Tuesday, August 21, 2012

What I Really Want To Win

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I have changed my perspective on a lot of things since passing through the pearly gates of retirement.  When your value is in the form of a paycheck and you have benefits coming in every two weeks, the rest of the issues that swirl around us don't have the same urgency until you are no longer working. 

Issues such as health care, the economy and what is right, wrong, good and bad take on a new tint.  If you have had health care coverage through your employer and then have them taken away, you start taking it much more seriously.

It is with this new found perspective, that I find myself watching some of the commericals for various fast food outlets in which 'contests' are offered where you can win 'fabulous' prizes, like money, or a new car or a new Sony PS3 Gaming System.  Ohhh, Goodie. 

Are we really that stupid?  Is McDonald's or Jack in the Box really going to get me to eat more Tacos or Fish Sandwiches by offereing me a new Ford Explorer?  That is the last thing I want. 

If you want me to eat your fast food or shop at your supermarket, offer me these types of prizes;

Free Health Care for 5 years....I will shop at your store a LOT for that!

How about a free 4 year scholarship so I can go back to school and get retrained for a new career.

Maybe a free monitored security system to take up the slack left by the minimal coverage of the police force where I live. 

Friday, August 17, 2012

Why We Are Leaving.....

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My wife and I are in the process of moving. We are leaving the big city and moving to much more rural town about 200 miles away. Moving is a bitch, especially the older you get. But we are dead set on getting out of here. Here is just a few of the reasons why.

Sometime last month, someone grafettied out alley-way wall and then came into our backyard and ransacked our garage. Stolen were a Laptop, iPod, Segway and an adult tricycle. All this, even though we leave near downtown where police precense is supposed to higher and we have private security in our neighborhood.  The best part about this, is that the Segway had no keys and no batteries attached to it, so it is effectively an 80lb paperweight.  It can never be made runable.  Apparently, the folks that stole it have a very low IQ.  

Then...... I tried to re-register my motorcycle that I had in storage for the past year so I could ride it down to our new house, 200 miles away. This took a total of 6+ hours waiting at the DMV, only to be told by three different state workers that I didn't have all the correct paperwork to complete the process. Instead of telling me up front what I needed (their website was no help at all), I had to find out peice-meal over a 3 day period and 4 seperate trips to the DMV office. To add insult to injury, I was penilized $50 for letting the previous registration lapse.

THEN.......... Sometime last week, we had a ceramic cat statue stolen from our front porch. Which means someone just walked up to our house and walked off with it in the middle of the night. Value? Maybe $20. Worth stealing? Priceless.

T H E N . . . . . . After going to Kinko's to make some copies of the sale documents for our new house (did I mention that it is 200 miles away?), I walked across the street to McDonald's to get some breakfast. After ordering and giving them $6 for my receipt, I waited, and waited, and waited for over 10 minutes. No food showed up. When I went to the counter to inquire about it, they admitted that they had failed to create the order. I put the recipt down on the counter, told them to keep it, and walked out of the place. This same scenerio has happened to me on numerous occassions at McDonald's, so why I keep going there is a mystery to me. The fact that none of the counter staff could speak a word of English may have had something to do with it.

Sue and I have come to the conclusion, long ago, that there is no competency in the society where we live. It may not be much better in the town where we are moving to, but one thing is for sure. There will be a lot less theives and incompetent people there to deal with.

To all the friends that we are leaving behind in Phoenix, Arizona.  Good Luck.  Hope you all have better luck than we did in the Valley of the Sun!