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Thursday, July 31, 2008
From our friend David Miller's blog:
Item Two: My Hobby
Everyone needs a hobby, right? I have one that I want to share with you. I hope that my hobby will become a national movement. If it does, all our lives will be improved.
Do you, like me, get piles and piles of credit card solicitations? I got more and more annoyed with the appeals, until I had a break-through thought. In each of these solicitations is a self-addressed, postage-paid envelope.
So, whenever I get a credit-card solicitation, I just write "please throw away your own trash" on the letter and then send it all back to them - mailing envelope and all. Stuff it all in the self-addressed envelope and stick it in the mailbox.
There is one problem. When you do this, the credit card companies get miffed and stop sending you solicitations. Poor sports. I got two while I was gone to the wedding and they are the first I have had in months. They are packaged and ready for mailing.
There are advantages to this hobby.
1) It costs you nothing. How many peope bankrupt themselves with boats, golf, macrame or whatever. This costs nothing and brings such joy.
2) It cannot be addictive, like some hobbies. If you are faithful to mail back your credit card solicitations, they will stop very quickly. The people at Capitol One are the slowest to get the message, but they eventually get it. Then, you have to find a new hobby.
3) It is good for the environment. Most of these big companies have recycling programs, so they will recycle your mail. Also, they will then stop sending the solicitations to you, and that will help the environment.
I should call this "Save the Environment with Dave's Soliciation Send-back."
4) This hobby gives you a deep sense that you are "sticking it to the man!"
By the way, this works almost as well with those annoying solicitations that fall out of your magazines when you open them. Send them back blank!
One Warning: this will NOT work with credit card BILLS. Only solicitations. If you wad up your credit card bill and resend it, you will be the one who suffers. (I only included this warning because of my fear that Cedar Rapids Bohemies might read this).
Join the movement. Save the environment.
It just feels good to know you are making a difference!
7/31/2008 07:52:00 AM by Todd Bacon
2 comments
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
I want that....
7/30/2008 09:56:00 AM by Todd Bacon
0 comments
Friday, July 25, 2008
Merry-Go-Round rocks
I really don't understand how some people can blog day after day after day. I guess my life is not interesting enough to warrant posting something every single day. Each day is pretty much similar to the one before it. I like it that way. My job almost pays the bills and my children and wife are healthy. I have no complaints. Contrary to the Grandmother and Mary Steenbergen's character in "Parenthood" who claim that they like the ups and downs of the rollercoaster, I believe I'm just fine with the Merry-Go-Round.
7/25/2008 03:26:00 PM by Todd Bacon
2 comments
Order in the court!!
Those who know me very likely know that I like an orderly, structured approach. I shamelessly suggest that I like doing things God's way. During creation, God did stuff one day at a time. Sure, he did quite a bit per day, but he didn't start any tasks and run out of time to finish them.
Unfortunately, when it comes to my approach to home-projects, I don't stick to God's example of working for six days, then resting one. I'm more likely to work real hard for two days, then take 3 months off to recuperate. So, admittedly, I probably don't get as much done as say, my wife - who takes a whole different approach.
Whereas I like to mentally psych myself up and plan for getting something done with enough time to finish it all up, then clean up and get life back to "normal" (where there is a place for everything and everything is in it's place), Jenny takes the shotgun approach of jumping in with both feet and using the time that is currently available.
Hence the relative chaos in our house, conveniently timed to coincide with Jenny's weekend trip out of town to take her mom shopping for her 60th birthday.
I came home for lunch today and my bride decided to get started on painting the entryway and the hallway up the stairs. Betty (Jen's mom) came in to help out. They have only a few hours to work on it, as we are all going out tonight to Nagasaki to eat for Betty's birthday. It will be interesting to see to what conditions I shall arrive when getting home from work today. Jen's theory is that taking all the trim work off around the doors will spur me into action on getting new interior doors installed (something that I definitely want to do, but on my schedule and fitting into my idea of how it fits in with our outflow of funds.) Taking all the trim off is a good idea as it makes painting much easier - so no big deal. I just wonder if it will still be sitting in the frequently-barefoot-traveled area of our back porch when I get home from work in time to change to go out to eat dinner tonight. I don't like disorder. At all.
Due to the recent purchase and delivery of our new living room furniture, I've already chosen to write off our "toy room / homeschool supplies room" as it currently houses our old furniture (which is ever-so-patiently awaiting it's departure at the next garage sale), as well as lots of junk, water balloons, board-game pieces, Magnetix, cat and dog hair and dwarf hamster/gerbil food dispersed about the hard-to-reach areas. I just pretend this room no longer exists. It helps me.
While I was home for lunch, eating some pizza and watching Jenny and Betty slave away, Emily asks, "What's that wife stuff on the side of the couch?"
Our golden retriever Glory had rubbed up against some of the wet paint, getting it all over her right side. Then she decided to rub the wet paint from her fur up against our new leather couch. Fun times. Jenny and I, mostly Jenny, worked on getting the paint off and it came off fairly well thanks to Spot-Shot.
The jury is still out on how well Jenny was able to get the maraschino cherries juice out of the carpet from last night. Jacob took the jar in the loving room and was eating them at the coffee table. He didn't get the lid back on tightly enough to prevent the juice from spilling out onto the carpet when Emily moved the coffee table, turning the jar over. Of course, none of our three darling children noticed the turned-over jar of RED juice (no need to even go into how many times Jenny has told them, as well as anyone else who is ever at our house - NO red stuff in the living room!) The baby-sitter noticed it sitting there while straightening up after the movie was over and had put the kids in bed.
C'est la vie.
This diatribe is what comes of me being pretty well caught up at work. Mayhap I need more to do.
7/25/2008 02:46:00 PM by Todd Bacon
3 comments
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Conservative Texans
Received this from a friend.... not sure if he'd want credit for it.. .but I love it!!
Near Fredericksburg , Texas, where there is a large German-speaking population, a farmer walking down a country road notices a man drinking from his pond with his hand.
The farmer shouted: 'Trink das wasser nicht. Die kuhen haben darin gesheissen!', which means: 'Don't drink that water, the cows have crapped in it.'
The man shouted back: 'I'm from New York and just down here campaigning for Obama, I can't understand you. Please speak in English.'
The farmer replied: 'Use two hands, you'll get more!'
7/24/2008 08:25:00 AM by Todd Bacon
0 comments
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
This stuff matters folks....
By Sen. John McCain
In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80 percent to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.
Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”
Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.
Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City — actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.
The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.
To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.
Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.
No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.
But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.
Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”
The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.
I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war — only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.
7/23/2008 02:03:00 PM by Todd Bacon
0 comments
Thursday, July 03, 2008
The Ant and the Grasshopper
Subject: The Ant & The Grasshopper
The ant and the grasshopper
This one is a little different...Two Different Versions! Two Different Morals!
OLD VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
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MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America 's stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'
Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.' Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.
Nancy Pelosi & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.
Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.
The ant loses the case.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2008
7/03/2008 07:45:00 AM by Todd Bacon
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