Hospital Perspectives

Having been to many different hospitals over the years for a variety of reasons I have really some to not enjoy the experience but have become unfazed by the environment and having to spend countless hours within their walls. While much of that calmness depends on the reasons for making the trip there, the majority of my experience has been of the non-life-threatening variety. Mostly those stays have involved pain and/or preventative measures… in some cases, like allergic reactions, it would have been a different scenario had we waited any longer.

Lately many of those brief visits to the medical compounds have been to check in on our son. These have been a welcomed change to the history that my wife and I both have with many of those medical buildings. It is here that we have been able to both see and hear our baby and really get lost in each and every moment. It is those times when the world melts away and any pain, discomfort, and stress disappears for a fleeting moment… it is better than any medication that any doctor could administer.

However, last week I was reminded of how much hospital trips can suck as I had to take a family member to the emergency room at 1:00am (it was not my wife so don’t freak out). It was a pain that I was all too familiar with having had a kidney stone in the past but this one seemed to be a lot worse. At least by what I could observe. And while we were able to quickly move through triage that is where the quick pace ended. 

This was the first time that I had been to the emergency room at this particular hospital in Chester County and I can’t say that I would rank it very high on the long list of hospitals and emergency rooms that I have visited during my life. The staff was slow and many of them didn’t seem like they knew what they were doing… while waiting in a "room" surrounded by curtains, I could actually hear a handful of staff members asking their colleagues where they were supposed to be. It really was a long cluster of a night/morning that dragged on for hours.

Once the pain was managed and the discharge papers signed, we headed back out into the cold and slalomed down the slightly icy roads. By the time I got back home I had about 15 minutes to sleep before my alarm would start going off. Needless to say I got to work a little later than usual last Friday.

And now with that experience fresh in my mind I am looking forward to what will hopefully be my next trip to the hospital. It won’t be much longer before I will welcome the trip to the hospital and anxiously pace around the room waiting for the birth of our child to happen. While all these other memories will remain, I am eagerly waiting for this new experience to be the prominent thought in my mind when I think about hospitals.

A Few Interesting Developments At Lodge

First the first time this year I was finally able to get to the lodge at my usual time last night and stay relatively ahead of schedule for the entire evening. By the time the candidates arrived I had already sifted through the incoming correspondences and fielded a couple of calls from the brethren. Because of this I was able to focus more on what was going on around me and truly appreciate the hard work that was being done more so than I have been able to do in previous weeks.

However it was before I even left the office when I received an email from a candidate that took me back for a second. Some will read the contents in a negative way but I see the words as a very positive understanding of the importance of advancing to the next degree. This candidate, having postponed his third degree once before, reached out and requested that it be pushed back another month as he didn’t feel he was prepared to take the next step.

While he had missed a number of training nights due to other obligations since receiving his last degree, he was still far enough along that it wouldn’t have prevented him taking the next step. This was evident last night as he struggled a bit but was definitely retaining what he needed to know. However, I completely understood his desire to be properly prepared and arranged for his degree to take place in March.

The rest of the night revolved around the dreaded discussions of the politics of the lodge as well as the initiatives that many of us would like to see take place in the coming months. In my position I do my best to remove myself from the former but eagerly embrace the latter when it makes sense and will continue to help the lodge grow and increase participation. Spearheaded by a newly raised brother, the ideas for the lodge, especially those regarding the education of new masons, are impressive and can ensure our continued success. I guess we will have to see how quickly we can implement those programs.

For now I am going to do my best to keep up and stay on schedule with the projects that keep flowing in. With everything going on just doing this has become difficult leaving me scrambling before most meetings to make sure everything is in order for the evening. Well, it could happen.

Tu B’Shevat: Celebrating New Life

I’ve always found it interesting that during the darkest time of the year when the trees seem lifeless under a snowy and icy veneer that we celebrate Tu B’Shevat. Of course, this is the view from the diaspora when many of these seemly oddly placed holidays reflect the life and vibrancy of the homeland. As Chabad.org summarizes:

Tu B’Shevat, the 15th of Shevat on the Jewish calendar—celebrated this year on Wednesday, February 4, 2015—is the day that marks the beginning of a “new year” for trees. This is the season in which the earliest-blooming trees in the Land of Israel emerge from their winter sleep and begin a new fruit-bearing cycle.

Legally, the “new year” for trees relates to the various tithes that are separated from produce grown in the Holy Land. These tithes differ from year to year in the seven-year shemittah cycle; the point at which a budding fruit is considered to belong to the next year of the cycle is the 15th of Shevat.

We mark the day of Tu B’Shevat by eating fruit, particularly from the kinds that are singled out by the Torah in its praise of the bounty of the Holy Land: grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates. On this day we remember that “man is a tree of the field” (Deuteronomy 20:19), and reflect on the lessons we can derive from our botanical analogue.

The fascinating thing that we have to remember when these holidays come around is that they are celebrating the Jewish homeland. This is what draws our thoughts and prayers to Israel. They are subtle reminders that no matter where we are in this world we all focus or faith and our being on one central holy land. Today, which began at sunset this evening, we celebrate the bountiful land that not only sustains our bodies but also our minds and our spirit.

However, this year I can see the season of new life in a very personal way as our son is nearly ready to join us. It is during these cold months that he has grown so much and developed quite the personality as he insists on playing with his mom and dad and responding to our voices more than ever before. The trees may seem dormant here but our baby is fully embracing this holiday by not just beginning a new year but beginning a new life. At some point in his life we will be sure to show him this land to which we are so strongly connected.

An Ornery Little Woodchuck

I went to bed last night with the snow falling probably as hard as it has all year and about two total inches having already accumulated on the ground. By the time I woke up for the third or fourth time during the night, I could hear that the precipitation had changed to a liquid state. It was going to be a messing morning no matter what was falling from the sky. All we could hope was that the ice wouldn’t develop as predicted but I’m not holding my breath either way.  

While still in bed and occasionally smashing the snooze button on my phone the meteorologists were all prognosticating and letting us know that, once again, Armageddon was just around the corner. Of course, a smaller and furrier one was also getting up early today… actually his process is more akin to being abducted from his home. It is that time of year when Sonny and Cher fill the airwaves and we all go out of our way to avoid Ned Ryerson.

That’s right, Phil is back and as ornery as ever predicting another six weeks of winter. However, when you think about it, it makes you wonder just how accurate a prediction he can give as he seems to be a pampered, agoraphobic, temperamental little rodent. It’s safe to say that this woodchuck wouldn’t chuck wood if his life depended on it. I’m pretty sure his handlers wouldn’t let him do any kind of physical labor anyway.  

Just like last year, he emerged from his little hole and glanced at his shadow causing a groan to flow throughout the crowd. This should be no surprise as since 1887 he has only been able to avoid the glance 17 times… maybe Bill Murray didn’t relive the same day over and over. Maybe it just seemed like it as he went through the same routine year after year.

So, if his prediction stands we will be stuck with this mix of snow, ice, and sleet for six more weeks. The worst kind of winter season. Hopefully, there will be a few good deluges here and there so long as they don’t happen at the same time as our son’s arrival. Any other time would be fine especially after we take him home as it would be kind of nice to be stuck in the house with our baby despite the possibility of having a close encounter with a blowout.

Phil doesn't like blowouts either!

The Super Bowl Waiting Game

It seems as though the topic of the Super Bowl has come up in just about every conversation I have had in the last few days. Most of the time it has been about the game itself while the commercials and halftime show have also been topics thrown into the mix. No matter the specifics within the general topic I had basically the same reaction… doubt that I’ll watch it just let me know who wins.

However, tonight I found myself turning the channel to check on the progress of the game. The little that I saw it seemed to be an interesting contest and based on the social media streams and post-game coverage, it was one of the better matchups that has happened in some time. But I wasn’t watching occasionally to see if Seattle or New England would win another title, I tuned in to watch a few commercials (which continue to go downhill) and to see when The Blacklist would be starting.

Of course, there was also the one time that I flipped the channel and the halftime show was running rampant across the field. They seem to be getting more and more extravagant every year and playing into the fact that the primary purpose of the NFL is entertainment. It was also amusing, which was also pointed out on Facebook by a friend of mine, that Katy Perry was riding the “more you know” star. Definitely no deflated balls found in the halftime show (also courtesy of the observant comments found on Facebook).  

In the end, George Carlin was wrong. Football seems to go on forever. It is not rigidly timed both for the on the field play or on the field antics. The games get longer and longer every year with the halftime show providing viewers with a loner and longer bathroom break. You could almost hear the entire country flush at the same time about five minutes after the first half ended.  

Thankfully the postgame ruckus seemed to pass relatively quickly and the regularly scheduled programming resumed leaving the football game in the past. It seems as though no matter how good of a game it was there is always an anticlimactic feel at the end of the night when the Lombardi Trophy is raised the same speech is repeated by the owner and 90% of the time the winning quarterback is brought up to the podium to receive the MVP. It is almost formulaic once the clock winds down. Of course, what do I know, I am a lifelong Eagles fan.

Packages And Returns

It seems as though there is one package or another that arrives at the office on a daily basis. All different shapes, sizes, and weights. Some business and others personal (especially around the holidays). Also a common sights is the occasional box that is put aside to be picked up and returned to where it came from. I have heard all the reasons for send something back even though I rarely do so myself from wrong size or color to poor quality, wrong item all together, or arriving too late and everything in between.

Every time I see one of those packages heading out the door I can’t help but think about the cost of those returns and how the “free returns” policy isn’t really a free service as those anticipated costs are factored into the price of the object. When I looked into the data behind returns (focusing on the online side of things) I was taken aback by the percentage… in 2013, The Wall Street Journal found that nearly a third (33%) of all online purchases were returned for one reason or another. That is a lot of money spend on “free returns”.

Beyond the money it just seems like a pain in the what to have to go through that process and I tried finding some more information on what impact it has on the retailer. From a recent survey I found the following statistics:

• 54% of respondents stated that the reason for returning an item purchased online or by phone is because the item is the incorrect size or color
• 97% of respondents stated that the return process is important to their future intentions to shop with a retailer
• 73% of respondents who receive an incorrect item after already returning it once stated that they are much less likely to shop with that retailer online or by phone again for future purchases
• 45% of respondents who have experienced continuous return process issues with particular retailers stated that they have limited shopping with that retailer altogether (both online and in-store)
• 26% of respondents expect the correct item to be shipped to them within one to two days after returning the incorrect item

While I rely more on the end cost of the item and tend to put up with these errors, it seems as though I am among the minority. But it makes me think more about the disconnect that many people have from the products they buy while maintaining the “I see it now and I want it now” mentality. While I prefer going into a store and buying the items that I want or need, online is an inexpensive alternative to get the same thing at a much better price. I wonder how many of those in the above survey could have avoided the return had they seen the color in person and determined if something ran large or small while trying it on in the store.

We have to remember that while online shopping is convenience and cheaper, the in-store experience is sometimes worth the ten minutes out of your day and ten cents out of your pocket. Heck, sometimes it is cheaper to buy in the store if you simply talk to the sales person, manager, or owner. That little bit of time can end up saving you a lot of aggravation if not money and if people stop returning so much stuff online it might even drive down some of those “low prices” even further.

Firearms Friday: SNAFU

When Sig Sauer originally started producing the Sig Brace they insisted that reviewers, especially those on YouTube, not shoulder the brace so that the ATF wouldn’t get their feelings hurt. The brace was designed with a specific purpose at its inception in that it would assist those unable to shoulder an AR-15 by allowing them to put the brace on a pistol length platform and wrap the brace around their forearm allowing for one handed operation. Since the ATF was fine with people shouldering an unaltered pistol, the brace was frequently being employed as a means to circumvent NFA requirements and making AR pistols function similarly to the highly regulated short barrel rifle.

The Sig Brace even came with (and probably still does) a letter from the ATF securing the legality of the brace and the multiple purposes that it serves. Everything was fine for a while but as soon as the first video was posted of the brace being shouldered, the letters to the ATF came pouring in. The astounding thing is that these correspondences were not from the registration and regulation happy crowd, they were from law abiding gun owners basically asking the federal agency if they were really really sure that shouldering was okay.

Well finally the ATF had enough and like most people in politics they decided to flip flop and declare that the shouldering of the brace was no longer allowed. That’s right, we had a good thing going and we are the ones that screwed it all up. So now we are going to have to wait and see if Sig Sauer decides to fight the ruling and eventually we will find out if the ATF will reverse their decision again.

But, for the time being, here are four simple words for some of the gun owners out there: “Shut The Heck Up!”

Of course, there are many of us that see the Bureau of Always Totally Fudged more as a waste of money rather than an effective means of regulation. After all, who are they really regulating anyway? That’s right, it is the law abiding gun owner (some obviously a little too overzealous in their caution) not the ones that would use any of the NFA items in a nefarious way. The $200 tax stamp, extra paper work, and additional background checks are only ensuring that they know where all the legal firearms are and doing nothing to remove them from the hands of criminals. 

Heck, maybe the ones who need to be controlled are the hoplophobes who like to randomly tackle citizens legally carrying a firearm into a Florida Walmart. Those people are nuts… and fortunately now they’re going to jail. Who’s the real criminal here?