Health care reform top concern should be costs

Alzheimer's disease is going to get you. It's going to get and affect you and everyone you know, whether it's that cherished elderly relative of yours or just your pocketbook. It's going to wreck your future, somehow, due to the absurd costs of covering the expenses of it.

My elderly loved one has been in a full-time Alzheimer's care center for over a year. The cost is over $6,000 per month. There are less expensive places where we might place her; but when it comes to having a decent place for her that meets my family's standards well enough, all such places are "competitively" priced at about the same $6,000 per month.

Demand some kind of cost controls on these businesses! If you don't, Alzheimer's disease is going to completely wreck your life, even if only financially.



Grandpa's 1930's perpetual motion invention

Annoying words & phrases that must be avoided

1. step up
This is where someone, usually some sports figure, will, during this game only, actually do what he's paid to do in the first place, and we're all supposed to feel he has slayed a dragon or something like that.

2. storied
In reference to some sports stadium; for instance, "Trainer Hiram Stinkwell sure has hosed out a lot of jockstraps in this storied colliseum."

3. disrespect
Just shoot me the next time someone turns this perfectly good noun into a cringe-inducing verb, as in: "Don't disrespect me."

4. house
in referring to some sports field

5. at the end of the day
Please leave this one at the office - just not at my office, if you please.

6. harm's way
Good lord, whatever this abstract-made-concrete word harm means, please give it wide berth, plenty of leeway, lots of elbow room. Just do not get in its path!

7. nother level
Often achieved in a "storied house" (see above); for instance, when some ballplayer is "Gonna take things to a whole nother level," instead of being his usual mediocre self.

8. swagger
This usually has to do with how some sports figure comports himself while locomoting somewhere on some sports field. It's not clear if said player has to take things to a whole nother level before he's allowed to locomote this way (see above.)

9. opportunity
Count how many times former Dallas Cowboys Darryl Moose Johnston says this, or one of its derivatives, in a game he's announcing. Sometimes he waxes lyrical with, for instance, something like this, and I paraphrase: "It was very opportunistic of that young man to take advantage of that opportunity because opportunities like that don't come around very often in this league." Seriously, if you count them, you might have more points than your favorite team by halftime.

10. get
As in: "Barabara Walters landing the exclusive interview with Ice Bucket was a great get!," after which we are supposed to get all jazzed up about hearing this person Q & A'd.

XXBeatles picture sleeves on Ebay

Chihuahua saves yorkie 's life -- dog, man's best friend ?

My brother often brings over his yorkie, Pebbles, to play with my Chihuahua, Tiny, when he comes to visit. Recently I was in the garage and heard my brother and his wife calling up and down the street for their yorkie; I figured he had escaped the backyard and gone on the lam.

I would finish what I was doing and then join the search. First, I decided to look around more closely in the back yard to see if he was hidden back there someplace.

I checked the rear and left sides along the fence, which are heavily vegetated. No luck. He wasn't around. I decided to go look down the street, but noticed my Chihuahua sniffing at one corner of our storage shed. I went to investigate.

Sure enough, there was the yorkie Pebbles's snout sticking out from beneath the shed. I ran around the shed to find the hole she had passed through. I found no such hole or space through which he could have crawled.

I grabbed a shovel out of the shed and began to dig by the shed door, not where the dog's snout had been, because I didn't want to smack her with the shovel. I had made a hole large enough for her, but she wouldn't come over to me.

I had been sick for weeks and was still recovering, thus very weak, so I called my brother on the phone to get him to hurry back. He came and dug another hole, nearer where the dog was, and his wife was finally able to pull him through, though the dog was a bit edgy about coming back out.

Not sure whether it was hotter outside or beneath that shed, for the temperature was over 100 outside. When the dog came out, she was panting fiercely and headed straight for the water dish. My Chihuahua had saved his yorkie friend. Way to go, Tiny! Man's best friend is also dog's best friend, I suppose.

..Classic literature books lots