A little food for thought to hold you over....

.....until I get on-line at my mom's!

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My now roommate and long-time friend, Joanne, sends a newsletter to her clients on a monthly basis. This month's was of particular interest to me and thought I'd share a few thoughts with my readers. The subject matter is more like New Year resolutions than CHRISTmas wishes but here's a sampling of what it suggested:

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The first suggestion is to take a pro-active approach to life and work, not waiting for things to happen to or around you, take responsibility for yourself.

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Keep the end in mind (we Christians already do that!) but, in this case, it means to set a goal and work toward it, don't be a rudderless ship!

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Prioritize! Love this one, but not enough to do it myself yet. This means to avoid wasting time and effort, and prevent less than superb performance. (Please remember I am paraphrasing).

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Listen to others, no matter how lame their argument----this does not mean you have to do what is suggested by them, only give them an ear and hear them out. When they are done with their piece, give yours and expect others to honor your turn at the wheel, as it were.

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Recognize the gifts and blessings other people bring with them, and put them to use if you can. Mainly this would apply to the workplace, as many of these suggestions do, but often in everyday living, people need to have a place to use their special "gift".

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Make sure you take time to recharge your batteries, don't allow yourself to get worn down by life, but rather, be invigorated by it!!!!

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Some suggestions to simplify your existence include setting up as many bills and monthly obligations on automatic payment so less thought is required to manage your household bills and expenses; set aside time to pamper each other, whether it is helping out with kids so the spouse can get her nails done, or the other spouse watch a sporting event on TV with minimal interruption. Remember these are borrowed in part from Joanne's newsletter and in part for me, so if you don't like them, they came from her newsletter!!!!

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I'll be away from the computer for a day or so, having to use my mom's dial-up service in WI so please don't be upset if I am not posting daily. Please pray our traveling safety tomorrow as we fly into the snowy north and for Justin's safe travel on Monday as he comes north for CHRISTmas!

Does anyone see the resemblence in Blogo??

Again the morning the news showed stories about the governor of Illinois, affectionately known as, or not so much, 'Blogo'. I simply cannot get over how much he looks like a former friend of ours in Manitowoc, a real estate developer who used to live in our neighborhood, Indian Bluffs. Every time I see the photos of Blogo, I see our friend, only mucho younger, of course. He, too, had a few rough edges but I don't think he used filthy language like the governor does! We'd built a number of houses in partnership with this fellow and did numerous other type of transactions. I've mentioned him in other postings a while back, I think when talking about how hard it is to get to know some people, but once you do, your life is better because you tried. I wonder if I was as profound when I wrote about it the first time!

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Through the networking tool, facebook.com, I've become re-connected with several of my former classmates from grade and high school, much to my delight. The other day I was contacted by a friend from grade thru high school whom I'd not heard from in many many years. She lives in IL but her dad attends church at First German, my home congregation. I think it would be awesome to catch up with each other when I am up there later this week. Another e-mail friend with whom I attended grade and high school might be able to connect with Dolly and me over the holiday season. Great! Maybe I should have gotten a haircut yesterday after all!

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In reading something the other day, I saw an article talking about taking care of our teeth. Being a big fan of teeth, it was interesting to see what this article had to say. The item I came away with was the recommendation to use only a pea-sized dab of toothpaste vs. the "caterpillar-sized" amount shown in the commercials selling the product. This brought to mind a TV show I saw when still living at home, an expose on advertising, with the story that stuck being the one about shampoos. Since both my mom and I worked in the shampoo and body care manufacturing/bottling business, it struck a cord with us. The news report told about how Japan advertisers had multiplied its sales in shampoos by adding one word to the "Use" portion on their bottles---Repeat. That simple word, this statement, influenced people to use double the shampoo, supposedly, as they normally would have if not prompted by this direction on the bottle! Many many years later my now former spouse would bring it up, "your family" (what? my family???, as though we had this written over our doorposts) always scoffed at 'Repeat'! Funny how things come back to us after all these years, a simple TV program a hundred years ago!