Message in a shirt

Now I am sure most of you will at some point have seen my hilarious/stupid (delete as applicable) t-shirts. Well I have found a new line of clothing with funny/witty/stupid (delete as appropriate) slogans - and that is clothes for Ellie. So I unveil to you all this picture of her 1st funny/silly (delete as appropriate) t-shirt.

I think you will agree she looks thrilled to be wearing it.

And of course a picture of my little girl

Bumper to Bumper

Tonight while driving home I saw the bumper sticker which is attached. Bumper stickers are big business here and range from telling the world that your kid is a"honor(sic) roll student" at his or her school to displaying which presidential candidate you voted for, to some which are witty to those which are rude.

The one shown here is obviously in the political camp and is against the right of homosexuals or lesbians to marry. I will go out on a limb and assume they also shouldn't have civil ceremony's but the sticker would be pretty large to include all of it.

Now my thoughts on this are very similar to Bill Hicks' views on gays in the military (anyone dumb enough to want to be in the army should be allowed), now I feel that anyone who wants to tell the rest of the world that they love their chosen partner should be allowed to do it any way they like, be that marriage, telling everyone you're life partners, buying a house or even getting cats. Whatever works for you. If two men want to get married - then why not? The idea that marriage these days is a holy institution is wrong. Whilst I now people who are religious and who got married in church, I also know people who aren't and didn't, but that doesn't mean that those who did not love their partners any less.

Economically as well as socially it makes sense to allow same sex marriages. Having gone through a wedding myself I know how expensive these things are. 1st of all you need to get a licence, then you need to pay the priest/captain/Elvis impersonator to do the service, you pay the venue, food, entertainment, drinks, photos cake the list goes on and on, and the moment you tell people its for a wedding the price seems to go up by 25% in what appears to be some sort of wedding tax. So all this extra money could come into the economy if marriage was opened up to everyone. I truly can't see the problem myself, especially as the church won't allow it so it won't be a religious wedding.

Also I believe in equal opportunities so why shouldn't lesbians be able to get divorced too?

Dora the Explorer

2 weekends ago we went to the Yeah Baby Expo and Emma got to meet Dora. For those of you who don't know Dora- you are lucky so & so's. For those of you that have seen and more annoyingly heard her you will sympathise with me. Anyway Emma enjoyed it which is I guess what counts.

Water, water everywhere

Also in the news recently here has been the case of a woman who drank herself to death. She was involved in a competition that was being held by local radio station The End (their frequency is 107.9 which is at the end of the FM band – clever), who were giving out the Nintendo W-ii (pronounced wee) to the person who could drink the most water without going to the bath room, so you got a W-ii for no wee.

The lady in question died 2 hours after the competition and the coroner determined that she drank herself to death. I always knew that drinking too could cause death, but I didn’t think anyone would be able to do it with water. The DJ’s have been fired, the station is being sued, and someone other than the deceased won the W-ii.

From now on I am sticking to alcohol, I mean I have never done anything as remotely silly as drink too much of it. At least not that I can remember.

End of the World News

I grew up with Spotlight being my local news program, so I am used to 1 or 2 serious stories and then the rest of the 30 minutes being filled up with stories of giant pasty making in St Ives, a cat that has been up a tree for 3 weeks in Totnes, and how the presenter still hasn’t got all the beans out of his ears from the Children in Need special a month ago.

I then moved to Lancaster where they have North West Depressed on. Every day there would be vicious gangland killings, brutal spousal murders and of course 15 minutes of sport. London news was similar, so when I moved to Sacramento I expected a similar level of news.

How wrong I was. The news headlines this week have been as follows:

Monday – Birds. Near a Home Depot in Sacramento, hundreds of birds have been sighted, and the number is higher than usual. Why were there so many birds, is this a sign of imminent disaster?

Tuesday – Rain. It started to rain last night, so the news had 12 minutes of coverage of what that meant and the delays it had caused. Why so much rain, is this a sign of imminent disaster?

Even the national news has its quirks. You see they really are not that interested in what is going on anywhere else than in their own country, so to get international news is nigh on impossible. The same is true for the local newspaper here in Sacramento. We have the Sacramento Bee. Now my experience of local newspapers is the Evening Herald or even worse the Cornish Times (comes out once a week and gives unrivalled coverage of all the local jumble sales). The Bee though is more like the Evening Standard in London, only bigger and better. It comes out daily, and has around 6-7 sections each and every day. On Sundays it goes up to about 14 sections. The 1st section is always national and international news. There will be 14 pages of US news and just 2 of international, normally with a huge Hummer ad on one of those pages. Then the next section is just made up of State news. So there is a bigger focus on what is happening locally than on international or come to think of it, national events. In fact there are more pages devoted to cartoons than there is to international news. But then again, Calvin & Hobbes are very funny.

Dr and the Medics

Now a while ago in the blog I mentioned that when Ellie was admitted to hospital the 2nd time she had to take an ambulance, as that was the Hospital’s rules and that I got there before she did and I walked. I bring this up because yesterday we received a bill from the ambulance company charging us $50 for the ambulance. The ambulance actually cost $500 in total and our insurance covered $450, but the remaining fifty is ours top pay.

The bill is broken down as such $42 for using the ambulance (an ambulance we were forced to use) and $8 for the “gas”. Now bear in mind that when Ellie and Jen got in the ambulance, I started walking and got to the hospital wing before them, so it really isn’t that far between the 2 buildings, and a gallon of petrol here is around $2.80 here at the moment. So eight bucks is a bit steep.

It has really highlighted the crazy medical system that is here for Americans. The actual quality of the care is fantastic, and I have no complaints about that, Ellie has received the best medical attention probably anywhere in the world, as the teaching is up to date and the machines they use are on the cutting edge of technology. But what is amazing is the amount you have to pay if you don’t have health insurance, and also the confusion about what you do pay when you have insurance.

Every time we go to the Dr’s it costs us $10 as co-pay. The insurance company picks up most of the fee but I still have to pay $10 out of my own pocket. Jen’s co-pay has recently gone up to $20. It is the same amounts for the girls. We received a summary of the amounts that are insurance company have been billed from UC San Francisco and it was $102,673. Luckily we have insurance or else we would be in big trouble. We have also received a bill from the people that provided us with the Biliblanket that Ellie used when she had jaundice. It seems that our insurance don’t pay for that treatment so we have to pick up the tab to the tune of around $100.

My parents were out recently and my mother forgot her insulin, so we went to get some, the Dr’s visit was $75 and then the actually prescription cost $450. So she had to pay $500 plus to get her medicine, a costly mistake she won’t make again.

Every now and again a politician will try and tackle the medical industry in this country, but ultimately nothing will change as medical insurers have big bucks to spend to defeat the politicians in elections, as do the medical professionals themselves.

St. Patrick's day

St Patrick's day is just around the corner, and it is amazing how big a deal it is here. There are St Patrick's day parades, Guiness cook-outs and a St Patrick's day eating competition shown live on Spike, a TV channel here.

Yes there is an extreme eating competition and I am not sure what shocks me more - the fact that there is an extreme eating competition or the fact that I know there is an extreme eating competition.

The world champion of extreme eating is not an American as most would expect, but is in fact a lean Japanese fella, who trains(!) for the competition. I am amazed that it is shown on tv here, when I can't find the 6 nations rugby - or in fact any rugby on here. You see, you can watch tennis, American football, basketball, Ice Hockey, college sports, gymnastics, cheerleading competitions, and Crufts (as well as other dog shows). So I suppose I shouldn't be too outraged. But why an eating competition? I have seen 2 people involved in an eating competition at close quarters and it really isn't a spectator sport (yes Chris and Ian that was you two and I felt sick watching you).

Rugby is too tough for Americans to play and that is not my opinion. You see when Teddy Roosevelt was President of the US he watched a game of rugby and considered it too violent and barbaric for Americans to play, so they invented American Football. Anyway I don't want to revisit my previous arguments against American Football.

Enjoy St Patrick's day if you are into that sort of thing, if not just enjoy your Saturday.

and even later....

Please note 2 things. Firstly the plate has been well and truly cleared, and secondly the perfect accompaniment to a pasty - cider. In this case Strongbow as it is one of the few cider's I can get here. Americans call cloudy apple juice cider, and cider hard cider. Confused, well have a cider and relax.

After

Here are the beauties when they came out of the oven. A meal fit for a Cornish King.

Before

Here is my pasty just before I put it in the oven. I was thinking that Ginsters or the West Cornwall Pasty company are missing a trick by not advertising St Piran's day more and changing in to St Pasty day - imagine a big advertising push and everyone would eat pasties on March 5th, it could rival St Patrick's day. They could make then black and white like the flag on Cornwall.

Just a thought.

What does the shirt say?

Many have asked - so here is a close up.

Deth Peran lowen tha wye

Happy St Piran's day to you all.Monday 5th March is St Piran's day. I was trying to describe what St Piran's day is to my American friends and well I struggled. St Piran is the patron saint of Cornwall, and he surfed into Cornwall from Ireland (more or less) and landed at Perranporth (literally Port of Piran in Cornish).

Anyway to celebrate I made pasties today so that we can have them tomorrow. So the next few pictures are me and my pasty making skills.

Deth Peran lowen tha wye!

Genius

http://www.myspace.com/alistairgriffinonline go to this link and choose the Mark Viduka song. Sheer genious.