Contribution by Stevie Kirby

My mom lives so far out in the country that she doesn’t have access to too many things. The closest grocery store is about 50 miles away from her house. I don’t know how she does it, but she loves it out there. I could never be that far away from convenience! The utility company doesn’t even offer internet connections out there, so she had to get wild blue satellite internet to keep in touch. I will never understand why after so many years of living in Chicago mom felt like she needed to move to the country. She raised my sisters and I to be city girls through and through, and then all of a sudden she was sick of the lifestyle. I’m supportive of her decisions as long as they make her happy. She comes to see us pretty often anyways, so the way I see it, she gets the best of both worlds. She has her peaceful country life, and then she can come and see her children and grandchildren in Chicago whenever she wants to get back to the faster pace.

I was reading an article on the Time.com website about how overpopulation is one of the largest issues that the world needs to address if we want to curb some of the environmental problems.  The supply and demand imbalance is largely contributing to the skyrocketing food and energy prices.

One of the things that I found interesting about this article was the proposition that the most successful way to control overpopulation is to put women in control of their own procreation.  In countries where women have access to birth control, the birth rate drops.  I imagine that’s very true, common sense would dictate that most women would not want to have a lot of children – children are a lot of work, and are expensive to care for! 

I was reading on the BBC website that a man from Milwaukee WIsconsin was been arrested for shooting his lawn mower with a sawed off shotgun.  He told police “it’s my lawnmower and my yard so I can shoot it if I want.”  He has been charged with disorderly conduct and illegal possession of a sawn off shotgun.

I’m no mechanical expert, but I don’t think shooting a lawn mower will “fix” whatever was wrong with it!  The story does not give a reason for the shooting, so I don’t know if he was mad that the mower wouldn’t run properly, or if he was simply mad that he had to mow the lawn and decided that if he killed the mower then he wouldn’t have to mow the lawn.

Oh, the world is full of nut cases!

Recently I was given a list of self-help books that a successful sales organization uses to help their sales agents hone their people skills. Rather than running down to the book store and buying them I decided to try to find some of them for sale at bargain prices online. That’s when I found a shopping site called become.com. The become.com shopping website is different than any other shopping website I’ve seen before.

In addition to being able to search through a lot of different vendors for an item like white teen desks or custom suggestion cards the site also offers comparison reviews and an entire section of tips about products and “how to” do things, like how to take care of your fingernails and how to pick out the best vacuum cleaner for your needs.

While I was browsing around, looking at the listings of books I realized that this might be a good website to use to buy the baby shower present that I’m going to need next month for Sarah. I found a lot of cute crib bedding, and I’m having a hard time choosing between the green and black crib bedding and the girl farm crib bedding. I think I’m going to need to find an excuse to go to Sarah’s house to get a sneak peek at the nursery before I decide for sure what to buy.

Guest post from: Constance Rodgers

It’s hard being the youngest in a room and at my job, that’s always the case. I work for a restaurant marketer and there’s always some kind of fire to put out but I feel like being in such a professional, fast paced environment makes sure I learn something new each and every day. If only I hadn’t waited so long to graduate and had been doing this for two extra years! My bosses seem to really see something in me and they’re always giving me some kind of cool assignment like looking up card services or talking to a vendor about price and it’s only a matter of time before I think I get promoted. I already make more than a lot of my friends who have jobs right out of school so I’m doing pretty well for myself and don’t think I’ve got too far to go! I love this place and I feel like I’m lucky to have fallen into a job I really see myself staying at for the long term.