My father was a smart man

When my father passed away several years ago, my mother was afraid she would have to go to work to pay the mortgage.  What none of us knew was that my father had mortgage protection on their home.  It not only covered what was owed on the home, but it sure gave my mother peace of mind.  I never quite figured out why Daddy didn’t tell her he had taken this out but maybe he did and Mom just didn’t pay attention.

Far too many times when one person dies, that leaves the burden of paying for the home they shared on the surviving spouse unless they were smart enough to get life insurance for mortgages.    My father taught us girls a lot of things and covering our rears with plenty of life insurance was just one of the life lessons he taught us.  I sure miss my Daddy.

This is the coolest thing I have ever seen

Animals absolutely amaze me.  The Cameleon is one of the strangest creatures God ever created.  I knew they changed colors to camouflage themselves to their surroundings but I had no idea just how fast they could change colors or the extent of the colors they could adapt to.  You have to watch this video.  It will blow your mind.  I know it did mine.

Ben Stein’s Final Column

Worth repeating:    How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today’s World?

As I begin to write this, I ‘slug’ it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is ‘FINAL’, and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world’s change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton’s, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to.
It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars.

I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton’s is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.Beyond that, a bigger change has happened? I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated.

But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today’s world, if by a ‘star’ we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsche’s or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton’s is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament. The policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin or Martin Mull or Fred Willard–or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But, I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister’s help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.

By Ben Stein

Don’t ever forget to “Seize the Moment”!

I thought this was just too funny

A friend of mine sent me this and I just had to share it with you.  As soon as I read it, I thought “Now I have an excuse!!!”  I bet a lot of women who see this will think the same thing too.  I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.  Well poo!!!!!!!!!!  I changed my theme and lost the picture.  I’m sorry because it really was cute.  Maybe I’ll find it in my email later and add it back in.  How’s that sound?

Remember to thank a veteran this weekend

Memorial day is a wonderful holiday.  It’s where we honor veteran and the families of veteran that didn’t make it back home.  So while you’re having your cookouts this weekend, remember to say a prayer for our troops that are in harms way today and be thankful for those that passes before them that gave us the security and freedom to have the cookouts in the first place.

Happy Memorial Day!!

one-nation-under-god

I’ve been checking into diets online

Since Jayce and I have started seeing each other, I decided I might need to drop just a few pounds.  A woman tends to do that when either the summer is on it’s way or she has a new beau if you know what I mean.  The problem is finding a diet that I can handle.  I have a hard time with a lot of diets.  I was surfing the Internet for diet sites when I came across a Diet program that sounds like one that I just might be able to stick to.  I had never seen this one before so I checked more into it.

My weakness is sweets and snacks.  I love cookies and always have.  My mother was always making homemade cookies when we were kids so cookies mean comfort and love to me I guess.  Anyway, this program has a ‘diet personality’ page that you fill out so they can see what your weaknesses and strengths are with diets and to see if you have any syndromes like binge eating.  You can even calculate your BMI (body mass index) on the site too.  From everything I have read, this is a medically sound diet and the perfect cookie diet for me.  I get to eat cookies and still lose weight.  I couldn’t ask for anything better.

Thinking about going to Myrtle Beach this summer

Even though my mother has a beach house on the Virginia coast, I have been thinking about going to Myrtle Beach this summer with a couple of my friends.  We were checking out Myrtle Beach Resorts online and man there are some really nice ones down there.  If the three of us go and split the cost, it won’t cost us that much each to have a blast.  Even the Myrtel Beach Hotels are beautiful.  There are some that have great views of the beach and are high rise at that.  Some have jacuzzi tubs and all the extras you would ever want.

We haven’t decided just where we want to stay right now but we are all leaning more towards a Myrtle Beach Resort rather than a hotel.  The resort we were looking at is really close to all of the hot entertainment sites too.  I am so excited about going to Myrtle Beach.  At least it’s not the same old beach I have been going to since I was a kid.

Mom’s at it again

Mom sent me another joke and I just thought I would die laughing.  I had to share it with you.

Elderly Road Trip….(Remind you of anyone you know?)

While on a road trip, an elderly couple stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch. After finishing their meal, they left the restaurant, and resumed their trip. When leaving, the elderly woman unknowingly left her glasses on the table, and she didn’t miss them until they had been driving about forty minutes.

By then, to add to the aggravation, they had to travel quite a distance before they could find a place to turn around, in order to return to the restaurant to retrieve her glasses..  All the way back, the elderly husband became the classic grouchy old man…He fussed and complained, and scolded his wife relentlessly during the entire return drive.  The more he chided her, the more agitated he became. He just wouldn’t let up one minute.

To her relief, they finally arrived at the restaurant. As the woman got out of the car, and hurried inside to retrieve her glasses, the old geezer yelled to her, ‘While you’re in there, you might as well get my hat and the credit card.’

This proves that not all bankers are heartless!!

With the economy in the shape it’s in and the banks being so stingy with the money they are supposed to be lending out, well bankers are appearing as a bit ‘heartless’.  Well when I saw this, I knew that this was one banker that had a heart of gold or he sure wouldn’t have done what he did.  You probably saw it on the news but just in case you didn’t, here it is:

American Idol

I don’t watch a lot of TV and you already know my favorite show is Dancing with the Stars but American Idol is one of my sisters favorite shows.  She always records it on her DVR so if something really good is on that show one night, she can show it to me.  Well that boy on the show…Adam something, has the best voice I have heard in a long time.  Man is he a cutie pie too.  I figured he would win the show because I thought he was the best, most versatile and had a range that would blow you away.

Guess what?  He came in second to someone that is also good but doesn’t hold a match to Adam.  I’m sorry but that’s my opinion.  I think I know why the other guy won and Adam didn’t.  I think it’s the fact that Adam may not be heterosexual, he could be homosexual but what does that have to do with the fact that the boy is amazingly talented?  Nothing at all.  He reminds me of Freddie Mercury of Queen.  He’s very flamboyant and puts on a heck of a show.  I really think it’s a shame that America is still a bit homophobic.  I have several friends that are homosexual and that has nothing to do with our friendship at all.  I love them for who they are, period!!!