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My wife and I grew up in Ann Arbor Michigan.  We know from personal experience that it is a wondrous and unusual place to live.   In the spring, summer, and fall, Ann Arbor can feel like Camelot.  In winter, which may run from October 15 through April 15, it often feels like Siberia.

So, as much as we love Ann Arbor, we moved to Florida in 1974.  For 30 years, however, we return to Ann Arbor every fall for the entire University of Michigan football season.  We enjoy spectacular fall weather, cruising the local farms and apple orchards, tailgating, football, tailgating, and tailgating.  Mostly, we enjoy hanging out with great friends from college, high school and even grade school. 

One aspect of Ann Arbor is different than any place I have ever been in North America.  Driving in Ann Arbor is a dangerous and totally unique experience. 

Since the 1950s, the City Road Commission has timed major road construction projects to block one or more of the principal routes to Michigan’s Football Stadium.  This cannot be accidental.  It is a source of pride for the brilliant city engineers.  “You know that bike lane rework we set up on Stadium Boulevard?  It backed up the Notre Dame traffic for three and a half hours.  18 more minutes and we would have had the record!  Yeah, we nearly eclipsed the exit time for the 1956 Ohio State blizzard!  Boy, it was close.”  Okay, game day in Ann Arbor is unique and only happens seven or eight times a year.  It is very predictable, however.   Since 1975, the city’s population doubles for twelve hours at every home game.  Equally predictable, in all of those 48 years, the road commission has closed one or several routes to the stadium with some sort of construction project.

One of the first things I do when we arrive from Florida is cruise the downtown and campus streets.  I want to know where the construction is and plan alternative routes so I don’t spend hours getting from point A to point B.  I know all of the alternative routes in Washtenaw County.  I rode every street in Ann Arbor on my bike in fourth grade and I drove a moving van around the city to pay for my college education.

On the recon drive I discovered a totally unique traffic pattern.  This could only happen in Ann Arbor.  I turned from Main Street on to Madison to transition from downtown to the Michigan campus.  After several blocks I reached a stop sign at the intersection of Madison and 5^th Avenue.  Madison, the street I am on, becomes a one way street coming toward me so I have to turn.  5^th Ave is a one way street as well coming from my left.  The only option, therefore, is to turn right on 5^th Ave.  The brilliant city road commission has closed down and barricaded 5^th Ave to my right.  The only alternative was to make an illegal u turn and head back the opposite direction on Madison.  I understand the need for road construction. I grew up in Ann Arbor.  However, there were no “detour” signs, no “road closed ahead” signs, and no alternative route information.  I was really happy that I wasn’t driving my moving van with the 40 foot trailer at this point.  The citizens and particularly, the students in Ann Arbor are clever and enterprising.  As I was marveling at Road Commission’s work, a young man got out of a car parked next to me and tapped on my window.  He said:  “ Hey Mister, can you help me out?  I got to this intersection four days ago.  I don’t know when they are going to finish this construction and let me make this right turn.  I sure could use a fiver so that I can get a Blimpy burger from Crazy Jim’s.  What do you think?”  I responded that creativity and moxy on this scale was worth more than that and gave him a ten.                

An irony of the Road Commission’s fixation on construction near the stadium is the incredible disrepair of many remaining streets.  Ann Arbor has always been pot hole challenged.  Although conditions have improved in recent years, a lot of the potholes are bad.  Potential axle breakers.  Some are big enough to eat small cars.  I passed one on Traver Road that had two people rock climbing out of it.  So while you are negotiating all of the other traffic challenges in Ann Arbor you constantly have to be evaluating the danger threat of the next hundred feet of potholes.         

At this point, we know that we have to be exceptionally diligent driving around this great midwest city.  Random and illogical construction coupled with sporadic, long sections of potholes requires critical focus.

These are not all of the challenges, however.  A great aspect of Ann Arbor is their focus on liberal and environmental causes.  The admirable support for these causes creeps into the transportation grid.  The city is exceptionally bicycle and pedestrian friendly.  Four lane streets were redesigned to two lane streets to accommodate world class bicycle lanes.  Amazingly, a few streets have been redesigned to accommodate bicycle lanes by reducing the automobile channel to a single lane.  These are not one way streets.  I found myself cruising down First Street in a single lane and encountering an eighteen wheel Peterbilt heading directly at me.  It was pretty clear who was going to yield the right of way.  I waved at Bubba, who was driving the truck, and backed up 200 feet to the nearest driveway.

Pedestrian rights trump automobile rights.  There are many well marked pedestrian crossing areas.  If pedestrians are present cars must yield the right of way.  On a temporary or permanent basis the city will quickly change traffic patterns to accommodate non motorist activities.  For example, many of the downtown streets are closed in the evening and on weekends to allow outdoor dining.  In fact, the city has formalized a “Healthy Streets” initiative to slow traffic in residential areas.  The initiative reconfigures the usage of various residential streets to facilitate bicycle and pedestrian traffic. 

New rules and new driving patterns.  Much more complicated than a 25 mile an hour speed limit sign.  Is my car allowed on this street?  What are the “Healthy Street” speed limits and driving rules?  Are these people really allowed to close the street for a touch football game?  Oh crap, I didn’t see that huge pothole!  Hope I didn’t crack an axle.   

Are these all of the challenges to driving in Ann Arbor Michigan?  No.  The biggest challenge is that the city has an inordinately large percentage of terrible drivers.  I know this sounds like the typical, self aggrandizing, “I can drive better than everybody else” comment.  But it is true and you better be ready for it if you are motoring around the city.  For whatever reason, a lot of people operating vehicles have not learned the basic lessons of driver’s education.  I am a defensive driver and have earned the highest safe driver rating from my insurance company over the last twenty years.  Normally, I expect hazards to emerge from the right, left, front and rear while I drive.  In Ann Arbor, I expect things to come at me straight out of the sky.  I am hyper vigilant.  The general problem is that a higher than usual number of drivers just go wherever they want with no regard for anything else.  Crossing three lanes of traffic to make a right turn without looking happens all of the time.  Traffic lights often seem to be nothing more than a recommendation.  No left turn signs, no turn on red signs, are meaningless.  Turn signals, if used at all, are random and should not be taken as indication of which way the vehicle will be directed.  Aggressive driving, that you may encounter in Atlanta or Tampa, is not the problem.  Rather, you have to assume that some of your highway companions are simply going to drive wherever they want without regard to anyone else on the road or any of the posted traffic signage.              

It always takes me a few days to gear up my driving skills for our autumnal visit to Michigan.  Construction, potholes, bikes and pedestrians, strange temporary driving regulations, and non compus mentis drivers make this a truly unique driving experience.  Last week we were in a grocery store on Maple and Dexter and I asked the check-out professional how long it would take to drive downtown on Dexter Ave.  She replied, “I don’t know, no one has ever made it.” 

Vaccines have been around a long time.  A small pox vaccine was perfected in 1796.  Diphtheria vaccines date back to the 1890’s.  Of course, the great Polio vaccine was developed in 1952 by Jonas Salk.  We have effective vaccines for rubella, mumps and scarlet fever.  Moving into the 21^st century we have hundreds of vaccines for the flu, pneumonia, shingles, RSV and the granddaddy of them all, Covid. 

We can argue about the effectiveness of the new vaccines.  Do they work?  Are the side effects more damaging than the malady they are trying to prevent?  For example, everyone I know who has had an outbreak of Shingles has taken one or two different Shingles vaccine treatments before contracting the infection.

Clearly the pharmaceutical companies find the vaccination process lucrative.  They have made a concerted effort to address thousands of maladies that are particularly troubling to modern humans.     

Through the miracle of Artificial Intelligence and computerized medical research, pharma has blessed us with a host of very helpful inoculations in 2025. 

Here are a few of my favorites.

The Titleist Optimization Serum (ProV1 maximo smackosino)

This vaccine smooths out the golf swing of high handicap golfers and adds significant distance to the length of their shots.  For years, avid golfers have been plagued by high scores as the result of a crummy golf swing.  They have invested thousands of dollars on lessons and equipment.  They spend countless hours grooving their terrible swings on the practice range.  Someone with an average score of 93 who fully dedicates himself or herself to the traditional techniques for six months usually ends up with a scoring average of 96. Studies have found that an annual injection of the Titleist Optimization Serum (TOS) will add 25 yards to tee shots and 15 yards to the irons.  TOS has proven to reduce the average golfers eighteen hole score by five strokes. 

Side effects include: Hitting putts thirty yards past the hole.  An urge to watch every King Kong movie ever produced and a craving for very large bananas. 

Instapotential Calmingitus Vaccination (Nofearing kabooming)

Studies show that 78% of Americans have a deep seated fear of exploding pressure cookers.  They have heard family stories of great explosions in their ancestors’ kitchens in the 1900s.  They believe that the power of these explosions is measured in megatons. They know that the instruments used by their grandmothers explode so well that they are the favorite tool of terrorist bomb makers.   The IC vaccine is targeted to the area of the brain that generates this fear and suppresses the anxiety.  87% of the tested recipients showed no reluctance to use the R2D2 look alike sitting on the kitchen counter a few days after inoculation. 

Side effects include:  A strange fondness for commercial fireworks and a propensity to impress all of your relatives at family picnics by prefacing your actions with “Hey Y’All!  Watch this!!”    

Overthetop Winatallcosts Compulsion Damper (Sloth Serum)

Most Americans have a heightened sense of competition.  Their drive to win at everything is an impediment to a healthy life.  They may spend ten hours a week in the gym so that they can annihilate their four year old niece at Hungry Hungry Hippo. A pickle ball contest is treated like an event in the Hunger Games. Many have tried Yoga to assuage the aggressive behavior.  Typically, they become disappointed and then, angry if they can’t be the calmest person in the session.  An annual shot of the Sloth Serum dramatically decreases the patient’s metabolism resulting in a significant decline in this over the top behavior.

Side effects include falling asleep at hockey games and an urge to sit in a tree and eat leaves on a warm summer day.

Bison Avoidance Serum (Buffalo Begonis)

A highly effective inoculation prevents both the American and European Bison from occupying your living room.  The pharmaceutical makers are not certain how this vaccine works.  However it has been extremely effective.  In fact, for those who have been inoculated, only one instance of Bison Invasion has been reported.  The event occurred in a one room cabin near Theodore Roosevelt State Park, in Montana.  A Bison cow followed her calf through an open door of the cabin.  Apparently the calf was following the scent of mustard greens the trapper was preparing for dinner.  In essence, the vaccine has been completely effective in keeping all types of bisons out living rooms around the world.   

There are no known side effects to this injection.  Because of the incredibly high efficacy of this treatment, the pharmaceutical makers recommend that all 345 million Americans be immunized.  The cost is a reasonable $325 per dose.  A three step treatment is recommended.   

So the vaccine industry is booming.  The big pharmaceutical companies are researching and developing products in record time.  Artificial intelligence cuts the time to bring a drug to market to 10% of the historical development period.  What took years now takes weeks.  Of course this is only done to improve the health of men and women all around the world.  Certainly billions of dollars of profits are created for big pharma in the process.  The drug industry CFO’s tell us that the 100 to 150 billion dollars of net income is needed to sustain development of these great treatments. 

They still haven’t cracked cancer and heart disease.  But vaccines to mitigate the urge of binge watching featured shows from streaming services are just around the corner. 

I really hope they are not working on anything to curb cravings for bacon and fried chicken.  If they are, I hope my wife never finds out about it. 

It seemed that children were a lot healthier when I was growing up.  Okay, we all got pounded by the big childhood diseases: chicken pox, measles (three day and German).  I had mumps. My sister had scarlet fever.  We all had tonsillitis and tonsillectomies.  We had inoculations for the really bad stuff.  For example, small pox, diphtheria and polio. 

I always put chicken pox and measles on my healthcare portal history.  Usually, the medical professional will ask when I had them.  I respond that I don’t know when.  “How do you know you have had them?”  “I grew up in a government housing project. We all had them before age three.”

Other than the standards, we never got sick.  At least that is what our parents told us.  If you felt bad, it was a phase you were going through.  “Mom, I really feel crummy.”  “How so?”  “I have a headache. My arms, legs, and stomach hurt.  I feel hot.”  “It’s just a phase you’re going through.”  “Aren’t these symptoms of the Bubonic Plague.”  “Yes.  But if you don’t break out in pustules, it’s probably just a phase.”  Eventually, all of the symptoms faded and we were never classified as sick.  

“Mom!  Wow, I am really tired.  All I want to do is sleep.  I think I have a low grade fever.  There has been an outbreak of mononucleosis at school.”  “Don’t worry dear.  It’s probably just growing pains.  It’s a phase you are going through and you will feel better soon.”  Sure enough, in three or four weeks everything is fine.  Again, I was never considered sick.

Many years later, we had our daughter tested for allergies.  The physician said that she was very allergic to two or three different allergens common to the State of Florida.  He asked if I had allergies as a child.  I said no.  We were poor.  He took that a little harder than I thought he should.  None of the kids in our neighborhood had allergies because we couldn’t afford them.  Treatments were expensive, so every summer we would go through another phase. Sometime, around peak ragweed season, we would cough and hack.  Perhaps we spiked a weird rash.  When the fall came and the symptoms dissipated, the phase was over.

It is impossible to tell if kids were healthier when I was growing up.  There may have been fewer illnesses but there were a lot more phases.  

Medicine in the 2020’s is so much more advanced than the 1960’s.  I have at least five close friends that would not be alive if not for the wonders of modern medicine.  Treatments for many dread diseases are nearly miraculous. 

In some ways, however, I can still hear the words of my mother. 

A while back, I started to feel a little puny.  Sore muscles, stiff joints, tired and worn out.  I live in the 21^st Century so I took my symptoms to the Mayo Clinic.  After running at least 100 blood tests, they concluded that I definitely have an unusual auto immune disease.  I was born with the propensity for this disease to surface.  It cannot be transmitted to anyone else.  Very importantly, it really is not life threatening or a precursor to anything more serious than severe aches and pains.  The symptoms can be lessened with steroids.  In almost all cases, the disease stays active for eighteen to sixty months.  Eventually, it completely disappears and does not reoccur.

So I am listening to this world renowned Rheumatologist.  He is armed with 100s of tests. He understands this peril in incredible detail.  I visit him every three months and adjust my medications exactly as he prescribes.  Underneath it all however, when I boil down his feedback and prognosis, I am back in 1963.  His advice sounds just like Mom’s.  It is sprinkled with complex medical terms.  Yet, when you sort it all out, he is simply saying: “Don’t worry, this is just a phase you’re going through.”  

. 

When I was seventeen, I wanted to make a big impression on Mary Hadalamb.  She was a big Beatles fan and they were coming to Detroit.  Tickets were $40 each.  The whole evening was going to set me back at least $120.  Did I have the cash?  No, not even close.  My total Net Worth, at the time, was $38.75.  How did I know this?  I checked my pockets.  Well, I had another $4.75 in the Christmas Fund account at the bank but that was it.  The law of limited resources very clearly said, we could catch a movie and follow up with a fine dinner at the Big Boy and not much else.  The really bad news was that Thurston Howell, III did have sufficient capital for the Beatles and Mary accompanied him to the concert.

So it was easy to track our capital before massive technology took over our lives.  It primarily was driven by your cash reserves.  You checked your pockets and your bank accounts.  Using that information, you could make great decisions on how to spend your money and how to get more of it if you ran low.  If you didn’t have the cash, you were not going to the concert.  At seventeen, we were all outstanding money managers. 

Starting my Freshman year at Eastern Michigan, I had three key financial goals.  Sufficient funding for dates, $1.85 to buy a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon whenever I wanted, and $50 dollars to cover a bad day of shooting pool.  The business plan for Mike Inc. clearly showed that I needed to work full time all summer, aggregating a cash position and Net Worth of $2,500 on August 31.  In addition, I still needed to augment my cash flow during the school year with part time employment.  No fine dining with Ms. Hadalamb after Thanksgiving without income from a part time job.  Fortunately, Elsifor Moving and Storage provided the perfect employment opportunity.  I drove a moving van full time during the summer.  Lots of lucrative overtime.  The moving business slowed significantly during the school year.  Symbiotically, part time work, scheduled around my pool shooting class schedule worked very nicely for both Elsifor and Mike Inc.

Things were simple. We really didn’t have many options.  No one was going to give us a credit card and no reasonable bank was going to lend us anything.  So the daily decision making on how to deploy our money was very simple.  What expenditures were required?  Are there any funds left over?  Yes!  What would we like to do with the extra funds?  We then needed to take concrete steps to actually spend the money. There were no hidden disbursements. We paid cash or wrote checks for everything.  After we spent the money, we knew how much was left in our pockets or checking account.  We had a solid understanding of our near term cash needs and of our total Net Worth.  I always made sure that I had a week’s worth of PBR reserves.  In addition, the one Benjamin disaster fund for bad pool shooting was tucked into the corner of my wallet.     

Fiscal responsibility was easy to execute in this environment and most of my friends did a great job of managing their financial resources.  

Fast forward to the 2020’s.  It is almost impossible for anyone to competently manage her or his finances.  Cash is no longer king.  In fact cash hardly even matters.  I have had the same $115 in my money clip for eighteen months.  If we want to purchase something, we flash our phone, tap the credit card, or stick an item in our on line shopping cart and go to checkout.  If there are no red lights, the transaction is processed.  About eleven different IT systems instantaneously run through various aspects of the transaction and some of our capital pile is shifted to the vendor’s pile.  What does our pile look like before and after this transaction?  It’s impossible to tell.  Reviewing the Net Worth economic indicator is completely excluded from the process. 

Vendors, banks and technology companies tell us that all of the electronic processing is designed to improve our lives.  Balderdash!  It is designed to improve their profits.  Little clerical work is required to sell something and collect the funds.  Most of the required effort is actually performed by the customers.  “You don’t really want to send us a check every month.  Just give us permission, and we will, electronically, extract those funds from your bank account or charge your credit card.  You won’t have do anything.”  So I have authorized at least thirty different vendors to automatically extract assets from my pile and put in theirs.  Maybe it happens when I specifically buy something.  Often it is a monthly recurring process that happens until I officially tell the vendor to stop. Some payments are identical monthly charges.  Others are variable.  I have authorized at least thirty vendors or service companies to reduce my Net Worth every month.

All of the green lighting and approval processes are simply directed to whether or not I have sufficient funds or credit to pay for each of the transactions.  “Is there room on your credit card or enough cash in your bank account to cover the ACH?  Yes!”  We get the screen showing a green checkmark and the words “Good News! You are Approved!”    

That whole financial process that allowed me to evaluate the value of the transaction and the impact on my pile before I spend the money is gone.

I knew that I could not take a date to see the Beatles for $120 dollars but I just arranged an outing to see Taylor Swift for $8,500 dollars.  Can I afford this?  Who knows!  The automation accepted everything so the deal is done.  Can I actually pay this off at the end of the month?  If not, my $8,500 just got 25% bigger because of credit card interest.  Potentially, I just spent $10,125 to go to a concert.  Do I need to borrow more money to make the house payment, do I skip funding the 401 k again?  Without a day and a half of financial analysis, I can’t put the pieces back together.  

A further complication is that some of these expenditures don’t require real cash.  I have to use Apple Pay, PayPal, and three other pseudo currencies.  So far I have avoided Bitcoin but it is a matter of time until my physician says “If you want this bypass surgery, you need to pay me with Bitcoin”.      

The day of reckoning occurs after I have spent my money and the credit card bill arrives.

DANGER WILL ROBINSON.    

Yikes!  Amex is $15,402 this month and Visa is $11,307.  I can only pay half of that.  Would have been nice to get a “low capital warning” instead of a simple green checkmark when I was spending all of this money.  By paying half, I am borrowing $13,000 at 25% interest rates.  Even my uncle Vito doesn’t charge this much!

The good news is that having trouble with your Visa bill is not likely to incur bodily harm.  Getting behind in payments to uncle Vito will.  But there is still a lot of pain and challenge in overextending credit card debt.  It is very easy to creep up to the card limit.  Compounding $30,000 of credit card debt at 25% can generate huge numbers very quickly. 

If you decide to pay off the cards with an early withdrawal from your retirement account, more bad things happen.  First the money you take out is immediately taxable and you pay a 10% withdrawal penalty.  For most of us, that is at least another 34% assessment.  In addition, not maximizing my IRA contributions may make it very difficult to retire.  If I don’t make a contribution this year or, even worse, take money out of the retirement account, I may be driving a truck again at age 75.

Before technology, internal control over my finances was proactive.  I knew what impact spending money would have on my Net Worth before I actually made the disbursement.  Technology has made it incredibly simple to spend money but extremely difficult to understand the impact of all these expenditures on our accumulated wealth.  The only weak, back end, control I have is knowing how close I am to the spending limit on my credit cards.  Six or seven hours of analysis will put sharp focus on my financial standing.  However, that is a little difficult to do when I am waiting in the queue for Rose Bowl tickets.   

So, in the 2020’s, spending habits have changed.  When we elect to buy something, anything, we never assess the impact of the decision on our pile of capital (Net Worth).  We just wait to see if the green checkmark and the word “approved” appears on the payment screen.

I haven’t seen Mary Hadalamb for a while.  If she wants to go to The Beatles Revival Concert, I think I need to do a lot more financial research before I hit the “Proceed to Checkout” button.

Very often, Susan and I will make Christmas cookies.  We don’t do it every year but we do it most years.  Sue is spectacular with Sugar Cookies and five or ten other types of holiday offerings.  I am pretty good at making two classic German cookies.    

You truly have to be in the Christmas spirit to jump in to this project.  This year we felt the rapture.  We were chatting about making cookies with our good friends, Ruth and Steve and John and Mary.  We asked if they would like to join us.  We could double or triple our recipes and make a pile of cookies for everyone.  “Great idea! We’re In!” 

This always seems like a simple, idyllic exercise.  We will drink egg nog and listen to an array of Christmas carols.  Maybe, a little Schnapps.  Perhaps the temperature will drop and we will see a few snow flurries in Florida.  We forget all of the challenges we have had making cookies in the past.  For example, last year we used self rising flour instead of all purpose flour and baked up a bunch of tennis balls. The revisionist memory may happen because there is always a twelve month interval between cookie making sessions or perhaps our cognitive skills are trending in the same direction as Joe Biden’s.  

Not with standing, we move boldly forward with a lot of positive energy.  We are planning on making three types of cookies: classic Sugar Cookies and two German favorites, Springerles and Lebkuchens.  We will start the process at 2:00 PM, finish 450 cookies by 6:00 PM, have a few drinks and nice dinner around 6:30 or 7:00.  Maybe we will end the evening watching White Christmas.

Reality starts to set in when we review the recipes.  The Springerle and Lebkuchens are truly family heirlooms.  They have been passed on to me by mother.  She actually got them from her great grandmother.  A lot of unusual ingredients: anise seed, anise extract, almond extract, candied lemon peel, candied citron and Baker’s Ammonia.  A lot of steps for each cookie.  In fact, when you lay the recipes side by side, this cannot be completed in less than three days.  I am convinced that Einstein and Fermi decided to split atoms because it was easier than making their grandmothers’ Christmas cookies.

What the hell!  We all are retired.  It’s Christmas.  This will be fun!

So the day before the big bake session, I whip up two batches of dough for the Lebkuchens and Sue makes a big batch of Sugar Cookie dough.  We stick them in the refrigerator. The plan for bake day is to bake all of the Sugar Cookies and set them aside to cool.  Change the oven settings and bake all of the Lebkuchens.  Sometime during the Lebkuchen process we will break up in to two teams.  Team one will frost and decorate the sugar cookies and team two will finish baking the Lebs.  Finally, we will roll, mold and cut the Springerles after totally completing the baking process for the Sugar Cookies and Lebkuchens.  We can’t actually complete the baking process for the Springerles on bake day.  The nifty thing about Springerles is that they have pictures of different Bavarian symbols on each cookie.  You accomplish this by pressing a Springerle board on the dough after it is rolled out.  The reason we use the weird baker’s ammonia is to freeze the pictures in place.  This can only be accomplished if you let the unbaked cookies rest in a cool place for twenty four hours.

Well the bake day plan seems pretty simple!  I don’t see a problem banging this out in four hours.  Do you?        

Good news.  During the split Leb and Sugar session, the drinking lamp will be illuminated.  The process is sure to go more smoothly after one or two martinis or a few glasses of white wine.

What went wrong?  We completed the Sugar Cookies and Lebkuchens as planned. The Sugar Cookie prep was flawless.  The Lebkuchen prep had problems.  John, Steve and I took turns rolling and cutting these beauties.  I explained that the cookies were simple rectangles ¼ inch thick, 1 ½ inches wide and 2 ½ inches long.  In essence, a CPA, a cardiologist, and tax attorney were conceptualizing the best methods for high volume baking.  We had several rulers and a spiffy tool to measure the rolled dough thickness.  We thought that using a ravioli cutter would add a nice beveled edge to the final products.  Surprisingly, the methods we developed were not the best.  In spite of excessive measuring, there was a great deal of variance in cookie sizes.  The ravioli cutter was hard to use.  It would get completely gunked up after a few cookies. The spiffy beveled edge did not hold through the baking process.  It took a very long time crank out a full sheet of cookies.  We completed the Sugar Cookies and Lebakukens around 6:00 PM and broke for dinner without even starting the Springerles.

In addition to the baking process, an inordinate amount of time is required to buy all of the ingredients and assemble the baking tools.  We have more than seventy five cookie cutters.  Sorting them is an effort. For Christmas you probably want to exclude the alligators, grizzly bears, and Darth Vader cutters.  Sue and I spent at least forty five minutes trying to find our one and only Springerle Board.  The baker’s ammonia had to be ordered from Amazon.  

Starting the Springerles after dinner did not work well. I sensed that some of the World Class bakers were starting to lose their zeal.  Even the Carpenter’s Christmas album playing on the sound system could not retain the Christmas spirit.  Others, especially those who had lubricated themselves with a few martinis, had plenty of spirit.  They were definitely fired up to finish the project.

Because of the volume of dough, the Springerle recipe cannot be doubled.  We made two batches and each batch requires at least twenty five minutes of mixer time.  In addition, they are supposed to cool in the refrigerator for at least an hour per batch before rolling out the dough. We tried to shorten the total time by putting the dough in the freezer for fifteen minutes instead of in the refrigerator for an hour.  We finally finished getting the Springerles to the baking sheets at 10:30.  After baking the next day, the pictures on the Springerles started to fade. 

So we banged out about 450 Christmas cookies.  Our four hour estimate turned in to eight and a half.  The participants fell in to two camps.  One group, mostly comprised of minimalist drinkers, thought “Thank God it’s over.  All’s well that ends!”  The other group, who had been pounding bourbon and martinis, thought we should do another batch or two of Lebkuchens.

Most importantly, all of the cookies tasted great.  The Sugar Cookies looked perfect.  The Lebkuchens always look ugly but the flavor and texture was right on.  In essence, they looked and tasted just the way they should have.  The Springerles looked funny but the taste was terrific.  

The process may be significantly improved by judicious use of alcohol.  We should break out the martinis a little sooner and all of the participants, who are not alcoholics, should be sufficiently lubricated no later than 5:00 PM.  Egg nog with rum, a lot of white wine, or several high balls may really promote the feeling of Christmas.  After dinner, we may spontaneously find ourselves caroling throughout the neighborhood. 

The real magic of Christmas is not that God presented himself to mankind or that Santa can reach six billion households in one evening. The real magic of Christmas is that you will forget the debacle it was to bake Christmas cookies when Christmas arrives next year. After Thanksgiving, whipping up a few family cookie recipes will seem to be one of the most romantic and enjoyable activities anyone could ever perform.

I was very disappointed to see four different college football games end with brawls on Thanksgiving weekend.  In each case, the winning visitors tried to plant their University’s flag in the home team’s midfield logo.  How did this become a ritual?  This is both wrong and stupid.

In 1995, Gary Barnett took over the reins of Northwestern’s football program.  He handed out hats to all the players that said “Expect Victory”.  Since Northwestern had not had a winning season in modern history and was considered by all to be the worst college football team in the country, the hat was very humorous.  The opening game was in Southbend against the highly touted “Fighting Irish”.  ND was at least a 30 point favorite.  In his pregame speech Barnett said: “Look, when we beat these guys, don’t put me on your shoulders and carry me off the field.  That will tell everyone that we did not expect to win the game.  Just walk out to midfield and shake the losers’ hands.”  Gary was truly expecting victory.  He got the fantastic upset and his team followed his instructions.  When the winning team runs out on the field after the game is over with some ridiculous exuberance or stupid ritual, they tell everyone that they are totally surprised that they won the game.

And it still is a game.  One team wins and one team loses every time.  It isn’t life and death.  It’s a game within the structure of a sport.  My Michigan team prides themselves in good sportsmanship.  How does planting a flag at Ohio Stadium show sportsmanship?  You pulled off an incredible upset.  The results speak for themselves.  Shake hands or calmly walk to your locker room. The “Game” is over, end of story.  In game seven of the 1965 World Series, Curt Flood slipped while trying to field a line drive in center field.  As a result, the Tigers took the lead and beat the Cardinals.  Curt felt bad about the physical error but his post game comment put it in perspective.  “I am truly sorry that this happened but its not my life and not my wife so I’m not going to worry about it.”  Curt recognized that even the seventh game of the World Series is still just a game.

I know, you’re thinking that college football has always been emotional.  Fans have been tearing down goal posts after big victories since Knute Rockne was a head coach.  In fact, I took part in this festivity when we beat Ohio State in Bo Schembechler’s inaugural season.  For several hours, I had been warming myself with a flask or two of schnapps.  Storming the field and attacking the goal posts seemed like the right thing to do when the Wolverines won.  The celebration for me was one sided.  I didn’t harass any Buckeye fans and I wasn’t nearly drunk enough to confront any of the OSU players.  I was just over joyed with the victory.  The fans stormed the field and the fans tore down the goal posts.  The football team was certainly celebrating but they were not going after anyone from Ohio or helping with the disassembly of the goal posts.  No poor sports here.

When we won the game.  The competition and confrontation was over.  For me, then and now, if we win a game, I am happy.  If we lose, even to the Useless Nuts from Ohio, I am sad.  I am sad all the way back to the tailgate.  Then I am happy again.  Hey, it’s just a game.  

So winning or losing, even if we are not the actual competitors, has been distorted.  

This perverse view of the consummate importance of winning is spilling over to other aspects of our lives.  We were playing what I thought was a friendly game of euchre while the Turkey was roasting for Thanksgiving.  After edging us out ten to nine, one of our opponents jumped up on the table and mooned us.  It took the edge off my appetite.  Missing a backhand on the pickle ball court could be grounds for divorce.  Not happy with your quarterback?  You have to go out and buy another one.  Any spending level is justified by winning ball games.  

No doubt, a number of Ohio State fans will be miserable until next November.  If we beat them again it could be dark for another year.  In fact, none of the fans are even participating in the competition that is causing all of the angst.  Sportsmanship is not part of the equation.  Winning is all that matters.

Michigan fans are no better. Going into the 2023 football season, I heard a lot of “Jim Harbaugh owes us a National Championship!  If he can’t deliver, we need to dump him”.  Jim didn’t owe us anything.  No one is entitled to winning, especially if they are not actually playing the game. Far more important than winning, Jim ran a clean program and he acted in the best interest of his players.  The really great irony is that Jim did deliver a championship and he dumped us.    

So I believe that flag planting and brawls are wrong and stupid.  I miss the days when I could watch a game and feel good when my team gave it their best shot, played by the rules and showed good sportsmanship.  Win or lose, the competition ended when the clock ran out.  Now, winning itself is not enough.  You have to plant your flag in your opponent’s logo.  A loss is truly one of the worst things that could happen to a bunch of people who are not even playing the game.   

I hope that when the NIL and Portal dust settles, I can find a place to watch some amateur sporting events.  After all, it’s still a game.

For more than forty years, I owned and managed a systems consulting firm.  Most of our business was salvaging huge automation projects that were failing. We would get a call from a client saying: “We are really in trouble here.  We have $30 million in this project and it isn’t working.  If the new system isn’t up by Christmas, we will all be fired.  You need to bring your guys in and make this work.  If it doesn’t, at least we can blame you and maybe save our jobs.”

So, we got to be pretty good at organizing and managing huge projects that were really in bad shape. We had incredibly skilled professionals and a very long record of never letting an implementation fail.  We were the IT version of the company that caps oil well fires. 

If you do this for a living, it changes your lifestyle.  When you agree to take on the engagement you drop everything, become incredibly detailed and focused, and stay that way until you hammer out the new system implementation.

When I retired, my friends said you are really going to have difficulty adjusting to retired life.  You’re going to immediately switch from laser focus and extreme pressure to dead calm.  That will be challenging.

In fact, I never really changed my lifestyle when I retired.  I simply changed the projects I worked on.  As a consultant, I had to find out why a client lost 60,000 healthcare claims, recover the claims, and fix the system failure that caused the breach.  As a retired person, I had to organize my spice rack.  They were equally complex undertakings.

Let me take you through spice rack optimization.

Most people have a small section of their kitchen cupboard with a collection of all the spices they use.   So did I.  Okay, the pumpkin pie spice may have been eighteen years old, and I may have had four jars of anise seed.  Once every other year I would use two tablespoons of anise to bake up a batch of Aunt Flossie’s Christmas cookies. When I bought supplies at Publix, I would forget that I already had anise seeds in the cupboard.  So I would buy a fifth jar.  Most of the seasonings I used were in the cupboard somewhere. When I whipped up a pot of jambalaya, the most time consuming effort was searching for spices in the spice cupboard. 

I really started to hammer spices when I became a barbecuist.  Being someone who is paid to streamline processes, I quickly realized that my prep time was at least four times longer than it should be because I can’t easily find the spices I need. 

The first step in the great spice optimization project was to identify all of the spices I use.  Most were tied to barbecue but not all of them.  I reviewed all of my recipes and charted all of the spices required for every one of them.  I created a list of 36 spices that I use for everything I cook.  Nobody’s world is perfect but easily 95 times out of a 100, all the spices I need for anything are included in the list of 36.

When I started the indexing process, I could be cooking or barbecuing in three different places.  The ranch, the beach house, or the condo in Ann Arbor.   I never wanted to start a meal and have to stop to run to the store for any spice.  So I tailor made three identical spice racks with all 36 spices.  In fact, I bought three, 36 bottle, sets of unlabeled glass spice jars and created computer generated labels for each spice.  Included on the jars was the logo for the American Smoking Society – Hickory Only.  For easy identification, the spice name was both on the side of the jar and on the round top. The spice rack could rest on a counter or in a cupboard.  The spices were indexed alphabetically.  Anytime I cook, I can pull the desired spice instantly from the indexed racks. 

Of course, an effective spice management system is not as simple as three spice racks. 

Over time, spices start to fade.  Some, like black pepper, last a very long time.  Others, such as dehydrated bell pepper, go flat in six months.  Why would anyone spend a day and a half trying to make the best ribs and brisket in the world using dead spices?  The goal is perfect, explosive flavor.  You want to see your guests do an eye pop when they bite into one of your ribs.  Flat spices won’t get that done.  You are investing a lot of hours in the smoking process.  The spices need to be fresh. 

A second complicating factor is volume.  When you are making sixty pounds of four different varieties of sausage, those nice little spice jars are not going to get the job done.  You may need ¾ cup of sage for the twenty four pounds of breakfast sausage you are grinding.  In addition to the volume challenges, I am stocking three complete kitchens in different locations.  I don’t want to run out of anything, anywhere.

The final challenge was to minimize the cash required to obtain high quality seasonings.

So I set the following strategy.  I would buy the spices in volume from wholesalers, hoping for volume discounts.  I would set up a fourth spice rack of the 36 spices but the fourth rack would be quart jars of each seasoning.  The quart jars would work well for high volume projects, like sausage making, and barbecue sauce. In addition, when the regulation size spice jars ran low, I could replenish them with spices from the quart jars.  To avoid the “dead spice” pitfall, I would toss everything after eighteen months and start with a new batch of seasonings.

I identified several spice wholesalers and called them.  One of my favorites is Planters in Kansas City.  “Hello, this is Mike Sinelli, I am the Exalted Hind Quarter of a renowned barbecue society.  I am sure you have heard of the American Smoking Society – Hickory Only or ASS-HO.  The Society runs through a lot of spices and I am wondering what volume we need to purchase from your fine establishment to take advantage of wholesale pricing?  Minimum weights of one pound lots will give us the reduced prices?  Excellent!  I am looking at 36 spices and I see you have 30 of them listed on your website….”   

As it turns out, a pound of spices is typically a lot of spice.  Heavier spices, such as granulated garlic, might not quite fill a quart jar.  But a pound of Thyme would require three or four quart containers.  Importantly, when I ordered a pound of all 36 spices, I would easily accommodate all of my needs for eighteen months and I could replenish four or five racks for my fellow ASS-HOs.  

Wholesale pricing is greatly reduced from retail.  In fact, I could buy bulk, one pound lots cheaper than buying the regular size bottles from Publix.  I typically spend $325 to $400 every eighteen months when I restock my spices.     

Maximizing the benefit of any project requires fairly constant review and revision.  I change some of my “go to” spices when I tweak recipes or try new recipes.  So I may add new spices to the rack.  Changes require getting new jars and revising the computerized labeling system. 

In addition, I had to rework the storage system.  My quart storage stash is at the Beach House in Florida.  When we spend three months in Michigan, I would burn through a lot of the spices in the small bottle rack on the counter.  It’s a long drive to Jacksonville to replenish the sage jar.  So I added a backup rack of half quart jars to the Michigan Condo.  This rack travels to and from Florida with us.  In essence, I have a 36 quart jar rack in Florida for back up in the sunshine state and a 36 half quart jar rack for backup in Michigan.  I have all of the bulk spices delivered to Florida and I replenish the half quarters from the Florida stash when I travel to and from Ann Arbor.  For now, this system is working very nicely.     

So the great spice optimization engagement kept me fully focused for a long time.  Nobody’s job was on the line, the remuneration wasn’t very good but it had all of the other aspects of a Sinelli and Associates consulting engagement.  You would think that there are only a few spectacular potential missions, like spice optimization, for a retired person.  However, it appears that the list of possible engagements is limitless.  I can find ten or twenty on my own and my wife can easily add another hundred. 

Here are a few. 

Downsizing.  Moving from a big house to a small house can consume a few man years of effort and test all of your planning expertise.  I believe that you touch every item that you own at least three times during the procedure.

Organizing the 5,000 square foot storage locker.  This is really a bi product of the downsizing engagement.  Even though you tossed 80% of everything you own in the downsizing effort, you still have a few thousand things that you can never get rid of.  If you don’t try to organize the storage locker, most of it will end up like the Ark of the Covenant in the first Indiana Jones movie.

Digitalizing family photos.  I know it seems difficult to believe but my wife’s family and my family identified us as patsy’s to store all of the old family credentials and photo graphs.  I sorted through 23 boxes of old family photos.  I bought a scanner and digitalized more than 17,000 photographs.  My indexing capabilities were heavily taxed but I can go to the file and find a picture of Sue’s dad having a beer at Wall Drug on our great west vacation in 1973.  I can start from scratch and pop up the photo in less than ten seconds.  This was a great retired person’s consulting engagement!

Archiving recipes.  Everything I like to cook is in my computer.  I have hundreds of recipes.  The first segmentation isolates Barbecue Recipes, Tailgating Recipes, InstantPot Recipes, Christmas Recipes, and General Recipes.  I’m kind of weird, even with recipes.  When I make something, I will go back and add notes for things that I am not likely to remember the next time I whip something up.  So, I’ll have the recipe and four or five notes of things I may want to change each time I prepare the dish.  If I want to get the Pasta Faggioli right, I need to find the recipe and read the notes.

Instructions for barbecues.  I save all of the processes I follow when I smoke barbecue.  These include rubs, marinades, smoker used (even after downsizing, I still have eleven different grills and smokers), other equipment employed and timelines.

Instructions for tailgates.  If you want to know what the World’s Greatest Tailgaters put together for the 2012 Michigan State (Moo U) tailgate on October 20, 2012, I can tell you.  In addition to chronicling the menus, I have detailed lists of required equipment and timelines.

Sue has chipped in with a vast number of projects that she has prioritized.  We work them into the mix as well. 

If we don’t want to do anything constructive for a month or two, that’s fine.  One of my consulting engagements has been to organize The Retired Person’s List of Potential Consulting Projects.  That’s right.  I successfully completed a project to list, track and manage all of the potential, ongoing and completed projects. If I ever hit “dead calm”, I pick something off the list and I am back to work. 

I get all of the enjoyment and satisfaction of reworking a broken process with none of the downsides.

At Sinelli and Associates, I was updating the CEO of one of the largest health insurance companies in the country on the status of our financial system restructuring.  I pointed out the challenges that we needed to overcome in order to “go live” by January 1st.  We intended to deliver but there were real perils and he needed a complete and honest appraisal of the possible outcomes. The CEO stopped me and said “I don’t like you Sinelli.  You are saying “if this” and “if that”.  The “if” you need to focus on is: “If you don’t have these systems in place by January 1^st, you are going to F****** DIE!”

Key differences with Retired Persons Consulting are: Nobody is getting fired, no one is threatening my life, I’m not working 70 hour weeks, and there is not a lot of pressure from the people paying our fees.  However, I am still doing complex and interesting work. 

Bottom line: I really enjoy Retired Persons Consulting.         

A great comedian, Norm Crosby, was reflecting on the perils of being tried for a criminal offense.  “The scariest thing is having your fate decided by twelve people who are too stupid to get out of jury duty.”

Most of us recognize the importance of this civic duty but really hope that we are not called. It is a sudden event in our highly planned lives that is always inconvenient.  

I have been selected for Jury Duty a few times.  The odds are very long that anyone will actually be selected.  First you have to be summoned.  I was randomly chosen as a potential juror four times.  Most of my friends have never even received an initial notice.  I was instructed to call the Court on Friday afternoon to see if my services may be needed the following week.  Three of the four times they cancelled any requirement for my services. 

Once, however, I was asked put on a suit and report to the Court House.  I was given a number and tossed in to a pool of potential jurors for a civil trial in the State of Florida judicial system.  Somebody was badly injured at work and they were suing a large multinational employer and the employer’s insurance company for damages. Tens of millions of dollars were at stake.  All morning, they kept pulling other people’s numbers out of the hat.  Both lawyers were sorting through potential jurors with a lot of detailed personal and professional questions.  One person was eliminated because she had been employed, as an administrative assistant, by an insurance company.  Another was an accountant for a local bank. One of the lawyers did not want any accountants on the jury.

I’ll be out of here in no time.  I was a CPA who primarily audited insurance companies. In fact, I was Controller of a public insurance company for several years.  I now ran a consulting practice and all my clients were insurance companies.  We were down to just one open slot.  There were twenty prospective jurors sitting with me.  I will be home for lunch.  The judge called both lawyers to the bench.  He seemed unhappy about how long this process was taking. 

The bailiff pulled my number out of the hat. I was ready.  I would be completely truthful in all of my answers.  However, I would clearly show that my life experiences may not make me the best jury candidate for this trial. I would dazzle them with my CPA/auditing experience reviewing a lot of bogus injury claims.  As Controller of the insurance company, we were required to safeguard the reserves for our policy holders by culling out claims that clearly did not meet policy requirements.  I had grown to naturally dislike injury attorneys.  Frivolous lawsuits are the primary reason for excessive insurance costs in our state. 

I sat down for the inquisition.  The attorney opened with a softball.  “Is there any reason you cannot be fair if we seat you on the jury?”  My one word response was “No”.  “Okay, we accept this juror.  Let’s go to trial.” 

Wait! Wait! Wait!  You asked everyone else all kinds of questions about their personal life and employment history.  “Did an attorney ever make you cry?”  Are you happy when you write a check for your insurance premiums? Did an insurance agent ever cut in front of you in a concession stand line. Do you like creamy or chunky peanut butter?  Boxers or briefs?”  What?? I only get this one simple question??

One thing you learn about the judicial system is that jurors don’t get to ask any questions.  You get to answer some in the selection process and that is it.  I only got to answer one.  After a one word, two letter response, I am a juror.

Now I was in Norm Crosby’s cultural category of someone being too stupid to avoid jury duty. 

This was not how I intended to spend the next few days.  I had some challenges at work that needed attention.  However, Jury Duty is clearly an important civic duty.  I was legitimately selected and I will work with my fellow jurors to make the fairest possible decision.  As it turns out, this was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

The trial ran for five days.  The six jurors were from very diverse backgrounds.  There was a nurse, a school teacher, a homemaker, a student, a government employee and a business man.  We all followed the judge’s instructions not to discuss the case until it was turned over to us for deliberation. The first few days, I swung back and forth as the attorneys unfurled their cases.  After about three days, it appeared to me that one party was clearly right and the other was not.  I listened carefully until early Friday afternoon and became even more solidified in my position.  I thought, this could be bad.  I am not going to change my mind and it is very likely that some of my fellow jurors are equally entrenched on the other side.  We were a diverse group.  I have consistently found in life that most people don’t think as weirdly as I do.  Deliberations were going to be interesting.

What became very clear, when we were able to discuss the case, was that every single juror had carefully paid attention for the entire trial. There was some confusion about a few key facts. But not many.  We spent some time making sure we all understood them correctly.  Now we had to decide.  Everybody was serious.  We all wanted to get this right. 

We then decided to vote.  There were about five issues to rule on.  In reality, the only issue was “Is the employer liable for injuries suffered by the employee?” Instead of raising hands, we went around the table and asked every juror what their decision was and also asked them to explain why they made that decision.  I was the last person to vote.  At this point the count was 5-0.  Going in to the vote, I was confident enough with my decision to spend a few days in deliberation and hang the jury if others disagreed. My turn. I simply said that I agreed with everyone else.  I don’t need to tell you why because you more than included all of my reasons in yours.    

How did we get a unanimous decision so quickly?  It was not because the case was simple or clear cut.  The jurors were all very different individuals.  Different backgrounds, different political beliefs, different cultures.  What we had in common was a great sense of right and wrong and a very strong desire to reach a responsible verdict. 

This was very encouraging to me.  All six of us paid attention for a full week and made our decisions based on the facts that were presented to us.  No one simply went along with the crowd.  A random group of six people made a terrific effort to ensure that the State of Florida court system was fair and impartial.    

So I have to disagree with Norm Crosby.  There were no stupid people on this jury.  Very likely, all of us would have preferred to not be selected.  But once we were chosen, we did a great job.  I have the sense that this is the way most juries work in America and it is a real tribute to our country.    

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I have always been confused by units of measure.  Much of the confusion is centered around cooking or barbecue.  I’ll be reading one of my grandmother’s Springerle cookie recipes and it will call for a Smidgen of Almond Oil.  I actually have Almond Oil but what is a Smidgen?  I thought many of these ancient terms were really descriptions, not measurements.  I would splash in a little Almond Oil.  Predictably, no two batches of these Christmas cookies ever tasted the same.  As it turns out, my grandma’s frequently used expressions (Dash, Pinch and Smidgen) are real measurements.  A Dash is 1/8 of a teaspoon, a Pinch is 1/16 and a Smidgen is 1/32.  Through the wonders of Amazon, I now have measuring spoons for these volumes.  I actually use them frequently when I whip up some of the old Italian and German recipes passed down to me by my mom.

When I moved to the south, I found several southern expressions that are quasi units of measure.  Passal is a good example.  Passal means a large amount.  When it is applied to a specific item, it may mean a lot and a specific number.  I invite my friend Bubba over for ribs.  “Bring the family.  We will eat all day.”  Bubba responds “Shooey! With my crowd you’re gonna need a passal of those great ribs.”  In this case, both Bubba and I know we need one passal or four racks of ribs.  In Jacksonville, a passal is exactly half of a whole passal.  So if Bubba says “My sister Billie Jo and her family are staying with us. Can we include them?”  “Sure!”  Now we need a whole passal.  A whole passal of ribs is actually twice as many as a passal. So we need eight racks of ribs. Similarly a passal of hamburgers is twelve and a whole passal is twenty four.      

Much of my experience with units of measure is pretty short on science. To bring clarity to some of these vagaries, I called the National Bureau of Measures.  I had a delightful conversation with Professor Melvin Cowznofski, Chief Regulator for the Encyclopedia of Measurements.  Dr. Cowznofski provided a lot of definition and insight to popular terms that I thought were simply descriptions. In addition, Melvin offered a number of measures that few of us have ever heard. For example:

New York Second.  This is the measure of time between a traffic light turning green and the time a New York cabbie, directly behind you, starts honking.

Microcentury.  A microcentury is the maximum period of time that is allowed for a long, boring explanation of anything.  Officially, it is one millionth of a century or 52 minutes and 35.7 seconds.

Potrzebie.  In a 1960’s issue of Mad magazine, the publication established the “Potrzebie Systems of Weights and Measures”. The base unit is a Potrzebie which equals the exact thickness of the 26^th issue of Mad magazine.  It converts to 2.263348 mm.  Unfortunately, it failed to become the world’s standard for distance measurement.  Many years ago, anticipating the change, I invested 20 bucks in a Potrzebie based slide rule.  I still have this fine instrument manufactured by Axolotl, Inc.

Sagan.  A single Sagan is 4 billion of anything.  It is a base number equaling the smallest combination of multiple billions (billions and billions).  i.e. 2 billion plus 2 billion.      

Beard Second.  A measure of very short distances usually used in the production of microchips.  It is the distance an average beard grows in one second.

Portal Potty.  Time wasted inputting redundant information into every health care provider’s patient portal. An average of 76 minutes per portal.  “I just peed away 2 ½ hours signing up for two new Doctors.”

In Australia, a very small distance is called a Bee’s Dick.  Similarly in Germany, it is called Muggeseggele which translates to “a housefly’s scrotum”.

Software engineers have developed a rating system for newly developed technology.  According to their standards, there are no perfect systems. The Lovelace Scale, however, measures how significantly any particular program “sucks”.

An impressive IT term is a Mickey.  A Mickey is the smallest resolvable unit of distance that a pointing device (Mouse) can travel on your computer.  A typical distance is 500 Mickeys per inch.

Beer.  For many of us, it is convenient to measure elapsed time in beer.  If you’re smoking a pork shoulder for dinner, the elapsed time could be seven beers.  If your spouse’s boss is dropping in for the feast, you may be better off smoking pork tenderloins with an elapsed time of 1.3 beers.  In Buffalo, they gauge snowstorms in beer. Wisely, they only recommend six beers for a two foot blizzard.  Everything is set to scale based on one beer per four inches.  

Standard Giraffe Unit.  This measure is actually used to categorize Near-Earth objects by the European Space Agency.  In essence, they are tracking big rocks that are traveling close to our planet.  An object the size of a Giraffe is rated 1.0 and called a Giraffe.  An object that is .14 Giraffe Size is called a Canada Goose.  If the rock is 1.25 the size of a Giraffe, it is labeled an elephant.  There are seven animals on the SGU scale.    

A final unit of measurement offered by Professor Cowznofski is the Minutes Per Big Mac metric.  This economic yardstick measures how many minutes a worker, earning minimum wage, needs to work to afford a Big Mac.  Obviously, both sides of the equation will vary based on regional differences.  

So I thank Dr. Melvin Cowznofski and Wikipedia for all of this great information.  I may only use Sagans when evaluating government spending and Minutes Per Big Mac will be very helpful in assessing when I need to find a job in my retirement.  I am already measuring elapsed time in Beer and I certainly hope that no Whale objects will be an imminent threat to our planet.

If Potrzebies make a comeback as a distance metric, I have the slide rule.

Now I am trying to figure out how many people are in the Russian Army.  My wife often reminds me that I have enough barbecue to feed them.  I know it is way more than a Smidgen but I can’t get my mind around how many people are really in that group.

The highlight of my preteen summer vacations was a trip to Indianapolis to visit with the Donnelly family.  My uncle Bill, Aunt Florence and cousin Dave were larger than life people.  Flossie was empathetic and kind.  She believed that my parents needed a break from Mikey, Lucretia and Mad Madam Mim (my sisters, Barb and Jo).  She would drive from Indianapolis to Ann Arbor Michigan to pick us up and take us back to Indiana. We played penny ante poker, went to the stock car races, county fairs and toured the Indianapolis racing facility.  My cousin Dave would pile us in his 1940 Ford for a tour of the local Drive Ins, bowling, or even a fishing trip.  After a week or so of fun and frolic, my Aunt would load us back into her Ford Fairlane and drive us back to Michigan.  The trip was about 280 miles, on two lane roads, through midwest farming communities. 

Usually, I could snag a window view in the back seat.  Flossie would dial in a great rock and roll station and we would listen to Chuck Barry, The Coasters, The Platters, Johnny Mathis, The Everly Brothers and many other pop artists of the fifties all the way home.       

A fascinating side light to the trip were Burma Shave signs.  Burma Shave was a brushless shaving cream that came in a tube.  Their ingenious marketing campaign was to post simple jingles on a series of four or five signs.  They spaced out the signs along farm fields so that you could read them in sequence as you drove past.  They had hundreds of humorous statements posted all over the midwest.   The signs were simply narrow red rectangles with white writing and the last sign always said Burma Shave.  I loved them.  Here is an example:

Said farmer Brown      who’s bald on top      I wish I could       rotate the crop     

Burma Shave

The signs were spaced far apart so you could typically only read one at a time.  We would easily pass twenty or thirty postings between Indy and Ann Arbor.  Only a few repeats.  I’m sure a set of five signs cost Burma Shave less than a hundred bucks.  I don’t know how much they paid the farmers but suffice to say this was very reasonable advertising.  As you cruised the two lane highways, you were always looking for the next set of Burma Shave signs.     

A few years ago, knowing my affection for Burma Shave sayings, a great friend of mine gave me a set of five that she found in an antiques store.   At this time, we lived in the country, on a small two lane highway.  Our property sported a white horse fence, 1/3 of a mile in length, along the road.  I thought it would be spectacular to set up the signs and every few weeks, change the poems.  In fact, I thought I would post an original Burma Shave jingle for those traveling East and, on the back of the signs, a modern rhyme for people travelling West.  An aggressive undertaking but well worth the effort.

The real Burma Shave poems I selected were as follows.  To get the original effect, pause for a moment after reading each sign.  That’s how it worked when you passed them on the highway.  You could only read one at a time and it really heightened your anticipation.  

He lit a match          to check his tank         now they call him         skinless frank

Don’t try passing        on a slope                    unless you have           a periscope

A guy who drives        his car wide open        is not thinkin’             he’s just hopin”

Her chariot             raced 80 per             they hauled away        what had Ben Hur

Altho insured    remember kiddo     they don’t pay you    they pay the widow

My modern sayings included:

4 bucks a gallon       makes me cry        I wish I could       sprout wings and fly

It’s okay                      to text and drive          unless you want          to stay alive

Siri said                       turn right now             I did and nearly           hit a cow

Cannabis         is a legal drug          but smoke and drive         you’re in the jug

My EV Truck              can really fly               but only for                 three hours a try

The GPS         says fastest course      I just was passed       by a guy on a horse

I know, it’s hard to believe that someone would consider a running Burma Shave exhibit.  Before long, they could be committing to a weekly humor post. 

For the new sayings, I thought about naming the final signs after my consulting firm.  Instead of Burma Shave, the last sign would say:  Sinelli and Associates, Inc.   If the test market in Keystone Heights Florida was successful, I could take the marketing campaign back to the midwest farm country.  It worked for Burma Shave for nearly forty years.  They sold a lot of shaving cream. Some little guy could drive past with his Mom and say “Hey look at that.”  If she was CEO of a major insurance company and had trouble with her IT systems, she might give me a call.          

Alas, we sold the ranch before I was able to implement the Burma Shave exhibit.  I still have the signs, however.  They are squirreled away somewhere in my 5,000 square foot storage unit.  So the possibility of displaying authentic Burma Shave ditties and new rhymes is not dead.  Don’t be surprised if you are driving through rural Indiana and see:

On curves ahead    remember Sonny     that rabbits foot     didn’t save the bunny  

Burma Shave