Wherin we find out who we can rely on

What ever happened to service and reliability?

Background: This past weekend I was afforded the opportunity to head on up to camp to do some trout fishing with my friend Jefe' and his 2 sons. Our women and daughters stayed at home scrapbooking...you could say the testosterone was up north and the estrogen was at home. It was truly a mutually beneficial arrangement. Saturday morning, at camp, my cell phone rang...it was my bride:

Her: U-mm, We don't have any hot water...

Me: Did you check the hot water heater?

Her:I dunno how to do that...

So I, in all my benevolence, agree to walk her through the process...

Me: Go to the utility room to check and we'll check the pilot light...

Her: O.K. .... (a bunch of idle banter on scrapbooking ensues as she make her way to the utility room and I hear her opening the door) .... Oh my!

Me: What!?!

Her: Theres water all over the floor under the water heater!

This, of course, means the hot water heater is toast and immediately I am thinking, Great! There goes my weekend...

Me: Well, we had better turn the water of to it...it's the valve just above the top of the tank...turn it clockwise to close it...

Her: I can't...it's stuck...

Me: Try to get a hold of one of the neighbors

Her:O.K....and don't you worry too much about this...you stay up north...I can handle this

Me: (Thinking to self) Yeah...right....

After making several phone calls to the various neighbors, all of who appeared to be outta town or away...I mean after all it is a Holiday weekend... she finally gets a hold of a friend of ours who is a builder/remodeler. He comes over and shuts the valve. My dear wife proceeds to make several phone call to various plumbers in an vain attempt to get the problem repaired.

See, now heres where my initial question comes into play...What ever happened to service and reliability? It seems that no-one offered emergency service on the weekend or, as in this case, a holiday weekend. What's up with that? They have an answering service 24/7 and all, with the exception of 1 vendor said they could not, would not, be able to help us till Tuesday...the day after Memorial day. WTF?? The one vendor, who was in another town, who would consent to repairing, wanted a $250.00 emergency service call fee up front on top of the cost of parts, labor, mileage etc. etc. They coulda just as well told me to bend over and grab my ankles. Not wanting to go without hot water for 3+ days what was one to do??

So, were just about to bite the bullet and make the call when builder friend "R" rings up...turns out he just happens to be doing nothing in particular that day and he also just happened to have an extra Rinnai tankless water heater available...he had purchased a few of them, installed one in his house, and in some home remodels he had done, and still had this one available and he offered it to us along with his services to install it. You may not always be able to rely on your local plumbing service, but you can rely on friends and neighbors! 6 hours or so later, the new tankless water heater is installed and now we have endless hot water!

But really, what happened to service and reliability? There used to be a day and age when you could count on that. Not so much anymore. All of the people the wife did get a-hold of seemed to have a too-bad, so-sad....why, shame on you for having a malfunctioning water heater on a holiday weekend....we can help you but not today so deal with it attitude. Pathetic. There used to be a sense of pride that a company would have being available 24/7...not so much today. It's sad.

Thankfully we do have good neighbors and friends and now we have endless hot water to boot! A benefit that we are already realizing from this is our teen-aged daughter can't gripe at one-another about there being no hot water! HA! Peace and Harmony...well, til they got some other petty thing to bicker about any-way.

Wherin I vote "None of the Above" for President

I still remain uninspired by any of the so-called Presidential contenders. I won't vote for any of them. Oh, I'll still vote this year, but not for any of them. None of them deserve my vote and I refuse to associate myself or validate any of them by giving my vote to the one I dislike the least.

How many, if given the choice of "None of the Above" on the Presidential ballot, would choose to vote for "None of the Above"? I think, that if it could be offered, the results would be surprising! I would love that option!

Hillarys stubborn bitch attitude, her confrontational and divisive tactics and stance, and not knowing when to quit mentality are precisely why she should not be elected president.

John McCain has no real sense of leadership and his presence in a room is akin to standing alongside a cadaver in a funeral home. A bigger backstabber can not be found!

Then theres Barack Obama. For someone who has allot to say he sure doesn't say a whole lot. He is really nothing but an unexperienced pompous windbag....and there's just something about him, I cannot place it, but I just don't trust him...somethings just not right....

We truly are scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of presidential contenders this election season. Frankly, they all suck and I'll have nothing to do with any of 'em.

Wherin I very nearly sound like a liberal

Gas prices. One word. Ridiculous Now, I'm no economist but I don't think it takes a genius to realize that theres something wrong here. I'm not going to advocate a "gas tax holiday" like Der Rodham and Mc Cain are either. No, I'm going to advocate for something far more drastic.

As much as I hate government meddling in, well, anything, It's time for them to step in and take appropriate action and what they can do requires no tax payer funding either. First, they need to, through use of Anti-Trust laws, put a temporary cap on Oil company profits. Second they need to drop the National speed limit down to 65mph. These two, either by themselves or combined will have a significant impact on fuel costs.

By capping oil company profits that make investment and speculation in oil as a traded commodity less attractive and will slow down trading in oil futures and speculation. Prices should drop. By lowering the national speed limit to 65mph, and it is proven, increases fuel economy of the cars we drive so we use less fuel to get from point A to point B and since we then use less fuel, demand goes down and fuel prices also go down.

These may be considered drastic measures, but these are drastic circumstances especially from an economic standpoint. With more and more of our hard earned cash going into our fuel tanks it leaves less and less to spend on other consumer goods and services. I don't know about you, but I can live with a 65 mph speed limit.

The time to drive 60 miles at 70 mph is about 52-1/2 minutes. The time to drive 60 miles at 65mph is about 55-1/2 minutes. That makes for a total additional drive time of 3 minutes to go 60 miles. Big deal. My fuel economy at 65mph is about 27mpg. My fuel economy at 70mph is about 23mpg. With an 18 gallon tank I can drive 486 miles at 65mph and 414 miles at 70mph. Thats an extra 72 miles, or 2.6 gallons of gas saved driving at 65mph which, at todays fuel price is just over $10.00! My extra 3 minutes of drive time is worth that $10.00 savings!

Good grief, I almost sound like a bleeding liberal saying all this but I am looking at all this from an national economic standpoint and what would be best right now, short term, for our country. The current price of gas is doing no one any economic good and if fuel prices keep climbing, we all stand to lose.

Wherin Holland, Michigan is Mecca

This week starts off a very little known, local, pagan celebration called Tulip Time. Throngs of worshipers estimated at 500,000, of the Tulipa (latin for Tulip) gods have been, and are descending upon our quiet community wreaking havoc on local traffic patterns. They come by carload, nay, busload, wearing their cameras, overly-large sunglasses and sock garters gleefully Oo-ing and Ah-ing, over the hundreds of thousands of Tulips, planted at taxpayers expense, like they are on some flower pheromone-induced high like the Tulip is some type of aphrodisiac. It's absolutely insane! It's a fricken flower!

It begs to question how bored does one have to be, or desperate, to say, "Hey Honey, Lets go to Ho-Dunk (Holland) Michigans Tulip festival and look at all the purdy flowers, see da dutch dancers, da vind-mill and da parades" (3 of them, mind you, in 4 days time that present, on their own, a traffic night mare of epic proportions)

So, they come, and drive like idiots....turning left where they are not supposed to, never using their turn indicators, clogging intersections and jamming streets and hogging up all the local eateries. It's really nothing but a giant sea of blue hairs.

Consider the incident of today where I am following an obviously out of state tourist driving in the right hand lane, riding the brake causing his cars brakes lights to continuously flash on and off and his right turn indicator stuck on as they traveled down the highway for at 40 mph for at least 4 miles in that condition then making an illegal left hand turn without turning on the left hand turn indicator. It's no wonder the locals leave town for the week. They do it to preserve their sanity, safety and well-being

Now I guess I should not complain. I mean these Tulip crazed tourists spend a load of dough whilst here in town and also keep the local collision repair facilities booked solid til mid summer. So I guess one could say that it's a boost to the local economy to some degree. Even if it is highly localized, it's a help....or so they say...but if these were 500,000 jobs coming into the area, heck even if it was 500 jobs, now that would be something to celebrate and would be an even bigger help to the local economy.

I tell you what, I'll trade any community out there our local Tulip Time festival and the 500,000 tourists it draws every year for 500 permanent full time jobs for our local area. Any takers?? Now that would really be something worth crowing about ... but even then Michigan's lame-ass failure of a Governor, Jenny Grahm-cracker would swoop in like the ugly opportunist vulture that she is and claim credit for the deal! How she can even claim credit for any jobs created in our State when Michigan still has, at the very least, a 3 to 1 net job loss (-74,000 jobs since last year) and the highest unemployment rate (7.2%) in the country and the States weakest economic growth in 50 years is beyond me.

What I find mildly entertaining is that Der Rodham, Hillary Clinton, wants Jenny to be a part of her economic cabinet if she is elected President. That's really just laughable and stupid....wait.... H-mmm...maybe I'll have to vote for Hillary if she gets the Democratic nomination and nod just to get Jenny Grahmn-cracker out of our State...a diabolical plan! We'd send Jenny back to Canada, the land from whence she came but just as Michigan is Canadas dumping ground for their trash, they don't want her either. Why can't they just keep their garbage over there?