How I met and fell in love with my Honey

This one is for Shana, who wanted to know how I met and fell for my Honey.

We didn't know each other before we attended Wolfson High School. If Wolfson hadn't been built, it's likely we would never have met. She would have continued attending Landon, and I would have attended Englewood, just because of where we lived. Our homes were separated by the district boundary, which in that area ran down Beach Boulevard. As circumstances had it, though, Wolfson was built, and for the reasons I described in my previous blog, we both ended up attending school there in the eleventh and twelfth grades.

Reflections

I had a short conversation with my Honey recently, about old friends, and she surprised me somewhat. I won't go into the events that led up to the conversation, but it went something like this:

"Is there anyone among your old school friends or classmates that you would like to see again, or make contact with?" I asked.

Christmas will be different...

... this year. No little ones to rush downstairs early on Christmas Day, raising all manner of ruckus. Everyone who previously spent their Christmas Eve and Day with us, has other plans this year. Not a bad thing, really, just different from what I'm used to.

The next sound you hear...

... will be the air rushing in to fill the vacuum at my old workplace.

I got a call today from a friend and former co-worker, to let me know about a retirement luncheon for yet another former co-worker. My buddy, JimB came to work at about the same time I did, reaching his 30th year about three weeks ahead of me. He hadn't orginally intended to retire so soon, but he changed his mind recently.  In discussing it with him, he told me that the deciding factor is the length of his commute to work.

In 1985, he was transferred from his previous duty station to Atlanta. His family had deep roots in the home they already had, and he and his wife didn't want to move. As a result he has to traverse 75 miles each way, every day ever since. That is love, folks. The mystery to me is not that he tired of it, but why did it take so long?

JimB is an asset that will be missed.

Downtime

Well, here we are again. Thanksgiving day is over, the kids have all gone home, and so have those members of the extended family that had to come some distance to be with us.  M&M couldn't be with us, and we missed them.

Taxation... again...

Here's a thought...

In my previous blog, I mentioned that the philosophy behind the progressive tax is that those who receive the most benefit from the protections of our society should pay the lion's share for those benefits. I still believe that this is a valid approach to taxation. The problem is: how do you effectively implement it?

Taxation

Any way you look at it, taxes are functionally the same as protection racket payments. When you pay taxes, you are paying someone else to protect your assets. When you pay the "Mob", you pay to protect your assets from the "Mob" and its competitors. When you pay the government, you pay to protect them from a larger variety of hazards, including those same criminals, as well as natural and man-made disasters, and ignorance, just to name a few.