Halloween 2015

~ K ~ 4 Comments

Yes, Halloween is tomorrow! Are you excited? Ready to get your freak on? 

No? Me either….

This year we didn’t even bother to get the Halloween decorations out. Sure, we made a quick trip to the pumpkin patch with our Girl Scout troop a few weekends ago. This is where I paid $12 for a pumpkin. Ironically, that “special pumpkin patch” pumpkin was trucked in and placed there by a farm employee; it wasn’t grown there on the spot like everyone wants to believe. So I guess we know who got “Tricked”, right? Just me and my wallet, that’s all.

Our family did however, want to carve a few pumpkins (so we can at least pretend we care about Halloween).  We went ahead and purchased a few more pumpkins at the local grocery store which is a mere 2 minute drive from my house. That 2 minute drive was in comparison to the 30 minute drive I had previously done for my $12 pumpkin. And guess what?  The pumpkins at the grocery store were $4 each.  Yes, my $4 grocery store pumpkin was the same size as the $12 “farm/pumpkin patch” one.
I know, it is all about the “experience”, right?  Everyone wants to drive 30-40 minutes, walk around a muddy field, look at a bunch of dirty pumpkins, carry the dirty pumpkin, buy the pumpkin, overpay for the pumpkin, and then drive back home for another 30-40 minutes.

My daughter is actually into carving pumpkins and turning them into Jack-o-lanterns. I was pretty impressed with her ability to slice and dice up these pumpkins.

Now the pumpkins are carved and ready to be kicked in by some teenager’s shoe on Halloween tomorrow night. We strive to make it a pumpkin smashing good time!

  

Could you be better?

~ K ~ Leave a comment

I’m pretty good at my job. Sure, I know I have room to improve, make myself and my company better, make more money, etc.  And if I worked for someone (other than myself),  I’d say I’m a solid B+/A- worker. I get the job done and I do a great job at it.

But that made me wonder: What if I was better at another job (or career) and I just don’t know it?  Hell, I know I could be a great ticket taker at the movie theater. I wouldn’t be pulling down an awesome salary but I would be awesome at it.

So with an easy job; yeah, I would be awesome. But what if there is a job out there that I would be even better at…there was “more” for me to excel at at? I would reach a higher level of success at that job instead of my current job?  How do I figure out what that is?

How many of us are really good at our jobs but in another career field, we would be awesome?

Clearly, I’m awesome at a lot of things. And I’m modest too. I just don’t know what I would be better at. What talents and knowledge haven’t I tapped into?

What makes you great? Do you know?

  

Sometimes YOU are a Jerk and you do need to Change!

~ K ~ 12 Comments

Here are two trains of thoughts-

1. People should accept you for WHO you are. You shouldn’t have to “change” for someone. Be Yourself!

Or-

2. You should work to improve yourself! Always be working to become better. Be a better person, smarter, more fit! Get out there and be more social! Seize the day!

Hmm, so we should change ourselves, right? But we shouldn’t change for others? 

If I didn’t change, I’d be living at home with my parents and asking what was for dinner tonight.  Hey, if that is your life goal (to live at home with your parents….follow those dreams!) but that’s just not for me. 

You should also change for people…especially your spouse. If you are a jerk, you need to change that. I do stupid stuff that makes my wife upset all the time. I do smart stuff that makes her upset but it is for the betterment of the family (so I’m not going to change).  She has told me what upsets her and I have made the change for the better. I’m not some insensitive dope who doesn’t want to get better.

Remember: “You don’t have to sick to get better!”

Now, there are times when I’m not going to change.  Not all of my advice is worthless advice.  I’m not going to stop working hard.  I’ll continue to a good parent.  I don’t give up because life is hard today. Stuff happens; you take a deep breath and move forward.  There are days when I feel overwhelmed but I don’t fall apart.

So if you are a pigheaded jerk, you should change. If you yell at the neighborhood kids because they are making “too much noise”, you should change. If you are afraid to travel, you definitely need to change. If you think you are better than everyone else, please, go ahead and change (and stop thinking like that….you are a nobody everyone hates). 

 

Why Isn’t Nagging a Leadership Skill?

~ K ~ 3 Comments

Do you want to be a better leader, boss, or parent? What about being a better spouse? Surely, you answered “yes.” But how? Turn to nagging!  Nagging is a time tested technique that is sure to shot you straight into the ranks of being an awesome person!

Some people might view nagging in a negative light. Those people are naysayer Losers! Nagging is a wonderful technique that brings the best out in the person you are nagging. Without you and your nagging, they would never get anything done. In fact, they would be simple losers that who would aimlessly drift through life unaware that they are lost souls.

Don’t forget to nag about things that are both big and small.  How will you perfect your nagging motivational technique if you don’t like the small things become big things? Make everything you do a nagging battle!

Some people say you should pick your battles…so make everything a battle. Need a new car? Mention how awful your current car is.  Talk about how old it is and how it doesn’t like to go up a big hill anymore. Or how it smells. Or how it has let itself go over the years you’ve been together.  Talk about how your friend just got a new car. Every time a car commercial comes on tv, have a discussion that that Honda dealership is having a sale and wouldn’t it be great to get a new car?  That’s some good nagging right there.

Is short term nagging better than long term nagging?

Hmm, that’s a good question. I think you should show everyone you care all the time. Nag for small items on a short term basis (remember EVERYTHING is a battle!) and large ticket items can be scretched into months or years of nagging!

Action Step: Find something you can nag about tomorrow! You can nag your kids, spouse, coworker, or an employee. Practice those nagging skills right now! Don’t delay!

Enjoy your nagging!

How to Handle Stress like the Whiner You Are!

~ K ~ Leave a comment

Let’s visit our good friend: Stress.  As an expert of worthless advice, I can say: We all have it. Some of us handle it better than others. Some of us have an undue amount of it. Little things might stress you out while those same little things are not stressful at all for someone else.  How do we deal with stress?

We whine about it. We complain and whine about how much stress we have. But you know what? That’s OK…we should vent and complain. That helps to release the stress. Keeping all that stressed bottle up inside isn’t good. Let it out. Complain. I give you permission to whine, vent, and release your stress.

The key to dealing with stress is to compartmentize it. Just focus on the task at hand and not worry about the stress. Overcome your stress by putting it on the back burner while you do your job. You are volunteering at an animal shelter? Focus on the animals and put that stress in a different part of your mind, enjoy the moment of helping others.

The stress of your job getting to you? Take a walk and don’t think about it. You need to have “me” time to defeat stress AND recharge.  No one says you need to think about your job and stress out about it 24 hours a day.

Best of luck to you in your fight against stress!

How to Foil the T-Shirt Thief: Decoy Shirts

~ K ~ 4 Comments
Image from http://www.mainstreetts.com/t-shirts.jpg
  Who wouldn’t be insane witImage from http://www.mainstreetts.com/t-shirts.jpg

I have a T-shirt thief in my house; my T-shirts have become her pajamas and I only get to see my old friends as I do the laundry.  However, I have a clever plan to foil this T-Shirt thief.  Well, more like limit the shirts she decides to use.  I have a decoy drawer of shirts!  To give you a little history of men and their love for T-Shirts, I have two drawers of T-shirts (Tee Shirts).  Why two drawers? I have two drawers because everyone knows men NEVER throw their T-shirts away.  Unlike my worthless advice, my T-shirts never become worthless.  If a man does get rid of a T-shirt, it is clearly a mistake or an accidental lapse of sanity.  Who isn’t insane with your T-shirt collection is in consent danger of being stolen?

Keeping that in mind, I put all of my least favorite shirts in the top drawer and move my nicer shirts to the bottom drawer.  We won’t talk about the other stack of T-Shirts in my closet; those are back up T-Shirts and we don’t need to talk about those.  Then there is the guest closet with the T-shirts that I only wear during the winter months because clearly they are used underneath my sweaters.  Those T-shirts aren’t allowed to mingle with the summer T-shirts.  Everyone knows Summer T-shirts have sarcastic sayings so you can express your brand of humor to the world and show everyone how clever you are.

Now, I have my T-Shirts in two drawers which allows the thief to use my least favorite shirts as pajamas.  She ALWAYS gets the T-shirts from the top drawer, thus never accessing the bottom T-shirt drawer.  So the good T-shirts go in the bottom drawer.  She gets to use some of my T-Shirts and I get to keep my favorites hidden away in a safe location.  It’s a fair deal, right?

Organizational Tip: Instead of stacking your T-shirts one on top of another, put them sideways in your drawer.  This way you can see the different colors of shirts quickly.

Another Tip: Always organize your shirt drawer by color.  All the red shirts go together, blues, greens, etc.

I think I failed to make this a worthless advice blog post with those two awesome tips.  Oh well….

Is it better to listen to people who have failed or have succeeded?

~ K ~ Leave a comment

Is it better to listen to a person that has failed numerous times? Or is it perhaps better to listen to the people who have succeed?

What is your defintion of success? Walt Disney failed a number of times but people still view him as a success. What about Abraham  Lincoln?  He ran for public office and failed a lot. Who would have guess he would become our 16th President?

What about relationship and marriage advice? Does the person with five marriages have better advice than the person with only marriage? Does it matter if the marriage is only five years old or 50 years old?

I don’t profess to know all the answers (heck, if I did then this wouldn’t be a worthless blog advice). However, if you think about it, don’t we know all the answers to the questions we ask ourselves? Isn’t that what a therapist would say to you? Wouldn’t they say that you know that you need to do?  We all know “what we need to do” in our lives. We know we should plan better, drink less, focus more, be more considerate, be a better spouse, be a more skillful lover, and a more compassionate parent.

How do we find success? Do we read some article in the latest Parenting Magazine about how we should balance our social and economical lives?  But the reality is, we know that the balance will always be unbalanced. It will never be an easy balance. There isn’t a simple formula that tells you the proper balance between your work life and your personal social life.  However, maybe, just maybe you will know what you need to do to bring inner peace to your life.

So get out there and enjoy your life. Answer your own questions. Do the right thing.

 

Out in the forest of lies, deceit, and fear….

~ K ~ Leave a comment

Let’s talk about our fears and the lies we tell yourselves to keep us going. The deceit we bring upon ourselves to make the day go by faster and how we can improve our lives.

Just kidding. What kind of worthless advice would that be? That might be helpful advice. We can’t have that here!  It’s my blog about being sarcastic and fun loving so we need to enjoy life.

I’m out camping with the Boy Scouts for a Troop Leadership Training weekend. Except that all the scouts here are older scouts and have been to numerous leadership training weekends. None of our younger Scouts could make it. So instead of leadership training, we are making this weekend into a 6 month short term planning weekend and a long term 3-5 year planning weekend for the troop. We will be planning where and what the troop wants to do over the next 3 years. Long after I’m gone, the troop will be doing fun things. Yippee!

We will be covering summer camps, backpacking trips, canoe trips, snow camping, and mountain bike rodeos. It will be a blast.

Boy Scout Training Weekend: Terror in the Woods

~ K ~ 3 Comments

Well, my days of being a Scoutmaster are winding down. This weekend (from Friday to Sunday), we have our semiannual (twice a year), Troop Leadership Training (TLT). This will be my last one. Yeah!!

Now, this weekend isn’t super hard if you enjoy 8-12 Boy Scouts (ages 11-15) attempting to learning positive leadership qualities, cooking awful food, and staying up way too late. They also have very boring presentations (really not their fault) that I get to listen to.

Luckily, the adults cook and eat seperately from the Boy Scouts so I don’t have to worry about eating some gross hot dog dinner (for the millionth time).

I do want to spice things up a bit, so I thought we should watch some classical horror slasher movies. I figure a psychopath killing off a bunch of teenagers (in the woods) would be a prefect movie.  I think I could further the Boy Scouts’ experience with the addition of various adults wearing Halloween masks, running around, screaming….Oh, and perhaps a chainsaw running at full speed? And all of this would be done under the cover of darkness.  We want to make sure the scouts learn all about “team building” as they try to stay alive.

I’ll also probably start saying stuff like “Hmm, that’s an odd noise.” Or “Funny, did you hear that?” Or “What the heck was that? Did you see something over there??”  Sometimes the shear anticipation and the fear it produces is the real key to a scary experience.

What if I just start to giggle to myself for no reason whatsoever?  Or “talk” to a ghostly figure once in a while?  That might help the scouts freak out that much more.

Now, it won’t be all bad. We have a fairly nice location with flush toilets, hot water, and a large covered area. We do have to sleep in open air cabins. At least I don’t have to squeeze into some little tent and I’ll be dry too!  I’ll bring my comfortable air mattress, a good sleeping bag, and my pillow. Heck, I can even wear my Hello Kitty pajamas!

Do dear readers, feel free to add in your suggestions on other fun activities we could do? Or movies to watch?

I’m an Energy Whore….

~ K ~ 2 Comments

Just last week, I was called an “Energy Whore” by my beloved public utility company: Puget Sound Energy (PSE). Puget Sound Energy likes to mail out a 3 month Home Energy usage report (which is separate from my bill) that ranks my household’s energy use compared to other similar homes in the area. It ranks efficient neighbors, all neighbors, and then us: energy whores. It says we use 31% more energy than our neighbors. It also gives us a 12 month Neighbor Comparison where it tells me that we use 54% more electricity than our neighbors and 5% more natural gas than our neighbors in colorful graphs that clearly demonstrate that we are energy whores.

On the top of the report it says “You used 100% more energy than your neighbors.” Ouch!

Overall, it is a quite depressing little piece of mail.

How can we be this way? We turn off our lights at night and have CFB lights everywhere. We have an automatic thermostat that turns down the temperature in our home when we aren’t around. Sure, we have three flat screen TV’s (which I thought were pretty efficient) and other numerous electronic devices like any other average American home in the Pacific Northwest but we use 100% more energy than our neighbors? We have one A/C unit (which is a blessing in the few hot days we have in Seattle). We don’t have central air or a heat pump running 24 hours a day. We don’t use our sauna except for maybe once or twice a year. The hot tub is broken so that isn’t sucking energy. How are we using 100% more electricity than our neighbors? We have a natural gas furnace and a gas fireplace and we only are 5% more usage than our neighbors (in regards to natural gas).

I’m guessing my second fridge and my chest freezer are skewing the numbers. Probably my swimming pool pump and my fish pond pump running 24/7 doesn’t help matters either. I also work from home so my computer is on all the time. My house isn’t huge but it is larger than the “average” 1936 sq. ft. house they use. So I have some valid reasons why I’m an energy whore.

Then the report goes on to make you feel even worse. Once you flip over the Home Energy Usage Report, you see on the second page your “Neighbor Efficiency Rank”. Mine says my rank is declining. It’s not getting better or staying the same; it’s declining. It says my rank is #98 out of 100 neighbors. #1 is the most efficient so basically, I’m an energy whore that is sucks up energy like no tomorrow. No one likes to be called a loser and an energy whore. Nobody.

What is one to do with this information? My solution is to run long power cords from my six neighbors and use their power to help my numbers. I figure that with the winter months coming, they won’t be going outside much and they won’t notice long power cords running from their house to my house. You can buy green and brown power cords so it should be fairly easy to camouflage the power cords.

Clearly, by spreading my whorish energy usage over six other houses is better than me being burden with the guilt of being an energy whore. A little bump in their electric bills won’t be noticeable. Ah, free power…here I come!

Disclaimer: Of course, I’m not really going to run power cords from my neighbors’ houses to my houses. Just another worthless advice blog idea. But what if….

Image from www.chelanpud.org
Image from http://www.chelanpud.org