Agrimace in time

Today I am sitting and playing on the computer. I read the paper and the last of a book (skinny dipping) the book title not me :>. I haven't gotten up to exercise and I haven't done much to clean up. The weather has changed and it is cooler here. Harder to exercise when it is colder outside. I guess I will try to do something inside or maybe just go back to reading.
On another topic, I am totally thrilled that the republicans are self destructing. Good ol' "stay the course" Bush may have to rethink his philosophy come November. My thoughts for what they are worth.

I had to get up at 5 am this am to take my son to school for a field trip. He is going out on the water with his marine biology class to collect specimens. So I came back and went back to sleep. 9am and now off to work.

No matter how missed up your life seems at any given moment there is always someone else who has it worst and you can always find someone who has considerably worst customer service than you offer. An employee at work has a boyfriend that is severely abusing her. He is burning her, beating her and apparently tried to cut her throat. It makes one wonder what the upside for this young lady could possibly have been. How is it that her self esteem is so low that she would take his actions as love or even forgive him when he asked her to. BTW we are doing all that we can to get her out of the situation.

Customer service in this country is atrocious. This is particularly true in the health industry. I have had ro recently deal with a particular hospital that shall remain nameless, they treated my mother horribly. Not only did they loss her hearing aid, they never made any attempt to apologize for it or make amends. They thought that she was uninsured and as such never gave her any doctors above an intern. The doctors didn't return my calls and when they finally did they treated me like I was imposing on them for asking questions. They then released her before she could walk on her own to go home to a house by herself. Anyway, she is doing better (after a stay with us) and is madder than hell at the hospital. Really wouldn't take a whole lot of effort to give better customer service than that. First lesson, follow thru on promises you make. Just my two cents.

I hereby vow to increase my musings on Live Journal. Hopefully it will take my mind off work family etc and allow me to find other people with similar interests and concerns. I hope that Live journal is the place to do so and isn't full of immature teens. So here it goes....

It seems to me that no one has adequately defined "midlife crisis". Is it a time when you are looking for love in all the wrong places (to quote a cliche') or is it when you wake up one day and discover life is half over. When is life half over anyway? How do you know that you won't be gone in ten minutes (gee that seems more likely now than when I was 18). How is it that you can be in college one day and sending you kid off to college the next. What happened to all those things you planned to do but only later. Why is it I can't name one accomplishment that I will be remembered for? Sounds depressing but it is ok in the next minute I will be too busy to remember what I was depressed about anyway. Those "next minutes" add up and then it has been twenty years since college, 2 years since you had ideals, 20 years since you thought more about what you would be next year than how you will make it when your son goes away to college or when you will retire. I have never been one to dwell on posterity but posterity is getting closer all the time maybe it is time to start dwelling. I could start by making a list of all the things that I want to accomplish before I die. Or I could start by naming all the things I have accomplished and the things I have to be thankful for. There certainly are some of those. It is better to dwell or those rather than my regrets. Regrets, while educational, are damned dpressing. I think that I would like to stick to being modest and just accomplish one thing that one person will remember me for. Well maybe next year....

I guess once upon a time the front porch was a meeting place or a place to pass the time with the family. It was often the coolest area and since there was little other entertainment people would sit on the porch and watch the other people go by. Now with the advent of computer, Cable, dvds etc. no one is lacking for entertainment and hardly anyone sits on their front porch anymore. Last Night I went our with the dog and watched as a thunder storm slowly and violently rolled into the area. I could hear the distant thunder long before I saw any semblance of flashes. As they storm came closer the rain started to fall on the tin roof. Slowly at first and then increasing in intensity until the sound was almost all you could hear. The flashing of the lighting broke up the darkening sky and the thunder shock me and the porch.
The entire storm may have lasted ten minutes but I wasn't counting. I do know it was over too quickly and was much more interesting than what happened to be on TV at the time.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Republican lawmaker said on Sunday his U.S. Senate committee would look into a reported move by the Pentagon to reinterpret U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld broad authority over spy operations abroad.

Responding to the report in The Washington Post on Sunday, Senate Armed Services Committee member John McCain, an Arizona Republican, told CBS's "Face the Nation" program he would raise the question at hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Post, citing Pentagon documents and interviews with participants, reported that Rumsfeld had created a unit called the Strategic Support Branch to end "near total dependence" on the CIA for human intelligence.

The unit, which has been operating for two years, deploys teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists with special operations forces, The Post said. The department contended the defense intelligence missions were subject to fewer legal constraints, the newspaper added.

Defense Department spokesman Lawrence DiRita, however, said there was "no unit that is directly reportable to the secretary of Defense for clandestine operations as is described in The Washington Post article."

"Further, the department is not attempting to 'bend' statutes to fit desired activities, as is suggested in this article," he added in a statement.

McCain said the move was "a product of the frustration with the CIA of a failure to have decent human intelligence."

"Should the Armed Services Committee look at it? Yes. And should we know more about it? Yes. And I'm always sorry to read about things in The Washington Post when they affect a committee that I'm a member of."

The Pentagon statement said the war on terrorism necessitated "a framework by which military forces and traditional human intelligence work more closely together and in greater numbers than they have in the past."

"These actions are being taken within existing statutory authorities to support traditional military operations and any assertion to the contrary is wrong," DiRita said.

A CIA spokesman said the agency had no immediate comment.

The unit has operated in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other undisclosed locations, the newspaper reported. The group's focus, according to an early planning document, was on Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia, The Post said.

The Strategic Support Branch was established with "reprogrammed" funds and without explicit authority from the U.S. Congress, the newspaper reported, quoting unnamed Pentagon officials.

I ahve been religiously exercising now (in fight against diabetes) for over two years. I usually spend about 30 to 45 minutes a day 6 days a week in exercising. I find that if I miss a day, I get grumpy and have a hard time when I get back to it. I think that you have to find a goal as well as a purpose to exercise. My goal is losing and maintaining my weight. The purpose is to get me away from work and relieve stress.
Recently I have begun to have sore knees, that seem to start hurting while driving and sitting at a particular angle. I hope that I am not damaging my knees permanently.

I hate buying cars. Instead of being excited I always get depressed afterwards. I feel like I paid too much or that I piked the wrong model or that I didn't get everything I wanted in it. On top of that I have to worry about whether my wife really likes it or was she just letting me get what I wanted to shut me up.
We were upside down in the trade so we will be in this car (2005 civic) for a while. I hope it does better than the last car. Thank you all in cyberspace for letting me rant again without guilt or malice afore thought. This way no one can argue with me. Well almost no one.