Pictures From A Vacation, Sort Of

Went to Phoenix for a few days again last week, and lucked out with the weather again, too.  70-75 degrees and sunny every day.

This year's trip was much like last year in other respects as well, but a few new observations:

I highly recommend the Talking Stick Resort.

Visit Apache Junction, AZ for a trail-walking, ghost town-visiting, and saloon-imbibing good time.

There is no non-private golf course in the U.S. in better condition than We-Ko-Pa in Fort McDowell, AZ.

I gained firsthand knowledge of what a jumping cholla can do to a golfer if they aren't careful.  (Another reason to not hit the ball into the desert scrub.)

It sure seems easy to get around in Phoenix, it's spread out and there's lots of pavement for driving.  However, if you have trouble on the 101 or the 202, it's easy to get directions, like this.

Night At The Hospital

I recently spent a night as a visitor as a hospital.  This was my first hospital overnight since I was an inpatient at one over 12 years ago.

Outside of selected complimentary beverages, there are very few good things, if any, about spending the night at the hospital.  However, there are a number of bad things, beyond just being around sick people:

1) The random noises that interrupt the quiet.  Forget about a sound night's sleep.  If it isn't the beeping of the various medical devices, it's the nurses coming in every couple of hours to check vital signs or give medication.

2) The light pollution.  No matter how hard you may try to keep the light low, the above-mentioned nurses are going to walk in from the well-lit hallway.  Sometimes, if they have something to do, they're even going to turn the lights on in the room.

3) The antiseptic aroma.  Combine hand sanitizer, alcohol pads, and every other purification or cleaning agent known to man, and you might have a basic idea of what it smells like the entire time.  Not awful, but not potpourri either.

So in summary, a night at the hospital is going to be a benevolent assault on the senses of hearing, seeing, and smelling.  This is the sacrifice made to help get people well.

That's A Peach, Hon!

This weekend's stop on the PGA Tour was The AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. That's the only  tournament where a national TV audience can watch a bunch of amateurs play alongside the pros, at one of golf's most beautiful and famous venues, no less.

Some of the amateurs are decent, but watching them this weekend I could only think of the following scene from Caddyshack:

Tony D'Annunzio: [caddying for the elderly Havercamps... to Mrs. Havercamp] Your ball's right over there, go straight.  You can't miss it. Mrs. Havercamp... Mrs. Haver... Mrs. Havercamp... you'll need this.  [hands her her club]

Mrs. Havercamp: Oh, I might at that!

Tony D'Annunzio: Mr. Havercamp, your ball's right over there, sir.  [Havercamp puts hand out for club, Tony hands it to him as he attempts to shoot away from the green]  No... Mr. Havercamp.  The green's right over there, sir.

Mrs. Havercamp: [knocking ball into the pond]  Whee!

Mr. Havercamp: That's a peach, hon! Oh, by golly... I'm hot today!  [he slices it and it barely misses Tony's head]

You must Google the scene for the full effect!

Be Careful What You Wish For

Assuming I labeled my posts properly, I went the entire calendar year of 2012 without an entry on religion.  Hard to believe, because it isn't as if there weren't religious controversies worth blogging about.

Regardless, that streak is over.  Some news today pushed me over the edge, that being a new proposal from the Obama administration that would allow religious groups to opt-out (sort of) of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) mandatory contraceptive coverage.

Religiously affiliated groups, especially the Catholic Church, have been going nuts over this mandate.  When this topic was at its hottest this past summer, and preachers were crusading against the mandate during church services, an acquaintance of mine had a letter published in the Des Moines Register that complained about those tactics.  After all, she wasn't going to church to hear those white men telling her what she should believe about her reproductive health care.  The next thing you know she was getting letters from strangers, telling her how wrong she was to feel that way.

Here's the problem with all of this.  The outrage of those religious leaders and their followers over the contraceptive coverage mandate, while somewhat understandable, would have a lot more credibility it it weren't for at least two really big things:

1) Religiously affiliated groups, and here again especially the Catholic Church, completely supported the passage of Obamacare.  I'm sure much of that support was at least indirectly financial, via PAC contributions.  Then once the rules were written, and they realized the rules apply to them, snap! they suddenly wanted to be excepted from a major part of Obamacare.

2) It's laughable to see the outrage of so-called religious leaders over this issue, when it is a fact that many of the organizations they oversee have been including contraceptive coverage in their health care plans for many years.  Apparently, they think all of the young female teachers in their schools are using abstinence as their birth control method.  Classic old white men group-think.

Who knows if this new 'opt-out' rule will pacify the mandate-haters.  It probably won't.  But that has more to do with the out-of-touch religious hierarchy, and its culture of thinking they can and should govern themselves.  (Ask any former church pedophile victim how well they think that self-governance thing has worked out.)