Never in my life have I ever found an animal cute. When people gush about how cute a puppy is, or when they melt at the site of a rabbit, I just never see what they’re seeing. It’s not repulsive, either. In my mind, it’s just what they’re supposed to look like. I’ve never understood pet ownership. Why would you have something in your house that may (or inevitably will) pee or poop on your carpet. Once that’s in there, it’s not going away. Sure, you can clean it so you can’t see it. And you may get the…
Facebook “like” of the year
Guess what? I just won a seasonal “Like of the Year” award for 2019! Yes, I just found this in the comments section of this blog. It says that thanks to a comment I liked back in January, I won an award. Who knew? What a great idea? I didn’t even know there was such a thing. What a great marketing idea. I wish I’d thought of this. It just goes to show that even an unknown, middle-class noticer of things like me can win a major award.
He’s always been nice to me
Have you ever had a situation where someone is bullying you, or someone you know, and when you circulate the situation to see if people are seeing what you’re seeing, someone says, “I don’t know… he’s always been nice to me.” This is the bullying equivalent of, “I was just following orders.” People who sit by and let someone they know treat another abusively or poorly under the heading of “they’re always nice to me,” are only enabling the antagonist. How many people could say that Jeffrey Dahmer was always nice to them? I’ll bet O.J. Simpson was very…
Let courtesy be your guide
This morning, I was out running when I saw a woman at a four-way lighted intersection hit the “walk” button. With this particular “walk” button, when you press it, it gives you a 10 second head start before it activates the corresponding green light. So the pedestrian is the only one moving in the intersection. By pressing the “walk” button, this woman stopped traffic so she could walk across the street. When the lights went red, and the walk light activated, she just stood there looking around. The seconds in which she had the intersection to herself counted down,…
LOL or TAM?
If you work in an open office environment, you’ve no doubt instant-messaged a colleague with something funny, and they replied with LOL (laugh out loud). But then, if you sit near this person, you look and listen and realize they aren’t really laughing out loud. So why write it? It’s not like you can’t see. Perhaps we’ve gotten lazy with our acronyms. May I suggest TAM (that amuses me). That would lower the expectations of the originator of the presumed humorous comment and add some accuracy to the result. Or perhaps LIMH (laughing in my head). This tells your…
Marriage: we know so little…
There is no greater institution in the world in which so many have so much experience, and yet we know so little about, as marriage. It’s something that millions of people do, and yet there is virtually no information to draw from when making one’s own decision about either getting married or determining how happy they are in that marriage. We often read about the “top 1%” in the news, at it relates to wealth. There are plenty of lists of who’s in the top 1%, you read about what percentage of taxes get paid by the top 1%,…
The homeless: addicted to generosity?
I love surrounding myself with people of different ideas and perspectives. It’s not very stimulating or interesting to be around a group of people who don’t challenge my thinking or share an idea I’ve never heard before. I’d rather be exposed to new ideas to ponder and consider – no matter how strange or even ridiculous they may sound. Which sets up an idea I heard yesterday. Homeless people are not just dependent on the generosity of others, but nearly addicted to it. Before I started asking questions to make sure I understood exactly what the point was, I…
Pacific Northwest problem-solving
Live in the Pacific Northwest area long enough, and you’ll start seeing some patterns about how people navigate driving and walking. For example, one things area residents really struggle with is what to do when they encounter a car stopped in front of them. It’s not completely uncommon to drive down a neighborhood road and see a car stopped, with the driver speaking with a neighbor or someone they know who’s running or walking. The strange part is that you can almost take it to the bank that the car that drives up behind the stopped car will have…
The choice between building up and tearing down
If your choice is between working on self improvement, personal projects, and contributing something or tearing down something others are working to build, I’m hoping you spend so much time on yourself that you don’t have time to destroy someone else.
How do you define “fan experience?”
I was doing some recreational reading, when I came across this article in the Houston Chronicle by Jenny Dial Creech. The article opens with the line: “The Astros just took another step to enhance the fan experience at Minute Maid Park.” It goes on to tell about how the Astros have extended the netting behind home plate down the right and left field line, all the way to the foul poles. Due to some recent foul ball injuries, including one death in Dodger stadium, where a 79-year-old woman was hit in the head by a foul ball while sitting…