Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Thankful

It’s that time of year again where we are suppose to count our blessings and be thankful for what we have. One of my favorite hymns is Count Your Blessings. It seems like most church’s sing that around Thanksgiving. Ours was no different Sunday, as we sung it too.

I like to be thankful every day for what I have, not just on Thanksgiving. God, family, friends, a home, food, money, and the list could go on for eternity. No matter who we are, all of us should be able to find at least one thing in our lives to be thankful for.

To all my family and friends, I wish you, not only a happy Thanksgiving, but happiness to infinity and beyond!

Monday, November 24, 2008

How To Be A Good Friend

When I received the mail today at work, and was filing through all the junk items, I ran across something I thought was interesting. It is a flyer from RIPEA. (Retired Indiana Public Employees Association)

In the Editor's Corner there is a list of fun facts, trivia, and other information. One that caught my eye this morning was 'Ways to be a good friend':

*Spend time together

*Be there in good and bad times

*Don't keep score

*Pay attention to the little things that you do together

*Be positive

*Bake some cookies and share them

I could add to this list, but for now, these are good ones to reflect on!

Sunday, November 23, 2008

The Chosen

All of us have been in a situation where we have been the last one chosen, or maybe we were not even considered for the position at all.

Both situations hurt the person who realizes they were not good enough.

Overcoming the rejection is a long, slow process. Life’s short. People need to realize after the game, the King and the pawn go in the same box.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Some People Just Don't Like Me

That's right! Can you believe it?

Just as I get to work this morning, at about 8:00 a.m. the phone rings. I answer it, in my always pleasant voice. The female on the other end of the line asks if Norman is working. I say, "Who's calling please?"

Screaming at the top of her lungs, she responds, "IT DON'T MATTER WHO THIS IS IF HE'S THERE!"

Well, hmmmm, I guess it does matter who you are, to me it does, and probably to Norman too. What if there is someone in front of you wishing to speak to him? What if he already has someone in his office? Should I interrupt him? What if he's in the restroom and your wait time is going to be longer than you expect?

How I really wanted to respond and what I really wanted to say, I didn't.

After a short pause, I asked the caller if she would be able to hold. I placed the phone on hold, went to Norman's office and told him he had a phone call on line 1.

After I found out who it was, I wasn't surprised. Guess there is hatred in the world!

Oh, well, it's their problem, not mine! :-)

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

JJ Rocks

Today on Judge Judy's show she used one of my favorite sayings:

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to have a good memory"

How true that is! If more people followed this rule, wouldn't life in this world be perfect?

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Prejudice

From Wikipedia:

The word prejudice refers to prejudgment: making a decision before becoming aware of the relevant facts of a case or event. The word has commonly been used in certain restricted contexts, in the expression 'racial prejudice'. Initially this is referred to making a judgment about a person based on their race, religion, class, etc., before receiving information relevant to the particular issue on which a judgment was being made; it came, however, to be widely used to refer to any hostile attitude towards people based on their race or even by just judging someone without even knowing them. Subsequently the word has come to be widely so interpreted in this way in contexts other than those relating to race. The meaning now is frequently "any unreasonable attitude that is unusually resistant to rational influence".[1] Race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, and religion have a history of inciting prejudicial behaviour.

I did not make any hasty decisions.

I did not say anything about any one's race, religion, or class.

I do not have any hostile attitude towards anyone.

I do, however, understand history.

The United States Constitution Bill of Rights, 1st amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is America and I live in this country which is free! People, including you and me, are free to express their opinions under our 1st amendment rights.

Friday, November 07, 2008

O

What has America come to? Last night on Fox News the anchors were discussing Oprah and the mystery man. You know, the man she was leaning on, and crying on his shoulder during president-elect Obama's speech Wednesday morning. Come to find out, he will be on Oprah's show today. Some of the anchors were joking if O would have a place in the White House. Can you imagine that! After reading Shelley's blog post:

http://whatifitdid.com/?p=741

I see the Obama family is looking for a dog...hmmmm??

I did hear they are working on replacing the Statue of Liberty on January 20, 2009. The framing is now being built to remove Lady Liberty and construct the new statue. Here is what they are replacing her with:

Photobucket Aunt Jemima

Just found this today:

Photobucket

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

As all the others...

I'm sure there are millions and millions of bloggers in the USA, and I'm sure most of them have or will have a blog about our historic presidential election last night. It's my turn to blog about my disappointment. President-elect Barack Obama, democrat, won the election on Tuesday night. He gave his winning speech beginning at midnight on Wednesday. I missed the speech, but I'm sure the news will have it playing throughout the next few days. I'm sure we'll hear about the 'hope' and 'change' he based his campaign on. He said John McCain and himself made red states and blue states during the election, but we are actually the United States of America. Barack said he need my help. Since I didn't vote for him, he hears my voice and he wants to be my president.

That's what we hear now. Four years from now I'm sure we'll hear the excuse from the democrats blaming the Republicans for the democrats inability to dig our nation out of the recession we are in, the war in Iraq, the economy, Wall Street, etc...

The democrats have won the majority in the House and Senate. 435 House seats were contested with the democrats winning 254 of them compared to 173 for the republicans. 35 seats were contested in the Senate and the democrats snatched 17 to 14 for the republicans. Should be an interesting four years.

Normally, won by the republicans, Indiana voted for Obama 1,367,264 to 1,341,101 for McCain. Mitch Daniels won another term as our Governor by 18 percent, but in the 9th district congressional race, Baron Hill defeated Mike Sodrel by 20%.

John McCain said he always believes in the promise and greatness of America. Americans never quit or surrender. That's right, Mr. McCain! America is great and I, as an American, will not quit or surrender!

I have seen Oprah at Obama's speech last night so I couldn't wait till her show came on today. The title of her show is, "Oprah's Post-Election Special" I was thinking before it came on, I shouldn't watch it, but I couldn't help myself. And just as I thought, it made me sick! Oprah comes out to the song 'America' Oprah has her American flag, waving it, yelling, whoopie, whoopie, has a t-shirt on that reads, 'Hope Won' She said she had two words for America...she then holds up a newspaper with Obama's picture and says, "Mr. President" "Thank God! Thank God! Thank God" she kept saying, over and over. She then said if anyone watching her show wasn't in the 53% that voted for Obama, she wanted us to know she couldn't believe the sorrow we were going through. IF the election had a different outcome, her show would have been from the hospital while she was on life support. She was happy the election was over because she would not use her show as a platform for either candidate prior to the election, but thank God the election was over so she could talk about how she felt and who she supported. Duh! Like we didn't already know that! I changed the channel and now I'm watching The Young and the Restless. Kay Chancellor is still living, Ashley is still looking for Victor, Phyllis is in bed with Nick...

On January 20, 2009 president-elect Barack Obama will be sworn in as our 44th president...A CNN poll asked some Americans if they were glad the election was over. 94 percent said they were glad it is over...

Count me into the 94 percent!

Patrick was up till after 10 p.m. last night. We changed channels between FOX News, CNN, CBS and NBC to keep up with the results. Patrick made me promise before I went to bed to wake him up and let him know what the results were. I went to sleep in the chair, finally went to bed after 1 a.m. this morning, but told Patrick as he came into our bedroom at 3 a.m. Obama had won. He must have not heard what I said, as my alarm went off this morning, he jumped up, when into the family room and was watching the local news. Ric came in and told him Obama was the winner. He leaned up against the stove and said, "WHAT are we going to do now?"

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Did you get any candy?

Friday night was Halloween. Our church had their annual Trunk 'n Treat and everything went extremely well. I was the one in charge of getting everything set up for the Trunk 'n Treat. I think this is probably the 5th year I have done it, but for some reason this year was the smoothest ever.

I made an announcement at church for people to bring in candy if they could or if they preferred not to shop, if they wanted to donate any money, I'd be glad to purchase the candy for them.

I received $120.00 in cash and picked up the candy that was donated on Wednesday at church. The people had donated a huge box of Snickers (my fav) Kit Kats, Reese Cups, bubble gum, Butter Fingers, chocolate bars, Whoopers, Baby Ruth, suckers, etc. My living room floor was covered with candy!

I sorted the candy I had on Wednesday, made a list of what I had, then on Thursday headed to WalMart to spend my cash. I could not believe the people in the candy isle! The people were crazy! I had my trusty iPhone calculator and as Patrick would throw a bag of candy into the cart, I'd add it up! I donated $20 to the cause and when I was checked out it came to $143.00! I had another truck load of candy to sort!

The people who seen me with my cart full of candy said, "I'm coming to your house! Where do you live?" I laughed and said it was for my church, and they were welcome to come on Friday night.

Again, my living room floor was covered with chocolate! I sorted the candy putting the suckers together, candy bars, gum, etc all in a bag. By the time I finished I had around 25 bags of candy!

Friday night I loaded my truck up with the bags and headed to church. As people came to the Harvest Party, I lined the vehicles up to participate in the Trunk 'n Treat. I ended up with 10-12 cars to hand out the candy. I went inside to check out the party and ended up finding 8 more bags of candy to sort! As I was outside doing that and as people came to the party, they were still bring in candy! :-) I ended up with around 35 bags of candy to had out! What a blessing!

Some must have took my advice to come to the church, because we had over 300 goblins on Friday night! Another blessing. I estimate having over 7,500 pieces of candy, suckers, candy bars, etc which we gave to the Trunk 'n Treaters!

The entire night was truly a blessing. Sorry I don't have any pictures to share, I was too busy sorting and handing out candy! If you didn't make it, remember us the next Halloween. Bring your Trunk 'n Treat bag and we'll fill it up!

I wonder if 4-6 months from now if the dentist offices see a rise in patients?