Jul. 16: IDCEAYWTPFriday

It’s Friday, and that means you get a post called I Don’t Care Enough About You to Write in Transitioning Paragraphs Friday.

• All day yesterday I kept thinking it was Friday. It felt like a Friday to me, and I had to keep reminding myself it was Thursday. And even then, when I went to bed last night I thought, “Hm, I’m surprised Sherilee didn’t post her Friday Night Grateful Moment tonight.” Of course, there’s nothing wrong with there being TWO Fridays in one week, so that’s what I’m doing today: enjoying my second Friday.
• (I know, I make no sense at all.)
• I had the weirdest dream last night. It involved my grandma, Debi and Deanna, an ex from college (he was running the college cafeteria in my dream!), my mom doing some weird medical treatment that required her to wear prairie skirts so the IV bags wouldn’t show, and me. The odd thing was that it seemed REALLY real; nothing was so far beyond normal that it was unbelievable. Dreams like that are always a bit disturbing to me, and this was no exception… well, one exception: Jim Nabors was Grandma’s doctor. That wasn’t disturbing, it was just funny. To me. I don’t think having Gomer Pyle as one’s physician would be anything BUT disturbing.
• A new iPhone/Droid app that I really love is Springpad. It lets you keep all kinds of different lists, notes, etc. and, ideally, will replace all those loose notes you keep. You can make reminders by taking a photo or scanning a barcode—that’s one of my favorite features—and create notes about restaurants, various products, books, movies, music, etc. that you want to try. It automatically syncs with your online account, so you have access (and a backup) to your lists wherever you are.
  
  Here’s an example of how it can be used: Yesterday Sherilee posted a yummy recipe on her blog, so I copied it into a note, grabbed the accompanying photo, and now when I decide to make it, I have a shopping list all ready to go.
  
  Even better? Springpad’s phone app and its online version are free. Even if you don’t use the phone app, you can use the online version and you should. So says I.
• Our Internet service is back on at home. I don’t know how long the modem was unplugged, but with the recent office move, I shouldn’t be surprised that things didn’t go back exactly the way they should have. I still can’t get the kids’ desktop to connect. I don’t know what the deal is, and right now I really don’t even care. I’m just relieved to be able to use a non-iPhone Internet connection.
• By the way, Starbucks’ wi-fi is waaay convenient.
• I watched Season 1 of Flight of the Conchords this week. Loveliest Lori got me interested when it first started airing on HBO, and Debi let me listen to a soundtrack when we hung out last month. I knew I needed to fill in all the gaps by watching the whole series. Thank goodness there are only two seasons—I spent a LOT of time with the DVDs this week. The show is hilarious—very quirky and fun.
• Funny how everyone’s making such a big deal about this Mel Gibson thing. We all knew he was a jackass, didn’t we? Why is this news?
• You know what’s awesome about Almond Joy bars? They’re totally health food! Coconut, with all its fruitiness and fiber and vitamins, and an almond, bursting forth with protein and whatever else makes nuts good to eat. See? Health food. So says Dr. Jen, the overweight nutritionist.
• I was getting warnings that my hard drive was full, and I needed to do some cleanup. Last week I used Duplicate Cleaner to free up nearly six gigs of hard drive space. The program finds any duplicate files and then lists them all; you can then select which ones to delete, or set criteria that will select them automatically. I was able to compare my hard drive contents to my external drive (which I primarily use for backup) and it took a long, long time, but it did the job. Overall it was a tremendous time-saver and space-restorer for me. Git it.
• Talking Carl, one of the iPhone’s top selling apps, is all just super silly fun. Our favorite thing is to make Carl burp, because he opens his mouth HUGE and then just a squeak comes out. Anyway, this video made me LOL.
  
  
  
  
  
• We’re doing the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life this weekend. It goes from 10 am Saturday to 10 am Sunday and is supposed to be quite the party all night long. I got the schedule today and found that Victor and I weren’t assigned to any time slots, so maybe we’re not really participating after all. I need to make some phone calls, huh? Not that I’m so eager about staying up all night…
• Last night we watched Deadliest Catch from Tuesday. It was the episode when Captain Phil dies. They’ve been leading up to it for the last few weeks, but the way it finally happened at the end of the episode was truly heartbreaking to me. Phil’s oldest son called to tell the younger one that their dad had died. That’s exactly how it went when our dad died—Kathy called me. She doesn’t remember much of the phone conversation, but I remember every word, where I was standing, what time it was, what I did right after we hung up… It was a moment I’ll never forget. As horrible as it all was, there was something very special about having my big sister give me the news, rather than Dad’s wife or someone that cared even less about Dad.
  
  Anyway, this video is the sweetest moment between Phil and Josh, his oldest son. It’s kind of a killer, but as tender as they come. I don’t know for sure when it was filmed, but they showed it as though it was the day before Phil died.
• If you have a new bathroom rug and you wash it with your towels, you should expect to find the rug fluff on your body for many hours after you’ve dried off using your clean towels, even during a meeting later that day with an important client. Don’t ask me how I know this, and on a totally unrelated note, do you have a lint roller I can borrow?
• In case you didn’t notice, I’m feeling kinda bossy today. It’s just that I’m so full of it! And by “it,” of course, I mean GOOD IDEAS. It would be disgraceful of you to suggest otherwise.

Jack and I are going to see Despicable Me today. Smell ya later, losers. Um, I mean, people who aren’t going with us.

Dec. 21: Christmas spirit

Y'know, it's easy to criticize. Fun, too.

Sometimes I hate the way I view the world. Not that I'm way off from reality, necessarily. But you spend a little time in traffic, or in line at the post office, or pretty much anywhere and you can easily get the feeling that nobody cares about anyone but themselves. And it rubs off; you start feeling like if you don't look out for yourself, no one else will. It's just an icky-ness that can consume you before you notice. Yikes.

So it's this kind of thing that I find heart-warming; it reassures me that the world is a decent place and sometimes people are good to each other just to be nice people (or at least coffee drinkers are...). From KOIN News 6 today:

1,000+ Starbucks Patrons Treat Next In Line

MARYSVILLE, Wash. - One woman's kindness to a fellow Starbucks customer has resulted in more than a thousand others spreading holiday generosity in Marysville.

The regular customer paid for the person in line behind her a few times before, according to The Everett Herald. When she did the same thing Wednesday, though, that good deed set off a chain of 1,013 customers who each paid for the next person's drink.

Many even tacked on an extra ten or twenty dollars, and shift manager Sarah Nix says Starbucks Corporation will donate to that money to the company's holiday toy drive.

A store employee says the seemingly spontaneous pay-it-forward run ended at 6:20 a.m. today.

The name of the iced-tea drinker who started it remains unknown.

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Knowing how airheaded I am sometimes, I'd probably be that 1,014th person that says, "Wow, thanks!" and drives off without paying for the next guy's coffee, and then everyone that works at Starbucks thinks I'm an a-hole.

Merry Christmas!

Aug. 5: The way they see it

Last week I mentioned the quote on my Starbucks cup. A Google search shows that a lot of customers think these quotes are preachy and/or too liberal and don't belong on their coffee cups. I disagree, for the most part. So here are some more, randomly selected.

Americans spend an average of 29 hours a week watching television ... which means in a typical life span we devote 13 uninterrupted years to our TV sets! ... Cutting down just an hour a day would provide extra years of life — for music and family, exercise and reading, conversation and coffee.
--Michael Medved, radio talk-show host

Mother-love is not inevitable. The good mother is a great artist, ever creating beauty out of chaos.
--Alice Randall, novelist and first black woman to write a No. 1 country song

The wise healer endures the pain. Cry. Tears bring joy.
--Erykah Badu, musician

Hot allusions. Metaphors over easy. Side order of rhythm. Message: If you want to be a poet you've got to eat right.
--Nikki Giovanni, poet

When I began writing, the words that inspired me were these: 'A writer is someone who has written today.' If you want to be a writer, what's stopping you?
--J.A. Jance, crime novelist

Children are born with such a sense of fairness that they will accept no less than equal treatment for all. I know – I have three. I hope that as they grow, they keep that sense of justice and learn to challenge the old adage that life’s not fair. It should be, in so far as we have control of it.
--Beth Vanden Hoek, Starbucks assistant manager in St. Louis, Missouri

Why in moments of crisis do we ask God for strength and help? As cognitive beings, why would we ask something that may well be a figment of our imaginations for guidance? Why not search inside ourselves for the power to overcome? After all, we are strong enough to cause most of the catastrophes we need to endure.
--Bill Scheel, Starbucks customer from London, Ontario. He describes himself as a "modern day nobody."

Children are living in a world surrounded by media. If we can use television to teach tolerance and respect and promote healthy eating, we can indeed change the world.
--Gary E. Knell, President and CEO of Sesame Workshop, the producers of Sesame Street

Our greatest prejudice is against death. It spans age, gender and race. We spend immeasurable amounts of energy fighting an event that will eventually triumph. Though it is noble not to give in easily, the most alive people I’ve ever met are those who embrace their death. They love, laugh and live more fully.
--Andy Webster, hospice chaplain in Plymouth, Michigan

A mature person is one who can say: My parents may have made some mistakes raising me, but they did the best they could: now it’s up to me.
--Shannon Fry, Starbucks customer from Ann Arbor, Michigan

What would you do for someone you love?
Would you lie, cheat, steal? Break the law and call it justice?
Would you say yes? Scream no?
Would you kill? Would you give up your own life?
Would you move mountains, swallow fire, keep a promise?
Would you change the world?
Would you change yourself?
What would you do for someone you love?
--Jodi Picoult, novelist. Her most recent book is Nineteen Minutes

A very bad (and all too common) way to misread a newspaper: To see whatever supports your point of view as fact, and anything that contradicts your point of view as bias.
--Daniel Okrent, first ombudsman of The New York Times and author of Public Editor #1

Evolution as described by Charles Darwin is a scientific theory, abundantly reconfirmed, explaining physical phenomena by physical causes. Intelligent Design is a faith-based initiative in rhetorical argument. Should we teach I.D. in America’s public schools? Yes, let’s do it – not as science, but alongside other spiritual beliefs, such as Islam, Zoroastrianism and the Hindu idea that the Earth rests on Chukwa, the giant turtle.
--David Quammen, author. His books include The Song of the Dodo and The Reluctant Mr. Darwin

People don’t read enough. And what reading we do is cursory, without absorbing the subtleties and nuances that lie deep within – Wow, you’ve stopped paying attention, haven’t you? People can’t even read a coffee cup without drifting off.
--David Shore, creator and executive producer of the television drama House

How would you rather spend your time: by tirelessly working to curtail our freedoms, or by joyfully celebrating our differences?
--Anthony Rapp, actor best known for his role in Rent, and author of the memoir Without You

There is a great deal one can learn from their parents. One is eating your vegetables. It’s not that your parents are getting you to eat them, it’s that they are teaching you that not everything in life is going to be sweet.
--David Warstler, Starbucks customer from Massillon, Ohio

I used to think that going to the jungle made my life an adventure. However, after years of unusual work in exotic places, I realize that it is not how far off I go, or how deep into the forest I walk that gives my life meaning. I see that living life fully is what makes life – anyone’s life, no matter where they do or do not go – an adventure.
--Maria Fadiman, geographer, ethnobotanist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer

Scientists tell us we only use 5% of our brains. But if they only used 5% of their brains to reach that conclusion, then why should we believe them?
--Joseph Palm, Starbucks customer from Oshkosh, Wisconsin

People could become better than they are right now by doing one thing: reading! This neglected activity is a pathway to greatness. By reading, people open their minds to be mentored by others whom they may not have the pleasure to meet due to time and space differences. C.S. Lewis, Socrates and Billy Graham are all available to talk when I open a book to listen.
--Sarha Neri, reading teacher at Las Palmas Middle School in Covina, CA

Risk-taking, trust, and serendipity are key ingredients of joy. Without risk, nothing new ever happens. Without trust, fear creeps in. Without serendipity, there are no surprises.
--Rita Golden Gelman, author of Tales of a Female Nomad. She has had no permanent address since 1986.

Do not kiss your children so they will kiss you back but so they will kiss their children, and their children’s children.
--Noah benShea, poet, philosopher and author of Jacob the Baker, Jacob’s Journey and Remember This My Children

Source: Starbucks

Have a good week, people.

—Jen