For Your Consideration

One of the best things about life, maybe the best thing, is the ability to take naps. One day I'll die, and I'll miss taking naps. I'll especially miss taking naps on a cold day with the blankets piled on me, lying on the bed in anticipation of sleep. Then I fall asleep and dream. I dream fantastic dreams that I don't remember for longer than three seconds after I awaken. I remember a dream long enough to think, "Wow, what a fantastic dream." Then I get up and go straight to my computer to type as much of it as I can recall, and I can't recall anything. My only memory is the memory of how great the memory was.

But I begin this blog post very off topic. The post itself concerns life and death, so perhaps that is why I reminisce about dreams, which are that in-between state between life and death. You could lie down to sleep, then fall asleep and never wake up. It happens. And dreamless sleep is a little bit like death, but only a short death from which we return.

What prompted this post is an interview I saw with Ezekiel Emanuel on CNN. I found it a very thought-provoking interview, because I'm at the age where such considerations as those in the interview are appropriate for me. At a certain age, and especially with certain medical conditions, the prospect of dying is not terrifying; rather, the prospect of living is the thing that is terrifying. Then we have to consider, do we take the medical treatment or do we let nature take its course? What are the consequences of the path that we choose?

Beyond a certain age, and I can't say exactly what that age should be, as it will differ from person to person depending on our health and circumstances, each of us should give some thought to this topic. So I'm posting the video here for your consideration, or you can go to YouTube to view it.  

Background notes: 

Zeke Emanuel was Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center 1998–2010, a member of the COVID-19 Advisory Board, Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics of the University of Pennsylvania, and Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania. 

One of Zeke Emanuel's brothers is Rahm Emanuel, an American politician and diplomat who is the current United States ambassador to Japan. He previously served two terms as the 55th Mayor of Chicago from 2011 to 2019 and the 23rd White House Chief of Staff from 2009 to 2010, and served three terms in the United States House of Representatives, representing Illinois between 2003 and 2009.

Karma's A Termagant

Nuria got up early, as she does every morning, and unbeknownst to me, she drove her new used car. First she went for her morning walk. She walked to the city's municipal building and registered her car so that they can send her a tax bill. She even registered the car that was wrecked and they will send her a tax bill for that car, too.

But then she drove to Walmart and bought groceries. And on the way back ... I hate to say this, because, she just had a wreck with her previous vehicle, and what are the odds of having another incident so soon, but stuff happens. And when she got back to my house—as luck would have it—just after she had parked her car and the trip was seemingly finished, she...

Hold on, someone's at the door.

Ok, I'm back. They were selling Girl Scout cookies. Now where was I?

Oh yes, Nuria went to the store and just when she got home and parked her Toyota,  she ... she ... she dropped her house key into that crack between the seat and the center floor hump. And she couldn't find it. So she called me on her phone, and I went out to her car and retrieved the key.

What? You thought she had wrecked her new car? Banish the thought!

While I was outside, I was hailed by a man standing on a neighbor's porch. I didn't recognize him, but he knew me. It turned out that he was the son of the woman who lives there. He's been gone for several years, and he was about 18 years old when he disappeared. He was in trouble with the law a few times, and then he disappeared. I assumed he had gone to prison, probably on a drug charge. Now he's back home for a while.

I have a cousin with the same name as the young man on my neighbor's porch. He (my cousin) went to prison, too, for stabbing someone with a knife. My cousin has a brother (who is also my cousin), and the brother went to prison for seven years for vehicular manslaughter. He was driving at 109 miles per hour on the DC Beltway at 2AM when he ran into the rear of another car. Five people were riding in the car he hit, and a woman was killed. The car he hit was knocked across the median strip where an oncoming passenger van collided with it, injuring the passengers in that van. A female passenger in my cousin's car suffered a broken back and ended up in the hospital. My cousin walked away unhurt. In fact, he kept on walking, and by the time police arrived at the accident, he was nowhere to be seen. The police used helicopters to look for him and they found him walking down a residential street at 4AM. Hence, the seven year prison term. 

Karma can be a bitch if you don't treat your life and the lives of others with love and respect. I look at people like my neighbor's son and my two cousins as "young souls." They'll learn, the hard way. As Rev. Marion Starnes of Terra Nova Center once said to me, concerning first generation souls, "...first generations are too busy trying to get themselves out of jail."

Amen to that.

Rainy Sunday

Today is a cloudy Sunday. A light rain falls sporadically. It's a chilly 41°F—nine degrees above freezing.

We (Nuria and I) ate hot pastrami sandwiches for lunch, made with rye bread and Dijon mustard with dill pickle on the side. I had mentioned to Nuria, one day this week, that I had a taste for a pastrami sandwich. That was all I said. The next morning I got out of bed to find her unpacking groceries. She had just returned from Publix where she had purchased, among other things, rye bread, a pound of pastrami, and dill pickle.

Later we watched an episode of the old Perry Mason show, the series that was on TV from 1957 to 1966. We watch an episode every day. Then we watched an episode of 1923. That show is one of Taylor Sheridan's latest projects and is a prequel to the well-loved Yellowstone and a continuation of the story after 1883.

The first episode of 1923 begins with a scene from the end of episode 3, and then it flashes back (though that isn't clear to the audience) and then winds its way forward in time to the point where episode 1 begins. So season 4 will begin where season 3 ended, and where the beginning of season 1 ended. If that is clear. Only four episodes have been released as of now. Maybe that is all there will be. With Taylor Sheridan, anything is possible.

The weather forecast says we'll have sunshine on Tuesday and Thursday this week. Other days will be rainy. But I like rainy days. I like sunny days, too, but in a different way. I like being inside on rainy days. Sunny days are nice for walks and for work you have to do outside. I like snowy days, too. They're beautiful to watch as the snow falls, but then there are the people who get their car stuck in front of my house and have to leave it. My car stays in my garage unless I really have to go out. And my Jeep has four wheel drive (4WD) that really helps get through snow, if I have to do that. My last car, a Subaru wagon, had 4WD, too. I won't buy a 2WD car again, and there's a reason for that. You can read about it here if you're curious.

Below: Dec. 9, 2018—A snowy day and a car is stuck directly in front of my house at the end of the sidewalk. That is not me with the shovel. I don't do snow anymore.

The Toyota 3

Today is a nice, sunny Friday. Yesterday was cloudy with periods of light rain. 

Even so, yesterday I drove Nuria to Richmond to assist her with the purchase of another car. She had a 2009 Toyota that was wrecked by an inattentive driver who drove into her car. She only had the car for five months. The other driver was at fault so his insurance company, Progressive, was responsible for paying for damage. But Progressive would only pay for about 80% of what the car cost five months ago. So we had to add several thousand dollars to the amount Progressive will pay us in order to get another car like the one she had. And we're still waiting for the check from Progressive, but I assume they will pay us eventually. 

We found a 2010 Toyota that is almost identical to the one she lost. Like her destroyed car, this one is a Camry LE with "magnetic gray metallic" paint, ash color fabric seats, and has the same options as the previous car. It's almost identical except for being one model year newer.

I don't like driving to Richmond. The traffic on the highways is heavy and moving fast. Nevertheless, we got there and we transacted our business, and after about an hour we drove away. I had given written directions to Nuria that told her how to get home. But shortly after we left, I lost sight of her in the rear view mirror. I drove the route I had planned in advance, and I never saw her behind me again. But when I got home, her Toyota pulled up behind my Jeep about one minute later. Considering that the two of us had just driven over 25 miles, I thought that was amazing timing. 

We went back out to Burger King and bought a couple of Whopper meals. We both like the Whopper sandwiches, but they're never hot at that place. Never. "Barely warm" is the best one can hope for. Then we drove to Food Lion and bought a basket full of groceries, and then to home again. 

So now it's Friday morning and Nuria just left the house on a walk to a nearby insurance company. Her insurance is going to cost well over a hundred dollars per month, and it's only the minimum liability required by law. That price doesn't even include collision coverage. After she (hopefully) purchases an insurance policy for the Toyota, she'll then go for her usual morning walk around the neighborhood.

I lost a friend yesterday. Well, not a friend, exactly, but someone I've known for a long time and is the husband of a friend that I've also known a very long time—if you consider thirty five years a long time to know someone. I have another friend whose health has been declining for the past year. It's like, one day they're okay, and then they're not okay, and then they're worse, and then they're gone. If you have people that you love, let them know now, because our lives are finite and you never know what tomorrow will bring.

And that is VW's wisdom for this Friday morning. I hope all of you have a pretty weekend.

Closing In On A Car

On Friday, I drove my lady friend Nuria (who was recently de-auto'ed by a vehicle crash) to an auto dealer in northwest Richmond, Virginia. We took the Interstate, first I-95 north, then I-64 west, to get to West Broad Street (US route 250) where the auto dealership was located. 

While we were on I-95 we viewed a miles-long backup of stationary cars in the opposing lanes of I-95. It's not uncommon to see that on the interstate highways in and around Richmond. Traffic flows fast and heavy on those highways and accidents happen every day.

We went to the auto dealership to see a particular car they had advertised online, but the car was a disappointment. It had spots of rust on the hood, which the salesman said was sun damage. "After all, this is a 2009 vehicle, so you can expect sun damage." 

I replied, "My Jeep is a 1995 model and there is nothing like this on it." There were also scratches on the trunk and roof, which he said were "cat scratches," which they clearly were not. They didn't appear to have been done by any kind of animal claws, but perhaps by a sponge or brush—possibly the overhead roller brush in an automatic car wash. There were dents and paint transfers also, and we decided that the car wasn't a good deal considering the asking price. So they brought out another vehicle to show us. This one was a 2010 Toyota Camry LE with 38,000 miles, very similar to the vehicle that was demolished in the accident (see The Toyota) except this one was a 2010 model whereas the destroyed car was a 2009 model.

We found a few small dents and scratches, and the salesman said their body shop could remove them. Ok, fair enough. We put a deposit on the car and we left. We'll probably go back on Wednesday to retrieve our purchase.

Our trip to the dealership took 45 minutes. Driving home, Nuria didn't want to drive on the Interstate. So I tried driving through the heart of Richmond. It took us two and a half hours to get home. That included a side trip to I-95 that the GPS put us on, but we quickly ran into a blocked highway, likely due to an accident, and we were fortunately close enough to an exit to leave the interstate and get on Richmond's Broad Street and then onto South Belvidere Street, also known as Routes 1 and 301, and we took that road back to my hometown, 25 miles away. But at least we were moving, not sitting in traffic.

We returned the rental car to Enterprise today. When we rented the vehicle, they put a $50 hold on Nuria's credit card. This was to ensure that if it needed gas when we returned it, they would be reimbursed by taking the money out of her credit card. But Nuria filled the gas tank before returning it, so there was no reason for Enterprise to continue the $50 hold. But they refused to remove the hold. I told them I didn't understand; we returned the car in the same condition, the gas tank was full, our part of the deal was over. Why can't they remove the credit hold? They said they couldn't remove it until they saw a copy of her insurance policy declarations page.

We both explained that I had emailed them a copy of the declarations page three days ago, at their request. They said they couldn't find it. So we drove home and I emailed the declarations page to them again. And I asked for them to reply and let me know that they removed the credit hold. 

At the end of the day, we had heard nothing from Enterprise.

The Toyota 2

I sit at the dining table. I look at Nuria. Her eyes look watery.

"Are you crying?" I ask.

Nuria doesn't reply, but her eyes well up with tears. Hmmm.

"Is it the car?" I ask, referring to her lost Toyota (here: The Toyota).

"Yes."

There's not much I can do about that. I hate to see her hurting emotionally, but you have to remember, she is from Costa Rica, where she always took a bus or an Uber, and she didn't have a car until she bought one in July. The Toyota was more than a car. It was independence. It meant she could go anywhere she wanted at any time she wanted. There's a proverb: "You never know what you've got till it's gone." Now her car is gone. She misses it.

"We can get another car."

She shakes her head. I guess it's like losing your pet animal. Buying another pet just doesn't fill the empty space in your soul.  

I have to do something about this.

Classified

The headline says, "Biden aides find more classified documents."

Although some politicians are quick to make comparisons with Trump, the difference here is that Trump refused to return the documents to the National Archives after repeated requests to do so. Finally, the FBI had to raid Trump's home to retrieve the documents. Whereas, when Biden aides found the documents, they called the National Archives immediately and National Archives personnel retrieved the documents the next day. 

I once had a job where I worked with classified documents. I used to write classified documents. After writing the document, I would stamp the pages with the proper classification such as Confidential or Secret, and I would stamp the first page with the appropriate paragraph of law that enabled the document to have that classification. Then the document would go into a locked file cabinet. I never took documents home, or even out of the office. Even though I wrote the document, once it was stamped it was classified and had to remain at the office in the locked file cabinet.

It seems to me that a lot of people in Washington are playing fast and loose with classified documents, and I'm sure some of the documents contain information that affects our national security to a much greater extent than the documents I wrote. I am surprised at this behavior and at the casual attitude regarding these documents. If I had taken classified documents home, and it was discovered, I would expect to be in hot water right away. I wouldn't have to wait over a year for the FBI to come to my home and retrieve the documents.

I'm just really surprised by this entire "I-found-some-more-classified-documents-in-a-closet" attitude, as if that's completely okay and nobody seems to be responsible. It's a la-de-da attitude that would certainly not be accepted when I was working with classified documents. Of course, now it's a different day and attitudes do change. But sometimes, the change is not for the better. That last statement could apply to a lot of things today.

The Toyota

It's January 10, 2023. Exactly a month ago, on December 10th, Nuria (my significant other) was in an auto accident. It was the other driver's fault. Finally, today, the other driver's insurance company made an offer on the damage to Nuria's car. The car, a 2009 Toyota Camry LE with 57,362 miles at the time of the accident, was totaled. Nuria paid $14,867 for it last July, five months before the accident.

The other driver was at fault so his insurance, Progressive, is responsible for making us "whole." Today, we received a phone call from Progressive and they are asking us to accept their offer of $10,812.  

We have looked at many cars online, and we found one that is comparable to the one that we lost. It's a 2010 Toyota with 38,242 miles for $13,000. It's the same color, inside and out, as her Toyota that was totaled. But it has had one accident and two owners. Her previous Toyota had no accidents and one owner when she bought it.

Not stated in the advertised price is the fact that this dealership adds $675 to every purchase as a "paperwork fee." I know because I have done business with them. Thus, if we buy the car, the real price will be $13,675.

If we take Progressive's offer, we will have to add $2863 dollars (total: $13,675) to get close to the $14,867 car she was driving in December. 

Here's a thought: why won't Progressive pay us enough to buy a 2009-2010 Toyota Camry LE with no more than 60,000 miles? The car that was totaled was in excellent condition—fit, finish, paint, and interior. They are offering about 80% of what we need to get a car similar to the car she had. Except the car she had, at the time she bought it, had no accidents and one owner. 

Now I know that her car had depreciated during the time she was driving it, but five months? Really? It probably didn't depreciate enough to offset the higher price, due to inflation, of an identical auto now.

I'll keep you posted on what happens. Maybe Progressive will restore Nuria to the car she was driving without making her pay 20% of the purchase price. And maybe not. I'll let all of you know what happens.

This is the blog post about Nuria's accident: Nuria Part 2 

UPDATE:

I had a long conversation with a Progressive agent. I couldn't budge him from the original $10,812 settlement offer. He said he could not offer more than that amount, nor could anyone at his company. He emphasized that the insurance offer is not a replacement value for the car. The insurance offer is based on the value of the car at the time of the accident, as reported by J.D. Power. (J.D. Power owns N.A.D.A., which lists the value of cars.) He said that auto insurance companies always reimburse the insured in the amount computed by a company like J.D. Power, and this is called an "arm's-length transaction," because the insurance company isn't responsible for computing what the value of the car was when it was damaged. 

I understand what the insurance company is doing, and my response to the agent was, "You're telling me that you will pay me a 'wholesale' value for the car, whereas I have to pay a 'retail' value to replace the car." He agreed with my assessment, that that is what is happening. Nevertheless, Nuria can't buy a car like the one that was destroyed with the money that Progressive will pay us. We must add money to the insurance money in order to replace the destroyed car with a similar car—same model, year, mileage, etc. That's how insurance works. So, I'll say it again. Insurance will not pay replacement value for your loss. It will pay to repair the car, but if the car is not repairable, it will pay you the value of the car at the time of the loss, which may be, and probably will be, less than retail price for your car in your area.

Bummer.

Lessons 2

My reader LL left a comment to my previous post, Lessons, in which she said, "I believe this would mean that those we come in contact with merely tumbled out of another life -- and have nothing to do with us -- such as our family members."

I don't know if that happens, but I do think that sometimes we are closer to someone passing through our life than we are to our family members. Someone we think is a stranger may come into our life to teach us a lesson and then leave us to ponder the lesson. 

About a year ago I posted a blog titled 3 Poems. I'll repeat the second poem here, as it touches on what I was saying in "Lessons."

---

My connection to you

is more than who you are

and what you do.

My connection to you

is lifetimes of love.

Perhaps you were my daughter

many lifetimes now.

Perhaps I was your son

not that long ago.

Maybe we were brothers

or sisters

or lovers.

Man and wife

or children together.

I look into your eyes

and see someone that I know

well beyond our time together.

I loved you long before we met.

I had forgotten how much.

Now,

I remember.

---

Existence is a puzzle and I cannot see the whole picture. I can see a few of the puzzle pieces, and that is all. 

I have beliefs—call them principles—and one of them is that a Creator must be fair. A human life is one page in a very long book. But you are learning, whether or not you think you came to this earth to learn.

Here is a piece of writing that I created about 25 or 30 years ago. It seems like another lifetime now. It was originally going to be one chapter in a book, but I got distracted by other things and never completed it.  

Lessons

Suppose reincarnation is real. Suppose you die and then you're born again. But suppose that in your next life, you're born into a poor family in a poor country and you grow up struggling just to survive. Suppose you fall in with a group of gangsters, like many do in our big cities right here in the US, and therefore you become a gangster. You're young, but you're stealing cars, robbing drugstores, selling dope, and maybe you have to kill someone, because it's either them or you. Do you think you would turn out to be the same person you are now, who knows right from wrong, who knows where the line is and doesn't want to cross it?

I'm asking if you think you have a soul and whether that soul has learned values that it will carry with it into another life. Values: like good and bad, right and wrong. 

I ask that because I think we do have souls, and some of us have lived many lives and been through many experiences, both good and bad. And some of us are young souls, and like a toddler bumping into furniture as he struggles to walk, some of us with young souls are bumping into "the rules" and bumping into "laws" and end up hurting people and ourselves. But do we learn, and do we remember?

Do the lessons get more difficult as we move from life to life? When you learn to be a good person, do you then learn what it feels like to be a paralyzed person, or a falsely-accused prisoner? Do we have to go through every conceivable situation in order to reach perfection?

Now some people will say, no, we only live one life and then we are judged. What kind of judgment is fair when everyone has a different starting point and some have a smooth road while others have a road full of potholes? Where is the fairness? There is none. Either there is no judgment or the judgment comes after many, many lifetimes are lived. I believe the latter. 

I'm a long way from perfection. I don't even know which way to go to reach perfection. But I know when wrong is being done, and I know when good is being done. I know that some people do good and other people do bad. Is it what they were taught? Or is "knowing right from wrong" something they have learned by living hundreds of embodiments on this earth?

I suspect we live hundreds of lifetimes, and I suspect that each life we live is judged. But not judged by a Supreme Being, but rather judged by our higher selves, the spirit that exists within each of us. I think we know when we've done wrong. We learn something in this life, we are born again, and we learn a new lesson in our new life. Wash, rinse, repeat, until we get all the stains out. That, I believe, is our human existence.

Don't judge others. Some are just starting their journeys and they have a long way to go and much to learn. You're here on earth, so you're still learning lessons, too. We're all learning lessons. Be kind to others and remember that they're just learning, so sometimes, like all of us have done, they make mistakes.

I made a little slideshow to wrap up this blog post. View it here.

Damar Hamlin

I turned on the national news at 7AM this morning, and at the top of the show was the news about Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin. Hamlin was making a tackle and fell to the ground, got up and walked a few steps, then fell to the ground again, unconscious. His heart had stopped, the news people said. More likely, his heart had gone into atrial fibrillation, an abnormal rhythm in which the heart quivers instead of beats. Therefore, his brain wasn't getting fresh oxygenated blood and he passed out. This can happen when the chest takes a hit at just the right spot above the heart and at a certain moment in the heart's rhythm. 

The NFL keeps about twenty medical specialists on the sidelines at every game. They rushed to Hamlin's side and began CPR. This continued for 9 minutes until his heart began beating on its own. They took him to University of Cincinnati Medical Center, a level 1 trauma center about 10 minutes away.

Hamlin has a history of supporting charities, a history that began before he entered pro football. At the time of the on-field medical incident, he had a GoFundMe account that was trying to raise $2400 for a children's charity. When awareness of his accident spread, donations zoomed upward and surpassed three million dollars. When I checked, the top donation was $5,500. For those who would like to donate, you can donate here.

I've had several sudden attacks of atrial fibrilation (a-fib), but with me, my heart beats irregularly. It makes me feel exhausted. The first attack occurred in 2004. Two days in the hospital were able to restore my heartbeat. The next attack was in 2011, and again in 2013, and then again in 2014, in 2015, and in 2016. Each time, I was in the hospital for three days. Usually the treatment worked and I left the hospital with my heart beating normally. 

Except for the last attack. In 2016, the doctors were unable to fix my heart, and I left the hospital taking three medicines for my heart, and today—in 2023—my heart still has a-fib. My cardiologist wants to put me on another medication, a modern blood thinner, but I draw the line at three heart medicines. Besides, the next medication he wants me to take is considered by some medical experts to be too dangerous, and they think it shouldn't be on the market. Like some other meds, it's a two-edged sword. It can save you or kill you. It killed Charlie Daniels, the fiddle player and leader of The Charlie Daniels Band. He had a hemorrhagic stroke (a.k.a brain bleed) and by the time they got him to a hospital and gave him drugs to counteract the blood thinner he was taking—he was dead. I think God is going to take me when he wants me. I've known people who should be dead but through a "miracle" they lived. And I've know people who suddenly died much too young. 

I wish the best for Damar Hamlin. The last news I heard reported that he was still unconscious in the hospital. Good luck, Damar Hamlin. May you live to play another day.

[Update: According to the latest news at 6:30 PM, it appears that Damar Hamlin suffered from ventricular fibrillation, not atrial fibrillation. According to WebMD: "While not as common as AFib, ventricular fibrillation is more deadly. It can cause sudden cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac death, the leading killer in the U.S."]

Reminder Program

I always wanted to be a writer, but I don't write well enough to make writing my vocation. So writing became a hobby. I began writing science fiction stories at age 15.

I wanted to be an electrical engineer, so I went first to a two-year college, because that's what I could afford, and then to two universities, graduating with a BSEE from Virginia Tech. 

While I was working as an engineer, I decided to learn how to create websites using HTML (hypertext markup language) and Javascript. Today there are many websites that offer tools that make it easy to create a website. You don't have to know HTML. Even if you just rent space on a web server, you can buy a website design tool to create the HTML for you. But when I started creating websites, the only "tool" I used was Windows Notepad.

After I retired from engineering, I wanted to learn how to write programs for Windows, so I did that. I taught myself how to program in Visual Basic, which, despite the name, is a programming language as complex and versatile as Visual C# (C-Sharp). 

I learn best by doing, so I jumped into writing my first VB program. But what should this new program do? I recalled how difficult it was for my mother to remember to take her medications as she grew older. Some of her meds were to be taken every day, some were to be taken every other day, some could not be taken at the same time as certain other meds. It was complicated, and she drew up little charts to help guide her, but with growing dementia, even the charts weren't enough. Not being able to take her meds on schedule probably contributed to her death. Surely, I thought, other people must have this same problem. So I wrote a medication reminder program, and while I was writing it, I decided to also throw in an appointment reminder. 

I began writing it on Windows Vista using VB Express 2005. My Vista computer crashed and I bought a new machine running Windows 8.1. I installed VB Express 2008 and continued writing the Reminder plus other programs with that tool. Eventually, I upgraded my design tool to VB Express 2010. By then I had almost all the Reminder program elements written and functioning. 

I still use my Windows 8.1 PC, and ReminderXR runs fine on it. I know it runs on Windows 10, and I assume Windows 11. If you think you could use a Medication & Appointment Reminder that runs on Windows, you can get it here. Here's how:

Download RXRsetup, disregard the warning that says it might be malware. (I have to pay money to register the program in order to get rid of that warning, and I refuse to do that for a program I give away.)

It's a reliable program. It has one noticeable bug: if you set an appointment to repeat (every week or every two weeks) it sometimes doesn't delete the original appointment. It always creates the new appointment and you can always delete the old one manually, if it bothers you.

Anyway, and this is the point of this blog post, I wrote the Reminder program to help older people to remember to take their medications and keep their appointments. Now, twenty years after my mother passed away, I use my Reminder program every day. It's very helpful to me. When I wrote it, I didn't see that coming. I thought I was just teaching myself to write software for Windows. Not only does it remind me to take my medicine and keep my appointments on time, it's useful for looking up things I did months ago (trips to the airport, to the doctor, etc.). 

It's a funny world. Who knows where your actions will lead you?

Today, there are probably many similar programs with more features than ReminderXR, but the program I wrote does everything I need. Maybe it will help someone out there in the world. I know one of my readers, LL, uses it almost every day. Unless she found something better, and if she has, she hasn't mentioned it to me. So if you want to download it and try it, good luck and I hope it works for you. 

(Note 1: If you visit the website you may notice there is a Help section inside the Reminder-XR section. If you missed it, it's here. There is also a Backstory section that provides more information on the program, and it is located here.)

(Note 2: So why is it called ReminderXR? I originally named it RxReminder, as in Rx (prescription medicine) Reminder. But somebody registered that name, and so, since most of my working files begin with the letters RXR, I just renamed the program ReminderXR. (RxReminder = ReminderXR = RXR)

(Note 3: While you're at my VirtualWayne website, you'll find links to some of my philosophy and a number of photos on Flickr. Though, strangely, some of the photos have simply vanished.)

(Note 4: I have other websites, and Stardust Realm is one of them on which I wax philosophical. It's best read after midnight when the house is quiet.)

New Year 2023

My reader "TA" left a comment to my previous blog post in which she wrote, "Weird things happen in our lives, miracles exist. Remember that we are in this earth for a reason. Do you know which one is yours?"

I could not agree more. Definitely, weird things do happen in my life. Miracles do exist. I am certainly in this earth for a reason.

The reason we are on earth is to learn lessons that we could not otherwise learn. We have to experience life, and do things, and face consequences, and then we learn a lesson. When we do unto others, others will later do unto us those same lessons, and we will learn how we made them feel. Then, in the future, maybe we will choose to do something different.

It is impossible to learn all our lessons in one lifetime, so we return to Earth. We return many times—hundreds of embodiments. With each lifetime we learn a little more, and our lessons go from primitive to sophisticated. We learn what it feels like to hurt someone when we experience being hurt. We experience physical pain, then we move onward to experience emotional pain and mental anguish. We betray someone, then in another lifetime we experience betrayal, and we learn how it feels. With each life we live, and with each experience, we become better people. We become aware of how our actions affect those around us, how our actions hurt others, and how our actions can comfort others. With each lifetime we grow a little. It's a long process: we live hundreds of embodiments on earth just to nudge us from a primitive soul to a caring human. Eventually we know the Truth and feel the Truth. We evolve.

I knew a woman named Marion Starnes. She headed the Terra Nova Center, a spiritual retreat in North Carolina. She was one of those gifted people who could see the past lives of others. I asked her, "Do first generation souls ever come and talk to you?" Marion replied, "Very rarely. No, first generations are too busy trying to get themselves out of jail." I thought her reply was excellent and cut right to the heart of the issue. "First generations are too busy trying to get themselves out of jail." We are here to learn, and sometimes our lessons are harsh, but only because our actions were harsh. Physics tells us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That's how it works for our souls, too. We are always learning and we are always evolving. We are becoming better souls and better humans. 

No doubt some of my readers won't believe what I am saying, and that's okay with me. But if they behaved as though my words are true, then they will end up being better people despite what they believe. You never forget bad things that happen to you. You always remember the wonderful things that happen to you. Eventually, you will learn that your life here on Earth has a purpose.

"Weird things happen in our lives. Miracles exist. We are here in this earth for a reason.  Do you know which one is yours?"

May God bless you and may you have a wonderful year ahead. Just remember to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who hurt you. I hope that you have a wonderful New Year!