The Educated Fool

Well, it's time for me to go back to school....again. Everytime I enter a classroom, I swear that it's going to be the last time.
Last summer, I went to school in Austin and got my license as a property adjuster. To be real honest, that doesn't mean much. For the most part, the class material was focused on just the material that would be covered on the state test. That's a long way from knowing what to do when you are standing in front of a flooded house.
So I knew last summer that there would be classes I would need to take. And the objective of most independent adjusters is to work for State Farm (too many reasons to tell you about, but to sum it up, State Farm is a good company). There is a State Farm class called IDT that is offered about 2-3 times a year, and you have to take it before you are allowed to take any of the other classes. I was all pumped to take that class last October 5 in New Orleans. Unfortunately, Hurricane Katrina got to New Orleans before I did. They just now have rescheduled the class for Feb. 15, so I'm signed up for that one. Then I noticed that other classes that I need were being offered for March 6-8. You go to classes for 2 days and then the 3rd day is for testing. Lord help me...the pressue of taking a test when you are 51 years old. By now, I was on a roll about signing up for classes. I saw that there was another class on the computer program that was offered March 9-10. Sign me up. Did I mention that I was registering for all these on the phone? And that these classes cost $300 to $500 to take? By now, the person at the other end of the phone is yelling to all the other marketers "I've got a live one", and I heard a bell going off each time I sign up and give her my credit card number. It was no big deal to sign me up for the 5 day class that will be given on March 20-24. When they ran out of classes, she thanked me for my registrations (I think I made her house payment for this year) and said that they would be sending me my study material. It occurred to me later that they expect me to study the material before I even come to the class, which makes me wonder why I just gave them all this money to teach me! But in all seriousness, these classes will make certain that, regardless of how much I have learned hands-on this year, I will be more prepared to be employed by myself for the next storm. Of course, my luck...there probably won't be a storm of any type for the next century. Which means I'll have to find another career and go back to school for something else.
Uck....that thought has given me a migraine!!! Happy Weekend.

Dave Barry

I read something in a newspaper that I wanted to share with ya'll. Some of you may have already seen it. Dave Barry did a month by month overview of 2005. It took up several pages of the San Antonio Express-News, so obviously I won't repeat the whole column. Just the parts that I found amusing.
JULY: In weather news, the formatin of Hurrican Dennis is followed closely by the formation of Hurricane Emily, arousing suspricions amoung some staffers at headquarters of FEMA that hurricane season might be going on. It is agreed that somebody probably should look into this and write a report no later than Halloween. AUGUST: By far the biggest story in August is Hurricane Katrina, a massive, deadly storm that thrashes Florida, then devastates New Orleans. For several days, chaos reigns, with most of the relief effort taking the form of Geraldo Rivera, who, by his own estimates, saves more than 170,000 people. FEMA director Michael Brown, after conducting an aerial survey, reports that "the situation is improving" only to be informed that the area he surveyed was actually Phoenix. For her part, Greta Van Susteren personally broadcasts many timely reports from Aruba on how the Katrina devastation will affect the ongoing Natalee Holloway investigation. SEPTEMBER: It is not until now that the full magnitude of the New Orleans devastation sinks in, and local, state and federal officials manage to get their act together and begin the difficult, painstaking work of blaming each other for screwing up. Urged on by President Bush, Congress votes to spend what could wind up being more than $200 billion to repair the Gulf Coast and fix up New Orleans, so that it will be just as good as new when the next devastating hurricane devastates it. NOVEMBER: Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown, who resigned after being harshly criticized for his performance as FEMA director following Katrina, announces that he is starting a consulting business that will...advise clients on preparing for disasters. DECEMBER: The hurricane season, which has produced so many storms that the National Weather Service is now naming them after fraternities, fails to end as scheduled, as yet another hurricane, Epsilon, forms in the Epsilon. As the troubled year draws to a troubling close, yet another hurricane, Kappa Sigma Gamma, forms in the South Atlantic, treating to blast the US mainland with a load of energy that, according to the National Hurricane Center, is the equivalent of 17 trillion six packs of Bud Light.

Dave Barry...got to love him. We should get him to spend some time in Louisiana! Have a good week everyone.

after Xmas

My last two posts were about my Xmas eve (transporting the kitties from hell) and then Xmas day (forging for food in a casino buffet). So before it gets to be February, let me finish up my holiday tales.
I flew home a couple of days after Xmas. My sister Carolyn arranged for us to have a post-Xmas get together at her house. All my siblings were there except for the Arizona family, Jeannie and Carl. But they were there in spirit.
Several months ago, I started working on what I consider a special Xmas birthday present for my Mom. So thank God we had the family get together so I could give her this present. I've almost been in pain trying to keep this "secret" from her, so it was a relief to get it out in the open. Mom loves to watch Paula Deen on the Food Network Channel. I thought this was rather odd, since Mom's idea of cooking is making her coffee every morning, and pouring milk over her cereal. But then I started watching Paula, and understood. The woman is a riot! And not only funny, but she and Mom share a lot of the same beliefs. Paula believes that it's diet food if it doesn't contain a pound of butter. And being southern, a lot of her recipes involve frying. Anyway, I found out that Ms. Paula Deen was doing a cruise in April. Not only do you get to cruise to a bunch of islands in the Carribean, but Paula will be doing cooking classes and authograph parties and a Southern BBQ. So I signed Mom and me up for that. April 2, we leave out of Ft. Lauderdale for a week on the high seas. Maybe by then, I will have learned how to add pictures to this blog.
Oh, the other thing about the family get together is that I supplied dessert. No, I haven't changed my ways and started cooking. But maybe that would have been easier. Instead, I hand carried a pan of white chocolate bread pudding through three airports and three security check-ins. I had ordered this delicacy from a restrauant in Covington, about 20 miles from me. They told me that this pan would serve 18 people. I really intend to go back and ask them if that meant 18 people who happen to play on the front line of a NFL team. That pan weighed at least 20 pounds. And that's not including the chocolate sauce that I also had to transport. At last count, I think at least 30 servings had been cut from that pan. But it was worth every grunt as I heaved that bag over my head into the bin over the airplane seat. I will miss some of the food I have discovered in Louisiana. But that's another blog.

Cat Sitting

One of the friends that I've made here in Louisiana has three adorable cats. Of course, I think all cats are adorable. But anyway, I got to cat sit with them when she was gone over the Thanksgiving holiday. She doesn't have carriers for all of them, so transporting them to the condo has become quite a feat. Being the Modern Day Cat Goddess, I convinced Itsy (my friend) that the best way to transport cats was to put them into a pillow case. I 've done this for years (it was recommended by my vet in Corpus Christi), and never had any problems. Our first transport didn't exactly go well. Dude is her big male cat....and I mean BIG. He's a real love and as gentle as a lamb with two exceptions. One exception being when you try to put him into a pillowcase. None of the cats have their front claws, which Dude doesn't need anyway. He was not in the car yet until he had shredded the pillowcase and was out of there. Marie is the little, petite black cat. Being the tiny princess she is, she had no thoughts about attempting to shred the pillow case. And so she waited until she was safely in the car, being held on Itsy's lap....and peed like she had been storing water in her bladder for days. Delightful. Then there is Miss Kitty, who I was in charge of. It went pretty well until I was about a mile from the condo and she popped her head out of the pillowcase. I did some major swerving in my car as I attempted to contain her, and missed the turn for the condo twice. That was only amusing because Itsy was following me in her car, and was wondering if I was having problems finding my way back to my house.
When Itsy came back after the Thanksgiving holidays, I offered to bring the cats back home. It started out a little better. I took Marie first, and thank god, she had been to the bathroom before I put her in my car. But when I went back for Miss Kitty and Dude, things started downhill again. Lana offered to go with me, and we decided that we would just carry the cats to the car and not mess with the pillowcases. Again I was in charge of Miss Kitty, and got her safely in the car. But when I turned around, I realized that Lana was walking out the door with Dude on her shoulder, secured with only one hand. Because she had a drink in the other hand. I started to tell her that wasn't a good idea. But having been accused of being a know-it-all, I decided to keep my mouth shut. Sure enough, as soon as Dude saw the car, he decided that he didn't want to go. (Remember that I said that Dude was very gentle with two exceptions? Getting him into a car is the other exception!) Digging his back claws deeply into Lana's skin, he used her like a swimmer's springboard to leap into the air and somersault to the ground. Lana claims that when she looked at me, I was giving her one of my "You Dumb Shit" looks, and yelling at her to get Dude and quit worrying about the blood coming out of her body. But by golly, she never let go of her drink. Fortunately, Dude just headed back to the front door. So I was able to grab him with both hands and get him into the car. The ride over to Itsy's went fine, except having to listen to Lana's about her puncture wounds. whimp. It was when we got the cats back to their home that I realized that Miss Kitty had crawled so far under my front seat, she almost could not be seen. AND had wrapped herself around all the electrical seat wires so that I was afraid to move her. I swear, she looked like she was wired with explosives and if I tried to force her out, she'd hit the remore and take everyone out with her. Needless to say, it was a while before I got her out of the car.
What made me agree to keep the cats while Itsy was gone for Xmas, I don't know. Well, actually since I left after Xmas to go home for a week, the burden was really on Lana. Except for the transport part. That was done on Xmas Eve. Again, it was Itsy and me. But this time, she was in charge of Marie and Miss Kitty, and I had the Sumo wrestling cat, Dude. We got Miss Kitty into the pillow case (no more under the seat stand-offs) and into the car. Marie promply peed all over Itsy again as she was lifted up. And I congratulated myself prematurely for being in charge of Dude. Except that I had forgotten to unlock my car doors. And we were on one of the busiest (and noisiest)streets in Slidell. And if that wasn't enough, I've been having trouble with the battery in my car remote. And the security alarm goes off at the strangest times...like when I have a 20 pound cat in my arms. Keeping all of those factors in mind, you can appreciate that what Dude did to my stomach and breasts made his shredding of the pillowcase look like child's play. But I hung on, until I got him in the car. The ride over went pretty well for a while. Dude walked around the car and looked out the windows. But when he learned to put his paw on the button that rolls down the windows, it got exciting again! With visions of him flying out the car window, my little Honda started swerving all over the street again as I grabbed Dude, found the button on my side to roll up the window, and keep the car from running up the curbs...all at the same time.
So now it's after Xmas, and after New Years. Both Itsy and I have returned to Slidell. And the cats are still living with me. I'm sure you can guess why. No one wants to volunteer to transport three possessed animals who carry their own internal weapons of mass destruction. So if any of my generous readers would like to volunteer to come to Slidell and move these cats back to their rightful owner, please feel free to come over. I'll have the hydrogen peroxide and bandages ready, and will wash any clothes that Marie pees on.

Christmas in Louisana

Yes, I know that it's January 6, and so discussions of Xmas are a little late. The good news is that I've been writing all these wonderful additons to my blog. The bad news is that all the writing was being done in my head.
I did spend Xmas in Louisiana. It was mostly normal. As in any other American city, you would see light displays in front of houses at night. I suspect that there were probably not as many light displays as normal. People that got their houses flooded probably didn't feel the need to replace Xmas lights right away. But as you drove around, even in the parts of town that were so devastated, you would see people trying to get into the Xmas lighting spirit. I saw a lot of trailers with lights or a tree decorated outside. Gotta applaud those folks for trying to get something normal back into their lives. As far as the difference between the cultures, there were some differences I noted. In lots of displays, Santa's sleigh was not pulled by reindeer, but by alligators. And there were various decorations of crawfish dressed in santa costumes.
Lana and I really didn't have any place to go. We had invitations, but felt that it was family time and we should do something else. So we headed for a casino in New Orleans, looking forward to their Christmas day buffet feast. I had visions all the way there of all the prime rib I was going to eat. That was when things started getting a little strange. The prime rib was the worse cut of meat that I have ever seen served. So I sat where I could see the carving table, and was waiting for them to bring out a new slab of meat. It never happened. That's because no one else was remotely interested in eatting prime rib. Every table I watched, the people were loading up on....fried chicken. And that was by choice, not that the other selections weren't good. Now why were so many people spending $26 for a all-you-can-eat fried chicken buffet? Then I started thinking about the number of fast food places in Slidell. I realized that the only competition for the number of fried chicken places is the number of daquiri bars. Interesting culture.

There's a part of me that thinks that I should stop writing about the strangeness of Louisiana, but then what would I have to write about? Well, anyway, I want to tell ya'll about my visit home. So there might be several emails coming to you in the next week.

profound question

Now as my friends know, I am what you might call "challenged" by the English language. Oh, ask me to write and I'm just fine as long as a English teacher doesn't get to grade my work. Then there are all these red circles and crossed out words and notes in the margins about "run on sentences" and "dangling participles". So what's wrong with that? Our entire nation would be healthier if there was more running and dangling.....(hmmm, I probably need to rethink that business about the dangling....sounds like something that should be censored). It's strange because the people that like my writing give me the same reasoning why they like it that the English teachers give me as criticism...I write the same way I speak.

The only area of English that I'm as challenged as I am in the structure of the English language is pronunciation. If they had created "Hooked on Phonics" when I was a kid, I would be the part of the control group that flunked the testing. The only way I can get hooked on phonics is if they use a very large fish hook. I've often thought that part of my problem is this "auditory discrimination hearing" problem that I have. I think I wrote in an earlier blog that I have problems hearing the difference in sounds. So red and dead sound pretty much the same to me. That used to make hospice work interesting. Anyway, I'm getting to the point, or the question I have, about sounds.

Now, as I understand it, phonics refers to the sounds that create the word. But what I'm having a struggle with is how different areas of the country can have such different sounds, otherwise known as accents. How can making an "i" sound in one part of the country sound like an "a" sound somewhere else? How can you say "car" with a hard r sound in one state, and up north, they call it a "ca" with no r sound? Or more to the point, how can Texas and Louisiana use the same version of Hooked on Phonics?

Today I had to deliver a check to this man, who gave me the best directions he could. But because I've been here long enough now, I really don't expect to understand every word that is said. My objective is to understand enough to get me started in the correct general direction, and to make certain that I have the telephone number of the insuree easily available. I bet sometimes they feel like a air traffic control tower the way they have to guide me in to their run-way....I mean driveway. So he tells me to go down this highway, across a little bridge, and turn on *&/%# street. It sounded something like Carl street. Although I did miss the turn the first time, I did figure out quickly that I was supposed to turn on Carroll Street. I don't know about you, but when I say Carl and when I say Carrol, my mouth doesn't move in the same way. (Try it) Anyway, the check got delivered with only two extra phone calls.

Then I talked to the next person to whom I was delivering a check. She was meeting a friend for lunch and I agreed to go to the restaurant. "No." I told her, "I'm not familiar with that restaurant, but I'll find it". Actually, when she told me that she was meeting for lunch at Imperial Top Pick, I thought that might be a steak place, and I'm always looking for a good rib-eye. It was a good thing that I had the first word in the restaurant's name correct, or I would have driven past "Imperial CHOPSTICKS" without stopping.

I really don't know how much of this is my hearing and how much is their accent. But the next time you see me, look directly at me and talk in slow, clear sentences. By then, I will probably think that you've lost your mind. But at least, I'll understand you!

Louisiana Observations

Yes, I know....I've been missing for a while again. State Farm wants all the claims closed by December 20, and so things here are a little busy. Just because our claims will get closed doesn't mean that the job is over. In fact, to some degree, it will be really getting started. You see, there are going to be almost as many "re-opens" as there were original claims. That means that the claims get opened back up, due to price increases in materials (the insured can't get the work done for the original estimate), or damage is found at a later date that wasn't included in the original claim. So there is plenty more work to be done here. It is still a compliment to State Farm the amount of pressure they put on to get claims closed as fast as possible. I've heard of lots of people here that either haven't seen an adjuster from their company, or have just seen them for the first time in the past week.

But I have had time to think about some further observations that I wanted to pass on about the strangeness of Louisiana. Of course, maybe I shouldn't refer to it as strangeness as I may return to Texas and have picked up some of their characteristics. Like some speech patterns. I have a tendency to adopt some of the speech patterns of whomever is around me. I don't really mind this when I am in some civilized place, like England or Canada. But God help me if I pick up Louisiana. I don't think I will pick up much of the Cajun accent, because I can't ever understand them anyway. But as a state, they have this annoying habit of leaving out a word or two in simple sentences. "How are you?" becomes "How you?". "We came through the storm fine" becomes "We fine". I thought at first that this was because they are so slow about movement (unless they are in a car!), that they left out words to speed up their sentences. But then I discovered that at other times, they can make one word into multiple syllables. Just in case you have a sensor on your email account, let me refer to the most common word yelled when people are surprised or falling off a ladder, and is also used for a body function. It begins with s and ends in hit. Well, in Louisiana, that word requires a full 15 seconds to say. She......itttttttttt. And since it is said often, I guess that is why they leave out other little words in their sentences.

I was asked about how Thanksgiving went, especially the food. Thank God, for the most part, Lana cooked and so I had mostly normal food like turkey and cornbread dressing. But some friends that came over for the Thanksgiving meal insisted on bringing gumbo for an noon snack until we ate at 4 pm. Sounded good for me. And when they walked in with a big pot of seafood gumbo, the smell was wonderful. The other big pot they carried in was potato salad, just like we get at any Texas BBQ place. I assumed this was for Thanksgiving dinner, and that was a little different from any tradition I knew of, but I was pretty accepting. Until they fixed everyone a bowl of the seafood gumbo and plopped a big spoon of potato salad into the middle of it. That's the way they eat gumbo.....with potato salad. I tried it, just to be nice. But let me tell you, it just ain't natural.

I think the moral of this story is that if you ever decide to move to someplace, don't just look at the cost of living, the landscape/beauty of the area, or whatever. Take a temporary residence and live there for a few months. Because I now know that Louisiana is off my list of retirement areas.

Hope you fine.