Morning has broken isn't just a song lyric...

it's what happens each and every morning.  This morning it broke and I pondered whether or not to go for that walk and I decided against it.  I spent hours in the ER yesterday and I don't want a repeat visit so soon.  So I'm resting today and will definitely walk tomorrow, Tuesday, Thursday and next Saturday.  As to those days where I have classes, I may or may not walk, depending on my ability to awaken before the "wake-up" call shows up.  If I get up earlier, I'll walk.  If I am awakened by someone making me get my lazy butt out of bed, I'll just do what needs to be done and go to class.

Today is a day for at least one experiment.  I'd been drinking V-8 juice at breakfast and there's just too much sodium in it to continue that.  So I've purchased one bottle of the "low-sodium" version of the product to see if my hunch about it is correct.  If it turns out that low-sodium ensures that it is also a low-flavor and low-taste product, this will be the last bottle for awhile.  It will go from a daily thing to a once a week or maybe once every other week treat, and in smaller quantities.

So what would you do?  No, I'm not talking about the ABC show that airs on Fridays and creates artificial situations to see how ordinary people react.  I'm talking about a real life situation.  You're in line at a fast food drive-thru.  Someone was standing at the menu board to take your order because they're really slammed.  Long line not moving well.  He takes your order and tells you to drive to the next window.  You stop and wait at the next window and no one takes your payment.  Then both the cars in front of you pull out and you go ahead and pull up to the second window where someone hands you your food without you ever having paid for it. 

Do you try to pay?  Do you point out the error?  Or do you just drive off and think "score!, a free meal"?  What would you do?

When I finally got out of the ER yesterday, I found a voicemail on my phone.  It was one of the students from my tax class.  The instructor had discussed the graded reviews at our session on Wednesday and I'd joked that I'd be conducting seminars on the graded reviews at $20 per person, but guaranteeing a 100% score on the graded reviews.  Her voicemail indicated that she wasn't entirely sure if I was serious about charging for tutoring or not, but she was hoping I'd call her back and answer some questions.

I don't mind answering questions.  But consider this for a moment.  I haven't worked for H&R Block since May of 2010.  I haven't taught a tax class for them since fall/winter of 2009 (tax class, not their skills to win classes that I taught 9 hours a day, 7 days a week for the first 12 days of January of 2010).  My phone still rang with calls from former students needing help with tax returns they were being paid to fill out during the most recent tax season.  One former student, who I won't name, called regularly.  But this person isn't my student.  However, I will call her back and answer my questions, because it's good karma to help people.  FWIW, she's the one who tried to borrow a pair of glasses from another student at an earlier class.

Do things people do when driving make you wonder how they managed to pass their DMV road test?  I saw something yesterday that made me think that about the DIQ (driver in question), but you can say it like it's spelled.  In a parking lot, she was turning left and there were pedestrians walking in what would be her new lane.  So even though there was a vehicle coming on in the other lane, she pulled into the wrong lane, going the wrong direction, forcing the other driver to slam on his brakes, as she wove around the people at 15-20 MPH.  It's a parking lot, lady, not Indy.

Another thing I'm pondering.  Why do people insist on backing into parking spaces?  Like it takes less time to back in than it does to back out when you leave?  It takes the same amount of time and effort to park by pulling in and backing out when leaving as it does when backing in and just pulling out when leaving.  Yet people who insist on backing into parking spaces seem to think they've made some major accomplishment.  Is it the fact that they can pull out of the space faster when it's time to leave?  That makes sense at a baseball or football game parking lot, where you're competing to get out before you run into gridlock.

Jesse "the Body" Ventura has come out in support of that former Navy SEAL who wrote about the mission to kill Bin Laden, saying we as taxpayers have the right to know how our dollars are spent.  Right, Jesse, which is why the CIA and the NSA should publish the line item detail of their budgets, so everyone knows every dollar spent in intelligence gathering.  Sometimes I think he got body-slammed one too many times on his head.

Stuff I saw yesterday: 

A man in the next bed who was on a vent (meaning he has had a tracheostomy and has a tube in his throat to help him breath) being asked "is that uncomfortable?"  I wanted to throttle the nurse.  It's damn uncomfortable to have a tube in your neck where the nurses and respiratory therapists have to use a device to suction out the excretions that  you can't cough up.  It's uncomfortable to have that tube connected to other tubes, chaining you to a ventilator and keeping you pretty much in one immobile position so you don't dislodge the tube's connections.  Yeah, nurse, it's uncomfortable.

A woman having a major panic attack as they walked her into the ER from the waiting room, but they had serious trouble getting her to the bed that was waiting.  Apparently she'd just been discharged from the hospital the day before, and she was already relapsing.  I wonder what she went through that has her so on edge.  She seemed to be completely shattered, and her cries for her doctor and a glass of water wafted through the ER, probably continuing after I was mercifully allowed to go home.

Copies of "Handicapped Parking" signs taped up in front of spaces in the parking lot, where the old handicapped signs had been taken down during construction, and the blue paint on the ground painted over in error.  I'm wagering that you can't ticket a car for parking in a "handicapped only " space when the sign marking it as such is just a piece of paper hanging from some yellow construction tape.

Gridlocked traffic on the Westside because of the fire.  The back-up on Wilshire and the 405 was impassible and impossible, but the gridlock spread as far West from there as Centinela and even impacted the East/West arteries as far South as Washington Boulevard.  It was actually faster to duck over to Inglewood Avenue and then down to Culver to get around the traffic.

A visual image of how much money it would take for one person to pay off their share of the U.S.'s national debt.  Picture five stacks of 100 $100 bills and a small pile of bills next to that.  Just over $51,000.  Now look at the future unfunded liabilities of the U.S. for Medicare, Social Insecurity, and publicly funded healthcare and the per person bill for that requires you to take that pile of money and multiply it by a factor of more than seven.  Yes, the future unfunded liabilities of our nation represent more than $350,000 per person.  Yet the politicians in Washington continue to dicker and dick around about dealing with this so-called "fiscal cliff" that is fast approaching.

Never has there been a more important time for new ideas, new solutions, and a new political party.  Let's get the Centrist Party moving before it's too late.  I'm calling Wild Turkey on Monday to see if they'll be our party sponsor.