At a recent hospital board meeting, the term omnibus came up, and the presenter asked if we all knew what it meant. Of course, it means everything for everyone and, in that case, it referred to the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act that we all knew as COBRA, but now we know as EMTALA. Our federal budgets seem to be providing “everything for everyone” without figuring out how to pay for it, but I digress. The title of the e-mail means that I have something to say about many things, so there’s an outside chance you may have interest in one of the things I say.

I didn’t, at that meeting, offer to reminisce about a TV show called Omnibus that was hosted by Alastair Cooke that was televised when I was a kid. It ran from 1952 to 1961. For those of you who do know about the show, I should say that I watched it all the time. But, in reality, it was a very, very boring show for a smarter, more sophisticated audience than I was at age six.

In my last epistle, I talked about problems I had in Europe, but I really didn’t give them credit for some of the things they do right (in my opinion of course). First of all, no one was wearing hats. I really shouldn’t say no one because, every once in a while, you would see an old codger (61 or so years old) wearing a “chapeau” style hat…one of those hats that French artists wear. But you never, and I mean never, saw anyone wearing a baseball cap. In and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with wearing a hat, and with the tiny amount of hair I have, a hat is necessary. More importantly, you didn’t see anyone wearing a baseball cap backwards. I guess if they were an idiot, they didn’t want to give it away by looking like one. Going along with that, you rarely saw anyone wearing their blue jeans around the lower part of their rear end with 2/3 of their underpants showing. Probably they didn’t for the same reason stated above.

Europe operates on a 24 hour clock. When you looked at the digital clock to see what time it was, it may say 17:30. I know, I know. It takes a minute to figure out what time 17:30 is, but you subtract 12:00 and it’s 5:30 PM. When you say you’ll meet someone at seven, they don’t have to ask “Do you mean 7 AM or 7 PM”? Anyone who was in the military knows what a 24 hour clock is and it eliminates a lot of confusion. It took a little getting used to since the train schedules were in 24 hour format. We’re so dominated by the decimal system, it was hard to subtract 12 to convert the time. I was always thinking that 17:00 was 7 PM, but it was actually 5 PM. Luckily Matt hasn’t fallen off his bike “yet” so he can think faster than I can and we didn’t miss any rides.

I’ve seen the same clips of the same election speeches many times and I’m growing as weary of them as the campaign commercials that have finally stopped. When we go around the Thanksgiving Dinner table telling each other what we’re thankful for, no more campaign commercials for at least a year should come up in every household. But, again, I digress. I know it’s been said many times by many of the talking heads on TV, but I don’t remember this kind of excitement and enthusiasm for a Presidential election since Kennedy and Nixon in 1960. This is the first election in decades that I haven’t gone into the voting booth trying to decide on the lesser of two evils. No matter who you voted for, we had two very good candidates with two very different ideas on how to get us to the same place.

I guess I’m a slow learner, or I have a short memory span (shame on you for saying BOTH, BOTH). I know it’s only been since this past spring that I raked leaves at the lake, carried them to Hastings in the back of the Jeep, and dumped them at the city garage. Then, for several days afterward, I whined about all the spiders in my car. Well, I’m at it again and, apparently, I didn’t get all the spiders last time. I’ll be driving down the road and they will start coming out from everywhere. I had one walking all over the inside of the windshield today and I didn’t try to kill him (or her). They eat flies and that’s a good thing. But I gave them a free ride to town, and now they should GET OFF THE BUS!!

Just (Not Ready For Winter Yet So Take Your Time) Jack