Some of my favorite things about the Holidays are all the TV specials and movies. Love the animated Peanuts specials, the claymation specials about Rudolph & Santa, and, of course, who doesn’t love the story of the Grinch?!
There’s nothing like all the marathons on New Year’s Day either. It’s great to flip back & forth between the Twilight Zone Marathon and the Monk Marathon, kicking back, re-couping from the night before.
And movies? I can’t go the season without seeing A Christmas Story, It’s A Wonderful Life or Christmas Vacation. Here’s a website you might like if you’re a Holiday movie fan. Besides great Christmas music, there’s nothing like a good Holiday movie to put you in the right mood for the season.
Thanks to you, we raised over $42,000 for the Ronald McDonald House during our Radiothon. I was moved deeply by the outpouring of generosity. Times being what they are, KOSI 101.1 listeners still were able to find extra money somewhere to help families find comfort at Ronald McDonald House. Hundreds of kids who are facing serious illnesses can stay in a cozy home with their moms and dads during what could otherwise be a terrifying experience. As we bring to mind all we are thankful for this time of year, I’m especially grateful to know I’m able to spend some time everyday on the radio with kind people like you! My sincere thank you.
“There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.”–Robert Frost
As I was doing some work on the computer today I was recalling going to Epcot Center in the 80’s, right when it opened. Amazing! I especially liked the tour of the home of tomorrow where the voiceover man told us, “Some day every home in the United States will have its own personal computer.” Totally sci-fi. “What for?” I wondered.
Well, now can you imagine your life without a computer? Email, online meetings, information, dating, socializing, continuous light rock to help you through the workday at kosi101.com, you can’t live without ‘em! They’re useful at home, at work, for school. They give us something to blame when something goes wrong. “My computer crashed” is a better excuse for a missing assignment than “my dog ate it.” And isn’t it better to say something went wrong with the computer rather than “he doesn’t work here anymore?”
Oh, sure, it can be a real time-waster. But that’s awesome too sometimes. All hail the geeks with too much time on their hands!
“Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done.”–Andy Rooney
One of my favorite things about Halloween is going to get pumpkins to carve. We always go to the pumpkin patch set up by Habitat For Humanity. They’re an organization that builds and sells homes to hard-working people who wouldn’t be able to afford a home otherwise. Find out about Habitat For Humanity by clicking here.
Here are our jack-o-lanterns:
Emilia’s
Sam’s
Here are a couple more fun ones:
Happy Halloween!
“My son has planned a work of art.
On just what pumpkin will he start?
This orange giant looks just right
To shape a face that is a fright.
The big,round eyes are cut with style,
Triangle nose, a wicked smile.
He lights a candle’s small, brave beam
To make that jack-o’-lantern gleam.
Now which one has the brightest glow?
The boy or pumpkin,I don’t know!”
Some perspective in a crazy world is often just what you need to put things back the way the ought to be. A quiz:
1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name five people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.
3. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.
How did you do?
The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers either. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.
Here’ s another quiz. See how you do on this one:
1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.
Easier?
The lesson: The people who make a difference in your life are the ones who care.
My dad & I went to the Broncos game Sunday. No matter how old we get, he’s always “Dad” and I’m the son, the little kid. I felt like a little kid, excited and proud, to be with the greatest Dad in the world as we walked to the stadium from the parking lot. I nearly expected him to hold my hand going across the street! Funny, he was even the custodian of the ticket until we were almost at the gate. I couldn’t wait till he gave it to me, but I was glad he handled it till just the right time.
We had a great time together. It was nice to pal around with Dad. When you get older and busy with everyday life, sometimes you don’t have the time you’d like to spend with your folks. It was great to do it–to enjoy a day with dear ol’ dad.
“Dad, you’re someone to look up to no matter how tall I’ve grown.” –Author Unknown
Seems everyone has thoughts on the proposed $700 billion dollar bailout on Wall Street. What captures my interest the most is the sheer immensity of the numbers. Like a ballerina trying to hug a sumo wrestler, I can’t quite get my head around HUGE numbers like 700,000,000,000. But I found a guy who went about putting numbers into a smaller scale so you could “picture” what they look like. I know, snore. But, check this out, from Brian Bowker:
1 Hundred grains of salt is about how many come out of a salt shaker if you shake it once (if the shaker in question is not very generous). It’s a very small pile.
1 Thousand grains of salt is about how many you get if you take a really generous pinch of salt. This is still a pretty unimpressive pile as piles of salt go.
1 Million grains of salt is slightly less than what fits in a 1/2 cup measuring cup. Still not a whole lot, but quite a bit bigger than 1,000.
1 Billion grains of salt is equal to 25 gallons. If you can picture a 50 gallon drum filled half way with salt, that’s about a billion grains. That’s a lot more than the million that fit in the 1/2 cup!
1 Trillion grains of salt is equal to 25,000 gallons, or 3,342 cubic feet. That will completely fill a 21×20x8 foot room, roughly the size of a small classroom or a large living room. That is a lot bigger than that half of a drum that the billion fit into, and a whole lot bigger than the 1/2 cup that the million grains fit into. At that rate, would you even notice if a few million were added or subtracted?
1 Quadrillion grains of salt is equal to 25 million gallons, or roughly 3.3 million cubic feet. If you took a football field, including the end zones, and piled salt onto it, all the way to the edges, 60 feet deep, you would have roughly one quadrillion grains of salt! Or, if that’s a little hard to visualize, imagine 10 football fields all covered 6 feet deep with salt.
Crazy, huh? But look at the positive side: 700 billion is only two pinches per taxpayer!
“You kids today have it easy. When I was a kid everything was HUGE. My dad was nearly four times bigger than me. You couldn’t even see the tops of counters…. Then gradually everything became smaller until it was the manageable size it is today.”– Bizarro (comic strip)
Our new dog, Coby, is giving me fits. Sure, he’s gentle, friendly, and a well-behaved model citizen most of the time, but…
The other day we were off to Sam’s soccer game and decided to leave Coby in his kennel while we were gone. Previous times we left him home, roaming the house freely; we came home to find that he’d busted out the screen of an open window, into the front yard! Another time he had escaped through a different window into the yard. Still another time, we found another busted screen. No escape that time, but an attempt that left another screen trashed and the blinds too. No way could we leave him out while we were out. (Brilliant, right? Only took us three times to figure it out!)
So, we put him in his kennel. (I can hear the guy from “Cool Hand Luke” saying, “Any one caught trying to escape spends the night in the box.”) He’s in there with some of his favorite things–a couple of chewy thingies, a snack, and his blanket. Seemed okay, except for the sad doggie eyes. Well, when we returned from the soccer game, we were all stunned and amazed to see that Coby had escaped from the kennel! Didn’t try to get out of the house this time, but he escaped from the locked cage! He busted out the side. Latches still latched! Incredible! Came to the door as nonchalant as you please, happy to see us. Ta Daaaa!
Today I’m anxious. We got a new kennel. Different make and model. What will he do for an encore? If he escapes this time, one of us will be wearing a straitjacket tomorrow!
“A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.” — Ogden Nash
What’s happened to people’s manners? Have rudeness and coarseness become the norm these days? I held the door for a man and a woman coming into the building today. They both had their hands full–coffees, laptops, purse; all their junk. They seemed amazed that I did that for them. Not that I’m some kind of hero or something. I don’t need a medal. It’s just common courtesy, right? They thanked me. Made me feel good too.
But you see bad manners, rude behavior, obscene gestures all over the place. Discourteous drivers, surly clerks, loud cel phone talkers, and countless other people acting in ways that show disrespect for others. And what about all the political mudslinging and name calling? We shouldn’t even go there I guess.
I don’t know why things are so uncivil, but I think we need to get back to being courteous and considerate of one another. “Pay it forward.” You don’t really even have to go out of your way to be nice. It only takes a second to hold the door for someone. It takes less than a second to say please and thank you to somebody. Please, let’s try to be nice? Thanks. “A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.”— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I took Emilia, my soon-to-be 15 year-old, to learn how to drive on Sunday. It was her first time behind the wheel, her first all-important lesson. She did remarkably well. We were both anxious. I wasn’t concerned about her being behind the wheel as much as I was struck by the fact that, here I was, TEACHING HER HOW TO DRIVE! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? WHERE HAS ALL THE TIME GONE?! Seems like were “Driving In The Car” with Barney the Dinosaur not so long ago.
As we were pulling into the parking lot for the lesson there was a daddy teaching his little girl how to ride her bike. Was it that long ago that WE were on THAT lesson? Emilia will always be that little girl on the bike with the streamers from the handlebars, yet she won’t ever be that girl again.
Isn’t it one of the greatest things about being a parent? The little moments are the most extraordinary. You don’t want to drive too fast past them on the road of life. That’s the lesson I learned Sunday.
“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”-Dr. Seuss
