Today we went for a bike ride that took us over to Cloudland Canyon State Park. I’ve been wanting to check it out but just haven’t made it over there yet. Unfortunately when we left the house at the start of the ride, I didn’t know we were going to stop there or else I would have taken my camera, but we had a great time checking it out for an hour or so. The sight of the canyon, along with the three waterfalls that we saw, is enough for us to try to go and spend an entire day there checking out everything that it has to offer.
A few pictures from my dad’s camera:
The flooding that the southeast has experienced over the past few days made national headlines. Local schools were closed for a day or so, and I’ve heard about a few roads being washed out around here. But I think all the rain and rising water that we got wasn’t nearly as bad as other places, thankfully. It was crazy to hear that Six Flags in Atlanta was under water though, not to mention so many homes, roads, and buildings.
Since my work has merged with another one of what we previously were, we’re no longer a non-profit organization. Changes in benefits, retirement plans, positions, procedures, etc. are all forthcoming with the transition. If it were up to me, it’d take a long while to get to those changes. We’ve already had one staff retreat to kind of get to know one another and from what I hear we have an overnight one mid October sometime. There’s also a meeting tomorrow for benefits, and one on Wednesday for our retirement plan options.
I like my current 403b account, and I’ve got some thinking to do between now and Wednesday morning about signing up for a 457b account since we are no longer eligible to contribute to the 403b. They’re very similar accounts as far as matches and investment choices go, except for ownership—457b”s are owned by the employer. I don’t necessarily like putting my trust in someone else for what could grow to be a substantial amount of money. I feel safer knowing that I own the account, yet I love available matches of free money. Then there’s the big Social Security option and whether to begin it or not. Which for me seems easy, as it’s a Government program that I have no faith in whatsoever. But for others, it may be more enticing depending on their own situations and ages. Decisions..decisions…
There Goes The Neighborhood ended on Sunday, and the finale of Big Brother is tonight, so that’s got me already looking forward to the fall lineup to watch.
These are the current ones not to miss:
This one could become a not to miss, assuming it is good and it survives:
Apparently ABC doesn’t have anything that has caught my eye coming on soon. I’m highly anticipating the final season of LOST, but it’s still months away. So until then, CBS, you have all my attention.
Update – Added these to the list:
Continue Reading..
I can only imagine what this day is like for those who lost loved ones on 9/11. I missed watching Obama’s first anniversary as President today, but sadly the only reminder of what today was that I experienced were the scores of flags that Dalton had standing on the lawn of the courthouse, and my dad mentioning the following poem:
Met In The Stairwell
You say you will never forget where you were
when you heard the news, Sept. 11, 2001.
Neither will I.I was on the 110th floor in a smoke filled
room with a man who called his wife to say
“Good-Bye”. I held his fingers steady as he
dialed. I gave him the peace to say,
“Honey, I am not going to make it, but it is
OK. I am ready to go.” I was with his wife
when he called as she fed breakfast to their
children. I held her up as she tried to
understand his words and as she realized he
wasn’t coming home that night.
On Saturday we went up to my parents new place to put the shingles on the back side of the house. After a couple of hours of working, mom went to get us something to eat for lunch. She hadn’t been gone but just a few minutes when my dad’s phone rang w/ her ringtone. Before even answering it, I think we all knew that something had happened.
As she was going around a slight curve, a man backed out into the road without even being able to see if there was any oncoming traffic, and she nailed him. Luckily she was wearing her seat belt and the airbag helped soften the impact a bit. She’s still sore from where the seat belt grabbed her, but thankfully had no serious injuries. After an hour or so, the state trooper came to work the accident. He heard both sides and said that the truck was at fault because it is never okay to back into a main through-way.
If you earn 2,000 points for your cause on SocialVibe, they send you a pink stress ball. I’m at 4,132 points so far, so with 100 points equaling 457 gallons (according to their Facebook app), that’s over 18,000 gallons earned for charity: water so far by me. I’m hoping they add in some type of way to track your impact for whichever cause you support more accurately, just for your own statistical purposes. But regardless if they ever do, it’s nice to give back.
I’ve always tried to avoid the ringtone sites where you choose your carrier, enter your phone, and let them send it directly to your phone because I never feel like reading the terms to see what kind of hidden charges there may be. It turns out that sending a ringtone via email to your phone is just as easy, and saves you any chance of being charged. I’ve tried this in the past, and was unsuccessful, and I believe this is completely due to the cellphone address I was always trying to send it to.
First, the .mp3 file is supposed to be less than 200kb to be used as a ringtone. Since we know the size limitation, you could either crop a song or tune to the specified section you want, or just download already created ones online. Attach the .mp3 file to an email, and email it to your phone. The address that you have to send it to for Verizon phones is yournumber@vzwpix.com, NOT @vtext.com. From there you’ll just receive the text message with the attachment, and apply it as a ringtone. Applying the ringtone is probably going to be different for most all make and models of phones, so you may need to check your manual.
Today I spent my lunch hour riding to the mall to get a much needed haircut. While I was either waiting on my turn, or waiting on my brother to get finished up so we could leave, I can’t remember which, I was reminded of the following quote.
If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
While waiting, the mall janitor, an elderly man, doing his regular stroll through the wing where the haircut place is, noticed what must have been a small piece of tape on the floor. I didn’t notice it at all, so it’s obvious that he had an eye for spotting things, even the smallest, that shouldn’t be laying around. He took a scraper tool from his cart, scraped it off the floor, picked it up and threw it in the garbage can on his cart. Making the floor spotless.
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
—
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