Merry December 26th!!

Whew!! Made it to the 26th! that quiet, backwater day in which the ripples of time and events start to diminish...soon the pool will be calm again as the giant rock of Christmas sinks to the bottom.



Unless you've gone out shopping, I suppose...in which case your ripples may last longer...



I like the feeling of "reset" the holidays give me. I do feel like the new year is a new start somehow, and I can put all of my errors and regrets for 2008 into a box, seal it with packing tape and forget about it...2009 is a new, empty box, free of error for a moment, with plenty of room to begin the new collection....or to attempt again, a year free of sin.



I sin more and more as the year wears on. I get tired of being good, don't you? By December I've become my evil twin. I'm impatient with clients' problems, my friends are all exhausting, I have no money (well that's nothing new, really...just more apparent), nobody loves me and I can't stand anybody. Universal Peace and Love are a distant memory...and I'm just holding on, waiting for the big rock of Christmas to hit, because I know things will subside afterwards.



And today they are subsiding! I checked for comments for the first time in weeks and published the ones that were there - sorry about the delay. I've enabled instant comments so that won't keep happening as we (Orpheus and I) wander in and out of Blog Awareness. Now when you comment, it should publish automatically.



I'm looking forward to seeing the Obama administration's version of health care. I saw a lady on CNBC this morning talking about a "health care bubble".... and she was making sense. "Bubble" combined with any economic sector is ominous. And I am constantly nagged by Obama's insistence that making all medical records digital will somehow be the cure for something important. It makes me think he may be laboring under the impression that HIPPA works, too. I wish all politicians in a position to make health care policy were required to experience healthcare first hand for long enough to really get a taste for how cumbersome and unprivate HIPPA has made things. I want someone to get it with me that digital records makes your private healthcare information available to anyone with a financial or legal interest in you, along with their employees in the thousands, but keeps you, your family and your friends signing endless numbers of consent forms when they should be holding your hand or sponging your brow.



I know, I know: pharmacists can't read the Doctors' writing and give the wrong pills, the patient is unconscious and can't provide the relevant history, the patient forgets to mention they've got seven other pain pill prescriptions from seven other Doctors....I know, I know...

But I just want healthcare to be more personal than that, I guess. I'd like the Doctor to talk to my family who'll give the history. So they're wrong - that's what it's like to be human. I don't want to be tuned up like a car based on what the average performance index is...science hasn't accounted entirely for "healing" yet and I want the intangible part.



Anyway.



Hope all of your holidays were happy and that you, too, experience a feeling of renewal. And, Good Luck to all of us in the new year!...we seem to be approaching it with some trepidation; let's think of it as the much to be desired end of the consumer society. Let's develop some other interests this year. I'll bet we could think of something worthwhile.

The Union Needs Your Help

Colorado WINS is in need of Ft Logan staff's help. They are needing you to sign membership cards and volunteer time. You may be getting calls from WINS representative Deanna DeHaven (720-256-7491) the representative of Fort Logan, and from your co-workers here at the Fort.

As Colorado State employees, we are Colorado WINS so we are helping ourselves; the Governor needs to see that there is interest here to give us the voice everyone is wanting to heard.

Already Colorado WINS has been given an audience by the Joint Budget Committee just last week when 3 State employees gave testament to their concerns and needs. So this is the beginning of good potential for future cooperation in problem solving on many levels.

For those of us who are dealing with PERA, specifically folks who are about to retire, don't think the union doesn't pertain to you, since the union will be having a voice in PERA as well.

Orpheus