The Empty Soda Can

About four years ago, my doctor put me on a new maintenance medication and some Vitamin D3 to help with its absorption. Over the next few months, we tweaked the dose a bit, but I’ve been on this combo ever since. I’ve compared my results to others on the same medication but without the D3, and my results have been much better than theirs Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago: after some 3½ years without changes, I noticed that the meds didn’t seem to be working as well. I wondered if it might be time to up my dose, but then something occurred to me: the last time I picked up my prescriptions, the Vitamin D I usually take was out of stock, so they substituted a different kind. Could that be the culprit? I called my pharmacy and asked if there was any significant difference between what I currently have and what I usually get. They transferred me to the actual pharmacist, who looked it up and responded in the negative: they’re the same dose; they’re from the same manufacturer; they p...

I hate that this blog has become so political, as that really isn’t its intent; but so often, my friends post something political and my response is far too long for the comments. This has happened once again, with my friend Emily sharing an article from the National Review , What Is Consistent about Mitt Romney? . So, Emily, you’re getting a writeup in The Empty Soda Can . Try not to be too excited. 😄 Emily’s post regarding this article is as follows: HALLELUJAH for this article. I thought I was losing my dang mind with all of these Dems falling all over Romney. As an LDS anti-Trumper, I found Senator Romney’s latest stunt to be an obvious charade, and I’m stunned at how blind Dems and fellow anti-Trumpers are to it.  The author is generous in saying he “doesn’t understand” Romney and “credits his deep sincerity.” I see you, Mitt Romney, and you and your ridiculous antics drive me out of my freaking mind. SPARE US, I BEG YOU.   [Cue ‘The Greatest Showman’ soundtr...

A Swiss friend of mine, Martin, has asked for my thoughts on the current impeachment of President Trump and the details surrounding it. Since these thoughts are far too long for a reasonable Facebook post, I’m sticking them up here. Enjoy! 😊 * * * * * Hi Martin. Since you asked for my thoughts, I will share. Unfortunately, this post will be a fairly long one, since as with most things in life, neither this situation nor my thoughts regarding it are anything approaching black-and-white. First of all, my thoughts on President Trump: I do not like the man. I didn’t vote for him in 2016, and I don’t plan to vote for him in 2020. I think he’s a jerk, and he definitely comes off as immature. In short, he is not the kind of person I want serving as President of the United States of America. (This could also be said for most of those who have run, in the past couple of decades. I really liked Mitt Romney in 2012, but I’ve even become disillusioned with him.) That being said, I do a...

a $17,540 coat that probably won’t keep you as warm as a decent $50 one So this morning, it’s like nine degrees outside. For those of you who use the metric system, that translates to like -56 centisomethings. For those of you who don’t care, that translates to “It’s cold.” This got me thinking about the heavy, winter coat I put on so I could take out the trash without turning into a Drakesicle. You’ll notice I didn’t say it’s a “warm” coat. It’s not. I’m guessing yours isn’t, either. If you stuck a meat thermometer in your “warm” coat right now, it would probably register something like the exact same temperature as the inside of your house, unless you’re outside, in which case it would probably be considerably colder (unless you’re in the southern hemisphere, in which case shut up). But chances are pretty good your coat is not warm. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure somewhere out there, there’s a coat that’s actually warm. When I was in high school, I had these thi...

I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since I posted to my blog. I guess I’ve just been so busy on Facebook that I haven’t bothered to post anything here. What strikes me as tremendously unfortunate is that I’m compelled to post on roughly the same topic as my last post, and for very much the same reason. Hopefully I can find something else that warrants a long enough post to be worth this blog’s while. In the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy this entry. As many people probably know, the county clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky, Kim Davis , was recently jailed for having the audacity to uphold the Constitutions of both the United States of America and the Commonwealth of Kentucky, as per her oath of office. Of course, since people defending the Constitution cannot be tolerated in 21st-century Amerikkka, millions of people are supporting her illegal incarceration at the hands of a rogue district judge and a Supreme Court that recently ruled the Constitution null and void. One of t...

Anna and I have been re-watching The X-Files from the beginning, in preparation for the new “season” (yes, it’s only six episodes, but it’s still a season). In so doing, I’ve noticed a phenomenon that she and I have discussed before, but is still fascinating: our age in comparison to the ages of those we see on television. For the casual reader, I must explain that I am 40 years old, and that’s really quite okay with me. Forty is a good age: I’ve been around long enough to have a bit of wisdom under my belt; I’m far enough into my career that I can provide a reasonable living for my family; yet I’m still young enough that my body isn’t completely falling apart, an issue I’m sure I’ll have to deal with in the next decade or two. In short, forty is nice. It’s a shame I can’t stay here for a while. What’s weird is that, when I watch TV shows, the people on them—who are almost always quite a bit younger than forty—still seem to be older than I. Perhaps it’s because the shows we watch t...

Yesterday I came across this picture and posted it to Facebook: Shortly thereafter, my friend Tim posted the following comment: “Can you explain this quote to me? How is it Bullying to fight for the right for gay people to marry. Why should they not be allowed to express their love and devotion to each in the same manner that you and I can?” As is my custom, I’m taking a response that turned out to be rather long, and posting it to my blog for ease of reading. Tim, the rest of this is for you. :-) First of all, I’d like to point out that that’s actually a great question. The problem is that it’s unfortunately based on a false premise. If I may, I’d like to deal with that part—the false premise—first. Gay people have always had the right to marry. If an man and a woman walk into a courthouse and ask for a marriage license, their sexual orientation is never an issue. They can be straight, gay, bi, pan, or whatever other term they might choose to identify as—or any combin...

Just a cross-post to my other blog: Relocation

For those of you who aren’t regular readers (either here or on my Facebook page ), I’ve been self-employed and working from home, for most of the last 10 years. While I’ve absolutely loved almost everything about this arrangement, I suddenly lost my largest client in November, decimating my business and making short work of our family’s finances. Since my wife,  Anna ’s, parents and several siblings all live in the  Lafayette, Indiana , area, we’ve usually lived there or, when work took us elsewhere, at least within an hour’s drive, give or take 15 minutes. It’s all my children know; it’s about all that Anna knows! But now, out of sheer desperation, we’ve had to widen our net. The result: last month, I accepted a job in Birmingham, Alabama , over 500 miles away. We’ll be moving there in about five weeks. This past weekend, our family made the 1,000-plus–mile round trip to go house hunting. While there are certainly a lot of positives about the position and the area, on...

From 2002-2003, I was the marketing director for S&S Fire Apparatus Co., a small business in northern Indiana that built—surprisingly enough—fire apparatus ( i.e. fire trucks and similar anti-incendiary devices). It was my first job out of college and the pay was less than I would have liked (like whose isn’t?), but I loved the company and I loved the work I did for them. Near the end of my first year there, the decision was made to cut costs by merging our three successful tanker lines into one. We began the project as these things usually begin: with a meeting. After a couple of hours, there were still very few good ideas on what to call the new product family, which encompassed the old Infinity II ® , Infinity+3, and FC Series. Finally, I piped up and asked, “How about Infinity III?” Amazingly, everyone liked that suggestion and the Infinity III line was born. That’s where things started getting interesting. My next task was to create a marketing campaign for the Infinity II...

Yesterday morning, I posted a blog entry entitled Equal Rights , which dealt with  Fair to All ’s efforts to protect the rights of those who disagree with marriage redefinition. Strangely, no one chose to respond on this page, but I did get several responses in a thread on Mormons Building Bridges. I have dealt with each individually, but one was lengthy enough that I have chosen to add it as a separate blog entry, as well. MBB member Gina Crivello stated: “Jeff's blog post to show how inaccurate my and Erin ’s comparison between segregation and basic LGBTQ rights. He asked for my thoughts.) - ‘Should bakers and photographers and florists also be forced to provide services to Westboro Baptist Church rallies? How about a KKK lynching?’ “You are comparing a group of people who need housing and employment protection as well as legal protection for their family (which marriage would provide) to groups of people who seek to harass and kill others. Our comparison is not ‘severely’...

I am a member of a Facebook group called “ Mormons Building Bridges ,” the purpose of which is as follows: “Mormons Building Bridges is dedicated to conveying love and acceptance to LGBTQI individuals. We support all our brothers and sisters—those who identify as LGBTQI and those who identify as same-sex attracted—and work to make them feel welcome in our homes and congregations. Mormons Building Bridges is not sponsored by nor do we represent The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or any political party or caucus.” I wholly support this endeavor and am actively involved in the group. However, I am constantly surprised by how much many group members’ politics diverge from my own Moderate positions. For example, the most active members seem to trend morally Liberal and consequently support current redefinition efforts. To wit, a recent post linked to a web site called FairToAll.org , which demands equality for those who disagree with marriage redefinition, calling it—as ul...

In 1991, Coca-Cola offered a series of eight New Music Sampler s, each in a different genre (although there were two volumes of Pop), each one free with (IIRC) four proofs of purchase. I got five of them and actually wound up buying a single CD—and later, two others by the same group—based on a couple of songs I really liked. Twenty-two years later, I’m several years into the process of upgrading all my cassettes and can’t bring myself to just completely ditch a single one. If I own a song, I want to continue to own it. To this end, I’ve now bought almost 20 CDs for $1 or less on used music sites. I don’t think that’s quite what the record companies intended, but I guess it’s something!

Earlier today, I responded to a question by a Facebook acquaintance. As others have thought my response to be of worth, I have decided to place it here as well. The acquaintance in question—who, for what it’s worth, is the one who began the conversation—stated that my arguments regarding marriage vs. garriage boil down to a question of semantics. He further stated that arguments regarding the results of redefining the word “marriage” amount to a  slippery slope  argument, an informal logical fallacy. In response to both of these assertions, my response—which has remained unchallenged for eight hours (or in Internet debate time, approximately 562 years)—is as follows. Hopefully it will help someone in need. Enjoy! Daniel, you’re right that marriage vs. garriage is a question of semantics, and you’re right that it’s a slippery slope—which, while technically an informal fallacy (as you rightly pointed out), is also well precedented in reality. Whenever a law...

When we moved back to Lafayette, almost 5½ years ago, I looked out our bedroom window and saw a traffic light. I don’t know exactly why, but that traffic light was very comforting to me. I suppose it stood as a constant, my connection to the world. Even though it was off in the distance, it stood as a reminder that even in the midst of the cornfields, we were not in the middle of nowhere; we were on the edge of somewhere. I looked out at it, almost every night, as it changed from green to amber to red and back. It was my traffic light, and I loved it. Since that time, a lot has changed, around here. One of the streets that intersects at that light has been widened and combined with another street, necessitating a new and larger-sounding name. The other street has undergone significant construction, including a four-lane bridge over the railroad tracks where we used to have to wait for trains to pass. A factory has gone up on the corner of the two; a warehouse sits next to it; a th...

Tonight, while Anna and I were watching a show, our six-year-old daughter, Leah, came downstairs, obviously slightly distressed. Anna asked her what was up; Leah responded that she had to go to the bathroom—a rather cryptic statement, since there is a perfectly good bathroom, perhaps ten steps from her room, which she uses all the time. Still, we told her that that was fine and encouraged her to use the downstairs bathroom and get back to bed. For whatever reason, Leah then proceeded to enter the kitchen—which, for those who have never been in our kitchen, does indeed feature running water, but does not particularly qualify as a bathroom. We asked her why she was going in there, but she didn’t answer, which of course led us to ask her again. This continued for about thirty seconds. When she finally came back out of the kitchen, Leah again looked slightly confused. And again, we told her to go to the bathroom and head to bead. Her response: to walk right back into the kitchen...

When I was a sophomore in high school, there was a guy in my English class named Jeff Little. Jeff Little often wore flannel shirts and was thus dubbed “Flannelman” by the class clown, Chris Ziegler (whom, I now realize, I hero-worshipped for his ability to make everyone laugh). One day, during our study of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , we were discussing things that men and women just naturally do differently. Our teacher, Ms. Furia, asked us each to look at our fingernails. In general, the boys all held up our hands, palms facing us, our fingers bent halfway into a fist. The girls, on the other hand, held their hands with palms out and fingers extended. As Ms. Furia explained the difference, I happened to notice Jeff Little suddenly drop his hands to his side and glance around embarrassedly. Chris Ziegler obviously caught it, too, and deadpanned loudly enough for all to hear, “Flannelman seems a mite confused.” Of course, this was met with raucous laughter an...