Marlene McKay's Memorabilia

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.

What is up with the bad attitude at the half-time show miss flip off the world? Who were you flipping off, and why? Weren’t you getting paid enough money to sing your song and prance your half naked body across the stage? Didn’t you care that children might be watching? Don’t you care that you are supposed to be a positive role model? Do you want all of the kids that watched you flip off the world to flip off people at school or at home and get in trouble for imitating something you did?

You should grow up and apologize. And then you should return all of the money you were paid for the show.

Guest post by Mary Beckwith

Isn’t it fantastic how quickly technology is advancing in our lifetime? Every now and then I stop and look around and take a few minutes to be grateful for all of the modern conveniences of today’s life. My kids laugh when I tell them about how difficult it used to be do do things long-distance when I was younger. And by “younger” I mean back in the ’70s, which to me seems like last year!

I can still remember the telephone call that came into the house late one night to my parents that my oldest brother had been arrested for a prank that he and a couple of friends pulled when they were in college. Seems that the police didn’t have much of a sense of humor back then and charged them with grand larceny theft. Seems that they had relocated a friend’s stereo out of his dorm room, and by the time the friend realized that it was just a prank the court system had a very firm hold on the perpetrators.

Finding a california criminal lawyer was not a simple task back then; there was no internet to be able to just go to the computer and “Google” los angeles criminal defense lawyer in the search bar. Having been a teenager back then, my parents tried their best to keep all of the details from me, and the rest of the kids, but I know that they spent a lot of time on the phone behind closed doors and that somehow they ended up hiring a criminal defense attorney los angeles to represent my brother.

To be perfectly honest, if something like that happened to our family and there was no Internet to turn to, I don’t have a clue where I would go for information like that. Maybe call a local lawyer and ask him for a referral? All I can say at this point in time is, I’m really glad that we have the Internet – it is a fantastic source of information. One drawback, though, it does not help us learn to delay gratification! Everything is right there immediately!

I’ve noticed that credit card companies from time to time decide to change my credit card number.  They say it is for security reasons, and I can understand them trying to be “secure” and all of that, but it is a huge aggravation on two levels.  OK, maybe three levels.  First of all, I’ve memorized my credit card numbers, and it is hard to “forget” the numbers I’ve memorized and learn new ones.  Second of all, I have the credit card number listed for automatic charges on a lot of accounts, and now I have to notify them all of the change.  On the third account, every single time that they do this to me, the very first billing cycle after the account number changes, there are fraudulent charges on my new account number!  How is that being more “secure?”  So I have to challenge the charges, which is a royal pain in the neck!

Well, it is snowing today, but I’m going to go out cross country skiing in it anyway for a little while.  I enjoy the exercise, and I enjoy the peace and quiet of skiing on a nice trail, the snow falling gently around me.  The beauty of the countryside is something that brings a tranquility to my soul that is hard to describe.  I really enjoy being outside when it is so very quiet that all I can hear is my own breath and the swish of my skis.