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Monthly Archives: January 2010
Our Backyard
There’s a coach’s clinic at the ballpark today. Wishing I was back in little league.
11 Questions – January 31, 2010
Sandra Ainslie Montiel, Executive Director of the AjA Project and our favorite Socialist, is kind enough to offer her answers to the 11 Questions this week.
What fragrance provokes the most profound memory in you?
The scent of a mans shaving cream mixed in with the scent of coffee…while I’m half asleep in the morning…I don’t know if it provokes a memory but it is a scent that I associate with being in love.
What is your comfort food?
Pot roast with potatoes and carrots, like my mom used to make before she passed away and my beautiful friend Laura makes for me when I visit her. Also anything with potatoes in it: mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, potato chips, French fries…me and the potato have a thing going.
Of the six senses (ESP included) which is the strongest for you?
Touch. Touch is my love language.
What is your daily daydream?
I have so many! To be in Tunisia crossing the Sahara with my Bedouin guides when a band of Taureg sweep in, carry me off and make me their queen…fast forward…. I am still in the Sahara standing on a running horse while balancing a sword on my head and blue veils dancing in the wind…
If you found a hundred bucks on the sidewalk, what would you do with it?
I would pick it up, look around and if I didn’t see anyone looking for it I’d put it in my pocket. Then I would treat a friend to dinner. I wouldn’t feel bad about it at all. I would choose to think the universe wanted me to have it.
What is your existential bliss?
To be in a beautiful place, do a great yoga class, sit with a truly peaceful mind and have love all around…and then a glass of red wine.
What are you hopeful for?
I am hopeful that a meteor will land on Arnold Swarzenegger!
What is your greatest vice?
Red wine, red wine and red wine…oh yeah and still more red wine.
What is your greatest virtue?
Loyalty. I am fiercely loyal and devoted to those I love.
What do you want from life?
Love and laughter
Does Heaven Exist?
I believe in a higher plane of being…call it what you may; heaven, nirvana, enlightenment. I believe it is a place of calm acceptance and not one of judgment. That said I will be there; in a beautiful place, eating pot roast, drinking wine, with a lot of friends, loving, laughing and buying a round with the hundred bucks I found all while balancing a sword on my head!
Thought this was pretty funny
Be sure to mute Groove 24/7
Enjoy.
Musings of the Delivery Guy – January 30, 2010
Author Amy Stewart asks the question – “Can we come up with one simple five-point plan and actually get it passed? Can it be simple enough to fit on a single sheet of paper?”
She then proceeds to offer her 5 point plan. It is a very good start but it doesn’t go quite far enough, and forgive me if this seems simplistic.
I would add the following:
Remove the Moral Hazard. In other words bring the consumer back into the transaction. Currently, the customer in health care is NOT the patient, it is either the insurance company or it’s the government. The axiom those who have the money make the rules applies equally here. Remove both to the extent that’s feasible and allow the consumer (patient) to shop for the best deal and prices will come down.
Secondly, we need tort reform, if California has done anything right these past years it has been to pass legislation that limits “pain and suffering” damages to $250,000. Of course, one should be able to sue in the event of gross negligence, but multi-million dollar lawsuits “mental anguish” needs to be limited and reasonable.
Amy suggests an annual deductible at $10,000, I’d probably make it $25,000 to $45,000 high enough that annual medical expenses would be taken care of out of pocket, but enough to protect the individual from financial ruin should a catastrophic medical condition occur.
Amy’s monthly premium of $99.00 for individuals under 30 and $199.00 a month for those 30 – 65 sounds good on paper, although I’m not an actuary so I really don’t know if that’s reasonable or not.
HSA’s (Health Savings Accounts) are critical to this plan. Allow individuals to privately start HSA’s (like an IRA) that’s tax deductible currently HSA’s are only available through an employer. Make it transferrable from year to year, currently if you don’t use it within the year, you lose it.
I like Amy’s idea allowing individuals the ability to make tax deductible contributions to others’ HSA’s.
Allow insurance companies to compete across state lines, and reduce the tangle of state government regulation affecting how premiums are determined and charged.
Lastly, create community clinics where individuals can go to receive non-emergency care. Currently our hospital’s ERs are inundated with non-emergency patients who can’t afford to go anywhere else. Community clinics (wasn’t there something called Free Clinics years ago?) would alleviate the pressure on the ER’s both with workload and financially.
Students who want to become physicians and nurses could apply to the government to pay for their medical education provided they commit to 8 years of service in these clinics. The military has been doing this for years and has worked extremely well.
As a side note, President Obama made a critical mistake at the very beginning. Namely, farming out the job of creating a Health Care Bill to Congress, I’m positive that had he simply drafted his own bill internally and sent it to Congress to approve, we would’ve had a very different outcome. Unless of course it wasn’t really about reform in the first place, but that’s another discussion altogether isn’t it?
Musings of the Delivery Guy – January 29, 2010
Valentines’ Day
As you may be aware next month will be a busy one for the Delivery Guy. The 14th falls on a Sunday this year, and we just wanted to let you know that we’ll be open all day and will be making deliveries.
Most florists, not all but most create a menu of floral options for their customers to choose from, it makes it easier on the florist when preparing to execute large volumes of orders. The upside for the customer is it’s easy to choose, the downside is your sweetie is receiving the same thing 40 other sweeties are receiving. That’s why Che Bella has never offered a menu to choose from, instead each and every arrangement is unique. You can rest assured that your special someone is going to receive a floral arrangement that no one else will receive.
Our approach is a little harder on us, but we don’t care. We like to feel that we’re doing our part ensuring the person who makes a difference in your life, gets it.
One thing we do appreciate though, is ordering in advance. I know it’s almost three weeks away but by pre-ordering you insure that if you have special requests we’ll be able to fulfill them.
If you’re a reader of the 11 Questions, you already know National Review’s Sr. Editor Jay Nordlinger was last Sunday’s guest. If you’re not a reader, what’s up with that? Anyway, I’d like to publicly thank him for mentioning our little blog on his weekly feature Impromptus. The House of Love received an astounding 2000 visits yesterday, and more are coming today. For those of you unfamiliar with the National Review, it was founded by conservative icon William F. Buckley.
We’re you up early enough to see the full moon setting over the bay this morning? Very Wuthering Heights. The moon setting through gossamer clouds. Maybe more of a Dark Shadows moon. Anybody out there old enough to remember that?
….
Sorry, just got back from a facial. Hmmmm. Feelin’ mellow. Complement those florals with a gift certificate to Simply Skin. Lori does a wonderful job!
Here’s a sneak peak of our Valentines’ Day Marketing Campaign.
Order early for delivery.
I asked the crew the other day if they’d heard any good jokes lately. Nope. Me neither. So I’m asking you. Send us your favorite joke. Please, in the comments section. It can be a limerick, bawdy, naughty, politically incorrect whatever just not mean.
Until the next time.
Ciao!
UPDATE: Amy Stewart over at her Dirt blog offers her health care solution in 250 words and challenges readers to offer their solutions. Her ideas are good, but need a little refinement, I’ll weigh in tomorrow. Until then have a great night.
On the Chalkboard This Week – January 25, 2010
Fear of the Inexplicable
But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished
the existence of the individual; the relationship between
one human being and another has also been cramped by it,
as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of
endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the
bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone
that is responsible for human relationships repeating
themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and
unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new,unforeseeable
experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.
But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes
nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation
to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively
from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of
the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident
that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a
place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and
down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous
insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in
Poe’s stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons
and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.
We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about
us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us.
We are set down in life as in the element to which we best
correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of
years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we
hold still we are, through a happy mimicry,scarcely to be
distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to
mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors,
they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abuses belong to us;
are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we
arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us
that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now
still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust
and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those
ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into
princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses
who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps
everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless
that wants help from us.
Rainer Maria Rilke
11 Questions – January 24, 2010
The House of Love is very pleased to have National Review’s Senior Editor Jay Nordlinger shares his thoughts on the 11 Questions.
What fragrance provokes the most profound memory in you?
Very hard to say. But one of my grandmothers wore Shalimar.
What is your comfort food?
Oh, all of them! But I have a particular thing for macaroni and cheese. I sometimes have the food tastes of an eight-year-old.
Of the six senses (ESP included) which is the strongest for you?
Am I allowed to say spiritual sense?
What is your daily daydream?
Not sure I have one, but I’ll tell you this: Before drifting off to sleep, I often play holes of golf in my head. I tend to be in major tournaments: at the Masters; at the British Open, taking place at St Andrews; at the U.S. Open, taking place at Pebble Beach, probably. I’m up against Tiger and Phil and the boys. Amazingly, I do pretty well.
If you found a hundred bucks on the sidewalk, what would you do with it?
I would try to ascertain to whom it belonged. If that were impossible, I would put it to some good, unselfish use – I would consider the $ serendipity, unearned.
What is your existential bliss?
Understanding of God, and the harmony it brings.
What are you hopeful for?
The above!
What is your greatest vice?
Oh, geez. Let me mention a kind of cutesy “vice”: an overfondness for ice cream.
What is your greatest virtue?
To know better than to answer a question like that! I would not want to break my arm (patting myself on the back).
What do you want from life?
The max – the maximum of good.
Does Heaven Exist?
Oh, yes – and can be experienced here and now, through submersion in Spirit. Of course, hell can be experienced here and now, too. And we get rid of that by “drawing nigh.” Not nigh to hellish thoughts! We do it by “resubmerging,” if you will: in the right.
Musings of the Delivery Guy – January 23, 2010
Is it too late to say Happy New Year? Maybe in my case it’s appropriate as I haven’t said much these past few months. It’s been busy for us, what with moving a house and a business. My apologies if you’ve missed me. Did you miss me?
Our New Digs
Can I tell you that we are very happy in our new space? We’ve wanted something like this for a very long time – actually before we opened Che Bella in Little Italy, we were looking for a live/work loft space but none was available. Carla tells me she looked at our new space a few years prior but it was unavailable. Did you ever see the 1981 movie Diva? 
A great film by Jean-Jacques Beineix, I won’t go into the plot details in this post, you can read all about the film here, suffice it to say that that film sold us on loft life and this space has the same feeling.
And the door! F*ck.
The rain this week has been most pleasant to listen to, pounding on the barrel ceilings.
Pretty damn romantic, don’t you think?
We still have quite a bit of things to do, but we’re off to a great start. So please, come by and see us. If the door is closed, ring the bell.
Do you like Dags?
Digs and Dags I really didn’t plan it that way, it just happened. Call it literary serendipity. Frequent visitors of the House of Love must know that we have a new member of the family – Madame George. A rescue Chocolate Lab pup, who’s just about four months old now. I’ve been pining for a dog for a long time now and am very happy that we now have a lovely little puppy (well she’s not so little anymore, but she still smells like a puppy) to walk to Petco Park, throw an Oil of Ben pod down the hill, and watch tear up the turf to retrieve it. She always misses the mark by a good two feet, and goes rollin’ and tumblin’ down the hill before she comes to an ungraceful stop and jumps back to retrieve the object and bring it back.
It’s just hilarious.
Of course, she gets a bit tired after a half dozen times running back up the hill, but that’s the point isn’t it?
It is true what they (who?) say that dogs reduce blood pressure/anxiety. George has been a godsend in that regard. That said she can go Cujo on us at the turn of a dime.
Speaking of Cujo, I had George on a delivery with me last week; I had a pack of cigarettes, cell phone and a cup of coffee I left in the truck. I realize George is not completely trustworthy left by herself, so I put the cell in my pocket, and move the smokes and the coffee to the drivers’ side door compartment. I then make my delivery. When I get back, George had managed to maul my smokes (at 7.50 a pack it’s not funny), rip the lid off the coffee and drink half the 20 oz cup.
OK, I dealt with it.
It wasn’t until Point Loma 15 minutes later when the caffeine kicked in. I’m at the Sunset Cliffs/Nimitz split when George gets up off the passenger seat and looks at me with eyes that are completely dilated and starts barking nonstop about two inches from my face.
She was completely wound up.
I don’t know about you but dealing with a caffeinated puppy while driving a busy by-way is not fun.
But it is fun at the same time.
Ya know what I mean?
Anyway, I love her.
2010 and the Economy
So how do you feel the New Year is going to unfold? Personally I can only be optimistic. Especially in light of what happened in Massachusetts this week. My prediction is that the economy will FINALLY begin to rebound. My reasoning here (and please correct me if you feel I’m wrong), is that with the Health Care Reform side tabled, Cap and Trade going nowhere, and perhaps, just perhaps our President reads the mood of the electorate and really gets down to creating an atmosphere where the private sector (and not government) can invest and create jobs, then the recovery will happen. In other words, if small businesses who create 70% of the jobs in this country do not feel threatened with higher taxes and higher employment costs, and if – it’s a big if – consumers feel secure in their jobs and begin so consume – there will be an economic recovery.
I hope and pray our current Administration sees the light.
A note to Republicans, hubris is a bad thing.
So much for politics. Well it’s not really politics – is it? It’s the economy, stupid.
What are your thoughts on the subject?
And Speaking of Crass Capitalism
Che Bella is hosting a Feng Shui workshop Saturday February 6 from 1:00 to 4:00. There are still plenty of seats available but they’re going fast! For the details click here. And don’t forget our Customer Appreciation Program, as well as, winning a free $25.00 bouquet.
That’s it for now. I promise to write more often. Until the next time, Au Revoir!
On the Chalkboard This Week – January 18, 2010
O, the sky who turns above our head!
In love of the sun, you share the same mantle with me.
By God you are in love – and I shall tell what reveals your secret:
Inside and out you are radiant and lush.
You do not get soaked in the sea, you are not bound to the earth;
You do not burn in fire, and are not disturbed by the wind.
O the millstone! which is the water that makes you turn?
Tell me! perhaps you are a wheel made of Iron.
You turn one way and make the earth green [with raindrops] like paradise;
Then you turn the other way and uproot the trees [in storm].
The sun turn the other way and uproot the trees [in a storm].
The sunis a candle and you a moth in action;
Weaving your web around this candle.
You are a pilgrim wearing in Ihram turquoise in color
Like pilgrims you are in circumambulation in Ka’bah.
God said:’whoever performed Hajj is safe’;
O dutiful wheel [of the sky!] you are safe from harm.
Everything is a pretext, there is love and nothing besides love;
Love is the house of God and you are living in that house.
I will say no more, for it is not possible to say;
God knows how much more is in me crying out to be told.
Rumi
(Divan 2997:1-10)