It's been a few days since I had the chance to do anything but my regular memes, so it's time for me to play catch up. Let me tell you what's going on in my world.

Betty's condition is improving. Because she can't eat by herself, a feeding tube was inserted through her nose and into her stomach. Even though she was seriously drugged for the pain, she didn't like the tube and managed to pull it out a couple of days ago. Rather than put it back in, the vigilant nurses have been feeding her whenever she's awake and alert. It worked like a charm. She is now alert and talking, which means that she will be moved from ICU to a regular room once the chest tubes are removed. That should happen today or tomorrow.


I had some real excitement on Thursday afternoon with my retirement paperwork. In the midst of Betty's illness and my going back and forth to the hospital, I received a letter from the retirement agency indicating that they had received my application and asking that I contact the university's HR department to request that they not remove me from the insurance roll while the application is processed. So on Wednesday afternoon, I did as instructed. Much to my surprise, I got a response from the HR person who helped me take care of the retirement paperwork indicating that the university can't do what CALPERS had requested. It took several phone calls and faxes for me to learn that although I should have been removed from the insurance roll on July 1, a mistake that I made has worked in my favor. Because I turned in the application paperwork directly to CALPERS, the university doesn't know that I am retiring; therefore, I am still on the books, so to speak. No lapse in insurance coverage, which the only reason that I took an early retirement in the first place! Big sigh of relief.

The sorry state of my state has gotten worse. I didn't think it was possible; I was wrong.

• California still does not have a budget.
• We have no money to meet our financial obligations and such a bad credit rating that borrowing is not a possibility.
• Unemployment is now just above 10%.
• Our sales tax was recently raised to help raise funds but since so many people are worried about losing their jobs, they are not shopping enough for it to do any good.
• We're in the third year of a drought so bad that water rationing will likely happen before the end of summer.
• Just yesterday, I heard on the local news that the consistent increase in water temperatures on our side of the Pacific Ocean have made 2009-2010 officially an El Nino year. Rather than go into all the details now, I'm going to use the Thursday Thirteen meme to talk more about El Nino and its effects on the Golden State. Let's just say that it gets really ugly around here when El Nino pays us a visit.
• Our fire season, which normally starts in September and goes through October, has started early. The dry brush, thanks to the drought, on the hills and mountains surrounding Los Angeles, coupled with the outward sprawl that occurred over the past decade, has set up ideal conditions for a far more threatening fire season than normal. It doesn't surprise me that the hills have started burning three months earlier tha usual.

My headaches seem to be under control for the time being. This is a very good thing. Does the absence of headaches mean that everything is well and good? This is my life, peeps -- nothing in it is well and good at the same time! The stress factor is currently high and with stress comes headaches, seizures, and eczema. It's been several days since I had a headache, but The Brain doesn't like to play understudy to my life for very long; therefore, It makes its presence known through seizures. Thankfully, the four that I've had in as many days haven't been too bad. Now the eczema, my body's stress-o-meter, isn't doing as well as the headaches and seizures. I'll save you the gory details and say only that my hands are covered with a rash and blisters that itch like mad. And now, add to the seizures and eczema a sciatic nerve issue that is giving me grief at the area of the right hip. Yesterday was w complete waste because the pain was so bad, I used a couple of Naprosen to help me get out of bed and later, off my chair. In spite of all this, things could be so much worse.

Here's wishing everyone a great weekend!

Just a few things I've been thinking about. . .


It didn't take long for the conspiracy theorists to start doing their work on the death of Michael Jackson! Why is it that we have such a hard time accepting the fact that even icons die and that sometimes, their deaths are the result of decisions they made or actions they took?


Bernie Madoff's sentencing hearing is today. I'm still wondering why his ill-gotten assets haven't been taken and sold to repay at least a small portion of the money that he stole? If the man has been convicted of fraud and evidence shows that these assets were purchased after he began the Ponzi scheme, why would his wife or children be allowed to keep anything that was bought with stolen money?


Later today, Lieutenant Dan Choi, a West Point grad who was recently discharged from the New York National Guard for being openly gay, will have the opportunity to argue his case before a special board. Lt. Choi, a specialist in Arabic and a combat vet, stands to lose all of the veteran's benefits that he earned during his time in service. Where is the justice in that? And what happened to repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"?


In two days, the State of California will be bankrupt. Our state's credit rating has dropped so low that the possibility of getting loans to keep us afloat is out of the question. Even though I am now retired, the state still owes me two months salary from my last contract. Will I become a victim to the mismanagement of state funds come Wednesday, when my paycheck should be deposited into my bank account?

• Today is California's special election for six ballot propositions, each designed to raise taxes enough to help cover the state's current fiscal crisis. I love the Golden State to be sure, but I don't love her politicians enough to help them pay for the mess they've created! So in a few hours, when the polls open, I'll be telling the Governator where he can take those propositions and what he can do with them when he arrives there!

• Happy Anniversary to my dad and stepmom. They got married on my birthday so, he says, my dad won't ever forget their anniversary!
• The second phase of the grading marathon is well underway. My goal is to have graded and returned all of the research papers that I collected on Thursday of last week no later than tomorrow. One class is done, and the other one is in progress. Yeah me!
• I'm keeping an eye on the swarm of earthquakes happening in the South Bay area. Not that I'm worried about the "big" one, but it sure is interesting to see how the quakes correlate to our freaky weather. Judging from the number and strengths of the temblors in the last 48 hours, something big is brewing beneath us.
  
• At the lunch meeting of the Fourth Grade BFFs on Saturday, we were so busy talking and catching up that none of us thought to take a single picture! It wasn't until I got home and Ali asked me to see the pictures, that I realized I had none to show. I tried to schedule a quick meeting to get some photos, but Peggy doesn't seem to be checking her email and neither I or Diana have a phone number to call her.

Happy Tuesday, y'all! If you'd like to join in the fun of random ramblings, just post a few random thoughts on Tuesday. Send me the link to your post by leaving a comment, and I'll add you to the list of Random Ramblers!

I'm pleased to report that I successfully completed the first week of the Spring 2009 semester without any major issues -- yeah me!

My schedule is completely screwed up this semester. For the past four years, I've had a consistent schedule of Monday and Wednesday morning classes on the main campus. For someone who wakes up as early as I do, this has been an ideal situation for me. This time around, however, I am teaching one class on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, and one on Thursday nights. In addition to the days and times being off, one class is on the main campus and the other on our satellite campus in a city approximately 15 miles away. Under normal circumstances, fifteen miles is not a terribly long commuting distance; but when the class begins at 7 o'clock and the commute involves traveling down one of the most congested Southern California freeways at peak traffic time, a commute which ought to take 15-20 minutes becomes a stressful trek of, at the very least, double that time.

It has been at least five years since I taught a night class and equally as long since I taught a class on the satellite campus. Driving such a distance at night is not an option for me thanks to the Chiari induced problems with depth perception and night blindness, so Ali is once again playing the role of chauffeur. I think he likes the idea of napping peacefully in the car while I'm in class!

The two classes are as different as, pardon the pun, day and night. The afternoon class is quite small (16 students), while the night class has nearly met its cap of 45. If our state budget weren't such a mess and dozens of classes hadn't been canceled as a result, the enrollment of the night class would never have been raised from the standard enrollment of 25. But it is what it is at this point, and I will deal with the situation as best I can.

Both classes have, based on first impressions only, some really great students who are actively engaged in the learning process. This alone will make for a truly enjoyable semester.

And so it goes. . .

"I'm going to California where they sleep out every night," sang Jimmie Rodgers in his "Blue Yodel No. 4 (California Blues)." In 1929, when the "singing brakeman" recorded this song, California was still the Golden State and attracted tens of thousands of new residents each year. Whether it was the lure of a mild climate, the promise of job opportunities, or visions of the silver screen, people wanted to come to California. But that was 1929, eighty years ago. In 2009, not many people are "going to California where they sleep out every night."

For the past four years, California has lost more residents to other states than it has gained from them. And although a net loss of 144,000 in 2008 isn't such a large number considering that our population is close to 40 million, it does give us the dubious distinction of ranking first on a list of states whose residents are leaving in search of greener pastures at a higher rate than residents of other states arrive here in search of them. Thanks to births and immigration, both legal and illegal, California's population is still on the rise overall, but it has lost some of the appeal and attractiveness to people considering a state-to-state move.

The past four years of steady flight out of state is just one more reflection of the obvious: something is dreadfully wrong in California! I love the state where I was born and raised and because I do, I worry about its future. The November 2008 unemployment rate for California reached 8.4%, placing us third behind Michigan (9.6%) and Rhode Island (9.4%). Our budget deficit, according to the Governator's State of the State speech (1-15-09), has shot up to $40 BILLION through 2010. California's deficit is larger than the operating budgets of every single state in the Union but New York! The San Jose Mercury News has a fantastic article putting the numbers in their proper perspectives, and all I can say about it is that they are frightening.

Toto, we may not be in Kansas anymore, but we're not heading for California!

With the wedding nearly here (one part this afternoon and the other tomorrow), let's just say that hectic has taken on a whole new meaning around my house. As a result, I haven't had time to check my email as often as I normally do. So yesterday afternoon, in a brief moment of respite from the whirlwind while Ali went to pick up his suits, Magdy went to fetch his tux, and Iman went to get her wedding gown, I took a moment to check my personal email.

Like most people who use the internet far more than they probably should, I have email addresses for different things: one for work related matters, a personal one for family chats, one for groups, etc. To coordinate these various email accounts, I rely on Gmail to pull all of the messages into one single account which makes it much easier to manage them all. And while Gmail does a great job of sorting and filtering all the messages, the majority of them end up in a folder called ALL MAIL. I don't always remember to check this folder because most of the mail that ends up there is junk anyway, but for some reason I decided to check it yesterday and much to my surprise, I found a message from my department chair asking if I could take Tuesday/Thursday afternoon class.

Excuse me?! Can I take the second class that I was begging, and I do mean literally


for so that I don't lose my health care coverage? The one class for one semester that I begged for just so that I can retire at the end of the semester with my benefits and never have to worry about being able to afford medical treatment and medication ever again? You're kidding, right?

I responded with a single word: "Gladly."