Featured Grownups asks this month how we have been coping with an economy that has not exactly been in the best of shape for the past year or so. The topic is Getting Thrifty, and I have to say right up front that the economy has not really effected me personally too much. For the most part, life goes on pretty much as it did in prior years, with perhaps one or two exceptions.

The most notable exception was a conscious decision to delay my vacation plans last year until the cost of gasoline was below $2.50 per gallon. That was necessary because I planned to drive to my destination rather than take a plane. And the reason for that was because I would need a car when I arrived, and I wanted to avoid the cost of renting a car for two weeks.

The second thing I did was to take advantage of my employee discount by using only hotels in the same chain of operations as the hotel I work for. Getting a room for between $29 and $49 dollars per night instead of paying $100 or more per night saved me a bunch.  The table below shows the actual costs for these essentials vs. what the costs would have been had I used other services at the lowest available rates. 

                                  Actual         w/o Savings
Cost of Gasoline:       $480.00
Cost of r/t Airfare:                            $600.00
Cost of Rental Car:                           $390.00
Cost of hotels:           $350.00           $890.00
Total Costs:               $830.00         $1880.00

Total Savings: $1050.00

I suppose that unconsciously I am also looking for sales in the supermarket.  It's not that I avoid buying anything.  It's more like buying a little extra when I find a sale.  So while I might normally buy a bag of cookies for $3.00, if I see them on sale at 2 for $3.00, I'll pick up four bags.  On that occasion, I would spend twice as much as I might otherwise spend, but I receive four times more than I would otherwise buy.  Essentially, I am embracing what cost-free options are available to me, whereas I might not have done so before the economy turned bad.

Another thing I've done recently is stopped buying bottled water.  Instead, I now filter my tap water.  Filters are cheap, last long, and at the same time I help reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in the landfill.

I've noticed, too, that I am exercising a little more fiscal self-restraint than I used to, though honestly this could be influenced more by that fact that since retiring, I don't have the high salary I once had to work with.

Something slipped by while the congress was not reading the Stimulus Bill that was passed earlier this year.  That something was a provision in the Stimulus package mandating that a new National System of Electronic Health Records be established and that all "doctors, hospitals and other health care providers must create an Electronic Health Record (EHR) for every American by 2014 or else face deductions in their Medicare payments....The EHRs are supposed to be integrated into a national health care IT system where health-care providers nationwide as well as the government would have the ability to access them when authorized." (CBSNEWS)

The title of the article says that people can opt-out of allowing doctors to include records of sexually transmitted diseases and abortions in the new national system.  The rest of the article repeatedly quotes Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D.-R.I.) as saying that the inclusion of information is completely voluntary.  "We’re not going to get people to fully buy into this if they don’t feel comfortable with the record," Kennedy said, "and the one way to not make them feel comfortable with the record is to force everything on them and say, ‘This is a mandate, you’re going to have to do this or that.’ . . . "we are going to make sure that’s it’s all up to the individual, because we are not going to get widespread adoption if people don’t feel that their privacy is protected."

That almost sounds like the patient can opt-out of having any information put into the national health records system if they're not comfortable with it, but I doubt it.  It's more likely that some people get to partially protect their identities while others can not.

Then along comes Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Tex.), who is a doctor.  He said "completeness may be required in the electronic health records for both clinical and liability reasons."   If so, and it sounds right, then the patient can opt-out all they like, but the information will still have to be provided.  Ironically, "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act [ARRA, the economic stimulus law] included a provision that would require a provider to not share information with a health plan, if the patient requested it and if they paid in full out of pocket." 

Now I ask you, who among us on medicare, for example, can afford to stand up to the government and opt-out under those conditions?!  No one!  So -- despite what Rep. Kennedy says about it being up to the patient, the government isn't just telling us to provide the information.  It's telling us to provide the information or else. 

I resent that!!!  The government has no business and no right to my personal medical information -- historical, current, or future.

Since I did a question about wristwatches the other day, I thought that I might as well offer up a question about purses too. I do that when I'm tired of politics and need a break.

Anyway, size is an interesting place to start.  It seems that we grow through bag sizes as we age.  We start out as expected with something small, then we need book bags, so the purse goes in there.  By the time we get out of school, we don't need a book bag any more, but the small purse is too small for the things we normally need on a daily basis.  That's when we move up to a medium sized purse.  Some find the medium sized bag is still too small after having used a book bag for so long.  These ladies will move to large and very large bags.  Of course, some of those gals do it just to make a fashion statement.  Then, after learning that a large purse isn't really what they want, downsize to a medium size purse and start carrying a separate tote bag in addition to a purse.  A few will down size to a clutch purse that will fit in the tote bag.

Then of course there are the various styles.  Hobos, messenger, flaps, Clutches, wristlets, crossbody bags, barrel bags, satchels, not to mention the various outside pocket options that are possible.  It sometimes seems like the variations are endless, and don't even get me started on the various colors.

I have carried many different purses in my life, and I decided long ago that hardware on a purse is terrible.  Top zippers are usually cheap and break, so I try to avoid them; snaps are a real pain in the you know what, and I can rip magnets right out of the leather they're bound in.  Buckle closures are the worst; drawstrings are to teeny-bopperish;  and the little locking things that you have to turn to open and close are more trouble than they're worth.  They're all a pain.   

I prefer no hardware at all.  A flap purse with a leather tongue and slot to fit it in are more than adequate to keep a purse nicely closed.  Besides, such an arrangement gives a more simple and elegant appearance.  Make it in a medium size, add a shoulder strap that will stay put, and I'm happy.

So ladies, where do you stand.  What is your purse of choice?

Some thirty years ago, movie director Roman Polanski pleaded guilty to having unlawful intercourse with a minor -- a 13-year old girl.  The judge indicated that he would be sentenced to time served and put on probation, but before the sentencing hearing, Polanski fled the country fearing that the judge would change renege on the plea bargain and put him in prison. 

Since then, he has avoided traveling to any country that would extradite him back to the United States -- that is until this weekend, when he showed up in Switzerland to receive an honorary award at the Zurich Film Festival for his life's work.  Upon arrival, the Swiss police picked him up on a U.S. warrant and are holding him for extradition.

Question: is this a case of the law reaching out and touching someone just because it can?   After all, it was 30 years ago, and all he did was avoid going to the formal pronouncement of guilt.  He would have been back on the street 30 minutes following that hearing. 

Should the U.S. extradite him?

One day I was watching a television news program about The Pope making a visit to someplace or another, and of course they had to show pictures of him waving to the crowds.  That's when I saw it.  Why he would need one I can not say; he certainly doesn't need it, since his entire day is managed for him.  But for whatever reason, the Pope wears a wristwatch.  Now that is something I'd never thought about before.  It just shows you how ubiquitous the humble wristwatch is.  But it got me thinking about watches.

I have two watches, one for everyday wear and one for special occassions.  Both are analog watches, and both have unique features.  My everyday watch is equiped with a very special illumination system for viewing at night.  The hour markers and hands are outfitted with very thin capsules that contain a glowing gas which does not need to be charged by any external light, such as exposure to the sun.  They glow naturally, and without any assistence, and will do so for a very long time.  In fact, you could bury the watch at the bottom of an abandoned coal mine and come back 20 years later to find it still glowing.

My special occassion watch is self-winding and, at first glance, looks like the hour hand is missing.  The actual fact is that instead of a traditional hour hand, the watch was designed so that the entire center of the watch dial rotates to indicate the hour.

Do you prefer a digital watch display, or the traditional analog watch with moving hands?
Do you wear the same watch everyday, or change to suit your mood?
How many wristwatches do you own?
Do any of your watches do anything other than show the time and date?
Do you have a special watch that you save for more formal occassions?

You'd think that three years after the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto from its status as a planet to that of a dwarf planet people would just accept that the solar system is now known to contain only eight planets, rather that the nine they learned in school.  But not so.  People's resistance to change, it seems, is not limited to things that bind them to Earth.  Either that, or this controversy just serves to prove that people will argue about anything.

When it was first found in 1930, Pluto was difficult to classify because of its great distance from earth.  All we really knew about it was that it was small and that it circled the sun, so we assumed it was another planet.  As our instrumentation improved, we learned more.

We learned that Pluto's orbit is littered with rubble like the asteroid belt.  Science assumed that this rubble was left over from the planetary formation process and that eventually, pluto would gather all that rubble to itself and complete the process. 

In 1992, we found more such rubble just beyond Pluto in what was named the Kuiper Belt, and that this rubble (unlike the asteroids) is mostly made of frozen water, ammonia, and methane.  That's when we discovered that comets originate in this area of space.

We also learned that Pluto is smaller than our moon.  In fact it's only 1/5 the size of the moon. 

We learned that Pluto has a moon which is fully half the size of Pluto itself.  This moon was named Charon.  Maybe even more fascinating is the fact that the center of mass for Pluto does not lie within Pluto itself, as it does with all the other planets, but between Pluto and Charon, explaining why Pluto and Charon revolve around each other, rather than Charon revolving around its primary as other moons do. 

Another thing interesting about pluto is that while the orbits of the other planets have a slightly elliptical orbit around the sun, the orbit of pluto is eccentric, periodically crossing the orbit of Neptune, bringing it closer to the sun than Neptune, i.e. it changes places with Neptune. 

Pluto is mostly a giant snowball, with a rocky core, just like a comet.  In fact, if its orbit should ever be shifted by the gravitational pull of the outer giants, Pluto would look exactly like a comet, tail and all, as it approached the inner part of the solar system.

The physical evidence suggests that if Pluto is a planet, it forms a double planet with Charon; but since the IAU has not formally defined what makes up a double planet yet, Charon remains a moon.

Anyway, given its size, its unusual orbital characteristics, its comet like composition, its location near or at the edge of the Kuiper Belt, and given the discovery of similar and even even larger bodies in the heart of the Kuiper Belt, the IAU found itself having to decide for the first time upon an official definition of what actually makes a planet a planet. 

The definition they came up with was that in order to be a planet, 1) a body must orbit the sun, 2) it must have enough gravity to pull itself (more or less) into a spherical shape, and 3) it must have cleared its orbital path of enough debris that it becomes the dominate gravitational body of the orbit.

Pluto makes the grade on the first two rules, but fails on the third test -- it has not cleared its orbit of enough debris.  Pluto constitutes only 0.07% of the mass known to exist in its orbit.  By contrast, the Earth has 1.7 million times the mass of the debris in its orbit.

Personally, I think Pluto's eccentric orbit was probably factored into the decision by some IAU members.  With that orbit, I would not be surprised in the future if science discovers that Pluto was actually captured and is in the process of being dragged from the Kuiper belt into an orbit around Neptune.  When the process is complete Neptune will have a new moon.

So who cares, anyway?  Not me, except as an intellectual exercise and research project to make my days a little less boring.  How about you?  Do you care?

It's been a while since I posted about some of the interesting things and people I run into while driving the hotel van, so I figure you're ready for another guest story.

It was about a year ago, I think, when I had a guest on my van telling me about her recent round-the-world cruise.  It was an 8-month long trip, and she made ports-of-call all over the place in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.  At the time, she said she was on her way home.  When she stopped for a breath of air, I told her it sounded like she had a wonderful time - the trip of a lifetime.  That's when she then told me that she does it every year.

Whoooo.  Every year?  I said.  Why repeat the same cruise each year?  Her response was that she wasn't alone.  She was with a group of friends that like to travel together.  So I asked her out of curiosity how much something like that kind of trip costs, and she said it was between $30 and $50k, depending on options. 

Sounds like a lot of money, I said, but she responded that it wasn't really.  The trip lasts about 8 months of the year, and she would spend that on living expenses alone, but on the ship, everything was paid for: travel, food, rent, insurance, medical care, entertainment, and she didn't have any extras like car payments, car insurance, gasoline, electric, cable, telephone, water, and soforth, plus when she's at home, she stays at her daughter's place, so that doesn't cost her much.  All in all, she figures that's a pretty good deal.

I'm not real sure about her math.  I can see a cost of living of about $20K for 8 months at most (after factoring in some extras), but she hasn't factored in the cost to her daughter for four months out of the year. 

As for how she could afford such a trip every year, if she had a pretty good sized social security check, or maybe an annuity from her deceased husband each month, I suppose she could save it all to cover the trip without being exceptionally wealthy.

Anyway, that aside, she seemed to be happy with the arrangement.   And who knows, maybe her daughter was too.

Sometimes arguing with idiots is exhausting.  Maybe Glenn Beck's new book will give me some ideas about how to keep going when the battle seems to be a never ending one with stupidity.

After very clearly telling Congress and the American people that his proposed health care reform would not provide covrage for illegal immigrants, the Washington Times reported on Friday that President Obama is now talking about making all illegal immigrants legal so as to qualify them for any health care that might result from his proposed reform package.  Naturally Conservatives are screaming, and rightly so, that he is trying to sneak them in the back door.

Isn't it interesting how this White House is always doing these kinds of things on a Friday afternoon, when people are winding down for the weekend and are a little less likely to pick up the late news reports.  I guess thay are trying to let it blow over and become old news by Monday morning.  That way people won't be as upset, or so they think.