Dreaming is something we all do. We dream at night whether or not we remember that we did dream after waking up the next morning. We daydream as well during the day (isn't that what daydream means?), but we may not daydream everyday. Last week, especially last Friday, this whole country did a lot of dreaming, both day and night. We all dreamed about winning $656 million from the Mega-Million lottery.
Last week, along with everyone else, I spent $5.00 playing the lottery. I dreamed, along with everyone else, about what I would do if I won the lottery. I dreamed about paying off my debts. I dreamed about buying various things. I knew I couldn't spend all that money on myself, so I thought about how I could put some of that money to use helping others. I dreamed about traveling to various places. I don't think any of my dreaming was vastly different from what other people were dreaming about last week. That was one aspect that made last week a shared experience. We all were dreaming about winning that huge jackpot. The dreaming was fun to do, and it was fun talking to others about what we might do with all that money. For a little while, it was fun forgetting our troubles and thinking about what we would do if we won.
While it was fun dreaming about winning the lottery, I also was aware that winning the lottery could be a bad thing in the long run. There are too many stories of people being worse off after winning the lottery. They would spend the money foolishly and end up in worse financial shape. It would be hard to resist going into a spending frenzy with all that money, especially if you have gone without for a long time. The smart thing to do if you win the lottery is to seek financial advice. You can still "reward" yourself after winning, but you want to set something up so that the money will last you the rest of your life. I think that is one reason some people do not claim their lottery winnings right away. They need time to setup a financial plan so that the money will last, and they need to do that with someone they trust. That does not happen overnight. I hope that is what I would do if I ever won.
Last night I played the Mega-Million lottery again with only $3.00 this time even though the jackpot was just $20 million (just?) . Why did I do that? I have an almost zero chance of winning, but it is zero chance of winning if I don't play. I knew I would not win, but I had fun thinking and dreaming about the prospect of winning. It was a form of entertainment, and I enjoyed doing it. I never spend of lot of money on the lottery. I usually spend just $5.00, and I only do that occasionally. As long as I don't spend a lot of money on the lottery tickets, I don't see the harm in playing. It is good to have something to look forward to, even if it is just a dream.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
Change for an Older Guy
I love using Bounty paper towels. I have used this brand of paper towels for many years. They are very useful for many things around the house, or in my case, around my condo. I would recommend them to anyone.
Then one day they started offering paper towels that you could tear in half sizes as well as whole-size paper towels. Why would I want those kind of paper towels? I don't want a paper towel with a perforation in the middle that makes it easy to tear in half. Why would I use a half-sized paper towel? I have always used full-size paper towels to cleanup the spills that I always make. However, Bounty was not giving me much of choice. All I could see on the Bounty shelves were the paper towels you could easily tear in half. What was I to do.
But I started to find uses for the half-sized paper towels. I put the spoon I use to stir my cup of coffee on a half-sized paper towel. I put my spatula or my big spoon I use when I am cooking on a half-sized paper towel. After cooking bacon in my microwave, I clean the bottom of my microwave with a half-sized paper towel. I even use a one and one-half paper towel when I clean the white board of a classroom. When I use a half-sized paper towel, and it does the job of a whole paper towel, I am saving paper and money by doing so. I have grown to like this kind of paper towel. I would not be happy if this kind of paper towel went away.
Too my horror, it looks like the unthinkable has happened. A couple of weeks ago when I went to the paper towel aisle in the grocery store, and all I saw on the Bounty shelves were the full-size paper towels only. The half-sized paper towels were no where to be seen. My favorite paper towels were gone.
Why did this terrible thing happen? I don't go to the grocery store every day to see if my favorite paper towels are back (maybe I should). Maybe they were out of those kind of paper towels temporarily and had to fill the shelves with the full-size paper towels. Maybe they were not making enough money on the half-sized paper towels and figured they could make more money on the full-sized type. It seems so cruel to get someone used to using a product in a new way, and then ripping that away. I have become dependent on using half-sized paper towels. I miss them. I am sad that they seem to be gone from my life.
I know you are thinking now that I have really flipped. He is not really upset over a paper towel, is he? No, I am not that upset. However, the older you are, the harder it is to accept change. I had accepted change when I started to like using half-sized paper towels. Now I have to go back to using the old-styled paper towels, especially when I was saving money and paper using the new-styled ones? Oh, what a cruel world this can be!
Then one day they started offering paper towels that you could tear in half sizes as well as whole-size paper towels. Why would I want those kind of paper towels? I don't want a paper towel with a perforation in the middle that makes it easy to tear in half. Why would I use a half-sized paper towel? I have always used full-size paper towels to cleanup the spills that I always make. However, Bounty was not giving me much of choice. All I could see on the Bounty shelves were the paper towels you could easily tear in half. What was I to do.
But I started to find uses for the half-sized paper towels. I put the spoon I use to stir my cup of coffee on a half-sized paper towel. I put my spatula or my big spoon I use when I am cooking on a half-sized paper towel. After cooking bacon in my microwave, I clean the bottom of my microwave with a half-sized paper towel. I even use a one and one-half paper towel when I clean the white board of a classroom. When I use a half-sized paper towel, and it does the job of a whole paper towel, I am saving paper and money by doing so. I have grown to like this kind of paper towel. I would not be happy if this kind of paper towel went away.
Too my horror, it looks like the unthinkable has happened. A couple of weeks ago when I went to the paper towel aisle in the grocery store, and all I saw on the Bounty shelves were the full-size paper towels only. The half-sized paper towels were no where to be seen. My favorite paper towels were gone.
Why did this terrible thing happen? I don't go to the grocery store every day to see if my favorite paper towels are back (maybe I should). Maybe they were out of those kind of paper towels temporarily and had to fill the shelves with the full-size paper towels. Maybe they were not making enough money on the half-sized paper towels and figured they could make more money on the full-sized type. It seems so cruel to get someone used to using a product in a new way, and then ripping that away. I have become dependent on using half-sized paper towels. I miss them. I am sad that they seem to be gone from my life.
I know you are thinking now that I have really flipped. He is not really upset over a paper towel, is he? No, I am not that upset. However, the older you are, the harder it is to accept change. I had accepted change when I started to like using half-sized paper towels. Now I have to go back to using the old-styled paper towels, especially when I was saving money and paper using the new-styled ones? Oh, what a cruel world this can be!
Sunday, February 12, 2012
A Sad Weekend
I am saddened this weekend by the loss of two famous people. Whitney Houston died yesterday afternoon, cause unknown. Glen Campbell has not died yet, but he is dying slowly of Alzheimer's disease.
Whitney Houston had a fantastic singing voice, and she was beautiful as well. She has left behind an incomparable singing legacy, and she even performed well as an actress in the movie "The Bodyguard" with Kevin Costner, a ground breaking movie at the time because of the interracial relationship portrayed in the movie. Yet she paid a heavy price for her fame and talent. Perhaps if she had a little less talent and a little less fame, she would have been more able to pay the price for her talent and fame, and Whitney Houston would still be alive today. It is sad when someone dies so young (she was only 48 when she passed after all) and with such a talent, but it is even sadder to think what the drugs and alcohol did to her, that they caused her to lose that talent, and maybe ultimately, her life.
Glen Campbell has a great talent of his own, a talent for singing and for playing the guitar. According to CBS Sunday Morning, Glen Campbell played guitar on many recordings, including at least one recording of Frank Sinatra. He even was a Beach Boy for 6 months before making records of his own and hosting a TV show for 4 years. He has had many hit songs, and he acted with John Wayne in "True Grit". He is 75 now, and last year he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Not only is there no cure for this disease, but it robs a person of who they are, their ability to remember things and remember people. It robs people of their personality. Glen Campbell is on his last concert tour, and his last album is now out. Three of his children play in his band, including his daughter who helps him stay on track, especially during the concerts. His life is slowly ebbing away, and it is so sad to see that happen to Glen Campbell. It is so sad to see that happen to anyone.
Whitney Houston had a fantastic singing voice, and she was beautiful as well. She has left behind an incomparable singing legacy, and she even performed well as an actress in the movie "The Bodyguard" with Kevin Costner, a ground breaking movie at the time because of the interracial relationship portrayed in the movie. Yet she paid a heavy price for her fame and talent. Perhaps if she had a little less talent and a little less fame, she would have been more able to pay the price for her talent and fame, and Whitney Houston would still be alive today. It is sad when someone dies so young (she was only 48 when she passed after all) and with such a talent, but it is even sadder to think what the drugs and alcohol did to her, that they caused her to lose that talent, and maybe ultimately, her life.
Glen Campbell has a great talent of his own, a talent for singing and for playing the guitar. According to CBS Sunday Morning, Glen Campbell played guitar on many recordings, including at least one recording of Frank Sinatra. He even was a Beach Boy for 6 months before making records of his own and hosting a TV show for 4 years. He has had many hit songs, and he acted with John Wayne in "True Grit". He is 75 now, and last year he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Not only is there no cure for this disease, but it robs a person of who they are, their ability to remember things and remember people. It robs people of their personality. Glen Campbell is on his last concert tour, and his last album is now out. Three of his children play in his band, including his daughter who helps him stay on track, especially during the concerts. His life is slowly ebbing away, and it is so sad to see that happen to Glen Campbell. It is so sad to see that happen to anyone.
Friday, February 3, 2012
No Man is an Island
No Man is an Island is the title of a poem by John Donne, an English poet who lived from 1572 to 1631. Why am I bringing this up? I am not known for reading poetry, or for knowing anything about poetry. That is usually left to a fellow blogger Dan Verner, who is a retired English teacher. However in one of my GED classes yesterday, the subject about being connected came up, and John Donne's famous poem came to my mind. I remembered studying about it in high school, which is quite a feat for me at my age. It is a short poem, but a very meaningful one. So I recite it here.
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as a manor of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
As I see it, this poem is saying we are all connected to each other, that when we lose someone, we are in someway diminished. A part of ourselves is gone, never to be retrieved. Even if we do not know the person, we are affected by the death of this person, whether we realize it or not. If a church bell is tolling for that person, it tolls for us as well. A part of us has also died.
I am not sure when John Donne wrote this poem, in the 16th or 17th century, but obviously there was not much technology around then, not to today's standards. I think he would be more than amazed to see the technology of today. He would be amazed to see how connected we are through our social media of Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and the like. But are we really connected in the way John Donne would like us to be? Do we feel the lose of someone on the other part of the world, or the lose of someone across the street? We still fight each other. We still hotly debate the issues of the day, but we debate in a personal and hurtful way. We have the "my way or the highway" attitude.
I wish people realized how connected we are to each other, not by our technology, but in a spiritual sense. We are all human beings, and we have more things that are the same than are different. If we focused more on the things we hold in common, perhaps we would get along a little better. That may be a lot to ask, but if we don't ask, it won't happen.
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as a manor of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
As I see it, this poem is saying we are all connected to each other, that when we lose someone, we are in someway diminished. A part of ourselves is gone, never to be retrieved. Even if we do not know the person, we are affected by the death of this person, whether we realize it or not. If a church bell is tolling for that person, it tolls for us as well. A part of us has also died.
I am not sure when John Donne wrote this poem, in the 16th or 17th century, but obviously there was not much technology around then, not to today's standards. I think he would be more than amazed to see the technology of today. He would be amazed to see how connected we are through our social media of Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and the like. But are we really connected in the way John Donne would like us to be? Do we feel the lose of someone on the other part of the world, or the lose of someone across the street? We still fight each other. We still hotly debate the issues of the day, but we debate in a personal and hurtful way. We have the "my way or the highway" attitude.
I wish people realized how connected we are to each other, not by our technology, but in a spiritual sense. We are all human beings, and we have more things that are the same than are different. If we focused more on the things we hold in common, perhaps we would get along a little better. That may be a lot to ask, but if we don't ask, it won't happen.
Monday, January 30, 2012
You Get What You Pay For
The expression "you get what you pay for" has been around for a long time. It generally means the cheaper something is, the less value for your money it has. The more expensive something is, the more value it has. This is not always true. There are expensive items that are not worth the extra cost. Sometimes you are paying more for the item's reputation and ad campaign versus how good a product really is.
I was reminded of this expression a couple of weeks ago in a very small way concerning my laundry detergent. For a long time I have used a detergent, which I will call brand A, that cost more than most other detergents. In an effort to save a little money, I decided to switch to a cheaper brand, brand B. I did not notice any difference in my clothes with brand B. They all felt the same on me with one exception, my blue jeans.
My jeans felt real nice when I wore them the first day after washing them with brand A. When I wore them a second day, my jeans did not feel as nice. On the first day with brand B, my jeans felt like they did on the second day after washing with brand A. I did not think much of it at first, but after a while, I began to realize why my jeans did not feel as good after washing them. Sometimes I am a slow learner, but it finally sunk in that the cheaper brand was not as good as the more expensive brand. My jeans were not as clean with brand B as they were with brand A. I indeed was saving a little money, and over time, those little savings can add up to a big savings, but my clothes were not as clean.
Now I am have returned to brand A. I may feel the extra cleanliness only in my jeans, but it makes me feel better when I know my clothes and anything else that I wash in the washer are cleaner. I am keeping the container of the cheaper detergent I already have in case I need to wash something and I don't have any brand A available.
Now I understand better the expression "you get what you pay for". Hopefully I will keep that expression in mind more when I am shopping. That does not mean I will always buy the most expensive item. It does mean that if something about an item is important to have, I will be more willing to pay the extra expense.
I was reminded of this expression a couple of weeks ago in a very small way concerning my laundry detergent. For a long time I have used a detergent, which I will call brand A, that cost more than most other detergents. In an effort to save a little money, I decided to switch to a cheaper brand, brand B. I did not notice any difference in my clothes with brand B. They all felt the same on me with one exception, my blue jeans.
My jeans felt real nice when I wore them the first day after washing them with brand A. When I wore them a second day, my jeans did not feel as nice. On the first day with brand B, my jeans felt like they did on the second day after washing with brand A. I did not think much of it at first, but after a while, I began to realize why my jeans did not feel as good after washing them. Sometimes I am a slow learner, but it finally sunk in that the cheaper brand was not as good as the more expensive brand. My jeans were not as clean with brand B as they were with brand A. I indeed was saving a little money, and over time, those little savings can add up to a big savings, but my clothes were not as clean.
Now I am have returned to brand A. I may feel the extra cleanliness only in my jeans, but it makes me feel better when I know my clothes and anything else that I wash in the washer are cleaner. I am keeping the container of the cheaper detergent I already have in case I need to wash something and I don't have any brand A available.
Now I understand better the expression "you get what you pay for". Hopefully I will keep that expression in mind more when I am shopping. That does not mean I will always buy the most expensive item. It does mean that if something about an item is important to have, I will be more willing to pay the extra expense.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Reading is Fun
I have always enjoyed reading, whether I am reading strictly for pleasure or for studying something. When I was a kid, I would borrow books from the library, read them all in two weeks, and then return the books back to the library and borrow more books. I would do that more during the summer when I had more time to do so. I don't quite read that much now, but I certainly do read something everyday. I start each day by drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. That time is my favorite part of the day.
I am currently reading the book 11/22/63 by Stephen King. Mr. King is known for his horror books, but this book is a science fiction book. The main character is able to travel back in time, and his mission is to stop the assassination of President Kennedy. One day last week I was reading one passage where I found that I could not read the passage fast enough. I could not turn to the next page fast enough. However, I did pause enough in my reading to realize that I was having fun, a lot of fun. I was really enjoying myself. It was like I was on a roller coaster, and I wanted the vehicle to go faster and faster on the tracks. The faster I went, the more I liked it. It was quite a feeling. It reminded me how I much I like to read. You almost can say reading is a passion of mine. I just don't read at home. I like to go to Starbucks or Barnes & Noble, get a Vanilla Latte, and read a book or magazine. If I go with someone to a shopping mall, while that person is looking around in a store or actually shopping, I will find a place to sit and read with another Vanilla Latte. Now that I have a Nook Simple Touch, I am reading even more. At least for me, reading is fun.
I am currently reading the book 11/22/63 by Stephen King. Mr. King is known for his horror books, but this book is a science fiction book. The main character is able to travel back in time, and his mission is to stop the assassination of President Kennedy. One day last week I was reading one passage where I found that I could not read the passage fast enough. I could not turn to the next page fast enough. However, I did pause enough in my reading to realize that I was having fun, a lot of fun. I was really enjoying myself. It was like I was on a roller coaster, and I wanted the vehicle to go faster and faster on the tracks. The faster I went, the more I liked it. It was quite a feeling. It reminded me how I much I like to read. You almost can say reading is a passion of mine. I just don't read at home. I like to go to Starbucks or Barnes & Noble, get a Vanilla Latte, and read a book or magazine. If I go with someone to a shopping mall, while that person is looking around in a store or actually shopping, I will find a place to sit and read with another Vanilla Latte. Now that I have a Nook Simple Touch, I am reading even more. At least for me, reading is fun.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Changing My Blogs
In December 2010, I started my first blog. I blogged for over 6 months fairly consistently, and then I stopped writing in July, the reason for stopping mainly being nothing came to my mind to write about (writers block?). Then about two months ago I started writing again, but I wrote in a different blog that had the same name as the first blog but was under my Gmail email account instead of my AOL email account. I wrote more about tech issues in the second blog, and I got at least one comment back indicating that person was not interested in tech issues. That got me to thinking that maybe I should separate my writings into two separate blogs, one dealing with mainly tech issues and the other dealing with non-tech issues.
I have combined my two blogs under my Gmail account. I am keeping the name of my first blog, Blog from a Florida Gator in Virginia, and that blog will contain postings of non-tech issues. I have renamed my second blog Blog from a Florida Gator in Virginia with Geek Tendencies (not a big name change). That blog will mainly deal with tech issues. A lot of my tech issues come from Lockergnome.com, a Geek web site, but I will certainly be talking about tech issues from other sources, including myself. It will be interesting to see how that works out, at least interesting to me.
Amazing, I never thought I would be a blogger, and now I have two blogs. What is this world coming to.
I have combined my two blogs under my Gmail account. I am keeping the name of my first blog, Blog from a Florida Gator in Virginia, and that blog will contain postings of non-tech issues. I have renamed my second blog Blog from a Florida Gator in Virginia with Geek Tendencies (not a big name change). That blog will mainly deal with tech issues. A lot of my tech issues come from Lockergnome.com, a Geek web site, but I will certainly be talking about tech issues from other sources, including myself. It will be interesting to see how that works out, at least interesting to me.
Amazing, I never thought I would be a blogger, and now I have two blogs. What is this world coming to.
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