Mother’s Day was appropriately gloomy yesterday. The day started off by waking up to the alarm going off, but being so tired and the rain sounding so good that I overslept past when I wanted to wake up. It felt good though. Dad ran up to CVS to get his Mom a card, and let us all sign it with him. I love reading cards in the stores, but not so much around Mother’s Day. It tends to really aggravate my feelings and make me realize even more so than I do on a daily basis(if that’s even possible), what I’ll miss out on for the rest of my life, making Mother’s Day special for Mom. I see the card that Chase and I gave Mom on her last Mother’s Day nearly every day. It’s laying on a shelf near the back doors, in plain sight, with ‘Mom’ and a squiggly line underneath it written in a bold black sharpie marker. To this day I can nearly tell you word for word what it says, even though I just don’t have it in me to open it and read it again. That’s because I can only imagine how wonderful it made Mom feel that morning when she found it near the coffee pot, and me reading it would somehow take away from what it did that morning. Or atleast in my mind it would. We did get to spend most of the day with our Dad and brother, and I think that helped soften the loneliness of the day.
It’s amazing the amount of work and the quickness in which the honeybees can build new comb when they need to. The large comb in the video was about the size of a half-dollar on Monday. You can actually see the reflection of the honey inside the cells that aren’t completely full and capped. We have to find out yet when we can harvest a bar or so, but it should be very soon. From our reading and understanding, we can harvest the bars as they are filled, instead of a full hive harvest of the traditional style hives.
At a meeting today for work, I had the honor and privilege of meeting and listening to Willie Weir, an adventure cyclist. This is a man that has cycled in dozens of different countries around the world, and has the stories that some of us only dream about having the opportunity to experience. He’s a phenomenal story teller with stories from his adventures that you’ll never forget if you get ever get the opportunity to hear him tell them. So I would like to highly encourage anyone, if you ever get the chance to hear him speak, take it! You’ll be glad you did!
Today about lunchtime, my brother and I decided on a whim that we would ride up to Pigeon Forge for the Rod Run for a few hours. We had a nice drive up until we ran into Townsend. We had to stop at the gas station right where you take a left onto Wears Valley Road. Upon leaving the gas station, within less than a 1/4 mile, we were pulled over for speeding. Naturally, the bright yellow car is going to get picked out of the pack regardless of everyone speeding.
The big problem came from the police officer, Officer X (got to find the ticket to get his name). This officer was the most arrogant, disrespectful officer I have ever came in contact with. Sure his attitude is enough to tick you off, but it actually was his complete prejudice towards us that was the tipping point.
The officer naturally would be a little jealous of someone less than a half his age driving the type of car that we were in, but I had no idea that political affiliation would persuade an officer’s attitude like it did. Naturally, we sport a very large Ron Paul decal on the Corvette. But this officer had the stones to assume that because you believe in and support someone that believes in Liberty across the board, that you have something inside the car that you shouldn’t have.
Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.C.S. Lewis
It’s been one of those weeks where you have to look at everything that’s happened, how well you know some people, what you’ve heard and what you’re smart enough to believe or disregard, and make the best decision you can make to avoid becoming collateral damage, but at the same time avoid compromising your integrity. To this guy, keeping my integrity is worth more than anything else. Sadly, there’s not that many people around that will say that same thing anymore.
It’s true, all of my eating out at places like Arby’s, that serve the Pepsi product line-up have gotten me onto the Pepsi kick. If I stop at a store to pick up a drink, it’ll still either be a Green Tea or Sweet Tea, or Coke. So it’s not that I really prefer Pepsi over Coke now at all, but at home, if I’m drinking a soft drink, chances are it’s Pepsi now. Mostly because my brother and I have gotten to where we split a can so that we’re drinking less cokes when there’s not any tea or juices around, so when you pour it into a cup it really doesn’t taste all that different any more. Plus, CVS runs a killer sale on them really regularly, and it’s hard to beat something like 5 12-packs for $12.
I’ve always thought it would be a neat little hobby to collect the old NES games that we all used to play so much when we were kids. Mostly because they now carry such a decent amount of age, and are a thing of the past—being cartridges. The boxes and manuals are nothing less than pieces of art.
eBay is the logical place to begin looking for them, but as I’ve found out a time or two already, shipping is a pain. Most sellers unfortunately don’t recognize the value that the original box carries to a game, and don’t wrap it properly to ensure that it doesn’t gain any wear through shipping. In a couple of cases for me so far, boxes that have left the seller in near mint condition, have arrived in the condition of being almost garbage due to crushing.
Now I definitely check with the seller before the shipping process begins, and if there aren’t padding mentioned and space between the game/box and the shipping box, I’m staying away.
As long as I’ve been a member of eBay, I’ve only ventured into selling once before, and it was years ago. It didn’t work out so well—basically a waste of time because there was no interest in the items I was selling at all. I guess there’s just not that many people looking for 1955 Chevrolet rear doors. It was worth a shot though, right? I do wish that the fees were what they were back then though.
The past few days I’ve listed a few items up, and really was blown away with how complex the fee structuring is nowadays. So many combinations, final value fees, fixed listing fees, extended length fees—you name it. eBay definitely knows that they have the online auction market, and has no qualms at all about charging an arm and a leg for their user-base. But hey, if I can manage to find some buyers and make a few bucks even after all the fees, I’ll be happy.
Our water heater decided to die on Sunday, and with as much as I love warm/hot showers, that’s one thing that I want to fix ASAP when it goes out. We all ended up having to take cold, brrr, showers this morning, which was more than enough of a kick in the rear to change it out this evening. Changing it wasn’t bad at all. The worst part was having to drain it—which took quite a while, but everything else was easy as ever. Now, we have hot water again, thankfully.
Today, I voted against endless, undeclared wars.
Today, I voted to reduce our nation’s debt.
Today, I voted to reign in the powers of the federal government.
Today, I voted to protect my civil liberties.
Today, I voted to bring transparency to the Federal Reserve.
Today, I voted for Ron Paul!
If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.
—
© Copyright 2007-2012 Shane Holden
All Rights Reserved.
