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On the one hand, the drive from New York to Chicago can be pretty long and boring. On the other hand, it can be an opportunity to get a lot of work done if someone else is driving. I was typing in my laptop computer while my wife was driving. (Not recommended to type on your computer while you are driving!) I was trying to meet some deadlines but my battery wasn't up to the task.
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A self-respecting hummingbird would never have been caught where we used to live, because there were just way too many people. But now we are in a quieter area where we get to see those little guys. They're the original helicopters you know. They hover; they dart around with their wings moving so fast you can hardly see them. If you want to have them visit your place, your best bet (My wife tells me) is to hang a hummingbird feeder outside. You fill it with this sweet sugar nectar, (It's delicious. I tried some) and before long they zoom up to that feeder, they insert their long straw, I mean beak, and then they start loading up on the sweet stuff.
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It was a steep trail! It was during the summer and we were up about 12,000 feet on this mountain. Of course the air was pretty thin, but it was worth the climb because my wife and I were hiking up to this magnificent glacier. Now, you can't see it from the road, but as you climb the mountain, you finally get a peek at it near the top of the trail. That would be shortly before I collapsed from oxygen deprivation. There's this beautiful white blanket on top of the mountain, especially at the end of the summer. Actually, it looked more beautiful from a distance.
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Once a year, it's gets to be that time again-annual physical checkup. I know it's important, but that doesn't mean I have to get excited about it. I mean, they're going to poke me, and they're going to take my blood, and they're going to analyze me, and they're going to weigh me, and they're going to test me and hook me up to machines. Of course one of those is especially important in light of my family's cardiac history. Sometimes they give me an electrocardiogram; otherwise known as an EKG. And in a sense, that EKG gives information you couldn't get without it. It's sort of a picture of what's really going on inside my heart.
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Our friend, Kathy, has walked to get around most of her life. Recently she started floating. Yeah, she got the glow, a new bounce in her voice when she answers the phone, a new confidence. Kathy's more alive than we've ever seen her. Now, what magic could bring about all these wonders? If you haven't guessed, you've been away too long. She's in love! She's in her twenties, and this is her first really big romance. It might be her lifelong romance. It's pretty exciting to watch.
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For many years I was kind of an old fashioned sort of guy in shaving. You know, I wasn't going to have any of those electric shavers for me. I've sort of succumbed now. But for many years I shaved, well, what I thought was like real men. Which meant cooking my beard with hot water first. And that required filling that sink with hot water; as hot as I could stand it. Now, in order for that to happen, the sink has to be able to hold water for a few minutes. And you know what I've noticed traveling around? They don't all do it. I can get them all full; I just couldn't keep them all full. So I'd close the drain, but they just didn't all hold water. I have to keep filling the sink, filling the sink because it leaked.
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My son and I were trying to remember those basic food groups the other day. And we decided that there's one more than we learned in school. Haven't they added junk food as a basic food group? The problem with all that stuff, you know, the chips, candies, and cookies. They're habit forming! A long time ago, before you could actually skip the commercials, there was one that showed a well-known comedian reaching into a bag for one chip, then he got another and another. And he finally says, "You can't eat just one."
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I've been short and I've been tall. When I interviewed some professional football players, I had to fully extend my arm in order just to get the microphone up to their mouths. I was short. And then I went to Singapore and the Philippines, and I was tall! When I was in Manila I thought I could be in the NBA; I could play professional basketball there. Yeah, I was tall there. Of course, it's all a matter of what standards you compare yourself to. With that in mind, I have some great news for you this Christmas. Man, you are rich!
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One of the nice things about our yard there in New Jersey was the trees. One of the frustrating things about that yard was the trees. See, every fall we would take out about a hundred bags or more stuffed with the leaves that come from those trees. We appreciate those leaves most of the year, but there is a little month there where they're not much fun at all.
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We've all had our share of weathering recessionary economies, and sometimes it's hard to find a business that isn't hurting financially at times like that. But I have this friend, George; he's a funeral director. Dealing with him is quite an undertaking. He has an interesting approach to this whole recession thing and whenever the financial tide goes out, he just sort of cruises his way through it. Now, it's true that in a bad economy people might choose a no-frills casket over the deluxe model, but the fact is that George has a steady flow of business no matter what happens to the economy. He's not in construction for example when people might stop building houses. But people aren't going to stop dying. So George has business. He's pretty secure because he has a source that doesn't really depend on the economy. So do you.
