Special Day

I can't let the day go by without wishing my daughter a Happy Birthday. Publicly that is. I already wished her a happy day last evening and again today. She has a way of spending her birthdays like I used to spend mine when I was young and newly married - she was sanding. LOL I'm sure she will be blogging about her birthday - including the sanding - and hopefully posting a photo of her spectacular birthday cake! She did promise to post photos of the house since I told her Gail would like to see more!

So this is an especially lazy weekend. Started off rudely tho. My internal alarm doesn’t know that I have off next week so there isn't any real need to be too domestic. Naturally when I woke up at 7:30 AM to hit the bathroom I wanted to make it quick so I could jump back under the comforter. W R O N G. I jumped out of bed and promptly put my foot down on a Stink Bug. So I grabbed a paper cup from the bathroom, scooped him up and flushed him. YUCK! I went back into the bathroom to do what I intended when I got out of bed and lo and behold the damn bug flies out of the toilet! This is not how I want to spend my Saturday morning. Needless to say he managed to get flushed the second time......I have been living in suburbia most of my adult life and until two years ago have NEVER seen this bug before. If you are wondering where they came from, then click my link.

So I'm up and after a freezing walk with the kids made some breakfast and decided to watch one of my DVR shows from this past week. Since I have been totally engrossed with a new book series, I set the DVR to record all my favorite TV shows. While walking thru the book section at Target I saw "Twilight" and my hand just reached out and grabbed it because I remember seeing a TV trailer for the movie. It was listed as a bestseller - and I'm one who like to read the book before I see the movie so I can lament how it doesn't resemble the book. I've not been this engrossed in a book series since Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles or Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children series (isn’t she due for #6 ?) . I was reading in the car in the AM while defrosting my car - at my desk at lunchtime and by Thursday morning I was finished - but headed to the book store after work to pick up book 2. (I should be finished that tonight – only 300 pages to go).

It makes me think back to Melinda's blog about how many people Don't read - can't read. That's sad and scary. It explains this "fast food" generation tho - everything is instant - electronic - e-mails, texts, instant messages. There is even an abbreviated language they use. It's no wonder they can't read - or have the inclination. My God - that would take too much time! I admit I read in spurts now but given the time and opportunity I am a voracious reader. If I had to choose between books and the computer, books will win out every time.

Except of course to drop in and blog.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Please contact your Plan "B" person in my absence!

Northern Lights???

This isn't something I've ever seen living in this area (Malvern, Pennsylvania). I certainly never thought I would ever actually SEE the Northern Lights outside of National Geographic or the Discovery Channel, but whatever this was - it certainly was a lovely thing to see.

I wasn't even aware of it tho. We just came home from a walk and I was warming up watching "The Young and The Restless" which I DVR every day and suddenly there was an almost frantic tapping on the door. It was my neighbor Helen who was telling me to grab my hat and coat and come on out to see the Northern Lights! So I put Victor Newman on pause and tore out the door to join Helen for a short ride into the dark of the Immaculata grounds to see this phenomenon in the sky.

At first I thought I was looking at spotlights - maybe from a new store opening or something shooting up into the sky, but after staring at them for a few minutes you knew that wasn't the case. They were gently moving and the color changed ever so gradually. They didn't move the way I had seen photos of the Northern Lights move - they just looked like long multi-colored icicles falling out of the sky. I'm sorry if you didn't get a chance to see. You can check out more photos here.

So the (un)official report on the news was it was "most likely" thin columns of snowflakes falling out of the clouds that was being illulminated from the ground lights (and evaporating before it reached the ground).

I was sure there was a logical (scientific) explanation for whatever it was, but the "X-File" part of my brain was hoping the 11 o'clock news would report they were vapor trails from a UFO. Oh well.

Common Sense ?

I was told I was falling behind in my blogs. Actually I’ve been hording them – I start them and then I hold back – waiting until I can look at it over again. Heaven knows there are so many things you can blog about given the inclination. I’m the type of person that can handle the big problems, but it’s the little ones that really piss me off!! Lately I’ve been wondering what ever happened to common sense? Is it something you can teach a person or is it something you are born with? I’ve wondered for years what happened to it. Do you think if we had taken the time to teach our children a little common sense we wouldn’t have to deal with all the “warnings” we have now? Think about all the disclaimers that accompany TV shows, commercials, movies, cartoons - you name it. Doesn’t it make you feel insulted? Come on – just how stupid do advertisers think everyone is? How many times have you seen……DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS AT HOME (or something similar)?? My God - how did we ever survive early cartoons – can our children ever again watch Wile E Coyote and his many attempts to catch Road Runner? Might they be inclined to go out and drop an anvil on a neighbor?? What about he 3 Stooges? Talk about poking an eye out! There would surely be a lawsuit! (Another good blog topic)

Maybe if we had let our children scrape their knees and fall down occasionally they might have learned to deduce just how far they could go in certain situations– learn a little common sense. Children are not born suicidal - it is something the environment makes them. So....we have a generation of children that have warnings about everything – living in bubbles – don’t do this – don’t do that. There’s protection and then there is over protection – I’d say smothering, but that would require one on one parenting and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of that now days. And there I go off on another topic. Sheeshhhhhhh. Makes me crazy. How stupid is that?

And why can’t we call these people without common sense STUPID? No politically correct here - they are not intellectually challenged.

We all suffer those Stupid moments from time to time– some say they are blond moments, brain farts, senior moments whatever - it happens. And then there are those that suffer terminally from these intellectual deficits without whom we would not have the Darwin Awards and stand up comics everywhere would be without material.

Kaizen's, Elections, stimulating the economy

What a week! I'm not going to blog about the obvious - the election. All that I will say is that it's a new administration and I hope that everyone will keep the new president in their prayers.

So - in between the rush to find a good time to hit the polls I had two days of meetings. Correction Kaizen . A Kaizen needs to be experienced. The best I can describe is that it is a do-it-yourself type meeting. The "Lean" team comes in an basically guides you thru the process of what you presently do, what your goals would be to improve, and the best way to get to those goals. The whole time they just point you in the direction you want to go and help you focus on the problems you need to correct to get there.

They start by having you write down problems on sticky notes- then they put these on the wall in groups. They then move to an alternate wall and map out your "as is" which would be the problem area you are there to correct. Then it is disected in every possible detail. All on sticky notes. When it was over there was a sea of yellow notes all over the wall (with an occassional pink or green thrown in).

It really was an excellent meeting - tiring but you basically end up figuring out how to correct your own problem. As for cutting out the "waste" - I think we may have killed a sticky-note tree or two.

That managed to take the wind out of my sails for two days - leaving me two days to play catch-up at my desk and explain to customers what a Kaizen was.

So feeling patriotic the need to stimulate the economy, I went out today and spent some money. Picked up a few little things for the Birthday girl this month. I was looking for a nice warm jacket that I could wear when I'm walking the dogs. I didn't get lucky but I did get some for the kids. As you can see they are less than happy as usual. I suppose I do need to fix the hood on Carmel's.

BBC & being home sick.....

When I''m home sick (as I was on Friday- and NOT at the parade) I sack out on the sofa and usually keep one station on the TV. This time it was the BBC. The first program I watched was on Reborns. I had heard the term before but didn't think too much about it - "reborn" sounded like a good name for a baby doll to me. When I saw photos I was amazed at how lifelike they were. It wasn't until I actually watched this documentary that I realized that Reborns take doll collecting to a new level. These women don't keep their dolls in cases on display - they actually take them out on walks in prams, drives in the car in car seats, and spend hundreds of dollars on clothes for these dolls. And no one seemed overly concerned by these grown women playing with dolls......The show I watched was in England, but a glance at EBay brought up 9100 hits on reborns. They appear to be everywhere!

The next show as a documentary about Grannies in their early 30's. It documented families that thought popping your children out While you are children (14-16) gave you more time to enjoy life once they were grown (well old enough to pop out their own). Just how much fun it must be to go clubbing with your mother AND Grandmother ?!?

Next up - brothers and sisters in love. Yep - There wasn't any way to put a good spin on this one I'm afraid. Even if you NEVER met your brother or sister - there is something deeply wrong with you if you harbor sexual feelings once you know the other person is your sibling.

When I overdosed on documentaries and was jarred awake by my friend here I decided it was time to get them out for a quick walk and try to get something to eat. Even tho Friday was glorious, I was wrapped up in a sweatshirt and a fleece jacket with major shivers and came back exhausted. Being sick is a bummer when it's such a beautiful day.

The upside to having cable is I didn't have to watch Jerry Springer , or Maury, Regis and Kelly or the View. If you have cable and get BBC, I highly recommend a peek at their documentaries.

And if you are into British humor, then tune into their new comedy Gavin & Stacey.