Life is short, so time is precious. If you're not spending your time doing something you love, then you're wasting moments of your life.

Labels: The Quest for Happiness

It's so nice we didn't have to kill anyone. Current mood: weird So we decided to go to sleep last night, my husband and I, and several minutes after getting into bed... We heard a noise outside our bedroom window. Damn racoons again...they're always climbing all over our patio furniture, which we shove up against the house to keep the wind from blowing it all off the deck. Then there was a bigger noise and a bigger one and then banging and scratching on the window and the sudden confusion of "how the hell does a racoon make noises that big?" Dan went to the window to scare the little buggers away. He got the flashlight and looked out the blinds. "Is it the racoon?" I asked. "No," he said in a confused tone. Then loudly, to make it obvious he said, "It's a man! Call 911." I picked up the phone, called 911, told them what was going on, and gave our address. "He's just standing there," my husband said. The guy must have been trying to "think invisible" hoping my husband wouldn't see him. He tried to aim the flashlight at the guys face, so he could get a good look at him, but he suddenly took off. My husband rushed to the girls room to protect them (fortunately, they never woke up until everything was over with). After we gave all the info. to the 911 operator, she said the police were on their way. We started calling the neighbors to let them know to be aware of anything suspicious. The police showed up and said they had just had a similar call and were looking for the guy from that situation. They went searching for the guy and found him, due to my husband's description. He was some drunk guy named Mark-something who says he was trying to get into his ex-wife's house and apparently thought our house was the ex-wife's house. The good part is that nobody got hurt, all the neighbors stuck together to help each other out, the guy was caught, and he never managed to get into our house, which means we didn't have to kill him. :-) Ahhhh, now I just have to remember how to relax.

Labels: My Life

Wanton violence in my home Current mood: cheerful My husband has been teaching my 4-year-old and 2-year-old daughers the joys of World of Warcraft. They're already addicted to fishing and pointing out "bad guys" to Daddy. My 4-year-old has already become an expert and enjoys telling Daddy that he should change his attack and movement strategies. I guess it's better than Barney, and it does teach them the usefulness of carrying around large weapons. I have a feeling that with the three of them playing WOW all day, I'm going to have a lot more time for myself. I think I'll take up sculpting or something.

Labels: Funny Families Kids and Parenthood, My Life

Nerdy Homeowners Current mood: exhausted In school, they tell you that you need to take physics for college prep. They should have boasted how much money it can save you if you become a homeowner. It turns out that if you have a little physics know-how, you can move a building with some pvc pipes, 2x4s, wooden wedges, a couple of shovels, just two very worn-out parents, and some laughing children. Plus, you don't even need to spend your hard earned cash paying for a crew of sweaty workers to do it for you.

Labels: My Life

Hey, I'm not a bigot I did the test at http://www.tolerance.org/hidden_bias/index.html my results: Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between African American and European American.

Labels: Entertaining Myself

I conquered two fears at the same time So anyone who knows me knows that #1 I'm afraid of heights, and #2 I'm afraid of scary movies. This weekend, we went camping at Trillium Lake on Mt. Hood (an annual tradition to break in the RV at the beginning of the camping/travel season) and decided to check out Timberline Lodge. Timberline has always freaked me out for two reasons. #1 It's way the hell up on the mountain, 6000 ft elevation. (There's always snow up there. You can even go skiing/snowboarding in the summer.) Everywhere you look, you're looking down over the edge of some steep slope or drop. I had vertigo by just sitting in the restaurant. I don't think the reduced oxygen helped much. #2 It's where they filmed The Shining. I always thought the horror film thing would give me the heebie jeebies, but it didn't. Maybe horror movies don't scare me anymore. (I don't know. I haven't seen one in such a long time that I haven't tested this theory.) It was a very nice place, though. I think we'll have to stay up there for a weekend just for fun.

Labels: My Life

But the sanctity of marriage! I get so tired of hearing people talk about the sanctity of traditional marriage. I repeatedly go into the history of marraige (it's all about property and power) to explain that there was nothing truly sacred about it from a traditional standpoint. (Well, it was about as sacred as a bank account, anyhow.) I think that the sanctity of marriage should be determined by the individuals in the marriage, not by some group of people whose knowledge of traditions only goes back to the 1950's. So today I read this, and it brought a tear of happiness to my eye. At last, a quick, well written summary of marriage through the ages, and a reminder that conservatives are really just stuck in the 50's (along with segregation, communism paranoia, the immediate insertion of the word "God" into every government symbol, ...). http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-20050506-000006.html

Labels: Deep Thoughts and Philosophy, Things that Annoy Me

Be prepared to look like an idiot. If you spend your whole life trying to avoid making a fool of yourself... 1) You're not going to have much fun. 2) You're never going to accomplish anything because you'll be too worried about making mistakes. 3) You'll be more likely to do the wrong thing because it pleases the masses rather than doing the right thing, which may piss a few people off. I say, if you're going to do something that will make you look like an idiot, do it flamboyantly, do it publicly, make money off of it if you can, and learn to laugh at yourself. (After all, nothing makes you laugh harder than laughing at yourself.)

Labels: Deep Thoughts and Philosophy, The Quest for Happiness

Thank you for your interest in the test at IQTest.com.

Your general IQ score is: 146

..>..>..>..>

40 - 54	Severely challenged (Less than 1% of test takers)
55 - 69	Challenged (2.3% of test takers)
70 - 84	Below average
85 - 114	Average (68% of test takers)
115 - 129	Above average
130 - 144	Gifted (2.3% of test takers)
145 - 159	Genius (Less than 1% of test takers)
160 - 175	Extraordinary genius

Who knew? I'm a flippin' genius. Now if only I actually believed in the validity of standardized tests...

Labels: Entertaining Myself

Death Sucks! My Grandma (also my very dear friend and mentor) died this week. She was one of my favorite people. Every time we spoke, we talked for hours. I can't even begin to list all the things I've learned from her. As soon as I found out, I wanted to call her to ask her if she was OK. Weird how our habits don't get the message right away. I took me almost a year to stop doing that with my dad, to stop wanting to call him to tell him about our family camping trips or adventures. I wonder if it'll take a year for me to stop picking up the phone to call Grandma. Death sucks, but I keep focusing on the bright side. Death is just a part of life. We all do it eventually. Better to know somebody for a little while than never to have known them at all. Don't focus on losing them; focus on everything you gained by having them in your life. Honor them by living the best life you can, not wasting your life by wallowing in grief. That's what they would want you to do; that's what I would want everyone else to do when I die. Live life to the fullest and help others do the same.

Labels: My Life

This was an old post from another blog that I'm trying to phase out. I'm just copying anything that I'd like to remember, and I'm re-posting it here.

Just say no to door-to-door salesmen So these two people came to my door, saying they were selling magazines to get points, and xyz points = xyz dollars for them to use toward college. I was having one of my charitable days and decided to go ahead and buy a subscription, but I don't like magazines cluttering up my house, so they said they would have the subscription sent to the local women's shelter. Sounded good. I chit-chatted with them about how I also grew up poor, have strived to better myself, and tried to donate money to good causes whenever I could. Then I went on about how happy I was to hear that they were trying to better their lives and told them how college made a huge difference for me and lots of other people I know. But I kept getting that little twinge of "something's wrong." When they tried to casually tell me that one (1) magaine subscription would be $60 and the minimum order was 6 subscriptions. A rather hefty markup for magazines, but fundraisers are often like that. I said in my most compassionate tone, "I love helping people, but if I did that, my children wouldn't eat that week." They said they would allow me to order just one subscription, the cheapest one they had, for $30. As I was writing the check, those gut feelings that something wasn't right, just kept growing. And then they asked me not to write anything in the memo area of my check. (Giant flashing warning sign!) So instead of having a big confrontation with them (I've dealt with that before), I said thank you, gave them the check, and locked my door. Then I researched their organization online, and found out that they were frauds. No big deal. I canceled the check through the bank, faxed over a cancellation of my order, and figured I would just keep an eye open for anything suspicious on our bank account. At worst, I got suckered. Then today I'm reading the local news... Turns out one of the guys with the magazine selling group sold a couple of magazines to a woman who let the man in her house. He strangled her until she went unconscious and then robbed her house. Another guy in the group had sexually assulted a woman in my area. I'm officially declaring myself lucky. From now on, the only people on my doorstep I'll talk to more then 30 seconds will be kids and people I know.

Labels: My Life

Here's a memory from December 2007.

When my daughter was 3-years-old, she heard somebody on TV mention the name "Jack Nicholson." She was amazed. "Jack Nicholson! His name is Jack Nicholson? He must like to collect nickels."

Ahhh the cuteness.

Labels: Funny Families Kids and Parenthood

Did you ever stop to think about the great leaders throughout history? Not just political leaders but leaders in art, science, social values, etc.: Gandhi, Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Lincoln, the Beetles, Elvis, Da Vinci, George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, Martin Luther King Jr., Gloria Steinem, Harriet Tubman, Eleanore Roosevelt, Nelson Mandella, etc. What made them great? What made them revolutionary? What was the one common thread that each of them shared in the tapestry of life?

They weren't afraid to rock the boat, go against the flow, change direction at a moment's notice, and try something different. They didn't do these things just for the sake of being rebellious. They did these things because they believed that they are following the right path and stood up for what they believed in.

Sometimes you need to conform, so you can accomplish a goal that you couldn't do by yourself. Children conform to fit into their families because they can't feed or care for themselves without their parent's help. Conforming to laws, such as "don't murder people" and "don't steal things," is necessary to ensure that everybody feels a bit more secure without having to spend your life in a fortress like the Forbidden City. And conforming to the "everybody line up at the grocery checkout line" rule just makes good, logical, problem-solving sense to ensure everybody gets an equal chance to purchase the products they want to buy. Teamwork can get a big job done in the easiest and happiest way possible for everyone. But teamwork is only a beneficial tool when them team goals contribute to the individual goals of every team member. Without meeting the goals of the individual, you simply create a society of masters who are drunk with power and slaves who are paralyzed with fear. But in modern society, we don't like to use the words slave or subservient, so people in this system call them team-members, but a technically more accurate name to call them would be conformists.

Conformists are easy to manage. That's why many managers give rewards for conforming. Do what everybody else is doing. Follow the rules. Don't question authority. Do what you're told, and do it when I tell you to do it. If you don't conform, there will be punishment, everything from social clique rejections to witchcraft convictions and getting burned alive. Dictators, totalitarian governments, and cult leaders demand that everybody be a conformist, so they can stay in control. The people in power stay in power. The people at the bottom stay at the bottom. And no matter how flawed the system is, everything stays perfectly "the way we've always done it" under the codename tradition.

The great leaders of history recognize this problem. They challenge conformity, knowing that they will likely be rejected and punished.

I worry that we are teaching our children that there is more value in being a conformist than a leader. We take away their ability to make decisions for themselves, we don't allow them the freedom to lead their own activities, and we even ban them from embracing their own talents and ideas because they don't conform with what the masters want to see. We tell them what they should be good at and which of their accomplishments don't matter. We tell them to ignore their intuition, ignore their physical or emotional needs, ignore that little voice in your head that tells you to question what you are being told, and just do whatever the adults in authority tell them to do because it's easier for the adults to manage them.

What about creativity? What about embracing natural curiosity? What about thinking for yourself? What about exploring (true exploring, not just being told what to explore)? What about trying new things, making mistakes, learning from mistakes, and growing? Why are we force feeding meaningless trivia into our kids' heads? Why are we forcing them to perfect meaningless tasks? Why are we crushing their ability to decide what kind of life and future they want for themselves? What do we tell kids to dream big and squash them as soon as they do it?

So then I was wondering around on the Internet with these questions and worries in my mind today, and I stumbled upon a video that inspired me in the past and still does today. It's from the amazing TED Talks (now those should be required curriculum). It renewed my hope, something I truly needed right about now.
Sir Ken Robinson http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/66

Labels: Deep Thoughts and Philosophy

My 5-year-old daughter just learned that the word "ass" has two meanings, so she is now jumping around the house and saying, "Look at my donkey." That's normal, right?

Labels: Funny Families Kids and Parenthood

I admit, I don't get people who Twitter their every move. "I'm using the toilet right now." "I'm walking the dog." "I'm snipping my toe nails." "I just ate a very sour tomato."

I DON'T CARE!

However, I think Twitter can be useful for lots of other things. I'm sure it would be awesome for colleges: "Class canceled today. Read chapter 5 for next week." News reporters must love it: "The President just fell down a flight of stairs, jumped up, did a back flip, and caught a frightened kitten that was falling out of tree." Fast food chains and grocery stores could use it to announce amazing deals at mealtimes to draw in those what-should-we-get-to-eat crowds: "Free drinks for the next 60 minutes, and a free hat in the shape of a block of tofu for the next 20 people who walk through the door." And I think it's good for relating significant daily events to families and friends too: "Won the lottery today and will be paying off all of your debts later this week."

So I'm wondering where that leaves me. I signed up for Twitter a long time ago and couldn't bring myself to record the hourly events of my life, so I just didn't bother with it. But in the last couple months I decided to use it to update family and friends about any interesting (or mediocre) events in my life without having to read my ramblings about philosophy and such.

If you want to follow me, go to http://twitter.com/kristenbeck and add me to your list.

Labels: Blogging and Websites