As it turns out, a soured employee is one you get the best of. Instead of admitting a customer just might be right the embittered agent blasts away with the almighty blame game. It is almost funny.

Give them an idea after they ask for your opinion and the result is,

“Well that won’t work.”

Then why did you ask me in the first place?

The truth is she really was interested in my ideas but due to strict company guidelines of passing the buck she left off with a steamy list of do’s and don’ts.

How dare a customer know something they don’t! What if your marketing idea is worth a shot?

Heaven would roll over if those who monopolize our lives would transfer good for bad, whatever the issue.

Having worked with the public for more years than I wanted to I did learn a few good tricks of the trade.

Most people allow companies such as the water, electric, phone or cable get away with rate increases, no changes in your contract or for my latest venture budget billing.

I must admit that if I was a rep on the other end of the line I would not want to speak to me either. I  hold no punches, give them the truth and use their mistakes to my advantage. The following are just a few tips:

1. Keep handy any bills, account numbers, etc.
2. Write down all the reps you speak to by name, date and time you spoke to them.
3. Keep calling until you speak to someone who is a manager, or supervisor. Most general reps are trained to handle only quick conversations hoping you will hang up. Don’t.
4. Be nice which is a test for me. The rep on the other end is your connection to better service and possibly price changes or reduction.
5. Keep records of all conversations.
6. Once you have called, called and called again with no response, write a letter.
7. Ask for a personnel supervisor or find the President of the company’s name and address.
8. Use the number of calls, no responses and any questionable fact or misled quote to back up your reason for action and hold them to it.
9. Don’t give up until you get a response with a willing change. They just want you to go away and will often compromise or bargain to get rid of you.

10. If you don’t get your wish, use the Better Business Bureau, the local newspaper Opinion section to write a letter or your state’s Dept. of Consumer Affairs.

This process has worked for me over and over.

God expects us to pay our bills, but we are not to be doormats to companies who preach monopoly in the name of the almighty dollar. We are not to use God’s money to pay ahead for services not yet rendered or for those who are delinquent.

In this economy companies cannot risk a disgruntled customer, especially one who knows the facts and will pursue the truth for an answer.

Or better yet expose them for their dastardly business tactics.

Proverbs 37: 6” He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.”

http://samuelatgilgal.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/criminalizing-economic-growth/

http://settledinheaven.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/they-are-coming/

http://thewayeverlasting.com/2012/06/01/quote-progress/

http://strader612.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/daily-inspiration/

Copyright @ 2012 All Rights Reserved

The 5 Greatest Spankings of All Time by Rob Wood

This is a small book with big impact. A look back in time to the 1950′s through the eyes of a now grown man. As a child Rob grew up living on a 365 acre ranch with his mom and dad, Betty and Bullethead, and his 2 younger brothers, Randy and Rich. At that time it was not uncommon for children to get a ‘lickin’ when they had misbehaved. Kids then didn’t have video games and didn’t watch hours of television. They actually went outside and played, usually games that were made up on the spot or based on some concept like cowboys and Indians.

Out on the ranch Rob, Randy and youngest brother Rich, were always up for a new experience. The trouble was that most of those experiences that they had lead to a group ‘lickin’ administered by their father. He believed in the group punishment idea, as did most parents in those days, and had the 3 rules, known as Bullethead’s Rules, written down and posted throughout the house.

This book tells the story of the 3 boys who had great ideas, very little fear (Randy wanted to be a daredevil when he grew up) and what happens when the great ideas the boys come up with and then implement take a slightly or sometimes greatly wrong turn.

Now for some people they’ll say that ‘Oh, that’s horrible, spanking the children!’ and say that they should have been removed from the home. But that was not the way it was then. And I know that for myself (I was born slightly later, in the 60′s) I never considered it child abuse, it was what happened when you got caught doing something that although was fun, was definitely wrong.

This book has brought back some great memories of my own childhood. My 2 older brothers (they were both born in the 50′s, several years before my sister and I) took it as their sacred duty to teach my sister and I some fine things like “How to blow up mom’s cabbage plants with a nail and a ladyfinger firecracker (or for a better slaw, 2 ladyfingers). Yes we got punished, each of us got a lickin, and we all had to go out and scrub the neighbor’s garage because the smell of rotting cabbage was pretty rank. But boy we sure had fun!

I loved how Rob Wood has taken his childhood memories and shared them with us. The story is told very clearly and with a lot of humor. He brings you right back there with he and his brothers, once with his cousin Larry, his parents and his grandparents. A humorous, well written quick read that is well worth the time to read.

I received my copy from the author and my review was unsolicited

It was Tuesday afternoon. We were very rested from our home-stays  and our coach had been driving for a good hour and half to two hours. So we were (most of us, anyways) all awake when we began driving over a giant bridge. To one side, there was a thick, river-like body of water, and on the other a massive expanse of water that stretched to touch the horizon, blending the sky and water like a master watercolor artist. It was surreal. I believe it was one of the Great Lakes, and looking at the map now it must have been Lake Heron. It was the second time in my life that I had viewed one of the majestic bodies of water, and it was no less breathtaking than it had been previously.Our band bus did not know that at the time – there were guesses though. We could name all of the Great Lakes, but we could not tell you where they all were (besides the northern United States and Canada).

It was lucky for us that the Border Agents did not have that in their reservoir of questions. We had enough trouble (that we caused) getting across as it was.

The first thing we did to irritate them was that we did not have our passports. Now, since we were minors and traveling with a religious/school organization, we didn’t need them – they just believed (and rightly so) that it makes their jobs easier. And it does. The adults had theirs and were quickly checked. We had our IDs (state-issued) on hand, but the next mistake was not handing out the paperwork  to each individual before getting to the border. So then we had to get that handed out to everyone, while the Canadian Border Agents had – I’m sure – a good laugh at the idiotic Americans who were trying to get into their country. After we were finished, they told us to enter the customs office in a single-file line (with me in the front!) to go through everyone’s paperwork and IDs individually,  asking questions that make sense while not really making sense. I must have seemed like an honest gal, because the Agent who looked at my papers didn’t ask me any questions (to my relief). Or maybe my picture is so unique that there isn’t any else who can pull off looking like me. *shrugs*

Anyways, after a while, we finally got the okay to proceed into CANADA. Then we were off to NIAGARA FALLS
(the all-caps words are to be read with a deep, booming voice).

In the meantime trip from the border to NIAGARA FALLS, we played a little game called “things”. If you have never played before, the basic overview is that you have a question that is asked and you have the responses written down on pieces of paper. There is one person who has to guess who it was that wrote the response.

Our first question was: Things NOT to Say to a Canadian Border Agent. Here are a few that I remember:

1. (When asked what did you bring with you)
   “93 Lutherans.”
2. “Hey, can I get your number?” (wink)
3. “You can’t stop me! I’m on a music tour!”
4. “Detain me, bro!”
5. “Well, I brought a hockey ball.”
6. “Good thing I got rid of those fireworks earlier, huh?”

Then there is the ever so simple and irritating, but clever “Why?”

And my favorite:

“Did you bring any firearms?”
“Just these biceps, baby!”

TO BE CONTINUED (in a more timely manner)

-E

Here’s why you shouldn’t fret too much about your own eventual death.  In all likelihood–if you’ll pardon me for a moment of miserable misanthropic martyrdom–your life is less insufferable than mine, but that’s only because you weren’t dumb enough to marry a religious fanatic who’d be enough of a head case without having God to take credit for her bottomless wellspring of antagonistic rationalizations.  For me, contemplating suicide at times feels, to quote Jonathan Ames, author of What’s Not to Love?  Notes of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer (not sure if I got the second part of the title exactly right), like taking an aspirin.  It’s enough just to know it’s always an option, albeit an utterly untenable one that’s terrifying as hell to a physical coward like me.  (In other words, the main thing that keeps me alive is abject, cringing, sniveling fear.  How’s that for an inspiring raison d’etre?  Who could ask for anything less?)

A lot of elements of my life happen to be wonderful, much as many of them are out of reach, since I’m living so far away from home.  Still, I do love Korea and adore Korean people.  They’re some of the kindest, most decent people I’ve ever met in the world, and I’m not just trying to quote Frank Sinatra or Denzel Washington in The Manchurian Candidate (not that I live too far from the Manchurian border; wait a second–I am the Manchurian candidate!  What a surprise!  And I’m married to Angela Lansbury!)

Nevertheless, living with a drill sergeant in drag can be a drag at times.  I hope it’s not too presumptuous to say I now know–at least a little–how Jesus felt hanging there on the cross in front of the jeering multitudes, waiting for his diaphragm to collapse so he could hop in his M. G. convertible and high-tail it back to heaven, turning on the windshield wipers to fend off bugs and bird shit.

Not that I’m naive enough to believe in such a place, or to even hope for it.  I’d prefer to find it while I’m still alive, if that’s an option.  Maybe I’m jaded, but the thought of an afterlife of any kind holds no appeal for me anymore.  I just want to lie in the ground and rot–after I die, I mean.  Not now.  There’ll be plenty of time for that later.

And it is my wife’s own fear of hell and anticipation of heaven as a place worth striving to get to with pathologically anal-retentive, pretentiously pious, ridiculous rectitude, that makes her such a bore and a chore to be with sometimes, when she’s turning up the Jesus juice (a phrase I’m borrowing from the late Michael Jackson, who used it to describe the red wine he purportedly offered his pre-pubescent male charges).  I have no qualms about being a die-hard hedonist and, though I sometimes have an ascetic streak that prevents me from having quite as much fun as I tacitly feel entitled to, the Ten Commandments be damned, I firmly believe that certain kinds of pleasure are connected to happiness–a view my wife has begged to differ with in the past year or so, ever since she lost her mind to the church.

And so, without any further navel-gazing, let me return to the topic in question.  Life entails–or should entail–the freedom to do what you want, as long as you’re not going around hurting other people or being a general pain in the ass.  Freedom from certain types of adversity–for example, hungry Bengal tigers–is also a plus, but without the freedom to have a good time or work creatively towards a goal that makes you feel good in the process, life becomes overly pointless and painful.

But not to worry, because nothing lasts forever.  Of course, some people can’t catch a break no matter what they do (and I take full responsibility for the lion’s share of my failures), as if they were being shat on by the gods since birth, as most species of animals and even more types of plants are.  In most parts of the world, much of life boils down to a brutal, ruthless survival struggle, no matter how cozily it may be couched in outwardly polite social norms (devised to keep people from murdering one another and hoarding other people’s stolen stuff) or mitigated by the natural love that shines through, a quality our own troubled and troubling species shares with a lot of other charismatic creatures in nature’s peachy pantheon.

Unless you’re paranoid and pessimistic enough to believe in hell (whose happy counterpart, heaven, leads the exponents of many forms of religious faith to use a carrot-and-stick approach to enforcing belief), death is freedom from–well, everything–beginning with life itself.  I know we’re all meant to see the glass as half-full and “always look on the bright side of life” (Monty Python’s Life of Brian) and all that rubbish, but why not take it one step further?

As Eric Idle croons a little further along in the above-quoted song:  ”Always look on the bright side of death.”  Why not?  I’m not saying you should callously shrug off the deaths of loved ones–that would be cold-hearted and foolish (and would also set you up for a lot worse suffering down the road, once guilt had boomeranged and knocked you on your ass).  What I mean is that you should, at least on some level, look forward to your own death as a well-deserved, permanent vacation from all the bullshit you have to put up with every day, week after week, month after month, year after year, trying to beat the clock and kow-tow to bosses, clients, teachers, students, and customers, struggling relentlessly to make ends meet or keep yourself from falling apart, keeping up with the Joneses and trying to preserve your self-esteem just so people you have nothing in common with besides DNA will go out of their way to like you, trying to remain attractive to members of the opposite sex all because of some crazy biological imperative that keeps you desiring the pleasures of the flesh long after the ones you’re most attracted to due to their conspicuous glamor or fleeting youth have stopped paying attention to you because they already shrug you off as old, even though you may only be middle-aged, which means you have to keep putting up with this vexing sensation and frustrating desperation for decades.  What a hoax.  More than that–what a gyp.  Why do doctors and scientists keep trying to extend our life spans when we’re already considered old and in the way at forty?  Even thirty, in some places?  What’s up with that shit?

I’m not calling for mass-euthanasia; I’m just saying we might want to rethink our standards of beauty and attractiveness so we can all keep getting some until we get laid in the one way nobody wants to–in the ground.

Anyway, I’ll spare you the long list of things you don’t have to put up with when you’re dead.  This post has already droned on long enough.  Let me know if you’d like me to share it with you later.

Meanwhile, do what you can to enjoy your life, and don’t let the douche bags get you down.

Coal Cleanup really became important during the second half of the first summer because Unit 1 was getting ready to go online.  There was a major flaw in the Coal Conveyor logic when the conveyors first started conveying coal from the coal pile to the coal silos just above the bowl mills.  What would happen was the same thing that happens if someone were to fall down at the top of a crowded escalator going up.  Everyone behind that person would be shoved right on top of them if there wasn’t an emergency stop button to stop the escalator.

Escalator

All the conveyors had a safety cord alongside the entire length that could be pulled to stop the conveyor in an emergency, but this was something different.

To give you an idea… once the coal on the coal pile has been fed onto either Belts 4, 5, 6 or 7, they then are dropped onto either belt 8 or 9.  That carries the coal up to the coal Crusher which has a bin above the crusher that can be filled with coal.  If the bin gets too full, then conveyor 8 and/or 9 would stop.  When that happens, belts 4, 5, 6 or 7 should stop also…. only they didn’t.  Belts 8 and 9 continued dumping coal into the crusher bin until it filled up and then coal fell out all over the top of the crusher tower around belts 8 and 9 until the coal tripped the belt by hitting the safety cord on the side of the belt.  Belts 4, 5, 6 and 7 continued dumping coal onto belts 8 and 9, which caused the coal to backup and spill out all over the floor until the coal piled up high enough to trip the safety cord on the side of the belt.

In the picture of the power plant on the side of this post, there is one long tunnel that goes from the coalyard to the plant.  It is about 1/2 mile long.  This is where belts 10 and 11 carry the coal from the crusher, which crushes the coal down from big pieces the size of baseballs down to the size of walnuts.  At the top of the Transfer tower the coal from belts 10 and 11 are dumped onto belts 12 and 13 which carry the coal up to the Surge Bin Tower where the coal is dumped into the Surge bin.  Now when the Surge Bin fills up, it stops belts 12 and/or 13 and it should also stop belts 10 and 11 and the feeders that feed the coal into the crusher at the bottom of the crusher bin… only they didn’t.  They continued dumping coal into the Surge bin, which filled up and spilled coal all over the surge bin until belts 12 and 13 tripped, at which point, coal began spilling out all over the transfer tower filling up both floors of the transfer tower with tons of coal.  The same thing would happen at the bottom of Belt 10 and 11, where the crusher feeders kept feeding coal down to belts 10 and 11, which spilled out all over the bottom floor of the crusher tower.  I have worked in the transfer tower where the coal was higher than the windows and you had to bend over because your head would hit the ceiling on the floor at the foot of belt 12 and 13.  It was almost dangerous enough to picture yourself sliding down the pile of coal and slipping right out one of the windows (which had been broken out by the pile of coal).

If that doesn’t seem like enough coal spills, then picture this…  The coal from the Surge Bin tower fed onto belts 14, 15, 18 and 19 which in turn fed onto belts 16 and 17, 20 and 21.  These last 4 belts were in what was called the “Tripper Gallery”.  These 4 belts would dump coal into 12 coal silos (6 on each unit) that would feed the bowl mills. These are big silos about 5 stories tall.  The same thing would happen to these belts leaving piles of coal at the bottom of the surge bin in the surge bin tower and all along the tripper gallery because when the coal silos were full, the tripper was supposed to move to the next silo and dump coal until it was full, and keep moving until all the silos were full.  Only, the tripper wasn’t working correctly, so it wouldn’t detect that the silo was full so the belt would keep dumping coal and would end up spilling coal all over the entire tripper gallery which runs about 100 feet or so.

So, our first experience with doing coal cleanup was like being on a chain gang where we shoveled coal from morning until night trying to clean up these 15 or so major coal spills by shoveling the coal back onto the conveyor while it was running.  In some cases, we had to shovel the coal away from the belt before the belt could even run (as was the case with belts 12 and 13).  So, you can imagine how shoveling coal one scoop at a time made it seem like you were not getting anywhere fast.  3 or 4 men could all be shoveling on one pile of coal for 30 minutes and not even make a noticeable dent in the pile.  That is why when I went to the tool room to choose a shovel instead of picking a regular shovel, I picked a large scoop shovel used to scoop grain.

Scoop Shovel

Regular Shovel

Even though each scoop of coal was heavier, it seemed more satisfying to see the bigger dent in the pile of coal with each shovelful.  I remember one day after we had shoveled coal all day from morning until late at night only to come back into work the next morning to the new piles of coal just as big as the ones we had shoveled the day before.

After 2 years of volunteer coal cleanup which was becoming less volunteer and more rotational since the list of volunteers was growing smaller, Ray Butler pointed out that it didn’t make much sense to pay a first class machinist overtime to shovel coal when you could create a labor crew and pay them bottom dollar to do coal cleanup all the time, as well as other dirty jobs that no one really wanted to do (such as suck out sewage pits and other sump pits around the plant).  That was when the Labor crew was formed.  While I was in my 3rd year as a summer help (1981).  Bill Cook was a summer help then that stayed on as a labor crew hand at the end of the summer.  By the 4th summer as summer help, the only time we did coal cleanup was when there was a major spill, which was only a couple of times all summer.

It was during those days during the first summer when I was able to catch a ride with David Hankins a couple of times.  He was the crane operator at the time and drove a black Trans Am.  He was a black man with a very broad chest that never seemed to tire while doing coal cleanup.  From the first day he always treated me with great respect which in turn gave me a great respect for him.  I had him classified as a true Power Plant Man.

The second summer when I had been back at the plant for a couple of weeks, one day when Jim Heflin and I were going somewhere in a yellow Cushman cart, I asked Jim where David Hankins was.

Like this only Yellow

I hadn’t seen him around.  Jim (who hadn’t been there the first summer) stopped the cart in the middle of the road and looked at me very solemnly and told me that David Hankins had died in a car accident.  He had been going home from a Men’s Club event when he was killed.  Because of this, alcoholic beverages were no longer allowed at Men’s Club events.  As with all the people I have worked with at the power plant, I keep David Hankins in my memory and I often think about him to this day.  He was a True Power Plant Man.

It sounds kind of silly, doesn’t it? We keep putting on layers of protective coating and building walls around ourselves so that we don’t get hurt. Then, we wonder why we can’t feel authentic and just enjoy being; without having to be constantly concerned about how the world perceives us.  We wonder why people can’t just like us the way we are! But…most of the time, we don’t give others the chance to even get to know who we really are! That makes about as much sense as wearing gloves during a manicure!

I think it is in the unexpected times of sorrow or fear that we allow ourselves to remove the masks and see that we are all really on the same ground.   While sitting in an emergency room and waiting nervously for test results, I looked at all of the other people in the same situation…patients and their loved ones alike. Everyone was worried, scared, sick or lonely. We were all just people, hoping for good news and wishing we were somewhere else. It didn’t matter who had the most money, who had achieved the most success, or who had the best hairstyle. Everyone looks the same in a hospital gown with the back flapping open! We are all just bald beneath our hair and naked beneath our clothes.

As a child, I loved to play dress-up, and when I was in costume, I became that character! I tried to use it to my advantage. As a royal princess, I certainly could not be expected to clean my room and surely, my mother would not ask a pirate to take out the trash…especially one with an eye patch! Unfortunately, she saw things differently and had no qualms about reminding me that she knew who I really was underneath those clothes and wigs.

As an adult, sometimes, I still find myself pretending to be something else if I don’t think the real me measures up to the occasion…although I rarely wear pirate pants and an eye patch. It might be ego, fear, past experiences or maybe just the human condition which causes us to do these things, but I think we all deny our authentic selves every now and again.  I know a man who can only speak in front of a group if he wears glasses, even though he doesn’t need them for vision. He hides behind them and in his mind, it’s not him speaking…it is another character, so there is no chance of him feeling inadequate.

We all need to remember that each one of us is a pretty amazing creature just as we are, and no fictional representation could possibly measure up to the real deal!

DC, ya copped out. Weak move. If you want to stand for something these days, you gotta go big – - make Superman or Batman gay. Hell, everyone already thinks Batman’s gay. Don’t come at your audience with some second stringer in an alternate dimension (or whatever) of your comic setting. For the record, I know who Alan Scott is – - most people don’t beyond some hardcore comic fans.

Speaking of disappointments and superheroes, check this link out. Wow. Don’t get me wrong; I love super heroes and all that shit, but this is ridiculous. Its all fun an games until they run across some real gang bangers, or God forbid, one of those Death-Spirits that are causing a ruckus in Mexico. My favorite heroes on this website is Superbarrio and Angle Grinder Man.

It’s too late to celebrate Towel Day this year, but it’s not too late to celebrate the work of the late great Douglas Adams. Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a “trilogy” of five books. You read that right – it is a “trilogy” of five books, and if that seems funny, ridiculous, and irreverent, well, that’s right in keeping with Adam’s style. Most of Adam’s works rest rather tentatively in science fiction genre because they involve aliens and space travel, but they are so much more. To say that his writing is humorous is to commit a serious case of understatement. If you read “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (and, please, please do), and you don’t spend more time laughing than not, then we just aren’t of the same species. Adams revels in nonsense, and at the same time he’s got a perspective on what it means to be human that is spot on. The rythym of his writing is unique and brilliant too.

It probably goes without saying at this point that I’m a huge Adams fan. How could you not be a fan of the man who wrote this:

“One of the problems has to do with the speed of light and the difficulties involved in trying to exceed it. You can’t. Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they didn’t work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn’t really any point in being there.”

I hope that if you’ve never read any of Douglas Adam’s work, I’ve now got you interested in him and in picking up one of his books. But, before we go are you maybe wondering why people would carry towels in tribute to this great author? The original quotation that explained the importance of towels is found in Chapter 3 of Adams’ work “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost.” What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

—Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

It is past midnight in Paris. I have been traveling for over 40 hours with only two or three hours of rest. Needless to say, I’m exhausted. The flight went supremely well- I wish I could fly first class all the time. Real silverware, multiple beverages, chocolate and an eye mask- heaven!!!

Once I got into Paris, I met up with my best friend- Katie la voision. Fun fact- I’m staying in the room I was in last year! Deja vu! We went to a friend of dr v’s in Montmartre. We also did kareoke! I am happy to report that I still can take a shower with no curtain.

Bonne nuit! Je vous parler demain, après la marche aux puces.

Here is a cute little idea I stumbled across while on Pinterest…well, I thought it was more than cute…I thought it was BRILLIANT! In fact, I like it so much, that I am considering creating one for myself. Not for those days that I am bored, as I don’t have time to get bored…rather, for those times when there are so many things to do that I am having a hard time focusing. I can fill the jar with the items that I know must be done that day and pick one! But for those of us who have children, we can also use it to create ideas that will bust the boredom. Be creative, be fun, even the oldest kids still love being “kids” if we can light on things that represent their interests.

So, here it is…why don’t you check out this young lady’s site, as it is chalked full of other great ideas. Happy organizing!

Anyway, enough philosophical talk. Watch and enjoy!

Why You Shouldn’t Become an Archivist, from Derangement and Description by Rebecca  Goldman

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7727401/why-you-shouldnt-become-an-archivist

(Spencer Levin and Scott Stallings are tied for the lead.)

Last January I had a rather disastrous experience of giving blood. I had apparently not had enough to eat that morning and was suffering from what might have been a migraine (all I know for sure is that it was a headache, but people take your pain so much more seriously when you say migraine). I was so woozy I got two blog posts out of it. At that time I had signed up for a time to donate on June 1. That is today.

I had cleverly, so I thought, changed my appointment time to right after lunch. When Steven nicely packed my lunch, I asked him to make it a hearty one. Thus, a turkey sandwich and spaghetti salad. Also, some cheese, crackers, fruits and vegetables to eat at my morning break. I would be fine!

It was prior to my appointment time when I made my way to the blood drive place, but I had finished my lunch and the co-worker who is usually working the crossword puzzle at that time had taken the day off (lucky bastard). Of course it took longer than I would have liked waiting in line, but I finally got on the ancient gurney and got stuck. I stared at the ceiling and tried to see if I was feeling lightheaded.

Then I was sitting at the canteen, drinking apple juice and eating cookies. My head wasn’t feeling too great, but I knew it was an improvement from last time. I left there and got back to my machine before anybody could tell me I wasn’t looking so good.

The whole way back to my section, I repeated to myself, “I’m not woozy. I’m not woozy.” I had to admit to a little lightheadedness, but surely that was no problem. At least I wasn’t nauseous.

Until I had sat at my machine for a few minutes. I got a Gator Ade out of the machine and drank it. I would soon be as good as new. Any minute now, I would feel better. The Gator Ade was gone, as was my pocket change. I would soon feel better. I picked up my reusable bottle and headed slowly towards the drinking fountain. Water would be good. Water would make me feel better.

I confess, I was looking for one of my particular friends so I could say something like, “I don’t feel good!” and get some sympathy. I heard somebody behind me call my name. Two co-workers thought I didn’t look so good. One gave me the rest of her trail mix cookies she had gotten out of the machine. The other gave me a dollar and insisted I get a bag of his favorite trail mix, the one with bananas, raisins, nuts and other fruits. I took the goodies back to my machine and got some more water.

I have the nicest co-workers. I did feel better after I ate something. I worked slowly and somehow made it through the rest of the day. I did not, however, feel the least bit like writing anything down. I somehow managed to jot the title and opening paragraph during the 2 p.m. break. Everything else, I composed just now as I sat here typing and thinking, “Oh, I do feel better!”

It is Lame Post Friday. I am allowed to be lame. Before I wrote this, I went back and read the lame post I did on the last day I gave blood (before I wrote the two posts about being woozy). I think it was actually a little more amusing than this one. It was certainly shorter. Oh well, what the hell, as a wise woman once said (it was my mother). I can only try again tomorrow. Happy Friday, everyone!

Me: I just finished scooping all the poop from the backyard.

Emerson: What? You mean there is NO poop out here at all?

Me: That’s right.

Emerson: Oh man! I better hurry up and poop right away. Some animal might come by & think that no one lives here.

Emerson: *poops*

Me: Holy schnikies Emerson, what did you eat?! I can smell that on the other side of the yard!

Emerson: Of course you can! It has to make up for a whole yard full of poop so I had to make sure it was EXTRA stinky. How do YOU let other people know someone lives in a house?

Me: We usually just put our names on the mailbox.

Emerson: People are weird.

**Original post from November 13, 2011

The Neighbor Girl walked to school with us yesterday.  Mark, Kate, and NG decided to amuse themselves by telling jokes.

NG:  “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

Kate (disgusted):  “To get to the other side.  Everybody knows that.”

NG:  “Not everybody.”

Kate:  “Mark, why did the chicken cross the road?”

Mark:  “To get to the other side.”

Kate:  “SEE?”

Two blocks into our walk, they ran out of real jokes and began making them up.

NG:  “How did the tree get home?”

Kate:  “I don’t know.”

NG:  “The tree hitched a ride on a bee.”

Kate:  “That makes no sense.  How could a tree ride a bee?”

Mark:  “How could a tree even move?”

I’m saying nothing because by now my brain has shorted out, trying to make sense out of their not-quite-there jokes.  Ow!  Fizzle.  Pop!

If you know what I mean…

Sound effects

Song titles

Scenes from a hat

Apparently not …

I have been very negligent about posting, for one obvious reason and one not-so-obvious reason that I don’t feel like getting into right now, but what better way to make my monumental return than with another edition of email stupidity?

This gem came into my work blog’s tips email account:

Day before yester i got a notification to upgrade my fb since den i cant access my account except wit browser the passwords dat m usin say invalid cant i get new ones to reset

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

First of all, you use a BlackBerry, so you are clearly a moron.

Second: What the hell is yester? Are you too lazy to finish typing a word when you’re two-thirds of the way through it?

Third: Den? What sort of den? A den in a house? A fox’s den in the woods?

Fourth: Wit? I have wit, and I am using it to make fun of you, because you are a moron.

Fifth: Dat m usin? What in the fuck language is that?

Sixth, and most important: A blog that covers Facebook IS NOT FACEBOOK. You want a new password? I have one for you: Type “I am a jerkoff” 100 times and see what happens.

But possibly the strangest thing was having to go into Bushwick and interview locals, and then use the information to create a comic book. On a Thursday afternoon, my equally alienated friend and I hopped off the subway and into the vast openness of Bushwick. I guess we stood out, because literally everyone we passed by stared at us. We had decided to interview shop owners from the local Bushwick community, and ended up being directed by another small store owner to a moped shop.

Every question we asked, was answered by the moped shop owner with a yes or a no, even if question was open-ended.

“Can you tell us a bit about how you seen the local economy in Bushwick change over the past 10 years?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you think the local businesses in Bushwick seem to draw more people from Manhattan than from Bushwick?”

“Yes.”

At the end of the interview, he insulted both my friend and I by saying that we were terrible journalism students and that he would be better than us. What he didn’t know was that we were design students, not journalism students, and that we had a lot of fun playing up his out-of-style facial hair in our comic book.

Yes.

A gin martini, with olive, in a cocktail glass. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wally plugged away at the store for more than five years. As a Cashier in a busy supermarket, there was always something to keep him busy. Wally was dependable and his supervisor bragged on his ability to balance every time at the end of his shift. “That’s harder to do than it sounds” she said.

Wally, during his off hours would often come in to the store to pick up a few items and chit chat. No big deal, lots of employees did that. It was a family atmosphere with lots of long term employees. Because everyone knew each other pretty well, the whole store knew every one’s business. During work they would trade stories about their spouse or kid’s activities, or what they did the night before.

Unfortunately for Wally, he began to enjoy the night life a little too much. He found some new friends who he described as having less regard for a day of work than I did at the time. Evening parties lasted well into the early morning. All the parties and extra-curricular activity got Wally out of his groove. He was spending more on drinks and clubs than ever before. His co workers noticed him not being himself and coming into working looking like he was dragging a sack. Over a period of time, Wally’s job performance began to decline.

The supervisor noticed she had to recount his till more than usual. Wally, the usually dependable cashier began calling off more and more and sometimes just a few minutes before his shift. His supervisor kept track of his excuses and knew sometimes he just made something up when he called in sick. “At first, I believed him. His excuses became a regular feature. After a while, I knew something was up.” Wally missed more and more work and as he tells it, “The real reason was all the partying, I was out regularly and with all my new good time friends, I really got off track.” Wally was eventually terminated due to excessive absences and tardiness. He said, “I am more focused now so I think I learned my lesson. What did me in? Probably the last straw was when I told her my Grandfather passed away and I had to tend to the family. Everyone at work knew my Dad was 86 years old,” he smiled and shook his head and said… “Do the math.”

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2) There are talents that I do not possess but I see those same talents in others and it makes me wish for their ability.

You put those random sentences together and you get the reason why Pinterest.com and Loveit.com are my favorite sites.  

These sites have, in my humble opinion, some of the most positive and inspiring posts on the internet today. I check in everyday and I see what is new and find out who likes the same things I do.  I also discover new and wacky things I had never even considered in the past and I am proud to be associated with these sites.   People have this need to share the beauty of the world and there is no greater way to do that than through photography.  Both Pinterest and LoveIt are picture based sites that you are able to customize into your personal walls of joy.

Bacon Roses from “All Things Bacon”

I started with Pinterest.com with an invite from a friend of mine.  I puttered around and then started to really waste more time than I should have marveling at the fabulous photos that others put up of some of the most amazing things!  It spanned hundreds of years, all over the globe and with just about any topic that you could conceive.  It was marvelous.  I started out with just 4 boards of general ideas.  I am now up to 29 boards.  One of them is called All Things Bacon.  Another is just about barns.  I am working on one that is strictly about chocolate.  It is a wonderful way to find out about so many great sites, people, recipes and places.

Then, of course, the asshat lawyers got involved and started making a fuss about copyright infringement and so on and so forth.  That annoyed me. I felt that my little corner of internet joy just got groped, and not in a good way. Sort of like a teenager… by security… in an airport. Gross.

To some extent, I could slightly understand why those who take such wonderful photos would want credit, but on the other hand, if the photos are online to be seen, why can’t we spread the joy to others by pinning them to our boards?

This brought about the site LoveIt.com.  This site is almost exactly like Pinterest, however they are working on being different.  I was invited through my Klout.com perks so it is still in its Beta phase. This is what the site states:

LoveIt.com logo squirrel

LoveIt is a visual, powerful platform for individuals & groups to discover, collect, organize and share the things they love.

• Private & public collections
• Powerful drag & drop organization tools
• Follow feeds and sources, as well as people
• Patent-pending image recommendation engine

I am hoping that with their image recommendation engine, maybe those people who have taken the photos will get there recognition. Whatever it takes to keep the lawyers out of it. I will keep you updated. As a point of reference, initially I did not give credit to those who took the pictures, but shortly after I, I realized that it wasn’t nice not to give props where they were due.  Now I try to make sure that credit for the pictures is given by either name or website where I found the photos.

Praying Mantis on a bike: by Eco Suparman.

Check them out.  http://pinterest.com/bonusmum/

Take a look and if you need an invite, let me know and I will send you one.  As for me, I belong to both and when I need a little happiness and wonder in my life, I log on and look at the beauty of the world.  God has given us such wonder as well as the gifted/talented people that bring it all to me.  I am able to smile, acquire some inner peace and most of all feel a small glimmer of hope.  Hope is a hard thing to find, but if you visit these sites, you will see it and it will make you slow down and start to dream a little.  Try it and tell me what you think.

Marble Caves of Patagonia, Chile. Taken by Noelegroj Photography

God Bless and until next time, I wish for you joy and the occasional piece of dark chocolate.

Jessica Graefe Martinez