Do people really fall for this crap?

About once each month for the past several months I get an advertisement from the phone/internet company trying to get me to "upgrade now and save money!" RIIIIIIIGGGHHT.. I honestly fail to understand how spending $15- $25 MORE each month will save me money. And then the "savings" are only good for a year then there is another price increase. They want us to "bundle" out internet and phone for $10 more per month that we are currently paying, and I think it is already "bundled" because they are on the same bill all figured together. They want to increase our internet speed from 1 MPS to 3 MPS for only $15 more per month and we will "save" money for the rest of the year then there is another $10.00 increase. MMMMM Yeahhhh RIIIIGGHHT.. As long as we don't change our current plan they cannot increase the bill, because the price was locked in with Verizon before Frontier took it over out here. And yet they have tried, and it took me 3 months to get the extra $20/month charge off the bill. Plus they cannot even keep 1 MPS operating reliably it is always going off sometimes several times per minute, and frequently is off for several hours at a time and when tech support is called they just say we are in an "outage area" When asked if the time we have no service will be deducted from our monthly bill, they find that query extremely humorous, and explosively laugh uncontrollably for some reason..  The service sucks, the company really sucks, the support sucks, and if there were an affordable alternative available out here we would cheerfully tell them to pucker up and kiss where the sun doesn't shine. But it is either this or dial-up because satellite is well out of our budget range, and besides it goes out every time there is a hard rain, or so I have heard. But with the current drought situation, rain would not have been a factor for the past several months. Still I have to wonder how many people actually fall for that line? "Spend more and save money!" Yeah RIIIGGGHHTT!!!!

Amazing What you can find

Very few of my readers know that I have some health conditions that severely restrict what I am able to do. Among them are COPD with severe restrictions, I have about 1/3 the lung capacity I should have, along with several heart blockages, most minor, one is a 100% blockage in a main artery that could not be opened up, though the surgeon managed to open another 95% blockage in another part of my heart. Since then I have been able to do a bit more, and feel better with more energy than I had felt in a long while. So to help improve my health conditions I began walking as much as I could. At first I could only walk a few hundred yards before weakness over took me and I became short of breath, but I kept pushing and finally got up to 1/4 mile, then 1/2 mile then 1 mile and not sometimes, I can walk 4 miles. Now I do walk with my dog Annwn, there is some debate as to who is walking who there I suppose. Annwn is a Doberman Pinscher, and for those unfamiliar with Dobies, they are "High Energy" dogs. They are like a vehicle with a high performance engine under the hood that is difficult to keep under 50 MPH without riding the brake. He walks fast, and in a slow trot can out distance a conventional bike being pedaled as fast as you can pedal it. I have seen him overtake a running coyote with more than a 200 yard head start on him, going from a dead stop to passing said coyote before the coyote can run another 100 yards! Now according to my book on animal speeds, a coyote can run 43 MPH just to give you an idea. Then with a 200 plus yard head start and Annwn at a dead stop, from his starting point, in a run of 300 yards he has already caught and PASSED a running coyote! I say passed because just as he is about to catch it, the coyote dodges and Annwn is moving so fast he cannot make the turn, by the time he can get turned the coyote has another 100-150 yard gap between then but just for a couple of seconds, before Annwn is right on his ass again and time for another quick dodge. There was about 4-6 inches of a fine powdery snow on the ground out in the open field where he was playing tag with mister Coyote, so with the white spray flying in the air, often the action was obscured by a white cloud of snow sent airborne by their flying paws. I mention this only to aid understanding of the speed of a Dobie. Like I said "High Energy" so he cuts me no slack in walking. We cover ground. And its not a slow leisurely walk either. Annwn is both a service and therapy dog. He does know when I have reached my limits, and will ease up then, but will push me and keep pushing me and has greatly helped to expand my limits. So with the digression of some background out of the way, back to the topic..

While out walking I could not help but to notice an abundance of aluminum cans, and with the current price locally being about 57 cents per pound, and the need for a few more bucks, I decided that while out on my walks, I would pick them up. It did not take long for me to get all of the cans gathered up near the house, so on trips to town or on errands, I would watch for stretches of roadway where there seemed to be enough cans that had been tossed out to at least pay for a short drive over there to park and walk the road sides. We hit all of the major country roads near by first then began walking along the highways. Now you see a lot of stuff along country roads, but you see a greater variety of refuse and lost articles along highways. Things such as all sorts of containers that used hold wonderful goodies to eat, like candy bars, potato chips, hamburgers, a thong, french fries, chicken micky nuggets, & etc. Fishing equipment, sinkers, bobbers, Styrofoam minnow buckets, even a new wire mesh fish bag.. quite bent out of shape from road impact and traffic. Things that people like to play with or has held things people like to play with, like toy boxes, beach balls, golf balls, a thong, CD's cassette tapes, pieces of furniture, articles of clothing, shirts, pants, a thong, did I mention the thong? Anyway just all sorts of stuff, much of it deliberately thrown away, some accidentally lost along the way.

Now maybe it was hallucinations brought on by the beginnings of heatstroke or the lack of oxygen to my brain, but as Annwn and I were walking along the road way, the monotony and rhythmic steps tend to allow time for reflection, and it occurred to me that you can pick any road to travel and this would be any physical road or any life-path road or spiritual road, in short any type of road you can think of either real or metaphorically, and you will find similar "stuff". On every road, there will be things that people have deliberately thrown away, because they felt those things had out lived their usefulness to them, and you will find things that people wanted to keep, but through accident or design, have lost along the way. We have all lost things and people we wanted to hang on to, but for some reason, the Universe decided that we needed to get along without that which we lost. So we were forced to adapt. Also at some point, someone may com along that same road and find value in many of the things we have discarded, or that the Universe has decided that we no longer need. (Humm. I wonder if who ever lost that thong still felt the need for it..)

Walk along any road and if you try to see it, you will begin to realize that what you are  doing  is walking along a metaphor to what is the reality of your own life path...especially if you are suffering from heatstroke, dehydration and lack of oxygen.

What we have here is a failure to Communicate

Communication is probably the most important thing in all types of relationships. Although in these times of fast communication, texting, emails, chat programs and nearly everyone is attached to a cell phone, real and honest communication is still difficult. I saw a piece on the news a few days ago where a survey was done and surprise! surprise! people find it much easier to lie and deceive via text messages, and email, and since chat programs are similar I would include them in this too, than by actually talking over the telephone. And we all know that people routinely lie and mislead over telephones. So although the electronic marvels at our fingertips can make communication much easier, what it has done is make miscommunication much easier. Just think about how many times you have typed something and sent it to someone who took the message in a completely different way than the manner you had intended it to be taken and the other person often became offended or angry with you because of something you were trying to get across, in a friendly or joking way? When the other person cannot see your body language or hear your voice inflections it is very easy to be misunderstood, and conversely it is easier for you to mislead the other person. Many Television commercials even demonstrate how easy it is to lie and mislead with the new smartphones, apps and technology that are out there now. But what is always overlooked is that a lie or deception will always eventually catch up with you and the situation will become much much worse than it would have become if you were honest with the people you care about in the first place.

Communication is also a two-way street. One can talk and share honestly and openly and the new technology makes this easier over long  distances. But if the other person is not as forthcoming, not as open and honest as the first one you have miscommunication. Another problem is where one person is quite open and honest about everything while the other one is secretive, evasive, or not as divulgent, leaving the the first person guessing about some things. This guessing leads to projecting, which is never a good thing and can indeed in some cases destroy a very good and close friendship. If someone's openness and manner of expressing themselves troubles you, then instead of acting like everything is fine, just tell them they are making you uncomfortable and explain why. By avoiding this, you are actually making the situation even worse for yourself. In close relationships, such as marital or love relationships, emotions are easily touched, and sometimes we fear to ask the questions we suspect, because we fear the answers to those questions. So we don't ask the questions, we hold them inside, begin projecting and internalize that, the result is that our projections hurt us emotionally, we internalize the pain, the pain grows, becomes anger, then one day the pressure becomes great enough that we have to act. We explode emotionally, over our self-created scenarios, which are more often than not, far from the true reality of what was actually happening. Whereas, if we would have just communicated with the one we care about in the first place we could have saved ourselves days, weeks, months or even years of pain, grief and anguish.

Real communication is important, but so are the relationships we value, and if we truly value the relationship we will need to learn to communicate openly, honestly and candidly on both sides of the street. Not doing so will eventually destroy that which we value the most.