I am Officially, Well...

I have been off of the antibiotics for some time now and I have had no symptoms of recurrence of the dreaded bug, so I think I am officially cured. I am very, very happy about that realization. I am not sure I could go through another bout of that again...

The bad news is that my legs have lost so much muscle tone in this short while that I am amazed at daily. At this point, I am not sure if it is just muscle tone or that the blood supply from my right leg, that is now feeding both legs is sufficient to provide enough blood to them both. I am going to start doing treadmill work in the next couple of days. And, in a short while, I should be able to answer that question. I did start back to doing my yoga again this week and am feeling much better in the general body strength and well being areas.

On the business front, I sent out a letter to all our dealers that we are now out of the needle making business and now into the needle distribution business. Everything has changed with the new vendor made needles and all the new packaging and instruction information that I have been working on for the past 3 months. We are migrating from a little cottage business to one that will be selling our products worldwide in the very near future. I was hoping to be in this position on Jan. 1, 2009, but my health and the delivery of the new needles extended that by three weeks.

In the dealer letter, I told them all about the new products and asked them to provide a list of all their unsold inventory. We are replacing all of it with the new products, free of charge after they send the old products back to us. Our new products are so much superior to our old ones, or any other competition products, that I didn't want them in the distribution channel. So far, we have replaced about $2,000 worth of old product. It is painful to do, but is good business in the long run.

One of my largest dealers, Charkbait! in Huntington Beach, CA is going to have a booth in a very large consumer focused fishing and boating show that will be happening in Long Beach, CA the first part of March. They have asked me to attend and bring down lots of our needle products to show/sell in the booth. They are going to be focusing on our needle products and it should be a great way to gain a lot of exposure to our products image and general knowledge of them in the entire Southern California area. There will be a lot of potential new dealers there also that I plan to bring on board while I am there. Also, it will be great to see the family, which has been way too long in coming...

The weather has been hot and cold. Well, maybe more freezing and not quite freezing. The over night lows have been in the single digits to teens and the highs have been in the high teens to high thirties. When we have sun, which we have had a few days, coupled with above freezing temps, all the snow starts to melt and clears up the roads a little. But, then at night when the temps go below freezing, it all turns to slick ice and lots of accidents happen. The mountains of snow in each large parking lot, the results of snow plowing all the flat paved surface, continue to grow and will last for weeks or even months as the weather warms up.

We finally found Pam's belated Christmas present yesterday. She got a Wii system and the Wii fitness exercise platform system for it. It is a pretty amazing little device. We still need to get a few add-ons for it, but I am impressed with how well it works and at all the features and ability to configure the Avatars, or characters, that each person can make up to be their image while playing the games and exercise routines. The basic system has sport games like bowling, golf, boxing, baseball and tennis, I think. Pam, loves the bowling game and has already attained the title of Professional with it.

The Dell health insurance plan has changed again this year. Their new prescription plan is quite different than in the past. Before, all name brand prescriptions were a higher amount. Last year they were $ 35 each. With the new plan, all such prescriptions costs are split in half, and the patient gets to pay for half of the cost, not to exceed $150 each. Two of my prescriptions were $107 and $78 for the month, which is way too much. We called the new insurance company and they offered some generic equivalents that we are going with. We will have to see how 'equivalent' they actually are, I guess.

I cannot wait to get into all of the costs that were incurred with all my recent medical treatments. With all the CT scans, MRIs and other major tests I had during my two hospital visits and two operations, the costs are going to be way crazy, I am sure. The costs of drugs are totally crazy these days. A large part of the cost is all the TV commercials that the drug companies run hourly for their new drugs. Then the price the drugs in the USA market many times higher than most other places in the world, to recoup their R&D - read commercials - costs because we have more resources to pay for them. And, now, with the changes in the health care plans, many of the new expensive name brand drugs will be out of reach for many people. It should be an interesting showdown between the insurance and drug companies soon.

The Obama inauguration was impressive - over 2 million folks in one place in 18deg weather and no arrests, is a new one on me. I sincerely hope that he can live up the the image that so many folks are putting on him. The new $825 billion 'stimulus' bill that he is ramming through congress will give those that have wanted government to be the 'be all and do all' will finally get their wishes. We are sliding down the slick road to European Socialism at breakneck speed.

One of my mentors in life once said, "On the surface, the concept of communism or socialism really sounds good, but if you were to apply the same logic to the color spectrum, over time you would only end up with the single color of grey. As, any other color would not be fair, or right, in some way, to someone, and would have to be removed, until all other colors are gone. Only then would you really have true communism or socialism."

Any other president could have not been effective as the people are so hostile about everything now, that nothing could get done. For whatever reasons, Obama has the following and power of the people, and with that, will be able to make things happen if he uses it right. We shall just have to see how it all works out...

My pool game has not done well, since all the medical problems. I did win all 4 of my games last week, but no table runs and I wasn't playing well at all. Then, this week, I lost 2 of my 4 games, but got a 34 out of 40 points, which is good. I think we have three weeks of pool league left. I am in 13th place overall, which is good, and our team is in 9th place, which is not good, but we are not one of the long established teams that have all good players that always seem to win. There will be a top shooter tournament and team tournament shortly after the league ends. They are always fun to play in.

Well, I have stuff to do and places to go. That is about all of the news from here in DaHo...