Waiting – Take 1

You arrive for an appointment and the person you are meeting is on the telephone. They wave you into the office. You go in, and sit in front of their desk and listen to them talk, feeling uncomfortable. You are uncomfortable both because you have to wait, and because you seem to be eavesdropping on their call.

Finally, they start to make apologetic motions, but they continue the conversation. You begin to get irritated, because you had an appointment and they should not have taken the call in the first place. By the time they hang up, you are pretty hostile. The meeting goes poorly. You leave, and you spend the rest of the day irritated. (more…)

“What’s for dinner?” The happy children ask. “Chili,” replies the mother. One child is very happy; the other says “Yuck, chili again?”

Most of us still live in households where the food preparation responsibilities are not equally distributed.
Several years ago, I began writing books in my spare time. The family decided that maybe they would help with meals. First, they tried to cook together, and it didn’t work very well. It is hard for three people to agree on most anything.

Next, they each tried to take one night to cook. That worked much better. Suddenly, we had the Indian food night, the vegetarian night and the grilled ham and cheese night.

To make it work well, we had to lay some ground rules. (more…)

For those who will be a high-school junior this year, and want to go to college, it’s time to determine what college they want to attend.

Folks often do this by talking with their friends, looking at brochures, and looking at the college’s course offerings, but an often-overlooked factor is determining whether the academic and living environment at the school is one in which the student will succeed.

If the student is unhappy in the school and living environment, no amount of academic prestige will keep them there. Since the goal of attending college should be to graduate, the living environment is very important. (more…)

In the past few years, we have been hearing about mercury contamination in the environment.

Mercury was the Roman god of trade, profit and commerce. He quickly flew from place to place. His name has been used for the planet Mercury, because it appears to move quickly in the sky, and the element mercury, which is liquid at room temperature and thus able to flow quickly. Mercury is sometimes called “quicksilver.”

Mercury, Science Teachers and Toys

Most of us who are over 50 years old have some stories about the metal mercury. We can tell how our science teacher would bring out some mercury and roll it around in his hands, showing us this marvelous metal that is liquid at room temperature.

We also had toys with mercury in them. There was a plastic maze with a mercury droplet that we had to work through the maze. We also used mercury thermometers, and sometimes they broke. (more…)

Just before Bob and I were married, my mother told me about her early days of marriage. She said that they didn’t have much money, and TV was not widely available, but what they did in the evenings was read books aloud to one another. It sounded strange to me, but a year or so later, Bob and I didn’t have much money, and there was nothing good to watch on TV, so I suggested that we read a book aloud to one another. What fun it was! We found that some books are better suited for reading aloud than others. Agatha Christie and Nero Wolfe mysteries were easy to read. War and Peace, on the other hand, just seemed to bog us down with the details.

When our first daughter was entering kindergarten, I attended the “Get to Know the Principal” session. The principal said that one of the most important things to do with your children is to read aloud to them. We had, of course, been reading books to them, but had sort of thought that this would end at some point. The principal said, “Read aloud every day until they graduate.” Thus began a very pleasant time in our lives. (more…)

People behave in predictable ways. If you study your co-workers for several years, you will begin to notice patterns in their behaviors.

You will find that you co-workers are either:

1. Mostly concerned about procedures
2. Mostly concerned about people, or
3. Mostly concerned about themselves

Those mostly concerned about people are the type that I call sensitive. (more…)

You know that chemicals might be bad for you, but how do you live without them?

First, you have to remember that people used to live with the same pests that we fight today, before chemicals existed. When you use chemicals, the natural balance of predator and prey is upset in your house and yard.

Allowing your yard and house to come back into balance will take about three years. Since you have been artificially killing the bugs that you don’t want, you have also been inadvertently removing the food for the bug’s predators. Once you stop using chemicals, the “bad” bugs will temporarily explode in growth. You can control them through non-chemical methods; vacuuming often, using cedar chips, etc. Then, over the course of the next three years, their natural predators will return, and the predators will take care of them for you. During the temporary explosion, here are some things that have always worked for us, to discourage bugs and rodents: (more…)