Monthly Archives: April 2007
Hang On, We're Almost There!
It’ s only two days away, folks! OK, let’s see now…
“Life Lessons”. Hmmm, - maybe “Lessons from Life”. Nope, too general. How about “Things I’ve Learned”. Naw, need to be more specific – hey! How about, “What I Learned From…”
Uh, from what?
Well, now that is a great question, don’t you think?
Wondering what it’s all about? Tune in Tuesday, May 1 for the great MZM Group Writing Project!
What’s in it for you? Well, how about this? You will:
- Hear some great stories
- Learn some powerful life lessons
- Be introduced to some new blogs
- Gain significant link love
I promise, it’s easy, it’s fun, and you’ll be glad you were a part of it. Trust me.
This Time, It's All About YOU!
So, what’s the upcoming writing project all about, you ask? Well, it’s sorta like…
Have you ever experienced this? (What am I saying? If you’re even remotely human, then of course you’ve experienced this! Uh… you are human, aren’t you?)
You’re socializing around the water cooler (or whatever passes for this particular social activity these days), or gathered with a group of friends over, well, let’s assume it’s coffee, OK? (You still have to drive home, you know.) Everyone is having a great time, and one of you has just related a strange, funny, sad or otherwise engaging story about something that happened to them, or maybe to someone they know.
Now, as they’re telling the story, inevitably your mind is busily making all kinds of associations and connections. Suddenly, a memory pops into your mind – related in some way to the story you just heard. In fact, you can’t wait to tell it. In no time, your social gathering turns into a sortof story-telling tag-team smackdown.  Everyone sharing their stories, and each one is connected in some way with one of the previous ones. (Come to think of it, it’s like a rapid-fire blog, don’t you think?)
Surely it’s happened to all of us, right? (Yes, I know -Â don’t call you Shirley.) After all, it’s a big part of the enjoyment we get out of casual interaction with others. True, some folks are just better storytellers, but that’s not really as important as the fact that the story gets told.
Oh, didn’t you know? Stories passed from person to person are a major source of all cultural norms. That’s right; the sobering truth is that you might accidentally be responsible for teaching someone else how to act in a certain situation! Quite a responsibility, don’t you think? (It brings to mind the words of that immortal philosopher, Scooby-Do: “Ruh-Roh!”)
Of course, it can go too far. I mean, you know who I’m talking about, right? The one who, no matter how dramatic, how outrageous, how funny your story is – they always have one to top it. But here’s where we change the focus, and answer your original question (thought I’d forgotten about it, didn’t you?) This project isn’t about one-upmanship.
Surprise! This time, it’s all about YOU! Are you further intrigued? Good! Stay tuned… there’s more to come…
Don’t forget – the project kickoff is on Tuesday, May 1. Mark your calendars; set your alarms; schedule your wake-up calls. It’ll be great! (Of course, you don’t have to wait until then, you know; stop by anytime.)
Great Quotes #11
Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’re about to the end of another thrilling month of potentially preposterous possibilities. So the BIG question is, how’s that been workin’ for ya? Ah, well, if you find you’re a bit short of the mark -Â hey, no worries, I’ve got the cure for what ails you right here. That’s right, it’s time for another rousing edition of Great Quotes.
So my friends, if you find yourself running a little low on “oomph”, and you’re looking for a bit of encouragement, inspiration, or perhaps even just a chuckle or two – well, you’ve come to the right place! Check these out:
- Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else is silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to always be part of unanimity. – Christopher Morley
- Life is not advancement. It is growth. It does not move upward, but expands outward, in all directions. – Russell G. Alexander
- A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after awhile he gets to know something. – Wilson Mizner
- You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. – Jack London
- The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and therefore never scrutinize or question. – Stephen Jay Gould
- The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous. – Shana Alexander
- The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they’re OK, then it’s you. – Rita Mae Brown
- In theory there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. – Yogi Berra
- One of the advantages to being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. – A. A. Milne
- The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. – Lord Acton
- You live and you learn. At any rate, you live. – Douglas Adams
- What if this weren’t a hypothetical question? – Unknown
- When I came back to Dublin I was court-martialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence. – Brendan Behan
- Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it. – Jules Reynard
- Only the mediocre are always at their best. – Jean Giraudoux
- The trouble with facts is there are so very many of them. – Samuel McChord Crothers
- Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless. – Thomas A. Edison
- The best defense against the atom bomb is to not be there when it goes off. – Anonymous
- Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together. – Carl Zwanzig
- I’m a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work the more I have of it. – Thomas Jefferson
- Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don’t know and I don’t care. – William Safire
- On my income tax 1040 is says ‘Check this box if you are blind.’ I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away. – Tom Lehrer
And finally, just to give the American citizens in the audience a few words of encouragement after our annual lovefest hair-pulling ordeal Tax Month:
- The reason worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work. – Robert Frost
Winning Friends and Influencing People
Whoa, Buddy! I nearly missed it in all the excitement about the upcoming MZM Group Writing Project. (What’s that about? Well… there’s more details to come – but it kicks off Tuesday, May 1.)
There’s a list going ’round designed to take advantage of the power of your list of Technorati Favorites, and all you have to do is follow a few simple directions to profit from it in terms of links. But more than that, it will introduce you to a whole new set of blogs you may not have even been aware of!
I picked up this thread from Char at Essential Keystrokes, and I’m glad I found it. You will be too, once you do the following:
***Start Copying Here:***
Here are the rules:
1) Write a short introduction paragraph about how you found the list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.
2) COPY the Rules and ENTIRE List below and post it to your blog. To avoid duplicate content and increase the amount of keywords your site can accessible for, go ahead and change the titles of the blog. Just don’t change the links of the blog.
3) Take the three blogs listed under “My New Faves” and move them to the bottom of “The Original Faves” list.
4) Add 3 Blogs that you’ve just added to your Technorati Favorites to the “My New Faves” section. Remember to also add the “Fave Me” link next to your new blogs (i.e. http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn&add=
http://www.yourfavesdomain.com)
5) Add everyone on this list to your Technorati Favorites List by clicking on “Fave the Site.” Those who want to respond will fave you back. If not, you will for sure get the benefits of faves from the bloggers who continue this list after you.
My New Faves
· Chips Quips – Fave the Site
· Creative Think – Fave the Site
· LOGICal eMOTIONs – Fave the Site
The Original List
· Dawud Miracle – Fave the Site
 · Gary Lee – Fave the Site *
· Dosh Dosh – Fave the Site
· Nate Whitehill – Fave the Site
· Jeff Kee – Fave the Site
· Scribble on the Wall – Fave the Site
· Jimi Morrisons Head – Fave the Site
· Jon Lee – Fave the Site
· Samanathon – Fave the Site
· Eat Drink & Be Merry - Fave the Site
· The Man of Silver – Fave the Site
· Hannes Johnson – Fave the Site
· My Dandelion Patch – Fave the Site
· Nathan Drach – Fave the Site
· SiteLogic – Fave the Site
· Julies Journal – Fave the Site
· Tea & Slippers – Fave the Site
· The Thinking Blog – Fave the Site
· Pencil Thin – Fave the Site
· Essential Keystrokes – Fave the Site
· Mom Gadget – Fave the Site
· Engaging the Disquiet – Fave the Site
· Monk at Work – Fave the Site
· Converstations – Fave the Site
· The Kiss Business Too – Fave the Site
· HomeMom3 – Fave the Site
· Grow Your Writing Business – Fave the Site
· Quartz Mountain – Fave the Site
· Prime Advertising Blog – Fave the Site
***End Copying Here***
OK, you have your orders instructions suggestions, now hop on board and let’s see where it takes us! Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?
Can't You Just Feel the Excitement?
Just a friendly reminder – the MZM Group Writing Project begins next week on Tuesday, May 1, and I can already feel the excitement building! Can’t you feel it too? Sortof gives you a shiver, doesn’t it? (It’s either that, or that hole in your shorts is lettin’ in the breezes.)
Anyway, I just wanted to give you fair warning, so you can begin to commence to start to get things lined up to (finally takes a breath) warm up the ol’ pencils, pens, keyboards, or hammers-and-chisels; whatever you’re comfortable with.
Ah, but what’s it all about, you ask?
Well… I’m not going to tell you! Yet. (It’s what you basically call your “teaser”, don’cha know.)
Just… trust me.
Dad Always Knows
My Father-in-Law was an amazing man. And to this day we still wonder: How did he know?
Back when I first started seeing (the future) Mrs. MZM (actually, I think we’d known each other only a few weeks), she asked me to go with her to pick up her dad from his weekly visit to his clinic (he was on dialysis a total of 10 years before he passed away).
She had a wonderful relationship with both her father and mother (who had gone to Heaven some years earlier), and on treatment days customarily took him to dinner before dropping him off at the senior apartments where he lived.
We picked him up, got him safely into the car, and headed to the local cafeteria. (Now bear in mind, this was my first introduction to him, so I had no idea what to expect.) Dinner went well, considering it was a “first time to meet” sortof thing. We ate, had a nice conversation, and left.
At the time, the two of us lived completely across Houston from each other (as the crow flies, about 50 miles), so after dinner, she dropped me off (I lived fairly close by the restaurant) before taking her father to his apartment. As she was helping him out, he slyly looked at her and said, “Well, I guess I’ll have to be getting’ out the ol’ monkey suit!” (Meaning, of course, a tuxedo. You DO know what a tuxedo is don’t you?)
She was completely flabbergasted (which is as you know, is derived from a Russian word that translates roughly as What in tarnation are you talkin’ about?!) She of course denied having any intentions at all (which was true… at least, at the time), and did her best to dissuade him of any further ideas along those lines.
Ironically enough, he knew she had been dating someone else for quite a while (and in the immortal words of Maxwell Smart, Secret Agent Extraordinaire: “Sorry about that, Chief!”), but during that entire relationship, her father had never said or implied anything even remotely like this!
About a year later, we were married. And to this day we still wonder, How did he know?
I wrote along these lines in a post back in January of this year called Footprints. In it, I spoke of how the evidence of our lives and the things we do and say, even when we’re not around, tell others volumes about us.
Just think (try it; it won’t hurt – much!): if others can tell so much about us, even when we’re not around, then why should we be surprised at what they can perceive when we are! It’s a sobering thought.
All I can think of is there must have been something in the way we acted with each other. I mean, I did the usual gentlemanly things: held her door for her; took her hand whenever we walked together, etc., and in truth, I was already falling in love with her.
Yes, but marriage? It simply wasn’t “on the table” yet, as far as we were concerned. Nevertheless, there must have been something in what we said or how we acted with each other; something that presented his sharper and more experienced mind with enough evidence to recognize what we ourselves didn’t even know. But he knew.
Dad always knows.
(This story was prompted by the question posed by GL Hoffman over at What Would Dad Say, where he asks for a response to his question, “What did your dad say?” Why not share the wealth? Pop on over and contribute something! And yes, your father will know. He always knows.)