Who other than PBS could interest me in a subject up until now I have avoided like the plague? A week or so ago I saw a program on economics. It was fascinating!. I especially liked the part that said the X factor in economics is the human element. (That seems obvious but geniuses came up with the notion so what can you say?) And I love the term rational economics, partly because it began, so to speak, at the University of Chicago and I love the University of Chicago, and partly because it makes sense.. Anyway, I got to thinking about people and their money styles, then about my family and THEIR money styles. Needless to say, there are tales to tell.
Besides the brilliant teaching and advice of their parents my childrens financial philosophy background on the Mom side came from Pop-Pop who paid off all bills every month, bought cars with cash, and had two mortgages but no other loans his whole life, and Nana who learned to write a check when she was 32 and never though she had enough money. Paternal people consisted of two frugal to a fault farmers who were embarrassed by the slightest hint of "wealth." For instance, Grandma was humiliated by her working adult daughter's trip to Europe. "Where will people think you got the money?," she lamented. Thank God the kids did not inherit this assinine attitude.
We'll briefly analyse four sibling financial styles. Little Ingrid always seemed to forget her wallet on shopping excursions. We, of course, would lend her the money for her purchases but Ingrid was highly insulted at the notion that she should pay us back. Of course, these days she realizes having a wallet at hand is a very smart move.
Young Jamie's first shopping expedition was a revelation to him. He chose a toy in the local 5 & 10, asked how much it cost, then went up to the checkout counter and stood there. It became apparent that Jamie thought the cashier would give HIM $5.99 as well as the toy. He was stunned to discover it was he who had to fork over the dough! To this day James is very careful about his purchases and enjoys a bulging wallet rather than a big bag of stuff.
Kit, perhaps, has the most "normal" attitude towards financial matters. He spends when he wants to with neither anxiety nor regret. After making a purchase as a little boy, Christian was usually thrilled and had no lamentations about the depletion of his fortune.
Alex, I would say, loves spending money the most. Usually it is because he wants the item ever so badly and is very excited when it becomes his. Lilttle Alex would be the first to ask to go shopping after a birthday or Christmas windfall and the expression about money burning a hole in one's pocket was a phrase Alex would never have to consider. Getting rid of money as fast as he could would avert this potential disaster.
So my hope is that after all this financial training everyone now has lots of plain old common sense. It should serve them well.
.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
If You're Ever on the Witness Stand....Re-.Remembering the Bunny
If you are ever called as a witness in a trial, think twice about your memory. What you think you remember may not be the truth! Think about that. What you plain old say under oath might not be the truth. That's scary. I wrote the story about my Easter Bunny Experience Gone Bad and truly believed my memory produced an accurate account of the infamous encounter with no revisionist history.. I mean, how much worse could it have been? I am remembering the words "damn Easter Bunny." It happened that way, right? Not according to my son. He says the truth is worse, much worse. He says I said "damn" in my dreams but the real honest to goodness expletive was "I don't care what the f$%king Easter Bunny is doing." Oops! On second thought, I am thinking he is probably right. I am glad I did not have to appear on the witness stand, though, as that Big Bunny who just meant well did not sue me. Actually, come to think of it, I HAVE been on the witness stand and hopefully told the truth, although, to tell you the truth, who knows for sure?! (I was acquitted so whatever I said worked in my favor.) Anyway, I am now super SUPER sorry for my behavior to the Bunny so please remember this, your memory can and does and WILL play tricks on you. I think it usually tries to make the situation better than it was. The bunny probably was a damn bunny but he wasn't quite a f$%king bunny. My apologies.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Morristown Memory
I can't remember why I was thinking of Morristown the other day. I think I had read something about the public library there, which, by the way is infamous for having been the first homeless- man-decides-to-live-in-a-library case in America..
I had a relationship with this1715 northern New Jersey town for over thirty years and remember its pre- Interstate 287 days when it was a picture perfect Colonial town with a charming 1700s town square and really good shopping.
We actually lived in Whippany about five miles north of Morristown on a road that George Washington and his army had marched along on their way to Morristown where he spent the winter of 1779-80. He in a mansion and the troops out in the cold in the woods.
At the age of 10 I rode the DeCamp lines New York bus to its last stop in front of the movie theater on the square in Morristown before it went back into the city. Then I would walk ten minutes or so to St. Margaret School located in the Italian section of town while passing two or three parmesan perfumed Italian groceries. I loved the smell of parmesan in the morning!
But back to Whippany for a moment. Whippany was a small village on a Whippanong Indian site before Bell Labs came to town and precipitated the building of several hundred '50's ranch and split level homes. Years later, thanks to Google, I discovered that the Labs had been working on, among other projects, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) behind its secured gates. How exciting it would have been to have known that at the time!
Anyway, one of Whippany's early residents was The Seeing Eye, housed on a former estate. The Seeing Eye, still in operation but now located in the beautiful hills just outside Morristown, trained dogs for the blind. In fact, they trained guide dogs for about 300 blind persons a year. The dogs used to do their on-the-job-training on the streets of Morristown with their trainers or with trainers and their new proud owners.
The citizenry of the area needed training, too, and we all learned fast. We learned not to stop and pet the dogs, just to let them do their thing alerting the blind to stop or start at crosswalks, etc. It was a beautiful sight that we took for granted as on any one day there were many dogs getting their education, on the Green and in the restaurants and shops of the town.
I think now what a unique experience it was to be part of this training, even in a very passive way and the people of Morristown are still enjoying this opportunity to serve.
I had a relationship with this1715 northern New Jersey town for over thirty years and remember its pre- Interstate 287 days when it was a picture perfect Colonial town with a charming 1700s town square and really good shopping.
We actually lived in Whippany about five miles north of Morristown on a road that George Washington and his army had marched along on their way to Morristown where he spent the winter of 1779-80. He in a mansion and the troops out in the cold in the woods.
At the age of 10 I rode the DeCamp lines New York bus to its last stop in front of the movie theater on the square in Morristown before it went back into the city. Then I would walk ten minutes or so to St. Margaret School located in the Italian section of town while passing two or three parmesan perfumed Italian groceries. I loved the smell of parmesan in the morning!
But back to Whippany for a moment. Whippany was a small village on a Whippanong Indian site before Bell Labs came to town and precipitated the building of several hundred '50's ranch and split level homes. Years later, thanks to Google, I discovered that the Labs had been working on, among other projects, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) behind its secured gates. How exciting it would have been to have known that at the time!
Anyway, one of Whippany's early residents was The Seeing Eye, housed on a former estate. The Seeing Eye, still in operation but now located in the beautiful hills just outside Morristown, trained dogs for the blind. In fact, they trained guide dogs for about 300 blind persons a year. The dogs used to do their on-the-job-training on the streets of Morristown with their trainers or with trainers and their new proud owners.
The citizenry of the area needed training, too, and we all learned fast. We learned not to stop and pet the dogs, just to let them do their thing alerting the blind to stop or start at crosswalks, etc. It was a beautiful sight that we took for granted as on any one day there were many dogs getting their education, on the Green and in the restaurants and shops of the town.
I think now what a unique experience it was to be part of this training, even in a very passive way and the people of Morristown are still enjoying this opportunity to serve.
Big Bunny Blues
He was about seven feet tall from the tip of his ears to the bottom of his fur clad silly feet. You knew, of course, that the someone inside the suit was looking at you from somewhere on the thing's chest but you just naturally looked into his glassy pink eyes and felt a little ridiculous doing so.
We met the big rabbit in the lobby of the Radisson Hotel restaurant. It was Easter Sunday and we naively thought our party of six could march in and have brunch without a reservation. We had spent the day before blissfully perched on a hillside in great weather watching a college baseball game. So the rest of the weekend should be perfect, too. This was an incorrect assumption, to say the least. The hostess at the hotel told us we could not have brunch and I was very upset. Couldn't she just squeeze us in for half an hour? We would hurry. Pleeze! While we dealt with another negative answer to our pleadings, the Easter Bunny started jumping up and down around us. I guess his job was to smooth the waters, make funny, so we would laugh and leave, politely taking our disappointment over the failed brunch in stride.
But I was inordinately annoyed by the cavorting beast. The big darn bunny was in my face, so to speak, and I did not like it one bit. My polite children said "but Mommy, the Easter Bunny is just trying to be nice to you." Really? And then it happened. I looked up into the big darn bunny's eyes and said the fatal and memorable words: "I don't care what the damn Easter Bunny is doing. I just want brunch."
I stormed out of the hotel. Everyone was mortified. But the kids left with a memory they'll never forget. Isn't that what's important? Making special memories? Don't worry. They have not forgotten. . They remind me of this special occasion every chance they get.
We met the big rabbit in the lobby of the Radisson Hotel restaurant. It was Easter Sunday and we naively thought our party of six could march in and have brunch without a reservation. We had spent the day before blissfully perched on a hillside in great weather watching a college baseball game. So the rest of the weekend should be perfect, too. This was an incorrect assumption, to say the least. The hostess at the hotel told us we could not have brunch and I was very upset. Couldn't she just squeeze us in for half an hour? We would hurry. Pleeze! While we dealt with another negative answer to our pleadings, the Easter Bunny started jumping up and down around us. I guess his job was to smooth the waters, make funny, so we would laugh and leave, politely taking our disappointment over the failed brunch in stride.
But I was inordinately annoyed by the cavorting beast. The big darn bunny was in my face, so to speak, and I did not like it one bit. My polite children said "but Mommy, the Easter Bunny is just trying to be nice to you." Really? And then it happened. I looked up into the big darn bunny's eyes and said the fatal and memorable words: "I don't care what the damn Easter Bunny is doing. I just want brunch."
I stormed out of the hotel. Everyone was mortified. But the kids left with a memory they'll never forget. Isn't that what's important? Making special memories? Don't worry. They have not forgotten. . They remind me of this special occasion every chance they get.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Easter
I've cooked up over 30 Easters. In general, the recipe includes gallons of food coloring, dozens of hard-boiled eggs, scores of plastic eggs, many pounds of chocolate and millions of jelly beans. Let's not forget all the Easter baskets and miles of that cellophane grass that lurks around for months afterwards like needles found from old Christmas trees in July.
Several Easters were quite memorable, like the 90 degree April egg hunt one day before Easter and three days before little Alex was born in 1987. Jamie was at the egg hunt, hunting for REAL eggs, no less, which is now, of course, a huge sanitary no-no. He found the golden egg and won the grand prize which was a cute mechanical chicken toy. The man presenting the prize to him dropped the box on the hard street and the chicken never walked or peeped again. The look on poor Jamie's face was one of sheer shock as it was a miracle he had won the prize at all due to the fact that we were overly polite and passive egg hunters compared to the other piranha-like competitive parents who hunted for the eggs with their kids like a sport - passionately pouncing on each egg from yards away, grabbing them as their kid's trophy.
The piranha parents would knock little kids off their tiny sneakers just to claim another egg and would leave their tot rivals crying in the mud on their little tiny bums. The bums!
But, alas, the most memorable occasion (unfortunately) was the infamous Minneapolis Easter bunny incident. I will save this story for the next installment. It is a short story. It is a sad story. It will be worth the wait.
Several Easters were quite memorable, like the 90 degree April egg hunt one day before Easter and three days before little Alex was born in 1987. Jamie was at the egg hunt, hunting for REAL eggs, no less, which is now, of course, a huge sanitary no-no. He found the golden egg and won the grand prize which was a cute mechanical chicken toy. The man presenting the prize to him dropped the box on the hard street and the chicken never walked or peeped again. The look on poor Jamie's face was one of sheer shock as it was a miracle he had won the prize at all due to the fact that we were overly polite and passive egg hunters compared to the other piranha-like competitive parents who hunted for the eggs with their kids like a sport - passionately pouncing on each egg from yards away, grabbing them as their kid's trophy.
The piranha parents would knock little kids off their tiny sneakers just to claim another egg and would leave their tot rivals crying in the mud on their little tiny bums. The bums!
But, alas, the most memorable occasion (unfortunately) was the infamous Minneapolis Easter bunny incident. I will save this story for the next installment. It is a short story. It is a sad story. It will be worth the wait.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Numbers - I Hate Them (A Lot)
The form says "actual" or "estimate." I always pick "estimate." Actually, it should say "rough estimate." That would relieve a lot of tension.
The instructions state "must file by April 1." I pressed the submit button reluctantly on March 22, earlier than usual, held my breath and hoped for the best. My hope is that the state of Minnesota thinks the numbers on this report I have to do for my library job are OK. You see, numberphobes are never quite sure. If the numbers look too nice and tidy, the person who reads the report might think you cheated or lied or made them all up. And, ironically enough, we phobes also worry that if the numbers are too quirky, they will think the same thing.
It's a nightmare. All those numbers. Those damn numbers! They all have to make sense! If the computer thinks they don't make sense, little red flags come up all over the place.
The little red flags fly in your face when the computer thinks the number is too big or, for heavens sake, too small. Can you believe this? Then, adding insult to injury, little green boxes come out of the blue and you have to explain WHY the number was too big or too small. ( This is compared to last year's number, of course.) The computer just wants to see some words of explanation in the little green box. Any gibberish would satisfy it, but since I have been called on the phone about this report by an actual human being several times in the past, I suspect a real person actually looks at it. So, you have to compose a real explanation like " more books were checked out last year than the year before because more people checked out books last year" and that's that.
In college I avoided anything to do with economics or accounting but years later I took a college accounting course. I completed part 1 attending the classes at the university. And I did OK. Then I attempted part 2 on my own. I had seven, yes seven, years to complete the course but I did not. I paid tuition year after frustrating year and the "incomplete" cost me a fortune. Accounting seemed all backwards to me anyway and I would never attempt it again.
My number-filled numbing annual report is now in cyberspace and I haven't heard any complaints about it, yet. I am happy for the time being.. Now I have to get busy before the IRS deadline is here. And I pray that those numbers make sense and flags don't fly in my face and, and - oh the anxiety!
The instructions state "must file by April 1." I pressed the submit button reluctantly on March 22, earlier than usual, held my breath and hoped for the best. My hope is that the state of Minnesota thinks the numbers on this report I have to do for my library job are OK. You see, numberphobes are never quite sure. If the numbers look too nice and tidy, the person who reads the report might think you cheated or lied or made them all up. And, ironically enough, we phobes also worry that if the numbers are too quirky, they will think the same thing.
It's a nightmare. All those numbers. Those damn numbers! They all have to make sense! If the computer thinks they don't make sense, little red flags come up all over the place.
The little red flags fly in your face when the computer thinks the number is too big or, for heavens sake, too small. Can you believe this? Then, adding insult to injury, little green boxes come out of the blue and you have to explain WHY the number was too big or too small. ( This is compared to last year's number, of course.) The computer just wants to see some words of explanation in the little green box. Any gibberish would satisfy it, but since I have been called on the phone about this report by an actual human being several times in the past, I suspect a real person actually looks at it. So, you have to compose a real explanation like " more books were checked out last year than the year before because more people checked out books last year" and that's that.
In college I avoided anything to do with economics or accounting but years later I took a college accounting course. I completed part 1 attending the classes at the university. And I did OK. Then I attempted part 2 on my own. I had seven, yes seven, years to complete the course but I did not. I paid tuition year after frustrating year and the "incomplete" cost me a fortune. Accounting seemed all backwards to me anyway and I would never attempt it again.
My number-filled numbing annual report is now in cyberspace and I haven't heard any complaints about it, yet. I am happy for the time being.. Now I have to get busy before the IRS deadline is here. And I pray that those numbers make sense and flags don't fly in my face and, and - oh the anxiety!
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Book Visions
I just finished reading "Juliet, Naked" by Nick Hornby. It wasn't flat out marvelous like "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" but it was light and fun and it was about music and aging, two of my interests at the moment. (The latter, reluctantly.)
And I'm reading it, to borrow a phrase, because he had me at Minneapolis. I live in Minnesota, you see, and the book begins in the past when Tucker Crowe, a famous, Dylanesque, singer-songwriter, goes to the men's room during a gig at a Minneapolis club, has some epiphany, comes out, ditches the show and the band and becomes a recluse in Pennsylvania.
"Juliet, Naked" refers to the naked as in unplugged version of the Tucker Crowe album called "Juliet." And Juliet was the love of his life, an actress/muse person who lived in San Francisco.
Nick Hornby is also the author of "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy." Both of these books became movies and this one's gonna be a movie, too, and that's what drove me crazy the whole time I was reading it. I couldn't read a word without thinking of the book as a movie and my mind wandered on every sentence as I tried to cast the characters.
Who would play Tucker Crowe, the aging, reclusive ex-folk/rock star? I'm seeing Jeff Bridges fresh off another music character in "Crazy Heart." And who's going to play Duncan, the tiny town Brit obsessed with webbing and blogging to keep the flame lit for an addicted world wide group of Crowe fans? He, of course, will be played by Hugh Grant. Who else? Grant stared out at me from every page and it was most disconcerting.
That leaves Annie. Who will play Duncan's girl friend who becomes Tucker's girl across the pond friend? It could be Renee Zellweger as in Bridget Jones since Hollywood will probably choose an American who has to do a British accent the whole movie .But it probably won't be Julia Roberts since that would be too much like "Notting Hill," wouldn't it? I think Kate Winslet or Minnie Driver would do a great job but maybe Andie MacDowell will get the part and have to do the accent so at least it would not be exactly the same as "Four Weddings and a Funeral."
God! Do you see what I mean? This book was so good and so frustrating all at the same time but the good news is I've already seen the movie!
And I'm reading it, to borrow a phrase, because he had me at Minneapolis. I live in Minnesota, you see, and the book begins in the past when Tucker Crowe, a famous, Dylanesque, singer-songwriter, goes to the men's room during a gig at a Minneapolis club, has some epiphany, comes out, ditches the show and the band and becomes a recluse in Pennsylvania.
"Juliet, Naked" refers to the naked as in unplugged version of the Tucker Crowe album called "Juliet." And Juliet was the love of his life, an actress/muse person who lived in San Francisco.
Nick Hornby is also the author of "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy." Both of these books became movies and this one's gonna be a movie, too, and that's what drove me crazy the whole time I was reading it. I couldn't read a word without thinking of the book as a movie and my mind wandered on every sentence as I tried to cast the characters.
Who would play Tucker Crowe, the aging, reclusive ex-folk/rock star? I'm seeing Jeff Bridges fresh off another music character in "Crazy Heart." And who's going to play Duncan, the tiny town Brit obsessed with webbing and blogging to keep the flame lit for an addicted world wide group of Crowe fans? He, of course, will be played by Hugh Grant. Who else? Grant stared out at me from every page and it was most disconcerting.
That leaves Annie. Who will play Duncan's girl friend who becomes Tucker's girl across the pond friend? It could be Renee Zellweger as in Bridget Jones since Hollywood will probably choose an American who has to do a British accent the whole movie .But it probably won't be Julia Roberts since that would be too much like "Notting Hill," wouldn't it? I think Kate Winslet or Minnie Driver would do a great job but maybe Andie MacDowell will get the part and have to do the accent so at least it would not be exactly the same as "Four Weddings and a Funeral."
God! Do you see what I mean? This book was so good and so frustrating all at the same time but the good news is I've already seen the movie!
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