The Ski Club has taken several trips to the Salt Lake City area. Every January they go to either Park City, Deer Valley, Alta, or The Canyons.
A fringe benefit of that timing is that we are always in Park City at the same time as the Sundance Festival. So I have the best of two worlds while in Utah – skiing and the arts.
I love Park City – it’s my favorite ski destination – so far.
Most people take their good health for granted. It takes a special person to have empathy for the less fortunate people who live with disabilities, serious injuries, major illnesses and aging or other end of life issues. Obviously, doctors and nurses are at the top of that list. But there are dozens of other professionals who work with patients and their families during the surgery, the chemo treatments, the rehab processes and hospice or assisted living issues.
When my mother in law hurt her hip, we had to deal with a lot of medical people and a lot of special equipment. We spent two weeks living at her house to help coordinate everything. We had grab bars installed in the bathrooms, a ramp installed over two sets of stairsteps, and set up a complete bedroom on the first floor of the house so she would not have to deal with going upstairs just to sleep.
I didn’t mind helping at all. She was a good woman who had an unfortunate incident that took a long time to heal and get over. All the arrangements we made turned out to be a good investment. They got a lot of use over the years, even after she recovered from the fall that broke her hip.
One of the cool things about getting married is having more cool people come into your life as family members. Even if the marriage does not last, you have had the chance to include some very special people in your life, and sometimes a divorce does not end the rest of the family relationships that you’ve built.
The parents of my second husband lived in Salt Lake City, Utah when we first met and then later got married. We flew out to meet them and do some skiing at the fantastic ski resorts near Salt Lake City.
Because my mother in law suffered from a broken hip, we also helped her with some medical assistance devices, like a jazzy power chair Utah.
The evening news reported that several high magnitude earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean today have set off a tsunami that has killed several people in American Samoa and has wiped out villages on the coastlines of several countries, as far south as New Zealand.
My brother is still living in the Marshall Islands and I have been trying to find out of the tsunami danger extended Eastward. Strangely, it is very difficult to find any news of the quakes or tsunami on any of the newspaper web sites. I had to go to CBSNews.com to just find out the minimum information. I’ll have to keep looking.
People looking for a part time position that is proving to be basically recession proof might be interested in placing and servicing Vending Machines. It is an “all cash” business, and you either work as an independent contractor or as a part time employee of an established company. But even if you are working for another company, you are still pretty independent. You don’t have a boss riding around with you, bugging you all day and snooping over your shoulder.
Most of the daily duties involve driving to where you have placed the machines that display and sell candies and snacks, and you service those Vending machines. You replenish the items being sold, and collect the money from the coin box. Sometimes you might have to replace the coin changer or the coin mechanism. That’s pretty easy – you loosen a couple of screws and the old one pops right out. I’ve watched a guy do it to the machines in our office building lobby.
Everyone knows I’m an independent type of person. The idea of a Vending Machine Business is the type of business that I find very attractive. I found a good web site that explains the business model. You can easily find a web site to order the equipment. So it is a very do-able business venture for the right person.
Don’t know what Zuma is?
No, it’s not a new alcoholic drink! It’s a computer game.
I started played Zuma as a game app on Facebook. I like the way you can challenge your Facebook friends in mini-tournaments and compete for high score. There is a newer version of Zuma, called Zuma’s Revenge, that has just come out. I have played the free trial and really like it.
Zuma is a nice mindless respite from your daily chore or hassles. I played it a few times each day for a few minutes at a time. It’s addictive!
Today did not get off to a good start. I had a sleepless night and needed to sleep in a little later this morning. I had hopes of sleeping until 8:30 or so, to make up for the lost sleep last night. But at 7:30 my phone rang with a frantic call from my step daughter who needed me to come get her young son and drive him to school. They had overslept and he missed the school bus. So I got up and rushed over to fetch him. We made it to school just in time.
I SOOOO dislike driving kids to school. The schools have this ridiculous process of making parents line up in cars and only allow a few children at a time to exit the vehicles and be escorted into the school. There is no such thing as dropping off a child and driving away quickly. Once you enter the school driveway, you are trapped for up to 20 minutes while the other cars ahead of you go through the process of advancing a few cars at a time to discharge their precious cargo.
My girlfriend Dian and her family are in the process of moving again. This time her hubby has a great job opportunity in Greenville, SC, which is not all that far from where they were living, south of Charlotte, NC. She is so excited that they are moving to a huge, custom built house and the children’s elementary school is walking distance from the house.
She told me about a website called Greenville HD that has all sorts of information about Greenville. I already know a little about the area, as we put a franchisee there about 4 years ago. The real estate people and the landlord were very helpful and cooperative, and I have a great first impression of that area in South Carolina.
The link I found is featuring a music video of Edwin McCain Music, which I enjoyed watching. The site has information on 19 different categories, such as events, entertainment, jobs and careers, shopping, and all kinds of things!
Dian and I have been friends for over 11 years. Every chance I get to go out of town for a long weekend, I try to find my way to Dian’s house. She has an extra bedroom for us to sleep over rather than spending money on a hotel room, and she is a marvelous cook. Last time we were there she was learning how to use a new bread machine and she treated us all to fresh baked cinnamon bread for breakfast.
This is the kitchen’s food preparation area. It was about the perfect size for the way I like to cook. The only thing I was missing was a nice cubby for the recycling and trash cans, and a large pantry. If I had those two things, it would have been the perfect layout. Oh, and a nice view of the ocean would have be awesome. No such luck, though.
This si the only photo I have of my townhouse in California’s kitchen mural. It was hand painted to show a California vineyard. The walls were a stucco white with a wallpaper border running the eat in and food preparation areas, of grape vines in purples and greens.
