Another season passed, another season beginning. It has been a very busy summer here in the Virginia edition of the Charest family. We started with refinancing our house the evening before leaving on a three week trip to China. Upon our return home; the rest of the summer was a blur of recovering from our vacation trip, work, boating, really hot weather, earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding rainstorms, and several groups of family visitors.
Winter seems to finally be at an end. Daily temperatures are slowly climbing back up, trees are beginning to show blossoms. We’re having rain instead of snow. All-in-all, things are looking up.
For the first post of 2011, I thought it would be appropriate to post a YouTube clip of my all-time favorite movies about finding your dreams.
Another year passed, a new year ahead. Another time to sing Auld Lang Syne and celebrate the western world’s marking the start of a new year. All things considering, this is as good a day as any to take a few moments to reflect on the year passed, and what may lie ahead.
On Loosing A Hammer and Standing Up to People
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a hammer that I lost over 35 years ago. Rather, I’ve been thinking about losing that hammer and how I lost it. It involves my maternal grandfather, a school play, and a high school teacher whom I still consider to be one of the most inept teachers I suffered through during my entire public school career.
Back when I was in the Navy, our standard phase was “a happy sailor is a bitching sailor.” In fact, most sailors did spend a lot of time complaining about stuff. Including me, which may come as a shock to many people who know me now.
So when I stumbled across this on the ever-wonderful YouTube, I knew I had to post it.
So who’s winning the War on Christmas?
Once again Christmas time is approaching. Houses in our neighborhood are all decked out in colorful lights with inflatable ornaments sitting out on snow-covered lawns. The stores are full of holiday shoppers making retailers smile while dreaming of big holiday bonuses like kids wishing for candy-apple treats. Our TV screens are aglow with the many incarnations of Santa Claus telling the viewers in TV land just how great of a gift their trinket would be for that special someone.
So who’s winning the War on Christmas?
For those of us 1950’s kids, a corner office with a view has been considered the mark of success in a professional career. Well, I have to say, there are views and then there are Views. This is a View.
In my continuing Don Quixote-style quest against the dysfunctional, authoritarian, over-reaching and civil liberties-free government agency sadly mis-named the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), I have written some letters. No, I didn’t write to my congressman. No, I didn’t write to either of my senators. I also didn’t write to the head of the TSA, nor to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). I also didn’t write to the President (I figured he was a little busy trying not to get rolled by the minority Republican Party). I wrote to the real power behind the transportation industry in this Country.
I wrote letters to the airlines.
Let Him Die – Really?
It was just last year that we as a nation had a vicious and bitter “debate,” more properly called a descent into insanity, over whether we should have some semblance of pretending to create a national health care policy. I did my part in debating the position of sanity and compassion in the reader’s comments section of our local rag, now called “Inside NOVA.com.” What I remember most from this experience was just how vicious and selfishly mean the Republican side of the argument was.
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