From time to time we find ourselves looking at interior design magazines and webpages, and today we were looking at an interior design webpage that had a link to a partner webpage that was talking about decorating with hand-me-down furniture. Basically it was an article about how a handful of designers love some old furnishings that bring back special memories of people that gave them the item. The article was in slide-show form and had several pictures of the items in question. One of the items was of an irregularly shaped coffee table that my wife liked so much that she asked me if I could try to create a similar table for our family room. I suggested that she put that on her “honey do” list and I’d see what I could do.

When I tell people down here about that laptop program for the kids in Maine I’m told that the kids down here don’t need them because there are plenty of computers in the school already. That’s all well and good, but the laptops were taken to and from home so that the kids did not have to lug tons of textbooks home, and they could do their homework on their laptops. Many kids around here are from families that cannot afford to have a computer at home for the kids to work on. So I think that as much as people like to think that this is a progressive state, I have to disagree on that point.

Well, as they say, “you’ve come a long way baby” – IT careers are one of the hottest trends in the employment market. If someone were to ask me for advice on what field to enter when they are thinking about college degree choices, I would have to say either engineering or computers because the demand is going to keep being there for a very long time. Well, I’d probably also include medicine in the recommendation, but I think that the big money is going to be in computer technology. One of the greatest thing about working with computers is the ability to work from home a lot of the time. How great is that!? If telecommuting had been an option for me when I was a young man fresh out of school, you can bet I would have jumped at that opportunity!

She told me that the fire department has ordered some firefighting training videos to help keep the firefighters up to date with all of the latest equipment and procedures.  She is also going to sign up for some courses over the Internet to help her prepare for paramedic tests that she would like to take in the near future.  The courses she wants to take are through the National Paramedic Institute website.

She said that other members of the fire department took some of their training through this company, and that they were happy with the program.  She is confident that she will pass the tests with flying colors.

I have set a new goal for myself. I want to finally be in excellent shape. When I was in high school it was easy, I was always moving and always active in sports teams. As I have gotten older, it is a lot harder to make myself workout. My first excuse was that I didn’t have equipment at my house. My husband quickly got rid of this excuse by buying an elliptical. Then I said it was too boring because we didn’t have DirectstarTV in the room with the elliptical. He then solved this problem as well. Since I was running low on excuses, I decided to finally get serious and commit to working out. I started at once a week. A very weak start and most people would say pathetic, but a start is a start. This week I decided to up it to three times a week. I am determined to have a great body for swim suit season. The only way this is going to happen is if I get serious. Wish me luck because working out is so difficult for me!