The Golden Gate city made me smile twice today.

Smile # 1

A friend posted a snapshot of his ballot. It shows candidates vying for three school board slots. Starchild IS real.

Smile #2

San Francisco bans McDonald’s Happy Meals with Toys.

McDonald’s meals are not so happy in San Francisco after the city’s board of supervisors banned restaurants from giving away toys with meals that have high levels of calories, sugar and fat.

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/11/03/no-toy-to-go-with-that-shake-san-francisco-bans-happy-meals/#ixzz14F9dYFyz

McD’s can offer toys with Happy Meals ONLY if the meals are under 600 calories AND 35% or less calories come from fat. Not unreasonable in my mind.

You go San Fran. Let the erotic service provider sit on the school board and keep our kids from begging for Happy Meals just to get the damn toy.

I’m still cracking up.

I live in a glass house.

I’m lucky to live in a glass house. I also live on a lake. The views are fantastic. I am blessed to live in a glass house on a lake.

Living in a glass house on a small peninsula in the middle of a private lake is… pretty damn nice. It’s a National Geographic show on weekends; and every sunrise and sunset.

From this glass house on the lake, I am able to admire the elegant herons fishing on the shoreline. And I’ve learned they have a creepy, not so elegant, eerie call that can startle you awake in the wee hours of the morn.

I can enjoy watching the families of geese paddle by in a protective line as I take count of how many goslings have made it another day.

And I can watch my own children grow up in a magical environment where they can play and roam to their heart’s content. Even I can jump in the lake on a hot summer day or just sit outside and enjoy the view after a frustrating day at work. It’s a good life.

Mostly.

I live in a glass house on a lake in Oklahoma.

Late spring in Oklahoma is a meteorologist’s dream. You want to study weather? Come to Oklahoma. Tuning in to the local stations is, as one colleague put it, like listening to the “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast.

Late spring and fall in Oklahoma means wind shear, hail, torrential rains, flooding and…tornadoes.

For the 2010 spring season, all of the above has been sighted, but with the extra damage from not just hail, but baseball- and softball-sized hail. If you’re lucky enough to not have a tornado pass over or near you, you might just get pelted, nay pummeled, with hail.

This is my second spring living in a glass house on a lake in Oklahoma.

If we built a tornado shelter on this peninsula in the middle of the lake it would be a lake-fed pond with a steel door. We have one room in this house with no windows. The central bathroom…which has a glass shower door.

I will confess that the nearest shelter is only up a long driveway. It would be my mother-in-law’s reinforced “closet.” I won’t get into why I’d rather not rush up the drive and stuff myself in her closet. Yesterday, I came close.

View to the West:

Watching rotations in the sky from every side of my house was an adrenaline rush tempered with an underlying sense of terror. My relief when darkness fell was staggering. In this instance, not being able to see what was going on outside was a weight off my shoulders. I could then focus on listening to news reports of when to take cover, instead of watching the skies outside in fearful anticipation.

View to the East:

We made it through another night with no damage. We were lucky. Many were not last night. Many were not this last weekend.

I have to say I’m usually not a fan of Okahoma’s 100F summers…but I’m a fan now.

I would like to skip spring now and move on to summer. Then I can once again be grateful that I am blessed to live in a glass house in the middle of a lake in Oklahoma.

According to Pew Research, I’m a liberal. My leanings are typical of an American who has lived or grown up overseas. I’ve never pigeon-holed myself in the past as a liberal. I’m conservative in some areas and mostly middle-of-the-road. I took Pew’s survey and there you go. I’m a liberal.

As a military brat, I’m also intensely patriotic. I know what it’s like to live overseas. And I experienced intimately the cultures of those countries. And I KNOW that the grand ole U.S. of A. is still by far one of the best countries to live and dream in. Truly.

This whole health care reform debate was the impetus for figuring out my political leanings. I’m a self-employed, small business owner. I mean SMALL. I pay self-employment taxes. No one else contributes to my social security or medicare taxes. I pay 100%. I also pay $13,000 a year in health insurance premiums and HSA contributions for a family of four to have, essentially, catastrophic insurance.

Before someone argues that the HSA contributions don’t count. My 1099 for 2009 showed that I spent $5,200 of my $5,600 HSA contribution. My deductible is $5,600. Only $400 of last year’s contribution has rolled over to this year. And I’ve yet drummed up enough money to contribute to my HSA this year. Note that until I use up my entire deductible, I pay everything out-of-pocket. So for the last three years, my premium payments have only afforded me the ability to take advantage of small in-network discounts at doctor’s offices and on prescriptions. Again, I mean SMALL.

I am holding out hope that H.R. 3962 (albeit an imperfect reform plan) will allow me to shop around for better and more cost efficient plans that do not deny my children coverage, nor require so many riders on their existing conditions or previously injured body parts as to be useless.

I downloaded the bill and am currently reading it. The hearsay and rhetoric have gotten old. Why not educate myself? Of course, the bill does not equal the actual “plan” they’re supposed to come up with. But I’m holding out hope that for us middle- and lower-class families the struggle to find health insurance will become easier. I truly hope this bill will make a difference. Surely, it’ll help repair some of the existing issues in the system.

I particularly appreciate that six months from now insurance companies will no longer be able to deny applicants/children with pre-existing conditions. Trust me, in my six month search for insurance after leaving my previous employer of 10 years, this was and continues to be a big issue.