It has been a Knock Out week –

The strangest thing happened this week; I was walking this female client out to her car after a late afternoon appointment when this mugger jumped us and I ended up with this black eye…..no wait it was mom simply tired of me leaving my dishes out and she wanted to punctuate the point…..or could it have been my tender Marine son Don who wanted to handicap our racquetball game at the beginning with a quick shot to my eye with the racquet. You guessed correctly, it was Don leaving me a reminder of his visit. It was great to see him, if only with one eye.
In fact it was great to see all the kids together for the first time in 4 years, even if it was only for an hour brunch. I can’t tell you how much I love my family. You all have taken our feeble efforts to make a few memories and daily scripture study into happy marriages, healthy grandkids, and a positive attitude towards Heavenly Father. You even all vote conservative – a parent couldn’t ask for more. Life is good.
Here are a few pictures from the week.

Adding my voice....

With all the fun this country is having with their town halls, I feel I have missed out on the opportunity to shout a little bit and raise some H___ too. So I’m spouting off here in this venue.

I listened to part of Barak Obama’s town hall meeting held in Grand Junction yesterday. This man is a con artist. The words he so smoothly dispenses are so different than his actions and the poison he spews is wrapped in a sugar coating. The scary part is that so many people believe him.

He makes the insurance companies an enemy to us: to cover the weakness of his health care plan. It is their fault we have a crises – “let’s get ‘em”. Yet private insurance could be part of the solution and is probably the best solution. He effectively blocks off a source of ideas and solutions to create an enemy. That is self preservation not leadership.

He says – “You’re either for reform or anti-reform”. I say NO. I’m for reform but not his flavor of reform that allows for: the government to have access to our personal banking information to “collect payments”, rationed medical care, slowly eliminating private insurance companies, creating a national database of personal medical information, paying for illegal alien’s medical coverage, and supporting taxpayer funded abortions, etc. Yes we need to make improvements but so use the free enterprise system that reduces costs and improves service. There are many great ideas out there that are not being circulated or talked about because the Obama plan has sucked all the air out of the room. I want plans not government based like Medicare which is burdened with incredible amounts of debt and corruption.

Let’s start with tort reform and remove the obscene amounts of wasted money paid to trial lawyers who are not part of the solution. The government is not the appropriate administer of a health care plan – we can do better.

The bottom line fear is “who is going to pay” for the services. How do you add 47 million patients to the system and then claim that a government-run health care solution will decrease the debt. It is a blatant LIE and people still believe him. The Zimbabwe currency was declared defunct yesterday because of rampant inflation that required billions of their dollars to buy bread. We are headed down the same road unless we get the government to stop printing money. Having them run health care will not help to strengthen our currency or country. It is a recipe for disaster.

Now I feel better

Bike Hike

No time to write, just some pictures from our weekend getaway to Woodland Park and Garden of the Gods for a bike hike. I loved the lake trail and mom loved the rocks in Garden of the Gods.

New Light on the Subject –

I have been working for almost two years to get into this one company to do their 401 K program. It is a good sized company, growing fast, and they have doctors, but they have been reluctant to pull the trigger on a program because of the economy. They finally started the process and my name wasn’t on the list of prospective providers. My contact with the company got me an appointment for a presentation at the last minute.

I was panicked. I hadn’t been able to meet with them to do any data gathering and they were already at the selection stage. They sent a truly ugly RFP by way and it was some idiot document pulled from the internet and gave no direction at all. I had no time to prepare, no direction, no ideas on a plan design solution, and big expectations. My friend had stuck his neck out for me to arrange my appointment. I did what any silly sales guy does – I procrastinated hoping for then to just give me the business based on good looks. That would be a fast shut down.

I actually prayed like crazy for a couple of days with nothing reveled to me. The day before the presentation I was in a real panic. Then that morning during prayers it all came together. I saw how I needed to organize my presentation and spent a couple of hours after the temple shift that night preparing the agenda. During the meeting I had to fight the urge to persuade and sell and instead I helped them organize their thoughts and outlined what they needed to do to put a complex plan in place. We got really involved in mapping out their organization and what they needed to do and we ran out of time before I had told them all my sales points. I thought it was over.

They called the next morning to say that I was the only one that seemed interested in their business organization and how to help them put the proper plan in place. The business was mine and they canceled two other presentations. The spirit is a great business partner – I ought to use it more.

The other light came from mom’s wishes to have new lights in the front entry. We spent all day on rented scaffolding 15 ft in the air changing out the light fixture. Ladders aren’t my thing anymore.