In a few hours, Mrs. Major and I are scheduled to join some of her PEO sisters in Sanford, Florida, for a riverboat cruise dinner-dance, presumably for Valentine’s Day. This is a BIL¹ event. It’s been on the books for several months.

The problem is, it’s been raining buckets² for hours and is forecast to be the same with temps around 40 degrees at launch time. Fortunately, I think the meal is served inside. At least I hope it is.

© 2010, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

1. BILs are the husbands of the PEOs. I’m not sure what BIL stands for, if anything; except I’m sure it doesn’t stand for “brothers in lingerie”. At least I hope it doesn’t. [↩]
2. Cats and dogs [↩]

Our discipleship/small groups moved from Wednesday night to Saturday night. Wednesday is the night Mrs. Major has cards, so now I have Wednesday night free to read. Yea!

© 2010, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

Mrs. Major and I had a great weekend (Thursday – Saturday) in St. Augustine celebrating our 44th wedding anniversary. We walked on the beach, ate lavishly, shopped in Old Town, toured the fort, drove around, and visited the World Golf Hall of Fame. All-in-all a relaxing, romantic get-away.

© 2010, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

At 5am – 7am we had thunderstorms, a tornado,  and rain totaling 1/2 inch and and hour and a half later we were out playing golf. Gotta love Florida.

© 2010, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

Here we are with Marcus and his work

Marcus with Red Storm #5

© 2009 – 2010, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

The 1.8 year old TiVo HD finally started to look like it was recording, but actually dropping programs around the 1 minute to 11 minute recorded mark. I wasn’t sure whether it was the hard disk in the TiVo, the external hard disk, or Comcast signals. Not wanting to spend a bunch of money to find out, we switched from Comcast to Dish. Since the DVR service with Dish is less than the TiVo service, and the actual Dish service is cheaper than Comcast, we’ll be saving the big bucks.

I also switched our high-speed Internet service from Comcast to CenturyLink. It’s no longer required that  you subscribe to local phone service in order to get DSL. Good deal. The DSL will be about the same as cable after the discounted price expires after a year.

So far things are working superbly and we’re learning the new system.

I’m officially retiring the static page titled “Comcast Saga” effective immediately.

© 2009, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

I just went through my many boxes of electronic stuff to organize and throw out. I don’t know how I did it, but among the yards of phone lines, miles of coaxial cable, and plethora of plugs, I found 15, count ‘em, 15 AC adapters of various sizes and voltages. These do not include all the cell phone chargers, of which we have many. I must have kept them in spite of tossing the equipment to which they supply the juice.

I’m also getting real tired of this Halloween theme I’ve got going here. I’m glad October is almost over so I can change it. Maybe I’ll change it anyway.

© 2009, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

Apparently, I really offended my dentist, Dr. Adam Still, (or his operations manager, Stacy Markle), of Laurel Manor Dental. Offended enough that they no longer want me (or Mrs. Major) as a patient. Here’s what happened:

About a year and a half ago, Dr. Still recommended that I replace the crowns on teeth 18 and 19 as they were beginning to “leak” and I would begin to get cavities underneath them soon. He gave me a treatment plan for the two crowns at $2200.¹ I have this minimalist dental insurance² that was already maxed out for last fiscal year, so I tried to negotiate with the doctor on the price. He pretty much laughed me off.

I waited until the beginning of this fiscal year and attempted to renegotiate a better price for the two crowns. He refused. When my perodontist also recommended that I get the crowns replaced, I began to shop around to see if a local dentist would do them for less. The good folks at Royal Dental concurred with Laurel Manor Dental’s diagnosis and agreed to replace the crowns for $699 each. I requested that Laurel Manor Dental send my x-rays to Royal Dental so that they could do the work. Which they did for the agreed upon price. They did a great job, too.

A week or so later, I got a letter from Stacy Markle stating that Laurel Manor Dental was sorry to see me leave and was wishing me the “very best in your future dental care.” I called Ms. Markle several times but was unsuccessful. The last time I left her a message on her voicemail stating that I was not changing dentists. I just wanted to save $800 on my crowns. Other than the price for the crowns, I was completely satisfied with Laurel Manor Dental.

Yesterday, I received a “Dear John” letter from Ms. Markle. I quote it here:

As referenced in my letter to you dated July 20^th 2009 it is my understanding that you have chosen to seek dental care elsewhere. You indicated such to us when you requested your radiographs be forwarded to another office in order to have your treatment performed there. As a practice policy, we do not assume responsibility for treatment received outside of this office when we have diagnosed treatment and established a relationship with our patient. Therefore, as stated in my letter, we regret your decision, however, wish you the very best in your future dental care.³

A nice, friendly letter making it seem like I had abandoned our relationship. Figuring that a business manager would be loath to loose two valued customers in these tough economic times, I called Ms. Markle. I was astounded that, indeed, I was fired as a patient. They had cancelled my appointment for a cleaning for Wednesday.

I guess we’ll have to find another dentist.

© 2009, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

1. Actually $910 per crown and $195 each for buildups…so it’s really $2210. [↩]
2. It’s The Retiree Dental Program for retired military which we pay for. It doesn’t cover all the costs and for crowns there is a max per crown that is very low. They only pay 50% with a max of $350 per crown. [↩]
3. I can’t help it. The punctuation in the first sentence is amiss. And one doesn’t diagnose a treatment; one prescribes a treatment. [↩]

I received this as an email from one of my nieces. The deal was to fill it out on yourself and send it back and send it to a bunch of other folks.

I usually don’t forward emails, and I usually don’t spend much time filling out surveys like this, but this seemed like fun. I emailed a copy back to my niece and am posting it here…in case you’re interested. Read the rest of this entry »

© 2008, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

Here are the tag rules:Link to the person that tagged you: Tasty (my sweet Dau)!Post the rules for the me-it’s-all-me on your blog. And here they are:Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog, tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. I usually ignore tags. But since Tasty was completely out of people to tag, I’ll play along.
2. It’s been about two hours since I started listing these seven things. Maybe I’ll quit trying to make this interesting…which is why I’ve not posted here since November. Nothing interesting to say.
3. We just returned from a cruise on Carnival Cruise Lines. If you’ve never cruised before, Carnival would be a wonderful experience. It’s just a notch below RCCL, Norwegian, Celebrity, and Holland America in service. Lots more activities, though.
4. I’ve done our own tax returns all but one year…sometime in the mid 70s. I paid H&R Block $35 to do something I thought was complex but turned out to be easy. It helps to use Turbo Tax.
5. I get really annoyed when someone tells me how to do something that I already know how to do.
6. I am really enjoying retirement. My wife recently said she’s surprised that I didn’t get a part time job or volunteered for Habitat for Humanity or something. I guess leading the youth band (Everfall) at church doesn’t count. Besides, I don’t want another job.
7. I just got up to pee for the fourth time since starting this exercise. Not only have I always had a “tiny bladder”, but also I now have an enlarged prostate contributing to the problem. I doesn’t help that my wife and I started a diet today during which we have to drink eight, count em’ eight, glasses of water a day. That and the coffee are running through me like an eight-year-old through Christmas packages.

So there, I’ve killed two birds with one post. The following folks are tagged: Mandy, Scoop, Vicki, and BLB. (I know it’s only four. I don’t have that many friends.)OK. I’m done with these tagington thingys.

© 2008, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.