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That special day

Michael 12 Comments

Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Wait. What? Birthday? Again. Already? Coulda sworn I just had one of them. Just had lots of them.

Some time between the last post and this one, I turned a year older. Seemingly overnight. That always struck me funny at work. Does not matter if your birthday is tomorrow, if you go to the doctor, hospital, or ER today, you’re however many years you last celebrated old.  There is no rounding up in medicine. From an old person’s point of view, that works out pretty well. I often forget how old I am, so not having to remember how old I’ll be, simplifies things.

I mention birthday because since my last birthday I’ve learned a new birthday routine I found pretty nifty. I had forgotten about it until my birthday. I’m wondering if I’m the only one who doesn’t know this.

First, I should mention, I’m not the biggest fan of birthdays. Of my birthdays that is. I love celebrating everyone else’s birthday but mine is not necessarily a date I’ve learned to look forward to. With only a couple exceptions, most of the bad or unpleasant things in my adult life happened on or within a week of my birthday.

Maybe that’s something leftover from a childhood during a time when you were king or queen (or whatever member of the royal court you preferred) of the world, or your world, on your birthday. You grow older and your world takes a backseat to the rest of the world and disappointment soon follows. Maybe because I heaped unrealistic expectations upon it. For whatever reasons, in terms of days to appreciate, even though I am one of the first to expound “every day is special,” my special day not only rarely is, often is anything but.

But, this new little routine could change that. I was talking with a friend and her watch alarm went off. It was an odd time, 11:18. She excused herself and was back in less than a minute ready to continue. “If there is something you need to deal with, I can wait or come back,” I offered.

“No,” she replied. “It’s just my birthday reminder.” I knew her birthday was months away, or months gone by, depending on whether you want to look ahead or look back, and my questioning look must have expressed that thought. She went on to explain.

Her birthday happens to be November 18, 11/18 in American abbreviation. Her watch is set to go off every day at 11:18, and when it does, she takes a minute to thank God for another day.

What a remarkable way to truly celebrate every day. There is something to be said for those who say every day is special and believe it. There is something stronger to be said for those who say every day is special and celebrate it. There is something unique to be said for one who can say everyday is special and then adds the bells and whistles to prove it! I say “the one” because so far, she is the only one I’ve discovered who goes to lengths to remind herself that each day is absolutely, amazingly, beautifully special.

Unless you know of someone who does something so remarkable and would like to remark on that, I think I’ve found the new queen of the world. And all it took was setting an alarm. And yes, I’ve already set mine!

We may not be destined for fame, but it does not mean with are not destined to do great things. We are everyday people doing extraordinary things every day. Our latest UpLift blog post talks about becoming those special everyday people. Please read along with us!

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Oh That Jack!

Michael 8 Comments

Not too long ago I was working on prompts for whatever I might want to prompt myself with and whenever I feel promptable. One of them is “Would I rather be a jack of all trades or a master of one.” My daughter say my list and said, “You know that’s not right.” I said, “Yes, but it’s closer that what most people think.”

You’ve probably said it or read it or heard it many times. “A jack of all trades, a master of none,” usually spoken derisively of someone more talented than the speaker. Obviously the speaker’s talents do not include reading. Buried between my prompt and the usual dismissal is the actual quote. Do you know what it is? I’ll let you think about that for a while and then we’ll come back to it.

That prompted us to think about sayings we get wrong, or those we pick or choose only a part of the actual quotation that is far more complex, but we stop short of the complete thought. For example, no, the customer is not always right. Harry Selfridge actually encouraged his employees to not question a customer’s taste, not the customer’s correctness with his whole message, “The customer is always right in the matters of taste.” An interesting side note to Mr. Selfridge. Many, many, many years before he founded the London-based retail empire that bears his name, he was born in Wisconsin and his first experience in selling was delivering newspapers after school (before he dropped out) in Jackson, Michigan. (And yes, I know somebody is going to say, no, that originated in France in the early 1900s about a restauranteur who said “no matter how ill-tempered is the diner, treat him with civility,” which is a completely different thought process.)

We all recognize that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Does heaven have a similar comparison? Why, yes, yes it does. When William Congreve wrote Act III of The Mourning Bride he wrote, “Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.” Personally, I think love turning to hatred is more frightening than a ticked off lady. But then, I guess if she was really a lady, she’d not express her displeasure over much anyway.

One that doesn’t change the meaning at all is the complete quote that gave us ignorance is bliss, but it is so much more poetic. Hmm. Perhaps because it comes from a poem. Thomas Gray wrote in his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, “Since sorrow never comes too late ⁠and happiness too swiftly flies? Thought would destroy their Paradise. No more; —where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”

Would you like me to make you an offer you can’t refuse. If you’re one of the billion or so people who claim to have been at the premiere of the Godfather, or one of the 400 who actually read the book, you would shake in your boots and beg for mercy thinking I intend to cause you bodily harm. It’s possible Mario Puzo remembered that line from the 1934 movie Burn ‘Em Up Barnes, about the owner of an apparently worthless piece of land. But rich oil speculators who know her land is worth more than a small fortune try to convince her to sell, sell, sell! John Drummond (played quite convincingly by Jason Robards’ father, Jason Robards (Sr.)) says, “I’ll make her an offer she can’t refuse,” literally meaning he would offer her so much she would be foolish not to sell the land to him. So you might want to check with whomever is making the offer if they are a vintage cinephile fan or a more modern movie goer.

A most familiar misquote, or incomplete quote, is one of many traced to the Bible. That is the one about money being the root of all evil. Although during the first century of the Common Era money was not as ubiquitous, or as necessary as today, it still was, if you’ll excuse the inherent redundancy, valuable, and used even by those mentioned in the Bible. The full verse in 1 Timothy (6:10) is, “For the love of money is the root of all of evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” Not quite the same thing.

Speaking of not quite the same, let’s get back to jack, as in the jack of all trades. Do you know the full quote? Jack was given to us by the man who may be responsible for more common sayings than either Benjamin Franklin or the Bible. That would be William Shakespeare. Maybe. Some sources attribute it Shakespeare although not from any of his dramatic writings, but from his colloquial pieces. Others attribute it to fellow 16th Century author Robert Greene, speaking about Shakespeare. Still others have it going back to the ancient Greeks probably because you can make an argument that some ancient Greek said almost everything now noteworthy. Anyway, the full quote, which is not an insult is, “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but often times better than a master of one.”

Do you know of any others? Share them in the comments. Even if you aren’t sure of the origin or original meaning, we’ll get to the bottom of it.

Speaking of sayings, do you know the first instance of “Have a good day.” We do, and we even included it in the most recent Uplift, the one where we claim that telling someone to have a good day could be the smartest thing you do today. Have a good day!

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Artificially yours

Michael 9 Comments

I’m on notice. Me. Mr. Niceguy. The one who follows (almost) all the rules no matter how boring that makes me. Still, I’m the one in trouble.  But… I admit I did what I’ve been accused of. No “not guilty by reason of I said so” plea for me. No, I did it, I got caught, and I’ll tell you and whoever else wants to know, I’m going to do it again! I posted a manipulated picture. And the bad thing about that is, I didn’t say it wasn’t real. Here it is.

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Some of you might recognize this. It is the “cover art” that accompanied the ROAMcare blog post Spring Cleaning. I wanted a picture of a spray of daffodils and a red convertible. As luck would have it, I happened to have in my own photo library two very such pictures, and in years past, I would have spent hours cropping them, removing backgrounds, matching sizes, colors, brightness, and perspectives, then combining them and adding the resulting composite to the placeholder, overlay the text, and finally celebrate the job well done with a bowl of moose tracks ice cream. Instead, I took advantage of a tool at my disposal and told my handy dandy image generator (i.e. AI app), “show a spray of daffodils with a red convertible in the background,” and dished out the ice cream while it thought about this for a while. I knew it wouldn’t be exactly what I wanted but I made up for that with an extra scoop

Some time later, I added that image to our website, the email campaign, and the social media sites, Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, Facebook, and the one that used to be known as Twitter. And there was the problem child. That last one. The one that doesn’t even have enough confidence in itself to give itself a name, just some generic letter used for centuries as the signature stand-in for the illiterati. It dared to lock the organization account until I could prove we are humans. Thus, I was forced to solve a series of computer-generated puzzles to prove I am myself not computer-generated.

I suppose I will now be counted among the many when the owner of said anonymous site defends his company from claims of spreading questionable if not outright false information by saying “Why in the last month alone we limited access and deterred the activities of 196 billion, and that’s so big it starts with a b billion, users caught red-handed posting AI manipulated photos. We the best there is at not spreading lies. And while we’re at it, the earth is flat and we know smart people who say so!”

And guess what? I did the same thing a week later when I posted a generated image of two geese sitting on eggs in a nest. What can I say. Lock me up!

Every life is a life worth living. Celebrate with us the memory of a man who kept so many very much alive in Staying Alive.

The long and the short of it

Michael 12 Comments

I have noticed that my most recent posts are getting shorter.

And that’s all I have for today. Thank you for reading!

Seriously, these posts have been getting shorter. And believe it or not, that’s by design. Since November 2011 I have published 1,050-some of these and some of them were real monsters, one over 1800 words. The last several posts have seen more modest 400 to 500 word counts.

Why the big change? I don’t know. Maybe I realized I don’t have that much to say, and I don’t need 1,000 words to say not much. Or maybe I realized people don’t have time to devote untold minutes to reading my blog posts. Let’s face it, I am not dispensing indispensable information. Maybe a little smile-inducing, head-scratching, or even thought-provoking. Indispensable, imperative, can’t do without? Nah.

If you make the trip to the Uplift! blog at the ROAMcare site, you might have realized those posts with few exceptions fall in the 500-700 word range. By design. The goal is to produce a piece that can be read in two to three minutes. You might also have noticed they tend to ask more questions than they answer. Again, design. We want you to be able to read them in two or three minutes, but we’d like you to think about them for days on end. And hopefully, in a more thought provoking than head scratching way. You decide what is important for you. Taking the most recent post as an example, you probably didn’t find freshly laid goose eggs in your back yard, but it could get you thinking about what wonders you have recently experienced. (Yes, you have. Take a minute and think about it)

Another reason why I’ve taken pains to keep things brief (and yes, they are pains because I can talk and talk and talk and talk for hours and hours on end and beyond), is advice I once saw from one of the master story tellers of our time, Charles Osgood, and finally decided to give it a whirl. (Young people, you have a computer, look him up.) For forty-six years he presented “The Osgood Files” (“Reports and reflections on humankind”). He described his own style as “Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs,” and went on to say, “There’s nothing that can’t be improved by making it shorter.”

Oh boy, was he right! At least as far as my writing goes. Sometimes I think back when I was teaching and to fil the standard college hour (40-45 minutes). I routinely covered so much that my printed notes would fill pages in a notebook. Today, a 30 minute presentation reduced to writing might fill two printed pages. And be more informative. Not to mention more fun!

Sometimes I think as I write fewer words, I find more things to say. But then I read more of other people’s words, and I find I’m saying just enough. I hope you agree and are happy enough with the words I choose.

Are you still wondering about those goose eggs I mentioned? They really are a wonder. You can read about them at The Egg Hunt. What wonderful things might you find in your world?

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Easter Parade

Michael 3 Comments

Yesterday, Easter Sunday for most of the western Christian rites, closed the day with a rare showing of the 1948 Oscar winning musical, “Easter Parade.” Songs, dances, a far-fetched plot, and two lead stars who were called in as last-minute replacements. All inspired by a single song from 15 years prior, Irving Berlin’s “Easter Parade.”

I’ve been around a long time and live outside a city that will hold a parade or a fireworks display, or both, for almost any reason, including next week’s solar eclipse. But I’ve never seen an Easter parade. Have you?

You would think of all the things we’ve paraded for, Easter would be high on somebody’s list. It’s a natural time for a celebration, not just a Christian celebration. The beginning of spring hosts a bevy of religious holidays, spring breaks, and just a great time to shake off the winter blues. Or grays.

Spring is a time of new life, bright colors, happy songs, and a spring in most people’s steps (pun intended). That’s the definition of a parade. Can’t you just imagine a high school band lining the avenue, the high brass section playing about frilly Easter bonnets, woodwinds echoing the antics of the photographer on Fifth Avenue, all almost in time with the beat laid down by the bass drums and deep brass. I want to march around the room just thinking about it.

Instead, we march to open pre-Black Friday sales and the tapping of the green beer kegs. What a waste of a happy song.

Spring isn’t just a time for parades that don’t happen but for spring cleaning too. Did you ever spring clean yourself? In the latest Uplift we write about doing just that. Check out our version of Spring Cleaning.

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Duh…

Michael 8 Comments

Not much happened last week but of what did, two occasions stand out.  Surely at some time as a child, or to a child, you were told or you said, “You’re old enough that by now know you’d think you should know better than that.” I’ve been saying that a lot lately…to myself. At least twice a week. Like last week.

I can be almost obsessive about putting things where they belong when I come into the house. Hat and coat appropriate to the season on coat tree. Keys in basket on entry table. You get the idea. The proverbial place for everything and everything in a proverb.  Except the day it wasn’t.

Every once in a while, especially if I’m just popping in between errands, I’ll leave my keys in a jacket pocket. And that’s just what I did. On that day, in the morning it was cold, and by early afternoon it was springlike, necessitating a change from a heavier coat to a lighter windbreaker. I ran in, plop the coat onto the tree, put away the groceries I carried in, grabbed the library books I intended to return, pulled the windbreaker off the coat tree, stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind. And then checked to make sure I had my keys. Right.

No problem I’ll hop in the car and stop at my daughter’s house a mere quarter mile away and get her set to my house. Except I didn’t because, yes, that required a key also. It’s only a quarter mile and a walk there and back would be welcome anyway. And at least it wasn’t raining. Until it was.

Last week I spoke at a breakfast meeting. I rarely book anything before noon. (Because, why?) (Except doctor appointments because if you don’t get one of the first appointments of the day they will get backed up and then you are there all day and who cares if you sleep through them. Worst thing that happens is your blood pressure is lower when you’re sleeping.) (Anyway…)

The meeting was nearby and, bonus, it came with breakfast. I knew where I was going. I knew how long it takes to get there. I knew what time I had to be there. Add 30 minutes to the start time (because parking, finding room, networking, caffeinating(!)), double the time it takes to drive (because why not), and I’ll step up to the lectern with my beaming smile and dazzle.

Except I didn’t because getting into the car I managed to snag the side of my pants leg. Rush back inside, change pants, transfer all pocket detritus, check mirror, gag at how poorly it goes with previously chosen sport coat, rummage through closet for more appropriate coat, transfer jacket pocket detritus, check mirror, declare myself presentable, back out to the car.

I lost my cushion time but it’s still only a 15 minute drive and I had my 30 minute early arrival time built in, it would be fine. Until it wasn’t. The 15 minutes delay while I was performing my Superman impression put me on the single lane winding, county road behind a school bus. The first three miles of travel took 20 minutes, with still 7 miles to go assuming no more delays. Like the utility truck up ahead holding traffic back while they cut trees away from the power lines.

To make a long story short (yes, I know, “too late”), I got there with 3 of the 30 early arrival minutes left. I’m not 100% certain but I’m pretty sure the first words I said after being introduced were, “No more morning meetings.” I not 100% certain but I’m pretty sure I said them in my head.

And there you have why last week was not a week I want to repeat any time soon. And that was only 2 days. The others…well, let’s just say I know better than to bring them up.

Do you recycle? Do you know you can recycle yourself? You may be surprised at what you can re-imagine out of the raw material that is you. We were too so we write about it in the latest Uplift!

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Type Casting

Michael 8 Comments

Last week I took a couple hours out of a day and put on Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  It had been forever, or as Holly Golightly would say, just simply forever, since I had last watched it. I think Breakfast at Tiffany’s and I think Audrey Hepburn sitting on a fire escape singing Moon River. It was the first song I learned to play on the piano. The first song that wasn’t a lesson. That was the perfect song in the perfect scene for that part of the movie. A frightened, sensitive girl playing the sure, knowing woman beginning to realize she might not be either of those people.

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Audrey Hepburn sings “Moon River” in YouTube

You know Audrey was never meant to be Holly. The part was supposed to go to Marilyn Monroe. Say what you will, it would never have become a classic with Monroe, who would remove all doubts of Holly’s income source and turned Moon River into a parody of itself. That is if we even still had Moon River in the movie considering it was written specifically for Audrey Hepburn. But its title notwithstanding, this post is not about Audrey’s performance. Nope. It’s about 3 others and then some.

In order of appearance, those three are George Peppard, Patricia Neal, and Buddy Ebsen. Everybody knows George Peppard. Thanks to the A-Team. But everybody knew George even before the A-Team. He was the “name” to get people to watch the A-Team. But who was George Peppard, other than a name? The only movie I ever saw him in is Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Next comes Patricia Neal. Another name everyone knows, even before the coffee commercials.  Odd, I remember the coffee but not the brand that was advertised. Other than one other movie where she also plays a woman of questionable morals, I’d never seen her in any movie other than Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

And finally Buddy Ebsen. Best known as Jed Clampett and/or Barnaby Jones, he appeared in literally hundreds of movies and TV shows. Almost everyone identifies Buddy as the famous former stage and screen dancer. And yet, the only movie I ever saw Buddy play in is Breakfast at Tiffany’s. We could have counted Wizard of Oz but for his allergies to tin colored makeup.

It’s not odd that I watch a movie and have never some or even several of the actors in any other movie. It is odd that three famous people, names I know as well as my own, I had never seen in any other movie (or in Ms. Neal’s case, one other). A bunch of people that if you were to ask me, who were they, what did they do, even for knowing their names as well as my own, I know nothing of them. Couldn’t even write a mini-bio.

It had me wondering, some day when I’m not around anymore, and if my name should come up, will there be anything for anyone to remember, or will I have been perfectly type-casted as nobody special?

There are always people special to us in our own lives, but they will not always be here. They represent the one constant that never will change. Sometimes it takes a death for us to discover the value of life. How do we value it? You can read that in the latest Uplift, Today. Not negotiable.

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There’s no fooling Mother Nature

Michael 13 Comments

We sure pulled off a couple good ones on old Mother Nature these last couple weeks, didn’t we? First, last week we added an extra day to her natural progression around the sun because nobody who was ever important enough (or perhaps self-important enough) to proclaim this is the calendar we are going to use was smart enough to create a usable calendar without readjusting it ever 4 years. And then Saturday night we took an hour away from her because we don’t like when she decided to have sunsets. Well she got back at us for sure.  I din’t know about where you are, but here, after a week of beautiful spring like weather, she gave us torrential downpours on Saturday and snow (snow!!!) on Sunday. Of all the nerve!

The way we willy-nilly our way around physical constants you would think humans are in charge. Ha! You know what we’re in charge of? The universe’s blooper reel! We can start with the clock and calendar. Pick point, any point in space and call it Point A. Now however long it takes for this planet you are sitting on to go around the sun from Point A to Point A is one year. Period. Now… however we want to divide it is up to us. Maybe something like this, 10 months in a year, 10 weeks in a month, 10 days in a week, 10 hours in a day, 10 minutes in an hour, 10 seconds in a minute, and we can make the second as long or as short as we need to make it come out even.  No, after a variety of questionable decisions we finally land on 365.25 days in a year made up of, 12 months in a year, 28, 29, 30, or 31 days in a month, let’s forget about weeks in a month but put 7 days in them, 24 hours in a day except for twice a year when we make one 23 hours and one 25 hours (but make those changes at night so nobody will notice), 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds-ish in a day except on those days we randomly add a “leap second” or two so everything comes out even.

People have a hard enough time dealing with other people, do we really want to pit man against nature? Is it because we know we can’t amicably deal with other humans that we decide we’ll just make up stupid “laws of nature” and that will show everybody else how masterful we are. Guess what? We aren’t! As a species, man is selfish, stupid, and stubborn. People see things right in front of them but claim it didn’t happen. You don’t like the facts? Make up alternate facts. Don’t like what somebody says, make up a catchy insult. Don’t like that it gets dark so early? Push the hours around on the clock.

Nature isn’t like a mousetrap that you can make better. We can argue with each other as much and as long as we want. Chances are, neither side is right. But let the natural order of things go on naturally. Or else, don’t complain when next year there are more hurricanes than last year, that lakes appear and disappear in the dessert, and when eventually the Yellowstone volcano erupts. Until then, be happy you got to wake up this morning. Many didn’t and now what will they do with an extra hour of daylight. (By the way, you know you can get that “extra” hour by just waking up an hour earlier.)

Now, let’s talk about the genius who put 128 ounces in a gallon and said the metric system is too confusing?

It’s time to make a New Year’s resolution. What now? See why we say “Yes, Now!” in latest Uplift!

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Resonating changes

Michael 12 Comments

In the sports world they call it “a stale message.” The coach or manager is a good coach or manager and will continue to be a good coach or manager, but they have been in one place too long, and their message isn’t resonating with the players. They’ve become stale.

My kitchen was stale. It’s a good kitchen and will continue to be a good kitchen, but its message is no longer resonating with me. Err, that is, its layout is no longer resonating with me. It didn’t need a major overhaul. Just a tweak. I’d have liked to have swapped the refrigerator for the baker’s rack and to be honest, had there been more than just me at the time I thought it, I might have suggested going out for a drink after we’d huffed and puffed a major appliance and a freestanding rack loaded with pots, pans, glassware, and for some reason, a bagel slicer across the kitchen floor. But there was no other person, and I don’t drink, alone or in groups, so I kept my reorg (that’s new young adult speak for reorganization) to just countertop appliances.

Allow me a short trip down a short sidetrack. What’s the deal with the 20-somethings (and the 30 and 40-something’s who want to sound 20ish) shortening perfectly good words that don’t take too long to speak nor a genius to spell. Where we old fogies are perfectly content with dealing with our situations, they all have a sitch. (I’m not even sure how to spell that.) and don’t even ask me if I want to “have a convo” when I’m in the mood to converse with someone. Ugh.

Anyway, my kitchen sitch sorely needed a reorg so I had a convo with myself and got to it. Now, I ask you, how much is too much when it comes to kitchen gadgets.  I realized part of the problem with my counter sitch was the number of ladles (lades?) and turners (spats) that I had. And the number was too many, so those got thinned. The coffee brewer and tea kettle and their requisite accompaniments (go-withs?) took up much too much too much counter space, and the herb garden was monopolizing a perfectly good tea cart. I figured (figged?) if I could harness these three areas, I’d be much happier and believe me, a happier me is easier to live with, and as one who lives alone, believe me, that is crucial! (croosh?)

Well, to make a long story short (and you’re saying why couldn’t I have decided to do that two paragraphs ago), after several attempts I came up with an arrangement I can be happy with. (No, it wasn’t the same one I started with!) Oddly enough, my tea paraphernalia was much too much for the tea cart which then became a perfect spot for a coffee station. And now my kitchen is resonating again!

But just to be sure about things, if you should happen to stop by and visit, don’t be surprised if I ask if you’d like to move a refrigerator. Or at least have a convo about it.

Few times in life do moments of self-care become gifts for others. In this week’s Uplift we talk about how we take the things we enjoy doing and try to add joy to the lives of others with them.

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Brain Drain

Michael 5 Comments

I cleaned out my refrigerator last week and that reminded me that I haven’t cleaned out my brain in a while.

We might as while start at the refrigerator. Is there anybody else in the world who has as many condiments in their refrigerator as I do? Perhaps not so many condiments as condiment containers. Every time I get having just a little in the bottle, instead of fighting with it to get the last drop or just chucking whatever is left down the drain so I can recycle the container, I use the leftovers to make a sauce or my own condiment. Except I never label anything so weeks later I’m left wondering is that bottle the vinaigrette or plain old mustard, and which ketchup bottle is really barbecue sauce. This is why I now have a Sharpee tied to the refrigerator door! Someday I’ll remember to use it.

That just reminded me, sometime last summer, during picnic season when condiments are often on sale, over on the ROAMcare site, we posted, “Life is Like Condiments,” which was a really fun post to write. This isn’t a part of my brain dump but it popped into my head so I thought I’d pop it into yours. You should pop over and read it.

Also last week, my furnace stopped furnacing (which, by the way, spellcheck accepts as a real word – who knew?). Perhaps that’s why I decided to clean the refrigerator. I was already cold, why not go all in! Fortunately last week was full of spring like weather and it was only a day waiting on the part, so I simply supplemented what heat the house held on to with a trusty space heater during the evening hours when the sun stopped streaming through the windows. I’ll often have a space heater running under my desk to keep the toes warm and think nothing of it, but last week I worried greatly for those 3 or 4 hours, what this will do to my electric bill. For some reason, my mind flashed on an old standup bit from the 80s. I can’t recall who the comedian was, someone who often included his family into his routines, like Ray Romano or Jeff Foxworthy. The bit was about leaving the doors open in the summer and air-conditioning the whole neighborhood. “I went out and saw those dials spinning on the meter like a roulette wheel. Somebody please turn something off!!” he shouted, and it just cracked me up. The random things that randomly pop into my head.

Sometime after we crossed into February I noticed the gym is not as crowded as it was in January. Did everyone’s resolutions reach their expiration dates???

Also last week (a lot happened last week), a friend of mine asked if I decided where I will be going on vacation this year. On the surface it seems a reasonable question, except that it came out sounding as though I go somewhere every year. Perhaps once upon a time I would have made an annual trek to somewhere from home, but for the last dozen or so years, there are more that I have gone nowhere than anywhere, and when I had, it often was without planning. I would decide I want to go somewhere, find a good fare to transport me and a decent hotel to lodge me and off I’d go. Naturally though, now that she planted the seed, I felt the need to water it, so my browser history is now filled with vacation spots near and far. And I just know I’ll end up on my patio all summer.

Well, my brain feels much lighter now. Thank you for your patience!

Not always are life’s lessons found in expected settings. Sometimes we discover more behavior we would do well to imitate in unusual learning places. We write about two of these and turning our actions into life assets in this week’s Uplift, Actions Matter.

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