Columbus Day Update

Our internet connection has been intermittent (thank you, Earthlink) so I haven't posted in a while. Let's see - where were we when I last wrote something here?

The dishwasher had stopped working. Since then, the repairman has been to the house twice and the second time it was fixed. However, yesterday it started making a noise that was Clearly Abnormal for a Dishwasher, and we have stopped using it again.

We also didn't have internet access, because Earthlink had told us we could no longer have a DSL line. I am not sure what their current thinking is on that (Tom is the one who talks to them regularly) but we now have intermittent access. It will be on for a while, then it's off.

That also was the weekend of the Great Atlanta Gasoline Shortage. Although they said that things might not be completely back to normal until Columbus Day Weekend (which is now), the plastic bags covering the pumps disappeared pretty quickly - no thanks to Governor Perdue, whose response was to ask for oil to be released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; I guess no one told him that the problem was the refineries, not oil, but oh well - he was in Spain at the time when all this was happening.

That also was before the $700 billion dollar bailout proposal went through that was supposed to get the credit markets unfrozen. So Congress passed it last week, including giving the Treasury Department authority they didn't want to directly recapitalize banks, and the stock market kept going down all week and now the new Idea that Will Get the Economy out of the Toilet is directly recapitalizing banks.

Speaking of banks - our bank, Wachovia, is/was the fourth largest bank in the United States, and they went under sometime within the last week or two. CitiBank and Wells Fargo got into a tussle over the parts that were left that they wanted but Wells Fargo won. I was afraid we had more money in Wachovia than was covered by the FDIC (my mom's house in Oklahoma sold recently, and we had just deposited that check a couple of months ago) so right around the time Wachovia went under, I transferred some money to another bank.

I saw a patient on Friday who I hadn't seen before. The chart said he had significant mental health and substance abuse problems, and it looked from the chart like he had been homeless. But when I talked to him, he clearly described his symptoms and could tell me when he had had similar symptoms before, and what he had been treated with the last time. I told him his blood pressure was a little up, and he said it was because of all the stuff going on. What stuff?, I asked. Those guys running that company who got billions of dollars from the government, and then went on that week long spa vacation, he said. Oh, AIG, I said. Yes, he said, and went on to enumerate how much they spent on food and on spa treatments and whatever else they did.

In the meantime, the presidential candidates are arguing about who will cut taxes the most. It's not clear that anyone is prepared to ask us to do anything hard - if we just drill for more oil and keep those "Support Our Troops" magnets on our cars, it'll all be okay.

It's not okay, and doing more of the same is not going to make it okay. It would be nice if someone running for something would be willing to say that.