I'm Thinking…No!

Have you noticed lately that scammers are becoming just a bit more assertive?  A little too demanding?  They plunge right in with personal information.  One particularly persistent one tells me that he’s responding to our inquiry with “the information we requested about back pain.”  As neither of us has solicited anything relating to back pain, it’s a little suspicious.  Perhaps overly bold might be a better term for what we’re now seeing.  

Continue reading “Scammers With Attitude”

Just a little more than two years ago, I wrote a piece on obituaries.  There is so much sadness attached, and it’s a very sensitive subject. It reflects a great deal of person’s style.  Some people write their own ahead of time, and can thus make a personal statement about what is and was important to them, while others allow family members or others close to them to perform the task.  

Continue reading “Obituaries II – An Update”

Yes, it’s coming up again.  The snow is melting, exposing all of the dead stuff that I left from the fall.  Little green shoots are beginning to, well, shoot up.  Even the evergreens that were planted in an attempt to look like an Asian, Zen garden are starting to look a bit less tormented.  

Continue reading “Ode to Spring, or More Garden Adventures”

I heard a new word the other day on a news show.  “Catastrophizing”.   I guess it truly is a word, because spell check on my computer didn’t put that little squiggly red line under it.  Does it mean “make into a catastrophe”?  How does one do that?  Is it like a skier that starts an avalanche?  He or she “catastrophized” an existing natural phenomenon?  All right.  I bow to greater minds than mine.

Continue reading “Inventing Language”

This is a retread of a blog I posted some time ago – in fact, back in 2018.  It’s a bit more serious than my usual stuff.  The topic remains timely, and it’s been updated. It follows on the heels of discussions at all levels about where people get their information, and what they’re willing to believe.

Continue reading “When Perceptions Become Reality”

In lessons learned from Project Runway, there is a razor-sharp line between bold innovation and truly ghastly – likely to get you sent home. Certain color combinations, elements of line and form can either please the eye and capture the imagination, or they can cause us to avert our eyes or worse, run to the bathroom.  Now, as we are in the bleakest of midwinters, when the always relevant and lively debate topic of “winter white” inevitably comes up, can there be middle ground, or are there absolutes in play?  

Continue reading “Winter White and Other Fashion Controversies”

The events of early January, nay the events of the preceding two months or since the November election, have sent unfortunately mixed messages about what democracy stands for.  Maybe even that it doesn’t always work.  But the military didn’t seize power.  The protesters eventually went home. They weren’t gunned down on the steps of the capitol, but several hundred have been invited back to answer for their actions. Democracy, embedded in our society, has and will continue to triumph, despite the best efforts of some, lately Republicans to show their true intentions.  Congress came back and completed its mission – to certify the election results.  The transition happened two weeks later.  But we can ask ourselves, with shaking heads, what are the optics of a sitting president stirring up a crowd followed by images of him sitting watching the events unfold on television with a smile on his face, until presumably one or two of his legal team suggested it could be problematic? Then, he issued a half-hearted response.  Really?  The rest of the world was more outraged than some Americans. This the way we do things in the world’s most potent democracy?

Continue reading “Torn from the Headlines Yet Again – the Optics of Politics”

As I was preparing our taxes and filing our taxes this week, along with Her Ladyship’s conversation with our friend, Lady Peacock about her taxes, it seems an appropriate time to go back in time long ago, to a period we thought ripe with prosperity and good will. February, 2020.  Here are excerpts from that blog, along with a couple of strategic revisions and updates.

Continue reading “Tax Time in a Pandemic”

There’s a most amusing series of commercials for an insurance company, in which a gentleman runs seminars whose purpose is to prevent young home buyers from turning into their parents.  They’re really very funny.  In one, they’re guessing at the correct pronunciation for “quinoa”, and in others, he admonishes “You got up early. Nobody cares.” and “The waiter doesn’t need to know your name”.  There’s a stage at which we all turn into our parents, sometimes not in our thirties or forties, but for better or for worse, it will happen.  Her Ladyship and I are well into that stage.  

Continue reading “Turning Into Our Parents”

Her Ladyship is an inveterate watcher of “The Price Is Right”, and make no mistake, it’s a great and classic show.  However, does it make great television to have the contestants jumping up and down and around the stage, screaming at the top of their lungs, flailing arms?  Does this add to the excitement of the show?  Is this why people watch?  And if that’s why people watch, what does it say about a) the content of the game and b) the caliber of viewers they’re attracting? 

Continue reading “The Price is LOUD”