I didn’t know whether it was a bug I picked up, or something I ate, but I spent several days last week being violently ill. Just getting out of bed drained all my energy, the very thought of food made me sick to my stomach, and I couldn’t even read without getting a headache. One of the things that kept going through my mind – besides how achy and uncomfortable I was – was what a waste of time this was. It was bad enough [...]
Our discussion started with the Zika virus. None of us had ever heard about it before, so we began by filling each other in on whatever information we had read or heard about it since it began showing up in the news. It was interesting to note that we each had different information. Not conflicting, just different. We quickly realized it was because each of us got our information from different sources. Newspapers for some, TV news for others, online sources for still others. That [...]
I’m going to get the “Full Disclosure” business out of the way right up front. Since my husband and I grew up in the Chicago area and still have family ties there, it’s Chicago sports teams that we cheer for. Also, I’m not a super-sports-fan to begin with. I enjoy watching the games with family and friends, but it’s the social aspect, not the sport itself, that I’m most interested in. All of this is to explain that even though I – like so many [...]
“Look it up on the Google.” My husband and I have been having fun saying this to each other ever since we heard it in a movie we watched over the Christmas holiday. The movie was about four guys who have been best friends since they were kids some fifty years ago, and who are having a reunion in Vegas. As you can probably guess, the movie is a comedy, with much of the humor coming from age-related assumptions and misconceptions on both ends of [...]
As always, I spent some time thinking about what my New Year’s Resolution/s would be this year. Part of this process was reviewing my resolutions from the last few years – which is easy for me to do since I devote a column every year to the subject. It’s become a stroll down Memory Lane for me, as well as a good analytical tool. I can see which resolutions became habits and routines that I still follow today, as well as ones that I’m still [...]
I was at a holiday outing last week with a number of people I usually see just once or twice a year, and some that I was just meeting for the first time. So some of the conversations were the getting-acquainted kind, while others were more of the catching-up variety. Yet almost all of them included some discussion of holiday plans. Since few of the people at the event have lived here in Minnesota their entire lives – which is pretty much the norm in [...]
A friend of mine posted the details of a recent experience she had, and the story was so heartwarming and uplifting – not to mention perfect during the holiday season – I knew I had to share it with others. I told her I wanted to write about it, and she graciously gave me her permission. The story ended with someone’s prayer being answered. And it started a few miles away from a home improvement store. That’s where my friend first drove past an elderly, [...]
It happened again. I taught a class one evening this week, and it was a presentation I’ve been preparing for and looking forward to for quite a while. But two nights before the program, I had a dream in which the class was about to begin, and I suddenly realized that I didn’t have any of my notes or materials with me. In a moment of panic, I briefly considered driving home and returning with everything I needed, but I didn’t have enough time to [...]