johnhenrehan's Blog

I felt a little dopey doing it, but, just before I went in the hospital for surgery on my left knee, I took out a band-aid, and with a magic marker, wrote, WRONG KNEE.  I affixed that band-aid to my right knee.

When I got to the surgical prep area, I felt a little sheepish, because the whiteboard had "Henrehan -- left knee" written on it.  And the surgical nurse wrote her initials on my left thigh.

I thought, "Boy, they're gonna think I'm a moron, when they see that band-aid." 

Then my surgeon came in.  After consulting his notes, the first words out of his mouth were, "So, we're operating on that torn ACL and meniscus damage on your right knee, today."

I thought he was kidding.  He wasn't.  I said, "No, it's my left knee that  I damaged at volleyball."  "Left?" he replied, "No, I have it here in my notes as the right knee."  He showed me his typewritten notes.  Twice those notes indicated the injury was to the right knee.  His notes were completely wrong!

I assured my doctor that I recalled the injury happening to my left knee.  I recalled the x-rays and MRI's were taken of the left knee, and I recalled his earlier diagnosis and treatment of the injury.  To my LEFT knee. 

He  scratched out the word "right" in his notes, and hand-wrote "left."  He proceeded to perform a competent operation on my left knee.

The MORAL of this true story:  forget the band-aid.  Next time I have to face surgery, I'm taking the sharpie and writing write on my own skin:  WRONG KNEE!

John Henrehan

c: 202-438-5640

We cannot get every fact into our stories.  Here's one I -- unfortunately -- had to leave out.

It turns out the former judge who sued the dry cleaners had gotten into a dispute with the owners about another missing pair of pants on an EARLIER occasion.   They settled by paying him $150, although, according to the attorney for the owners, the Chung family thought that pair of pants was worth only $80.

When Roy Pearson came back to their store with more dry cleaning, they asked him to leave, saying they did not wish to do business with him anymore. 

According to the Chung's attorney, Pearson responded by threatening a discrimination lawsuit, so the dry cleaners reluctantly began accepting his business again. 

It was after all this that the second pair of pants was misplaced.  That's when Pearson filed his multi-million dollar lawsuit.

I did the story, Thursday, about the DC Schools' plan to pay middle-schoolers up to $200. a month for excellent attendance, good behavior, improved grades, etc.

Naturally, we wanted to see how kids liked the idea.  At the first rec. center we stopped at, the kids had left for a movie.  So we cruised the streets in residential neighborhoods for an hour.  We spotted ONE middle school aged kid.

Children don't play outdoors, nowadays.  They're inside on the internet, playing video games, or watching TV. 

In my own Fairfax Co. neighborhood, the homes are filled with teens and pre-teens.  You'd never know it on a beautiful day.  They're not outdoors.  But in the morning (during the school year), they mob the bus stops, so I know they live here.

At the morning meeting, today, several reporters said they had done stories in the past about how hard it is to recruit school bus drivers in this area.  (Compared to most of the country, wages around here are high, and unemployment is low.)

Well, I got the story this year, and guess what -- all three big local school districts (Fairfax Co., Montgomery Co., and P.G. County) are having NO trouble getting drivers.  First time I ever remember this situation.  The soft economy and high fuel and food prices are pushing many retirees back to work. 

The economy may not technically be in a recession, but, trust me, we are in a recession.

A  Seventh Day Adventist Church in Petworth operates a soup kitchen four days a week.  In recent months, they have noticed their volunteers -- many retirees -- have had difficulty coming in because of the high price of gasoliine.  Also, the rising price of food is forcing them to change their menu (less meat).

So, today, after serving lunch, the volunteers drove to the nearest gas station, filled their cars, gathered in a circle, and PRAYED for God to intervene, and to lower the price of gas.

Well, complaining hasn't worked.  Congressional hearings haven't worked.  Maybe this will work. 

Anyway, if gas prices mysteriously start dropping in the next few days, you can thank the Big Guy and some church folk in Petworth.

More than 3,700 raffle tickets have been sold (at a hundred dollars each) for the four bedroom house for sale in rural Maryland!  The goal is 5,000 tickets.  My original posting is below:

.........

[In January] I covered the story of a couple from Washington County, Maryland who are having a very hard time selling their refurbished, four-bedroom farm house.  It sits on a three-and-a-half acre lot with a year-round stream.

Linking up with a local non-profit, they are going to sell their house using a raffle.  Tickets will cost $100 each.  The owners will get no more than the fair market value of the house; the remainder goes to the local orphanage.

Ticket sales will be capped at 7,000, so the odds for any participant will be no greater than 7,000-to-1.  Those are actually far better odds than any state lottery.

BUT, the house is in the middle of nowhere.  It would take more than an hour and a half to commute to DC.  Even living there as a retiree, I would go nuts from the solitude.  But, it's some people's dream to live in the country.  About 900 people so far have signed up to buy raffle tickets.  You can search for my story on this website (HOUSE RAFFLE), or go to the orphanage's website for more info:  sanmarraffle.com  

On Saturday I covered the story of a couple from Washington County, Maryland who are having a very hard time selling their refurbished, four-bedroom farm house.  It sits on a three-and-a-half acre lot with a year-round stream.

Linking up with a local non-profit, they are going to sell their house using a raffle.  Tickets will cost $100 each.  The owners will get no more than the fair market value of the house; the remainder goes to the local orphanage.

Ticket sales will be capped at 7,000, so the odds for any participant will be no greater than 7,000-to-1.  Those are actually far better odds than any state lottery.

BUT, the house is in the middle of nowhere.  It would take more than an hour and a half to commute to DC.  Even living there as a retiree, I would go nuts from the solitude.  But, it's some people's dream to live in the country.  About 900 people so far have signed up to buy raffle tickets.  You can search for my story on this website (HOUSE RAFFLE), or go to the orphanage's website for more info:  sanmarraffle.com  

In December I did a story about pellet stoves.  Pellets are made of wood waste products, and the stoves offer a controlled burn (pellets drop slowly from a hopper into the fire).  Anyway, the vendor and customers swore to me that they save money over conventional fuels.

After the story aired, a man approached me about his pellet stove story.  He owns one of those glass-on-three-sides homes in Hollin Hills, Va.  The home was built in 1950 when all hydrocarbon fuels were dirt cheap.

Using a pellet stove for 85% of his heating, the man estimated his winter fuel bills at about $1,500 a month.  Using the natural gas heating only, he estimates his winter fuel bills would be about $3,000 a month.  Ouch!

He bought a top-of-the-line pellet stove ($3,000), and has no regrets whatever.

CAVEAT:  pellet stoves do require cleaning every couple of days.

OK, after months of argument, the board that oversees Metro has made a decision on fare hikes.

Bus fares are going up a tiny 10 cents a ride, and they won't go up at all if the bus rider uses a SmarTrip card.

Suburban rail commuters will be hit big-time.  Rush hour maximum fares are going from $3.90 one way to $4.50 one way.  Parking in Metro lots will jump from, roughly, $3.75 a day to approx. $4.50 a day.

What's driving Metro's escalating costs?  Energy and health care increases.  Without the fare hikes, Metro managers estimate their deficit would be 109 million dollars next fiscal year.

I got a chance to ride in several of Metro's experimental rail cars.   All of them have fewer seats, to better accomodate rush hour standees.  (They can put 200 people in a car in these new cars; Metro's oldest rail cars can hold only about 180 people).

Some of the new cars have "bench seating" -- seats along the window, facing inward.  Again, that frees up more floor space for standees.  BUT the new seats are also narrower.  They are only 15 inches wide.  Metro's older seats are 18 inches wide.  It's a huge difference for larger-than-average people like, well, me.

I was driving down Rt. One the other day and saw a couple of VOTE CALABASH signs strewn among the thousands of canddates' signs.  CALABASH is a restaurant in the Hybla Valley area of Fairfax Co.

The owners have slyly decided to take advantage of the political season and advertise their eatery among the political signs.

In the course of doing the story, I contacted a rep. from V-DOT, which maintains most of the roads in the state.  Turns out, it is NEVER legal for an individual or business to post a sign on a Virginia roadway.

But V-DOT concentrates its budget on potholes and snow removal, so the agency generally does not remove invasive signs.  Thus the CALABASH plan is working.  Business is up.  And the owners say they will take down the signs when the candidates do, several days after the election.

I have often suspected that many realtors steer prospective buyers toward homes that are simply too expensive for the buyers' budget.

I got that confirmed, today, doing a story which included pre-purchase counseling by a non-profit group.  One of the buyers being counseled told me flatly that realtors kept showing her homes valued up to $350,000 because she and her husband "qualified" for such a loan.

The non-profit explained that such a mortgage would crush them, and strongly recommended purchasing a smaller home at a price below 300k, which is what they did.

Houses are so expensive and their purchase is so complicated, that, in my opinion, everyone should take a class or two before buying.  I wish I had done so.

There's an interseting suburbs-vs.-DC debate going on at the board that oversees Metro.

DC representatives are furious that the General Manager is sticking with his plan to raise bus fares by 20%.  (Currently, Metro bus routes cost $1.25 a ride.  John Catoe wants to make the base fare $1.50).

He wants to raise parking fees at suburban stations, but by only 50 cents a day.  (Earlier, Catoe had suggested a hike of  a dollar a day for parking.)  Rail fares would go up also.

DC reps say the city has many poor, transit-dependent people, so the priority should be keeping bus fares low.

MD and VA reps say, when you add parking and rail fares together, the average rider from Vienna pays about ten dollars a day, and, under the new plan, would pay $12-13 dollars a day round-trip.  While salaries are higher in the 'burbs, they point out that long-distance riders will be getting hit big-time.  They like the current Catoe plan.

Metro does need more money.  Ridership (and revenues) are growing at about one percent per year.  Expenses (fuel, labor, health care costs) are rising at 7% a year.

I was reminded again (at a story on Saturday) that most counties (and most states) have programs for first-time home buyers with moderate incomes.    You can get a 30 year loan at below-market rates if you qualify. 

I wish I had done it.  It saves you a hundred thousand dollars over the life of the loan.  Montgomery Co. offers classes for first-time home buyers in both English and Spanish.   See website below.

Don't worry about the current mortgage crisis.  These programs still have plenty of money, because their default rate is rather low.  (They didn't offer the impossible "teaser" ARMS that became the norm in the private market.)

http://www.hcii.org/HomebuyersEducationSchedule.htm
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I have done yet another story on "payday loan" stores.  The DC Council is considering capping the interest rates at 24% per year.

I walked into a payday loan store on H St., NE, and read the fine print on a chart.  If you borrow $300. for seven days, you must pay back $344.44.

According to their chart, that comes to an annual percentage rate (APR) of interest of 772%

And I thought credit cards were expensive!