Sunday Ramblings

Woke up to snow this morning, and lots of heavy winds all day to move the inch or so around.  Hubby and I worked on getting a router installed, and now we each have our own computer to sit and play/work at with no fighting over computer time.  Figured out how to get into my daughter's blog, and follow it too.  She makes pretty blogs!  But I'm still learning, and will figure it out some way or other.  Did lots of laundry today, but now we have clean clothes.  Working on an afghan for a raffle, and found the square I thought I'd lost.  Put a heater in  my shop to keep the cat warm, and maybe I can go out there and spend time working with my stained glass now.  We'll see tonight when I go out to feed the cat. 

My Baby Boomer Experience

I was raised by pretty strict and protective parents, and learned how to think in the public school system.  And in order to escape, I enlisted in the military.  Well, the military sure doesn't teach you how to think for yourself; it teaches you to follow orders.  So I jumped from the frying pan into another frying pan.  It certainly has taken a long time to overcome their training!  Can you relate? 
Sometimes I feel like a hamster on one of those exercise wheels (have you seen that Kia commercial yet?)  What's the "American dream"?  Grow up, get a job, get married, buy a house, have two cars in the driveway, maybe have two or three kids -- oh yeah, and become a millionaire by winning the lottery.  But nobody tells you that credit cards, auto loans and mortgages will keep you in debt until about 50 years after you die.  And that if you don't save 10% of every dollar you earn from the day you start your first job in some sort of interest-bearing vehicle, you will wind up living hand to mouth in your "Golden Years".  And you had better be putting at least six months' earnings away for emergencies.  What else they don't tell you is that emergencies come up regularly:  the transmission goes out on your car, the hot water heater springs a leak, your three kids need braces, and daddy just had a heart attack.  They can be tiny -- the hot water heater only costs an unexpected $200-$300; or real monsters -- those hospital bills and funeral expenses ran up to half a million dollars, and you didn't expect this so early in life so there wasn't any insurance. 

I'm out of time for today, so I'm going to leave you hanging for the next installment.

New Experience

Have you ever woke up in the middle of the night so excited by an idea that you couldn't get back to sleep?  That's what happened to me this morning.  I've been working on making some changes in my life, reading books, getting ideas, doing online research, listening to cd's -- you probably know the kind of stuff I've been going through.  Some of what I've been learning has pointed me in the direction of blogs.  Now you probably think, "Blogs have been around since 1999, and millions of people use them. So what's the big deal?"  Well, the big deal for me is that I just learned about blogs.  And I really want to communicate with other people.  And blogging is a great way to do it (or so I am informed).  So this is my very first posting to a blog -- just think, two days ago I had only heard the word "blog" and didn't have the faintest idea what one was.  And now I'm actually blogging.  On my own and without any more assistance than what comes from Google!  You will be hearing from me again, and this probably won't be my only blog site.