Logbook

Like many of you, I set aside some time near the end of the year to rest and reconnect with my family.  Unlike many of you, however, much of my family is over 7,000 miles away.

He never knew what hit him, and in hindsight, I feel a bit bad about that.  He was just doing his job, after all.  It probably wasn’t his “dream job,” either. 

There aren’t enough seats for everyone waiting at the bus stop. You consider waiting for the next bus. The question is…when will it arrive?

The outcomes of random dice rolls determine a player's progression up the board, complicated by ladders, which accelerate progress, and chutes, which set one back.  These “complications” have a much more dramatic effect on one’s chance of victory.

It took a pretty rough day and at least one injury for me to learn a valuable lesson about something called “Anchoring.” My pain (both physical and psychic) was a result of my anchoring off of irrelevant information.

You may not be one of the richest people on the planet, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn from one.

Forget about “lifestyle inflation,” we are faced with good old-fashioned “Inflation Classic” for the first time in a long time. Back then, I wrote about the average American Family struggling to cover their expenses. Today, I’m here to tell you that “The Rich” aren’t doing that much better.

“The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.”

Taking more risk might get you to your destination a few minutes sooner, but also might end in an ambulance ride to the emergency room. When it comes to the long–term, nothing is more important than surviving the journey…

It occurred to me recently that this question could also apply to the damage done by drug pushers on the street versus people dispensing dangerous drugs while wearing lab coats and stethoscopes

“What were you thinking?” My older brother was almost shouting at the absurdity of the story. I had taken my mother to a new lunch spot and she hated it!

There was a confusing moment with a friend from the island of Crete, for whom English was his second language. The conversation got interesting when the Cretan was confused by the English term, “making love.” He objected to the notion that it should be a euphemism for having sex since true love is a far more serious concept.

I won’t lie. I could be a real stinker when I was small. One charming item in my bottomless toolkit of annoyance was the “I’m Bored” song. Yes. It was an actual song that I wrote at the age of 5 or 6. It had two verses and it was terribly repetitive.

The words we use matter. From a very young age, we are taught that the words we use with our parents are the ones we use with our peers. As we age our vocabulary grows, and we develop our “social survival skills” in a larger variety of settings and with different types of audiences. There are still plenty of people that could use a bit of fine-tuning when it comes to their choice of words.

What does it mean to be admired? What does it take to lead a life that is admirable?

Admirable

adjective

worthy of admiration ; inspiring approval, reverence, or affection

Don’t worry. As near as I know, Kermit is fine. While “It’s Not Easy Being Green” from time to time, there are several frogs that have had it a great deal worse than that musical muppet. Today, I am using three examples of tragic frog fates to help us learn how to survive as humans.

Everyone has a list (mental or otherwise) of desires. I suspect that on some level, many people believe that their happiness depends on having what they want. The interesting thing is that having everything that you want is a shockingly simple thing to achieve.