cerebral discharge

Again.

Technically, I still have a job for a few weeks or months, but not for very long. We just found out yesterday that the budget cuts from the state mean that Amy and I will be out of work. It’s unclear whether our company will be staying open, but at the very least, Amy and I will be out of work very soon.

We’re not sure whether we’ll stay in Phoenix or move back to Indiana. Neither option will be cheap. If we stay here, we both need to get full-time jobs, but the jobs we’re looking at pay less than what we currently make, and we’d have to both drive to work every day. That means buying another car, paying for gas, reducing our health care, and probably moving into a smaller apartment in a worse neighborhood, and paying our current apartment complex $1000 to buy ourselves out of our lease. If we go back to Indiana, we’ll have to find someone to let us live with them until November, when our house will be free from renters, still pay $1000 to buy ourselves out of the lease, still buy another car for when we get jobs at home, and pay for a moving truck to get our stuff home.

It seems right now that moving back to Indiana will actually be cheaper. On top of that, we’ll have all of our close friends nearby, Amy’s family will be close, and I could even finish my degree.

What I don’t understand is why God wanted us to come here if he’s just sending us back to Indiana. It’s been a good experience, but I honestly can’t afford good experiences right now. Amy and I are not in a place financially to be able to afford any more good experiences. The move to Phoenix was supposed to mean saving money for us, not losing another 5 grand. After this experience, we’re going to be just a few steps away from declaring bankruptcy. Cool, huh?

The State of Arizona is experiencing massive budget problems, which is no surprise. What IS a surprise, however, is how deep they’re willing to cut to end the year in the black.

We just found out tuesday that they are cutting the rates we can bill for therapy by 10%. The therapists are absorbing about half of that, and we in the office are absorbing the other half. Sounds kinda crappy, huh?

Get this: today, we find out that the state is cutting ALL funding for kids in the 0-3 age range, except for in extreme circumstances. Suddenly, the entire bottom dropped out of our industry. We are going to lose at least 30% of our business to this cut, and we’ve got 35 days until it goes into effect. But it’s not just those kids that we will lose. Full-time therapists absolutely require that they can see some kids in that age bracket, since all the kids older than that are in school during school hours, and therapists can’t get in 40 hour weeks using only after-school hours, unless parents of 6 year olds with cerebral palsy want the therapist coming over at 9pm to provide services.

We are probably going to lose close to 60% of our business when this is all over. I never imagined that this would happen, especiallly after the 10% rate cut we took tuesday. We were thinking “well, at least we know what they are going to do, and we know we can get through it.” I couldn’t have dreamed that they would cut off all early intervention funding. It’s scary what this means to families of children with developmental disabilities. Providers will be going out of business one after another. Kids will suffer. The entire business model has shifted to the point that full-time therapists are just a memory, and everyone will be working part-time, billing after school hours only. All the therapists who used to work part time in the mornings, and then pick their kids up from school will have to either retire at 30, or give their children house keys for when they get off the bus alone, and hope that PBS can keep them occupied on Saturdays when they are out trying to make a living.

I’ve seen god pull off some crazy things in my day, but I’m not sure where he’s going with this one.

My office is in Downtown Phoenix, almost directly in the middle of all the excitement that comes with living in a large city. I am 2 blocks from Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Another block west is the US Airways Arena, home to this weekend’s NBA All Star festivities. I took a bunch of pictures at the big block party we had downtown outside the arena. I’ll upload those later if I remember, so you can see what it was like.

Well, today, right outside my office, I heard loud shouting and swearing, as if there might be a fight brewing. Remember when you were young enough that fighting people was an honest possibility? Like if you hit someone too hard playing playground football, or if someone called you a name? It reminded me of that. Everyone goes quiet except the one kid yelling.

Well all the shopping center commotion got quiet, but there was one man yelling and swearing. Naturally, I ran outside to see what was happening, cause you CAN’T miss a fight!

I looked over the balcony down onto the main sidewalk, and there was a homeless man walking through the middle of the sidewalk, between Starbucks on one side, with lots of outdoor seating, and Hooters on the other side, again with dozens of people seated outside in the shade.

The homeless man was looking over his shoulder shouting about someone framing him for something, and saying “you ain’t gunna git me!” and things like that. But he wasn’t talking to anyone in particular. He was just shouting at whoever was around him. I listened to him as walked another 100 feet or so, and he continued shouting to the universe that it wouldn’t “mess wit da back of me!” or something like that.

The best part, though, was after he was gone. There were a few businessmen standing around, as well as a man with his 3 year old son standing next to him, watching and listening to all the crazy things the drifter was yelling. After he was out of ear shot, the 3 year old scrunched up his face and yelled “HEY!” in protest to the man’s chaotic outbursts.

I shared a chuckle with the businessmen watching, and got back to work…well, back to my computer anyways. I couldn’t resist blogging about it before I got back to work.

NOW, I’m getting back to work.

I’m absolutely fascinated with big buildings. I love skyscrapers. When I moved to Phoenix, which is the 5th largest city in the country, I was disappointed that no buildings in our fine city are taller than the Chase Tower, which is 483 feet high. Here’s a pic of the Chase tower, which I walk by every day.

483 feet...not big enough!

In my last post, I talked about the Burj Dubai, which is right now my favorite building in the world because it is the tallest. Scroll down for some pictures. Well, I found a video just now of a couple of guys BASEJUMPING off the Burj. Insane, right?

Check it out:

You are being told that Obama’s “stimulus” plan is going to cost ~$800 billion dollars. This isn’t true. The estimated 10-year cost of this bill is actually about $3.27 trillion.

How much is $3.27 trillion? Well, for starters, lets stop shortening it with an 8 letter word and use all the zeros:

$3,270,000,000,000.

Seriously? Look at all those zeros.

What would $3,270,000,000,000 buy you?

Burj Dubai

This, my friends, is the Burj Dubai. It is BY FAR the tallest building in the world. It is found in the United Arab Emirates. Office space in this building is selling for $4500 per square foot. A 1000 square foot office in this building will cost you about $4.5 million dollars.

Would you like to know how many Burj Dubai skyscrapers one could build with $3,270,000,000,000?

Seven-hundred ninety-seven Burj Dubais could be purchased with this stimulus bill.

We’re not talking about just a bunch of money that we need to help us make jobs. This is not a small deal. We could build the world’s largest city, with 28 rows or Burj Dubais, 28 deep of Burj Dubais. 797 Burj Dubai’s could be payed for with this money.

How many low-education $15 an hour workers could you employ to build all these buildings?

LOOK at how big this building is, compared to other well known skyscrapers:

Those are MASSIVE buildings next to it

Look at it in the city skyline, FULL of huge skyscrapers:

797 of these...

Obama, I would rather have 797 of these. You could put 1 in each of the 16 largest cities in EVERY STATE. We’re talking cities with 30-40 thousand people could ALL have their own BURJ DUBAI building with this money.

How many jobs would that create? How much housing or office space could that provide?

Guys, we’re talking about SOOOOO much money. Like, a LOT of it. This bill is a big deal. We should be throwing a complete bitch-fit that the Democratic party is so willing to just vote WITHOUT EVEN READING THE BILL.

It’s so damn scary that our country is in the hands of a group of people who are willing to spend $3,270,000,000,000 so frivolously, without even reading the document.

Did you hear that the reason they delayed releasing it to the American public and to the House was because they were busy converting it to PDF form first, to ensure that we couldn’t do simple searches to find key words/phrases to at least get a glimpse of what this bill was about? Scary, huh.

CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN…

HOPE…

Rubbish. That’s what I say. I’m saying much stronger words in my head (and out loud) but not on my blog, because I would like my grandmother to keep reading!

New blog category. I like history, and I like anniversaries of stuff, and I like ALL THINGS AWESOME, so we’re going to periodically go back in time on my blog and talk about all the awesome things that happened on this day.

First of all, birthdays.

Many of you know I’m an avid poker fan, and a rather good player as well. World poker star Gus Hansen’s was born on February 13, 1974, making him 35 today.

Here's Gus with his round head of knowledge

Also born on February 13th was #81 himself, Randy Moss. Moss is one of the best wide receivers of our era, and probably top 10 of all time.

He catches stuff.

I’d be a horrible person if I didn’t mention my good friend Luke Barnett, also born on this day, 1983. Luke’s an actor in LA, and he’s been seen on SpikeTV’s “Manswers” as well as a few sitcom spots, and in Jon Heder’s recent film “Mama’s Boy.”

so hot

In 1970, Black Sabbath released their debut self-titled album, which was probably the first heavy metal album ever.

Heavy Metal awesomeness

There is one other awesome thing about February 13th that I’d like to mention. The number 3-21 is significant for me for a number of reasons. My birthday is March 21, which is 3-21. Also, growing up, my favorite numbers were 21 and 23. I noticed that all sorts of weird things happened around the number 23. If you’ve seen the movie 23, you know what I’m talking about. The numbers 23 and 21 are both embedded in the number 321. I wore the number 21 in soccer when I was growing up.

Well, on February 13th, there is exactly 321 days left in the year.

Awesome, yes?

Poor kid had a tooth pulled, and he’s completely stoned on the laughing gas…oh my.

Any of you who know me probably know that I love music. Not just radio music, or pop music, or indie music, or even playing music myself, but all sorts of music.

Up there in my list of all time favorites is Johan Sebastian Bach. Having no videos or recordings of JS Bach playing his own music, I suppose the next best thing (perhaps even better?) is watching and listening to Glenn Gould.

Glenn Gould is by far the greatest Bach player ever. He is absolutely stunning. It has been said the Glenn Gould can read sheet music the way you or I can read a novel. His mind is an incredibly deep place, and his hands are hands of a god.

I am as big a fan of Glenn Gould as I am of Radiohead, Stephen King, and Chinese food. Yeah, he’s up there for me.

Watch this video. This is considered one of his best performances. He died shortly after giving this performance.

I like to link this one as well, because this is a piece that I enjoy playing. One of my favorite bach pieces to date, and one of the simplest as well!