights of unexplainable insomnia have become almost non-existent; I have nights that take a long time to get to sleep, but they are usually the nights I was out at the ballfield until 11 and stopped at White Castle on the way home. So those are understandable.

Sunday night, though, was awful. I tossed and turned until 1 a.m., got up and tried to read some but soon felt I could try to sleep again. And tried again and then got up at 2:30 and watched some television and then went to bed at 3:15 and tossed and turned and never slept. Going in to work with no sleep was miserable.

Here's something that happened Monday afternoon that makes me think I might have been a bit delirious: I saw a package of Monet postcards on a co-worker's desk, and then a short time later I heard Eddie Money on the radio. The rest of the afternoon I had periodic fits of near-giggles over the idea of an impressionist rocker named Eddie Monet.

By the time I woke up this morning it didn't seem nearly as funny.

Of course, I was also in a foul mood when I awoke this morning because I had injured myself during the night.
I was sleeping on my right side and my right hand had fallen asleep under the weight of my body. I wasn't aware of this until I rolled over, caught my hand in the covers, and must have bent it incredibly far before I felt anything wrong. And then what felt wrong was the incredible pain in my hand. My right pinkie finger is pretty well sprained and swollen around the lower knuckle. Ouch ouch ouch.

I don't suppose the AMA has ever done a study, but I'd bet it is fairly rare to sprain something while asleep in bed.

(It ain't broke, it's just spraint)

According to "The Daily Mail," this ram caught his horn on a low-lying wire atop a hill, then ziplined down the hill. I think that's pretty funny.

_____________________________________________________________________________
We won two games tonight. I played okay and hit okay.