Daily Archives: April 30, 2008

14 Years Ago Yesterday

children, life is good


I woke up at 4:30 having contractions, but calm, cool and collected despite the fact that the hospital was ONE HOUR away. Waited to wake up Greg ’cause I figured we had lots of time. We finally got on the road at 6 am. Got into the room at the hospital at 7. Joel was born 30 minutes later, after only 2 pushes, all 10 pounds, 8 ounces of him. 8 hours later we were heading home with our new little guy. Easy-peasey, lemon-squeezy.

I have a theory that my labor and births correlate with the personality of the child. In Joel’s case (more about the others another time), that is so true. He is an easy-going, happy, laidback guy. Labor and birth were all of those things as well.

What a joy this boy is to us. Thanks be to God for the blessing of Joel!

Doing Things the Hard Way

computers

I have a computer and it has Microsoft Excel on it. I’ll bet that’s a really cool program, but using Excel for a recent project not only led to me doing 6 times the work, but also I made SIX mistakes. Since this project was about crediting people’s tuition accounts, everyone was hoping to get the real amounts. Not only did I make mistakes on SIX accounts, but ONE of them was MINE (shorted myself over $150!). One conscientious person questioned her total and so I redid the project, WITHOUT Excel, and got the right answers. Of course it’s not Excel’s fault that I don’t know how to use it and of course it’s not Microsoft’s fault that the book I checked out of the library on how to use Excel WASN’T FOR THE MAC.

I’ll tell you. Sometimes computers are more trouble than they are worth.

Nascar Fans being hit Hard with Gas Increases

current events

I listen to talk radio while I cook supper. Today a well-meaning tree-hugger called in with an idea: Let’s have the Guv’ment BAN Nascar for 2 years to SAVE ON GAS. The two hosts thought it was a pretty stupid idea, but I think that was mostly because the guy didn’t have any of his ducks in a row. Didn’t know how much gas the cars even use. One of the callers after him said HE had heard them Nascar racecars actually get NEGATIVE gas mileage. Didn’t explain how that was possible, but wow, what a concept!

Interesting idea, but let’s not have the government involved in this, hey? Do we REALLY want to give control of this over to the people who think it’s a good idea to spend $41.8 MILLION dollars on a letter to say, hi, you’ll be getting an economic stimulus payment sometime, maybe, but we’re not going to tell you how much or when. See ya later.

Read more about the woes fans are experiencing here.

Perhaps some of the fans, especially the guy who can’t believe his fuel cost is going to actually exceed his BEER cost, might consider not going to the races cause it’s expensive to drive big ol’ motorhomes that get like 4 mpg.

I admit I’m not a Nascar fan and I wouldn’t drive 1/4 mile to see a race. Probably wouldn’t even go out the back door if the race was right in my backyard, but I am surely not a Nascar Fan. I also am not denigrating Nascar fans in general, but I have to admit some of them say some pretty amazing things. Nascar is probably pretty darn cool if you like that kind of thing, so there’s a place for it.

But, I’d say, let’s let the Nascar teams worry about how much the gas is costing, let the motorhome drivers worry about how much it is going to cost to get to the races, and the rest of us can figure out how in the heck we are going to continue to pay those prices at the pump.

I’m feeling like it’s time to get creative.