Ahhh, finally a great work weekend!

How do I express my immense satisfaction at how this past weekend's work went? I had two potentially difficult jobs to do. Jobs where I would have to rely one of my helpers to run the buffer because I have not been released by Dr. Mina to do work. Adding to my possible migraine was concern about whether I would have sufficient numbers of workers to accomplish the tasks and whether those workers would be up to the job, physically and mentally.

Not only did I not run into the problems I envisioned, the jobs ran smoother than any had in a long time. The guys worked together like cogs in a well-oiled machine. My #1 man ran the buffer and basically, the job, like it was second nature to him. Oh, and the floors turned out fabulous.

Irony is life's gift to the arrogant!

A friend of mine related this story recently and I had to post it here. He owns a small business and has a valued employee who is very sure of himself. His opinions are golden. Wrong is a word from a foreign language to him. My friend mentioned that he had hired a guy to help them on one job. His employee said that he was not happy about the hiring. He had seen the guy before, had brief, meaningless small talk with him and had concluded that there was something wrong with him, some character flaw, something that he knew would make him not be able to work with the new guy. This employee mentioned his displeasure with this one time addition on a number of occasions, not being able to point out a specific problem, but reiterating that he KNEW that this new guy was going to say or do something on the job that would cause him to get upset and it would not be a good thing. My friend held firm to his decision feeling that his own assessment of the new employee, based on observing him working elsewhere and comments by others who worked around him were more valid than a nebulous 'gut-feeling' The day came for the job and my friend started the day with a small sense of impending doom, fearing a clash of personalities. His fears were unwarranted. The new guy worked well with the 'knowing' employee and the rest of the crew. They all got along seemingly well, even to the point of the valued employee talking about using the new guy on another job, bigger and more important. My friend said the highlight of his day came as the crew sat around and chatted. The new guy mentioned that he had decided that the valued employee was not the friendly type and was a bit surly. He said that he just knew this from the few times they had briefly spoken, said he could tell things about people from just one or two meetings. He said he sometimes just knew that some folks were a certain way, by merely meeting them.
Can you say IRONY?

The world would be a great place to live if we could just get rid of all the people!

I get so tired of people sometimes. Being a property manager of an apartment complex, esp. of a complex that is being remodeled and owing a small business which requires having helpers and clients leads to the inevitable frustration of dealing with people. I get tired of people straining to find ways to get over on you or get out their responsibilities. I am exhausted from dealing with arrogance, self-absorption, childish behavior, personality clashes, hypocrisy, and laziness. I can hardly keep my head up from the daily stupidity I see. And when I take a minute from condemning the entire human race, I have to look at one of the biggest frustrations in human form...ME. Just when I get going full steam ahead on a track of self righteousness, I get derailed because I have to see my own failings and I must stop to take the beam out of my own eye.

Now that doesn't add up.

Take the bills for my regular physician add to them the charges I incurred from physical therapy, add the MRI bill and Dr. Mina's cost for my surgery and the amount that the anesthesiologist hit me with for his services during surgery and you would still be $10, 000.00 short of what it costs me to spend about 7 hours in the hospital. I received the bill for the hospital charges today. The total charge was $22, 504.50. That figure breaks down to a little over $2, 800.00 an hour or $46.00 a minute. No wonder many people don't get the health care they desperately need. I am blessed because God worked it out so I am receiving financial aid through the hospital's donor program. I actually only have to pay $1437.00. Of course, that brings me to another question, if I only have to pay $1437.00, shouldn't that be what they charge me, and not that heart-stopping figure?

I am reading David McCullough's John Adams. I am so glad I asked my daughter to let me read the book after here. I am learning loads of information about John Adams, the early days of our country and politics. One of the refreshing things I have gleaned from this book is the aspects of a great woman. Abigail Adams was a great woman. I want my daughters to emulate her. She was devoted to her husband, loved him without bounds, dreaded to be without him and felt it her duty to make sure he was all he could be, but my praise for her does not stop there, no I am more impressed that she was this way while simultaneously being intelligent, out-spoken, independent, industrious, creative, and eager to learn everything she could. My kind of woman!

Today was a great day!
I received the surgeons official bill today. Yes, I know that that does not sound like the makings of even a fair day, and it gets even less likely to make one do handstands for joy. The bill was approximately $1000.00 more than the estimate. So how does this constitute a great day? The bill started with the eye-popping figure, but ended with a final balance owed of approximately $1600.00 less than I expected. I had forgotten that Dr. Mina's office manager had told me that they give a discount to cash paying patients. Now, I call this a fabulous discount. Now, you see one of the reasons that today was a great day.

The other reason that I am typing this with a smile on my face is that my 19 yr old college student daughter spent a few hours with her dad and we successfully experimented in the kitchen with a dish that I humbly suggest one of the restaurant chains like Ruby Tuesday should add to their menu. Ok, so maybe the whole restaurant-worthy fare is a bit of an overstatement, but it was good. This whole enjoyable afternoon and earlier evening fun with Laura, began as simply a desire of mine to play around in the kitchen, maybe make something tasty. I was thinking about a dish that was heavy with various squashes and chicken. As I contemplated cooking, I decided to see if Laura was busy. She had plans to go to a football game with her gentleman friend later in the evening, but said she would enjoy a little foray into culinary experimentation. I will skip to the actual dish, noting first that I have never been a huge fan of peppers of any kind, a few finely diced in a meal won't make me run away screaming, but they are not my first choice. We sauteed, in olive oil, some green, yellow, and orange peppers, added fresh garlic, two small slices of jalapeno pepper some roasted red peppers and mushrooms. Then we added a spicy wine based tomato sauce, lightly. We didn't want a heavy sauce, more of a base to help the veggies stick to the fusilli pasta. We added this mixture to the chopped chicken cooking in another sauce pan , and let it simmer. We served it over the fusilli and it was awesome. The fact that it was not a heavy sauce made the dish even better, because we were able to enjoy the individual tastes of the veggies and chicken, as well as the blending. What was amazing to me, was that my daughter had sliced the peppers in long slices, no dicing at all and I loved them, even picking a couple out of the pan as they sauteed and eating them.
I did discover a great need in my kitchen, cooking tools that actually work, esp. knives. Since I have been a fast food addict for so long, Wal-Mart knives are the fare in my kitchen and that resulted in Laura struggling to slice pepper, really, slicing peppers was difficult. So when the apartment complex here is finished remodeling and I move into the new office apartment, I am throwing myself a house-warming party, so remember, bring kitchen utensils!