Category Archives: Family

‘Tis the Season

Frantic Frantic Frantic

Ever get the feeling we’re too busy to actually think these days?

I had a customer e-mail me this morning. “I need 2,500 brochures made up, please. I need to have them designed, printed, folded, addressed and mailed by the 30th. Please e-mail me a proof sometime next week before going to press. Thank you. Oh, by the way, I’m leaving in just a few minutes – I’ll be back in the office January 3rd.” So how exactly am I supposed to e-mail the guy a proof? He just said he’s on vacation until AFTER his deadline… But he’ll be plenty peeved if his job doesn’t get done on time, I’m sure.

I e-mailed a different customer this morning. The subject of the e-mail was “The first four pages of your newsletter.” In the e-mail I explained that I was sending the proof of her newsletter to her in two chunks this time because her server rejects anything over 10mb, and that she could expect the second half of her newsletter momentarily. I immediately received a reply. “Hey, I only got half of my newsletter! Where’s the other half? What went wrong? Why did you only send me the first four pages?” I held my breath and started to count to ten. By the time I got to “eight,” my e-mail beeped at me again. Same customer. “Oh,” she said. “I see…”

The receptionist here at the shop called me on the intercom yesterday. “I’m ready to put that Jewish Christmas card on the color copier now,” she said. Jewish Christmas card?

It’s so busy here I actually saw the boss working. Spooky. Why is it that there’s never enough time for us to print a job right, but there’s always enough time for us to print it over again? How does that work?

I’ve been hearing from a lot of our customers (and Dagmar, too) that many people are off work from the 23rd through the 3rd. Is that normal? We only get Monday off…

A New Distraction

In an odd twist of events, I’m now the semi-official photographer of Chesterfield’s Wednesday night jam sessions. They’re giving me free beer and a couple bucks every week to go to my favorite bar, listen to good music, take pictures of my friends and maintain a website of photos. Color me happy! You can see the results thus far HERE. (Feel free to e-mail me any photos you’ve taken at the jam – I’ll get ’em uploaded to the site!)

I was surprised how many musicians showed up at the last jam — it’s been a while since I’ve been there. It seems to have grown a bit!

My only problem with this whole thing is that I have a day job. Thursday mornings are gonna be pretty rough on me! I’m not used to being out until 1:30 in the morning on a weeknight any more.

Between that and the American Legion Riders (who created an officer position for me – I’m the PR guy now) I’m gonna be a busy, happy hippie! It’s nice to be able to do the “music thing” once a week, and the ALR really gave me a sense of purpose. The last few months have been good to me!

Pops

I’m happy to report that Pops is out of the hospital and is back home. He’s got some nerve damage from the blood clot, but they say it may heal, given time. But he’s up and walking, and should be back at work in a couple months!

Finally, a Break for the Oil Industry!

Anyone remember the Exxon Valdez? You know, the supertanker that dumped about a zillion gallons of oil off the coast of Alaska? I just read that an appeals court lowered the fine Exxon has to pay from $5 billion to $2.5 billion. And boy, and I happy! Imagine, those 32,000 Alaska natives, fishermen and property owners are pretty chastened for wanting Exxon to pay damages — just because Exxon spilled a pesky little 11 million gallons of crude oil. “Waaaaah, all the fish are dying and I can’t make a living now…” I mean, everyone knows that the oil companies haven’t been able to pull a profit at all the last few years. A $2.5 billion fine is bad enough, I don’t know how they would have paid the whole court-imposed $5 billion…

Actually, Exxon actually had a $7 billion profit last year alone. Their greed knows no bounds. They’re rolling in money, refusing to pay their fine, which would have gone to help the fisherfolk recoup some of the losses they incurred in the years following the oil spill as well as helping the property owners and native Alaskans whose lives were impacted by the spill. I’m sad that they kept this in the courts this long, and I’m sad that they found a sympathetic court that cut their fine in half.

We can’t get true alternative energy vehicles on the market because the rich (and conservative) oilmen don’t have enough of OUR money yet, and our health care system is completely unaffordable to most people because the rich (and conservative) pharmaceutical companies don’t have enough of our money either. They will continue to take our money until we decide to take it back from them.

We need to quit letting ourselves be pushed around by these people.

Merry Christmas.

If you’re reading this on Facebook, you can see the original blog at www.radloffs.net, click on “Blog.”
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My Oh My

Pops…

I don’t know if many family members read this, but Pops had back surgery Monday night, then again on Thursday night. Turns out he developed a blood clot in his spinal column from the first procedure. The clot cut off some pretty major nerves, but the second surgery (to remove the clot) was successful. So it looks like Pops will be okay. They don’t expect there to be permanent nerve damage (though it’s still a possibility), but it was kind of a rough week… He’s still in the hospital, they don’t know when he’ll be able to go home.

Unfortunately, I think I picked up a bug whilst visiting Pops. I feel rotten. Icky icky icky poo.

Blogger

I finally had the option to switch to the new blogger. So I did. This is it. So far I don’t see any major differences (other than labels), but I haven’t poked around in the software’s innards yet either. If anyone has any problems reading my blog, please lemme know! I’m not sure I’ll be able to fix it, but at least I can be anxious and upset… So far I agree with Common Iowan – it seems easy to use and stable indeed! I really like their “g-mail” style spellchecker! The only glitch is that Blogger has e-mailed me some 23 messages saying that the transfer was complete, and I’d like to find a way to delete the AdSense module (in the past year of having ads on my blog I’ve earned less than a penny)…

On a related note – if anyone e-mails us at our regular e-mail addresses and doesn’t hear back from us, please don’t think we’re uppity or anything. It’s just that we get so much junk mail (well over 200 messages a day in one account) that some of the “good” mail is getting deleted by accident. You have my sincere apologies, but I really don’t know what to do, other than to encourage “real” people to use my gmail address when they send stuff to me. G-mail has an automatic filter that seems to be pretty reliable. I think. Maybe.

If you’re reading this on Facebook, you can see the original blog at www.radloffs.net, click on “Blog.”
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A Day of Sadness

Today Dagmar and I helped mother-in-law Kriemhild (Mama K) take their beloved family pet, Bambina, to the vet. Bambina didn’t come home… The pooch was over fifteen years old, and was having difficulties. It was quite simply time to let little Bambina go. It’s a sad fact that we tend to outlive our pets. The thought occasionally crosses my mind when I look at the cat that owns us, Fruitloop, that someday I’m going to have a difficult decision to make. I hope I make it with grace.

The emotions that come with the death of a pet run surprisingly deep. Bambina danced in my life for five years, fifteen years for Dagmar and Mama K. Fifteen years is a long time. It’s rare that a close friendship lasts that long. (When the vet put Bambina to sleep, the twice-widowed Mama K had difficulty leaving. “I need a few minutes,” she said. “After all, Bambina has been in my life longer than either of my husbands.” That brought the depth of emotion into focus.)

It inevitably made me think of past pets. My grandparent’s dogs, Solomon and later Bounder Bee and later still Katie. Cricket cat, who died in her sleep at the farm whilst I was far, far away. Ma & Pa’s pooches, notably Taffy and Sandy. Animals have a way of seeping gently into our soul and making a place for themselves whether we’re ready for that to happen or not.

I shall have to finish this little essay later – I took a sleepy-pill and it’s making me, well, sleepy. Night-night.

The next day…
Do animals have souls? Do we? Prove either… Or deny either. It can’t be done. I do know that a dog or cat somehow gives energy to the house. Last night Mama K said, “It’s so quiet in the house now. Even when Bambina was sleeping, it wasn’t this quiet.” If there is such a thing as a “life force,” little doggies and kitties have it. That’s what Mama K was missing when she said it was quiet in the house.

It’s a spooky responsibility in some ways, having a pet. They depend on you for everything. Food, water, shelter, and the choice of when to end the suffering and pain of age.

In any case, Bambina is chasing butterflies and nibbling blackberries off a bush somewhere…

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Yeesh

The holidays are over. Most of my friends and family are finally recovering from the flu. We’ve had Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s… Now we all have to go back to work until the next paid holiday, which is either Easter or the Fourth of July, I don’t remember which. College football is over for the season, and there are just a few playoff games left before the Superbowl. So… Once my beloved Packers get knocked out of the playoffs in a few weeks I have nothing much to look forward to until April or May when I can get the bike out of storage… Wake up, go to work, come home, sleep. Rinse. Repeat.

Of course, I could probably find something constructive to do, maybe work on some genealogy stuff, or perhaps *gasp* update this web site more often, or maybe practice my bass, but what fun is that when I can sit and whine instead? This just seems to be a good time of year to sit in my jammies drinking hot chocolate watching a movie, whining the whole time about how miserable things are. (There’s some irony there if you look really closely.)

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