Enter the new small guys like Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Tracfone, Net10, Straight Talk and Cricket just to name a few. With these guys you can get a cheap Android phone for less than $100 and $50 a month for unlimited everything with no contract. They ride on the same networks that the big guys do and so far, it’s been my experience that the quality is good.

I’ve had the same phone number through Verizon for 15 years. It was costing me $49 a month just for the minimum plan of 200 minutes a month. No text, no data. I bought the Net10 android LG Optimus Net phone for $99 from Radio Shack and brought it home and it worked very well. I decided I made a good move so I ported my old Verizon number to the new service and phone through easy online tools that Net10 and the others provide. It took about 3 days to complete. When the number port is complete, if that’s the only number that you have with your old phone company, then that account is automatically closed. My Verizon contract was long since satisfied so no penalties were due. Bottom line is that I got rid of the old guys, got better service with the new guys and got to keep my phone number so I didn’t have to go through the hassle of changing phone numbers.

The common thread on the internet is that the customer service sucks for these smaller companies, but that was not my experience at all. I suppose if you are the type that requires a lot of customer service then that might be the case, but the dealings that I had with them through the porting of my number were pleasant and professional. Also, if you are a cutting edge type of person, these guys are not for you. While the big guys are rolling out 4G everywhere, the smaller guys are just now rolling out Android phones with 3G.

I honestly couldn’t be more pleased with my new phone and service. The Android 2.3 operating system is awesome, everything works and syncs with Google, and the great GPS and voice/speech applications work flawlessly. Do yourself a favor and look into these phones if you feel you are stuck paying to much for your cell phone service. I’m glad I did!

Right now you have a system that is wildly out of control. I saw an ad for a urologist three years ago in the paper. The starting salary was $375,000 per year. That tells me something right there. Medical supplies are through the roof. Just google some and you’ll see. Example: I buy a new below knee prosthesis about every three years. The cheapie costs $6000. It takes about a day to make and it has about $250 worth of parts in it. So why is it so expensive? Because it’s a medical supply. Why are medical supplies so expensive? It’s because it’s part of the medical and insurance wildly broken and corrupt system.

It starts with malpractice lawsuits. (Yes, of course layers had a part in making it this way) Judges and jurys hand out outrageous settlements in malpractice cases. Those awards must be paid for, so doctors and medical suppliers charge outrageous fees for medical services so that they can afford malpractice insurance, so that judges and jurors can continue to hand out outrageous lawsuit settlements. That’s why you see $7 dollars for an aspirin on your hospital bill. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You go to the doctor or the hospital and get your care and then they bill your insurance company, who of course denies the payment. Then they go back and forth with paperwork for several months saying “you owe me this” and “I’m not paying you that”. They have to hire people to generate all of this paperwork and their salaries translate to higher medical costs, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg too.

These are just some of the things that are wrong with the current healthcare system in America that need fixed BEFORE we even try to get government healthcare coverage for every American.

I got into an interesting discussion on Facebook the other day. You may have seen this picture.

Well, everyone started either ragging on or defending Obamacare and I was no different. I was one that was ragging. But then I did a little looking into exactly what PCIP was which is what is referenced on her sign. It stands for Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan. So what is that? Well, it varies state by state but in Pennsylvania it means that basically, insurance companies have to insure you even if you have a pre-existing condition. You have to pay for it, but they they have to make it affordable and they have to offer it. That’s where I was wrong. I had assumed that the government was just paying for some slacker’s medical bills with my tax money. I admit. I was wrong.

Well, this I agree with! It’s just like the “high risk” car insurance for bad drivers. It’s not paid for by the government and our taxes. It’s paid for by the person who needs it. Sure, you and I pay too through higher premiums, but in the grand scheme of things, I can live with that. People have pre-existing conditions and everyone, including myself is tired of seeing the big fat insurance companies slamming the door in the faces of people in need. Perhaps someday I’ll get the chance to read more about Obamacare. I really wish they’d simplify their bill passing and stop porking every bill they pass though with thousands of pages of self interest bullshit. Bottom line, I like the thought behind PCIP but I get the feeling that this is a bright point in an otherwise dark bill.

Debbie and I are looking forward to our first Christmas season together. We still haven’t picked a date for the wedding yet but hopefully it will be this summer. We want to get married on the sailboat. As soon as we hash all of that out I’ll post it here. Well, I have a fresh batch of Boilo cooking so I have to go for now but I’ll get back into writing mode soon.

Ciao for now!
-Ron

I had a lot to do that day to prepare for her visit. There was house cleaning, laundry, and a million other things to do. I’d been in touch with Charlie several times during the day via email going over different parts of the plan. I would meet him there about 45 minutes early to scope out the angles and so forth. That was the plan.

I didn’t have the tv or radio on all day. I was too busy. I had no idea there were severe storm warnings or anything. About 6:30 I started hearing some thunder but nothing to be alarmed about. I got a shower and got dressed and was on the road by 7:30 which would have put me at the airport by 8:30. Here’s where the plan changed. I made it about half way there and on a section of highway with a concrete wall on one side and a guardrail on the other, all traffic came to a complete stop. Parking lot stop. The kind of traffic jam where everyone puts it in park and turns off the engine.

So it’s 7:50 and I’m sitting there. 8:00 rolls by. Then 8:30. I still hadn’t moved. 9:00 comes and goes. I’m freaking out. Still no movement. Unbelievable! I didn’t have Charlie’s cell phone number. He’d heard about the impending doom and sent it to me late in the afternoon, but I hadn’t checked my email before I left. Charlie and Shelly left early because of the forecast and they were at the airport plenty early.

So there they are at the airport. Debbie’s plane lands. Everything is in place except that I’m in this God awful traffic jam with trees blown over the highway and nothing is moving. Debbie calls me to tell me she’s landed. Time for plan B. Gonna have to make this one up on the fly. I described Charlie and told her to look for him. I told her I wanted to have pictures of us meeting at the airport and that’s why they were there. So she finds Charlie and Shelly and introduces herself.

The way it works out is that Charlie and Shelly offer to take Debbie to a local lounge and wait for me. Traffic finally starts to creep. All the while, they’ve been hearing about the destruction of the storm and it’s hitting close to their house. They have no idea if they even still have a house, yet they are doing all this for me. Rescuing my girl from the airport and bringing her to meet me so I can propose to her, and they will photograph it, and that’s what we did.

This is a once in a lifetime shot for me. I am in awe and deeply in debt to Charlie and Shelly for doing all of this for me, all the while knowing that they might be incurring damage to their home while they are doing it. It was a great show of friendship and one that I will certainly never forget.

Also, I can’t say enough about the high quality and unique artistic aspect of their work. Go check them out at http://www.charliezimmerman.com and you’ll be glad you did.

To Charlie and Shelly. Thank you so much for everything you did for me. You were my heroes and I will never forget what you did for me.

Soon I will ask a question, and if I get a three letter answer my life will change forever.

We talk about closing the gap somehow and being together forever. We’re not exactly sure how we’re going to accomplish this yet but our hearts are one and I’m sure we will find a way. My good friend Jon McDougal offered some advice but I’m having trouble subscribing to it.

He says “Take it slow. You’ve got plenty of time. Sounds like you both have the same goals and ideas, so it isn’t a race”.

I’m about a decade older than Jon and I don’t see it that way. We’re a bit past mid-life. We don’t have as much time as the younger people do. We’re not on the uphill climb anymore where you deal with the daily grind of upward mobility, raising a family and stressing out over all of life’s small stuff where every day is just another grinding day. We don’t take tomorrow for granted. We’re thankful for today and hope and pray that tomorrow comes and provides us with another day to share together. We’re at that plateau in life where you level out and enjoy each others company and every minute counts. We take the time to share a sunset and revel in the moment. We enjoy every moment that we have together. We take the extra time in the morning to let each other know we care and we never pass up an opportunity to hold each other because tomorrow may never come. I’ve endured 33 years of my adult life without her company and now that I know what I’ve missed, I have a new perspective on the time that we have left. Every day that we’re not together is another day of our lives that is wasted and gone. It’s another day that gets chalked up and added to that 33 year sentence. It’s another day lost that we’ll never get back.

Thirty three years had passed since we last saw each other in person. Thirty three years since we had even spoken until January of this year, 2011. We had both taken radically different paths through life’s journey that led us to the same spiritual and emotional place all these years later. It is such a crazy story that it is almost unbelievable.

We re-connected through Facebook and then immediately began texting and instant messaging online. It wasn’t long until we fired up the web cams and since then we’ve been face to face enjoying each other’s company for hours on end every single night, but a thousand miles away from each other. There was much to teach and learn about each other’s past and life’s experiences. There still is much for us to learn.

We were in love with each other when we were sixteen years old, but what do sixteen year olds really know about love? At 49 years old now, I have a new deep respect for the answer to that question.

I thought I had been in love before. I even got married in my early twenties. That didn’t work out. I had several long term relationships throughout my life. I thought they were love too. Each and every time I had my heart handed back to me, quartered and diced, and a few ounces shy of when I gave it away. I built walls after a while. I didn’t let anyone in. For the last decade I’ve lived alone, keeping any relationships at arms length. I had some soul searching to do and I did it. I know who I am now. Wisdom has taught me many lessons and I know what is important and what is not. I know what is shallow and what is deep. I’ve spent a lot of time here alone. I learned to like being alone and I never felt lonely. And then Debbie came back to me after all these years and everything changed in a flash.

Debbie arrived Friday morning and it was although time had stood still for all those years. The chemistry is amazing. The romance is strong. The passion is deep. The love that we felt for each other way back then never died and it wasn’t just laying dormant somewhere. It was growing, unseen and undetected. It seems to have grown exponentially over the years as if someone or some thing much greater than ourselves was nurturing and feeding it as if it were some kind of prized botanical treasure.

I have just spent three of the best days of my life with her. Every embrace felt like we were sculpted by the world’s greatest artist to fit perfectly with each other. We are like two pieces of a valuable rare puzzle that can’t and shouldn’t fit with anything or anyone anywhere else in the universe except for with each other. There is not a doubt in my mind that she was meant for me and that I was meant for her.

I have never felt this depth of love, this level of trust or this magnitude of caring before. I just spent three days of total, undiminished, unabridged happiness with her and never in my life have I felt so complete. The piece of me that was missing all of these years is no longer missing. She makes me feel whole.

Our visit is over. I drove her out to drop her off at her mother’s house in Pittsburgh today where she’ll spend the rest of her vacation. Every mile I drove home I felt just a little less complete and a lot more empty. I’ve lived alone for a very long time but I’ve never felt as alone as I do at this very moment. But while my house is empty and my soul is lonely, my heart is full of love for her and hers is full with me. I’ll drive out to see her next week before she goes back to Florida and we’ll embrace each other again with the strength and passion that it will take until we see each other again this summer.

We are one.

The store where I shop sells thinly sliced top round steak. It usually comes with 2 slices in a pack, about 12 inches long, 5 inches wide and 1/4 of an inch thick. It usually weighs in between a pound or a pound and a half. I take that and cut it down into about 1 inch wide strips and if they are real long I cut them down to maybe 6 inches in length. Once the meat is cut it’s time to make the marinade. In a big ziplock bag add

1/4 cup liquid smoke (Hickory)
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1-1/2 teaspoons sea salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
15 drops of Tabasco sauce

mix it up real good and put the meat in the bag and squish and mix it all around. Let it sit in the fridge for at least 12 hours. I let the last batch marinate for 24. It’s up to you, but I’d go at least 12.

When your ready to finish it, take it out and put it into a colander to drain it. Put a sheet or two of tin foil on the bottom of your oven and put the oven rack in the top position as high as you can get it. Then take a tooth pick and poke one through the end of one of the beef strips and put it up through the bottom of the rack and turn it sideways so that it hangs. Hang them all like that.

Turn the oven to 180 degrees and let it go for anywhere between 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours depending on the thickness of the meat and how you like it. Remember, it’s not about cooking the meat so much as it is drying it out.

That’s it. Let it cool, remove the tooth picks and enjoy!

She was on the track team. I was just a farm boy from the sticks. To this day I’m not sure how our lives crossed, who introduced us or how we originally came to know each other. It’s all a big blur and so much has happened since then. She wanted to settle down I think, like most people and raise a family after graduation. I just wanted to get out of school and run wild, and that’s what we did.

I moved back to Harrisburg and lived pretty much footloose and free and she got married and raised two sons in south Florida. A lot has happened to us both over the years. We’ve both lived through some pretty tough lessons. We’re both better people for learning them.

Here it is 33 years later and the strangest thing happened about a month ago. Through the power of the internet and Facebook we’ve re-connected. She’s still in Florida and I’m still in central Pennsylvania. We’re both single now. We chat every night on the net and call on the phone on the weekends, and I’ve realized something very surprising.
My heart still fills with warmth when I think about her. I look forward to her company every night. The laws of attraction and the forces of nature are apparently much more powerful that I’d ever imagined. She is still as beautiful, sweet, funny, innocent and true as she was when we met way back then. She still feels something for me too. I know she does. She’s coming to PA in March to visit family and we’ve carved out a few days to re-meet in person. I’m really looking forward to it. I can’t wait. I want to see her now. Today! I want to hug her so much right now on Valentine’s day but I can’t. We’re in positions where we can’t just up and travel 1000 miles at the drop of a hat. So I had to send someone in my place to do today’s hugging. I figured a really big bear would do the trick, and by the smile on her face, I think she liked it.

Neither one of us knows why this happened. Is this the master plan now that we’ve each done what we wanted to do earlier in our lives and now we’re supposed to be together again? Is this our destiny or is this some kind of other test, or hurtful life lesson like we’ve both endured so many times before? I’m not sure why this is happening but I am very glad that it is.

Happy Valentine’s Day Debbie. I wish I were the bear.