Creating a Swipe File

http://abundance-blog.marelisa-online.com/2008/08/29/how-to-create-a-swipe-file-to-jump-start-your-creativity/
A Swipe File for Creativity is a bit different take on the decorating/design files that women have long been encouraged to keep. I love magazines because of that "what grabs me about this page" factor.
"Swipe files are a collection of excellent material—or cool ideas–that provide a great jumping-off point for anybody who needs to come up with lots of ideas, whether you’re a graphic designer, copywriter, author, and so on."
Instead of watching the evening news, I scroll through design, wedding, art, food sites on google reader and go to sleep with more interesting, more positive images for my subconscious to play with. Try it. You might like it.

Helicopter Moms

Helicopter Moms are basically moms who closely monitor the progress of their college/university children and give feedback to the administration if they feel they are not receiving value for the tuition they are paying.

Society understands hyper-vigilance when it comes to investing in the stocks or housing market or running a business. Maybe you totally trust your broker and your real estate agent and your manager but one still protects one's investment by measuring performance against expectations.

I put my money into the education of my family. Twenty-eight years ago when I was putting hubby through, it was customary for the spouses to attend the Wednesday Eucharist Service and have lunch in the theology center. I knew all of my husband's classmates, their spouses and children and his professors. Most of the spouses proofread assignments and had a grasp of what was covered in the textbooks and discussed in the classroom.

Twenty-some years later, the women who put hubby through are now putting children through. A helicopter mom is usually giving the identical educational support to her unmarried children as a married student would receive from a spouse. This is a multi-cultural world and I doubt that I am any more involved than a Jewish mom, or a Greek mom or an Italian mom or an Islamic mom or a Chinese mom or a Japanese mom, etc., etc., etc. I doubt that I have a greater vested interest in the ultimate goal of my children getting jobs that support a comfortable lifestyle than the spouses with children investing in their futures. Most helicopter moms want their adult children to qualify for jobs that pay enough that they won't be a cash drain after graduation.

Successful people tend to have mentors and clerical support and people who free up their time so they can concentrate on what will best further their goals. The administrators who write about the lack of self-sufficiency in today's students are probably not that self sufficient themselves. I suspect that not only does the university hire support staff for them, they also hire or delegate out household and personal chores so they can churn out the papers that build their careers.

Motivation for Exercising

Here are 2 youtube links to inspire you to push away from the computer and get some exercise.

Over 10,000 people attended the funeral of Israel Kamakawiwoʻole an amazing Hawaiian singer and musician. He died at 38 of respiratory failure. This is a tribute video to someone who clearly loved his life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr-alr7P_qk

I love the way this video of Alive by Edmund begins and ends but I wish the middle part wasn't about extreme activities that I could only in a Second Life scenario. I wish someone would redo it changing the entire middle section to reflect more achievable ways of feel alive through physical activity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxaAfaCln8&feature=related

Marketing to Kids

The Oreo Episode of Seventh Heaven
http://bmimedical.blogspot.com/2008/08/oreo-episode-of-7th-heaven.html
I spent a fair bit of time trying to understand marketing this year. My son was taking a marketing course and I read whatever is lying around so I found all these links and navigated myself though the marketing strategies of various companies. It was really quite fun for someone interested in what's happening with the English language. Who knew that soda pop companies refer to their products as hydrating beverages?

I don't watch Seventh Heaven because real life clergy families get into way more interesting trouble. However if you take the time to open the above link, you will get to watch an episode of Seventh Heaven build around Oreo cookies. If you get stuck in a social situation where you end up watching a movie or a tv show or a video game that is torture to watch, add a little interest to the situation by watching the product placement strategy. I want to watch the Oreo cookie episode again myself because I didn't count but some marketing guy figured out the maximum number of times one could say Oreo while still maintaining a story line.

The Financial Sector

Jobs are a bit tight so it took a few months for my daughter to land her first job despite being on the Dean's list. She was hoping to work in Human Resources but was offered a job in the banking sector. My dad was a Scottish Presbyterian farmer and he divided the world into those who were straight (impeccably honest) and those who weren't. And it was generally known that the narrow, straight path led to reward and being crooked led to ruin.
The 60s broadened a whole lot of societal rules and being a person of my times, I'm much more relaxed about life than my dad. He got up at exactly the same time every day, ate by the clock, knew what day to plant and what day to harvest and read from the Book of Proverbs before falling asleep.
You think your own apple isn't falling anywhere near your father's but the words that came out of my mouth sounded like I was channeling his spirit. I heard myself saying to my daughter, a banking job offers security but if you take it you cannot deviate from being straight for even a second. Every single thing you do has to line up with generally accepted accounting principles. You are entering a world where people end up in prison because they let down their guard and made one little exception to the guidelines and it snowballed into an avalanche. If you enter that world, you must be disciplined and focused enough to walk the narrow road every minute of every day.

The Bridge Builder

I've been thinking a lot lately about this poem I learned from my mother long ago. Usually when a public figure is disgraced, it's not because of a lack of knowledge. It's usually a failure to remember at the right moment a commandment or verse they memorized as a child in Sunday School or Synogogue or mosque. Build a bridge.

The Bridge Builder
-- Will Allen Dromgoole

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim, near,
"You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again must pass this way;
You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you a bridge at the eventide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head:
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building the bridge for him."

Another Anniversary

Updated my profile. We've been married 28 years and our oldest has turned 27. We spent the night at a marina motel about an hour's drive from home. We slept through our first anniversary because we had a brand new baby and we pretty much slept through this anniversary just because we could. There's a really beautiful park with tons of flowers that we could walk through. It ended near an ice cream parlour. We'd emerge from our room, walk through the park, order a single dip of ice cream in a cup and then head back to the privacy of our rooms. Being old married couples, we'd taste one another's ice cream and over the course of the 24 hours sampled 6 different flavours. So now we know that Stephen's favourite is mango and I like picking out fresh fruit and having it blended into vanilla yoghurt. Checkout time was 11 and we couldn't make the journey home until after our 4 o'clock doctor's appointments so we decided to fill in the time at the local library. By chance, an old friend was also at the library so we got caught up to date on a choral singing group we used to belong to. Overall we had such a pleasant time that we've decided that from now on we're going to celebrate our anniverary quarterly. Both Stephen and I are healthy but our doctor thinks that now we are over 55, he should see us four times a year so that works out perfectly with our mini-anniversary plans.