I am getting ready to go out of town for Christmas. As a Christmas gift to myself and my family, I want to quit smoking. I have smoked for about 14 years solid, and a little bit (not a pack a day) before that. I have been taking Chantix, and I am to quit smoking tomorrow. Is there anyone out there who wants to quit with me?
The Emotional Bank Account
Stephen Covey talks about an emotional bank account in his Audio-book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He says that you should constantly make deposits into this bank account, and be cautious of how much you withdraw. In my own marriage, I think our balance is a bit low. I have been making withdrawals almost our entire marriage through my years in college and not so many deposits. My wife is awesome for putting up with all of my taxes, but I see now that I have been a bit selfish in taking so many withdrawals and not putting enough back in.
I am off right now to make one such deposit, but I wanted to write this article really quickly (one small withdrawal from that account) in hopes that I could save someone out there from overtaxing your own emotional bank account. Have fun and Merry Christmas!
Where Is The Line?
Recently, I have been battling with a somewhat embarrassing issue. A long time ago, self esteem escaped me, and a low opinion of myself and what I was capable of doing ruled the day. Within the last few years, others have helped build up this lack of self confidence by providing insight into the things that they feel I am good at, and by teaching new ways to express feelings in better ways. Having learned in these years that the lack of self confidence was unnecessary, I have been on a binge of learning the new me, and have been a bit self centered.
Now a lot of feedback has been coming from different sources showing how far gone with my own self absorption I have been. Not wanting to be one of those self absorbed jerks, I am asking for help. Even looking at this blog there are a lot of “I”’s and not so many “we”’s or “you”’s. Anyone out there with an opinion on finding that line between a healthy sense of self worth and just being narcissistic please post your advice here.
Honestly, the biggest reason to know yourself well is so that you can help others, but it is easy to get caught in a trap. I let the subject of me become my driving force, and lost sight of the whole reason that course was even started.
Online Book Collaboration
My long time best friend and I are doing an online book collaboration called “Momentary Lapse.” It should be fun. Check the link in the next few days to see how it is progressing. We are both fairly creative and let our imaginations run wild. I can’t wait to see how it ends up!
NewsWorthy?
It is not on frequent occasion that I am in the local paper, but this is one of those infrequent occasions. The article makes us sound a bit bad, which I don’t personally like so much, but there are reasons that the negatives are there. This particular class was about 10 times more demanding than it should have been, and the teacher was pretty bad about not telling us what he wanted, telling us to include things that he later retracted, and being very critical over all of the things that could or should be present, without any criticism of what was actually there. That being said, it was a good class and we learned a lot.
Making a business plan presentation in front of these 6 business leaders is something that some people work for years to get. My team was also invited to come in and discuss the plan by two of these panel members, which is a good sign. If we ever actually decide to start a business like this, I can at least say that it was reviewed by two successful investors and business leaders.
Overall I was satisfied with the class, though it was a bit weird seeing the newspaper at my final. We learned a lot, and had a good time. Now I am going to go warn others about the reality of that teacher on ratemyprofessors.
Bush’s Defense
A lot of environmentalists argue that Bush is the enemy of the environment. They often cite his refusal of some clean air extension or debate because he makes some concession to his rich buddies that overlooks their emissions or waste, but I feel that President Bush has done more for the environment than in fact many of his environmental critics.By continuing the war and doing everything in his power to delay our transfer to safer fuels, and influencing the gas and oil prices to stay high, he is able to convince millions of Americans to be concerned about the environment who would otherwise not be. He has nearly single handedly reduced the amount of gas guzzlers on the road, lined the pockets of his friends and himself, and successfully caused every American to at least consider the gas mileage in their current and new vehicles.
Go on with your bad self P. Bush. The Earth loves you too.
Light Chips
Given the new diet craze that everyone is going nuts over, I thought that it would be good to post a cool link about light research that is going on.http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news-print.cfm?release=2003/-073
NASA is researching the properties of light and ways to control it’s speed. They think that if they can figure out how to harness this method for data usage, that information will be much more secure, data can be transferred much faster, and larger chunks of it at a time. They would try to implement light into cables and computer chips for this purpose. I like this idea. If you are unable to reach the speed of light satisfactorily, then why not change the speed of light so that you can better reach it and achieve your goals?
MRSA
Does anyone know what MRSA is? Well you should. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a staff infection. It is characterized by antibiotic resistance to all penicillins (antibiotics), is incurable, lives in the nose, open wounds, urinary tract, and lungs, is super easliy transmitted, extremely prevalent in hospitals, is considered a superbug, and about alot of people have it, I think about 4 of every 10 people.If you have it, you have 3 times the likelihood of longer hospital stays, 3 times the cost, and 5 times the risk of hospital death.
The best part is that it got this way because doctor’s overprescribed antibiotics in the 80’s and 90’s and now they don’t even bother to tell the patients what it is, why they must be careful, or how easy it is to spread!
There are people that have it that have been told just to run antibiotics and beware if they get cut, but have NOT been told to wash their damn hands, not share handwrags, and other basic common prevention methods!
No wonder so many people have it. Is it just me, or should somebody be suing somebody here? The chances that you have MRSA are very high, and the chances that you will get it are even higher, and the doctors are too busy to key their patients in on the fact that it can easily lead to fatal infections, increases their hospital time, is super easily contageous to their friends, and whatever the hell else they aren’t saying.
I know that it must be hard to walk through life and inform everyone that you are diseased, but I think that it is complete B.S. to allow infected people to continue on is positions that allow easy exposure.
There are people in hospitals, restaurants, schools, offices, and anywhere else that you can think of with this shit, and the doctors haven’t even told them that they are spreading death.
If I get MRSA, I am going to sue the green shit out of anyone that I can in order to make my infected ass life as pleasant as possible.
What’s with Selfish People?
Earlier, I was going to McDonald’s to get a coke on my break from work (I work downtown in an office, and so have on professional attire). There I am sitting in the parking lot, blinker on, when this old lady pulls into my spot. I tapped the horn, went to another space and parked. On the way in I said: “I guess you didn’t see that blinker, huh?” She started mumbling something. So I said: “Ma’am? I couldn’t hear you.”She walks in, and I am about to drop it, when she steps right in front of the other fifteen or so people in line and right to the front! I walked up to her and asked redundantly if she had just skipped all of these people, to which she replied that her buddy behind her said that she could.
“Why don’t you just skip everybody!?!” I said, and then stalked back to the end of the line. A few people laughed and she explained that I was just mad because she took my parking spot.
Presumably I had already made myself look like an ass, so I should have explained why I was actually mad; because she was acting like a selfish, inconsiderate ass, and that it had everything to do with her pushing herself in front of people without regard to their own time and desires, and almost nothing to do with the parking space.
I understand that everyone must look out for number one. It is almost necessary to put yourself first to some degree, in fact it is necessary if you want to live a happy life, but when you start stepping on others to get what you want, when you put your own wants and needs above the wants and needs of others in such a way as to threaten and insult their dignity, then I say that it is too much.
Yes, I got into a tiff with an old lady at McDonald’s, but I think that if someone would have put her in her place long ago, then there would be no need for me to look like an ass in front of fifty people.
I also think that a big part of why she was doing it was because she is a little old lady and she thought she could get away with it.
Bah Humbug!
Two Faced
I just watched a lady get pissed off at her kids and start hitting them in the face. They were messing around while she was backing up. They looked over and saw me watching, and so on our way into the building they were being very sweet and encouraging to the kids: “come on now, baby. Watch out for the nice man.” “Don’t get in the way. Don’t run, you may fall.” And looking up at me every few seconds for my approval. “Excuse us. You go ahead.”Kiss ass. If you are going to beat your kids in public, then when you see someone watching you, dare them to do something about it. If she was half as badass as she wants her kids to think then I should have been scared to watch, not putting up with her kissing my ass because she knew that she shouldn’t have done it.
Don’t beat your kids, but if you do, have the gumption to stand behind that, and don’t make a show for the people around you.
