When that happens, all of the friends of the original poster jump on the case of the older, wiser family member and call that older person a “hater.” Sometimes friends of the older family member will interject a post that is an attempt to calm the waters, but instead it turns into a feeding frenzy of the younger people becoming argumentative and the older people not being heard. That is so sad. Makes me want to stop reading the posts on Facebook.

I do have a nice kitchen pantry closet that I keep my spices in, but there are several different spice rack set-ups in there. One of them is a double-decked lazy susan. Another one is a newer kind that I cannot remember what it is called but it is ingenious in the design – it has four shelves that flip and twist and slide around. To be honest, I’d like something like that on a larger scale because this particular one only holds small cans and bottles, and many of the cans, jars and bottles that spices are sold in just do not fit. That is the most aggravating part of storing spices, don’t you agree?

Much to my surprise, a couple of weeks later one of the intended recipients told me that she was thinking about buying one of those Himalayan salt lamps online. She showed me the picture of what she wanted, and it was exactly the same one that I had already bought for her! I told her that I had bought one for her for her Christmas present, and not to buy one herself. She asked me to give it to her now because she wanted to start “enjoying the benefits” immediately. Well, I agreed and I gave it to her. She was happy and took it home with her.

Less than a week later she told me that her daughter told her that she hated it, that it made her feel depressed instead of happy, and she gave the lamp back to me and asked me to give her something different for Christmas. I agreed to do that, and now I am using it in one of my bathrooms. I like how it deodorizes and helps to dehumidify the room. As for the original recipient, well, I ended up giving her a gift card to Wal-Mart. I know she buys things there, and I think that maybe I’ll just keep giving her gift cards in the future.

Although I’m not happy that there is some kind of rodent in the garage, I’m grateful that it was not a poisonous snake or a skunk. That would have REALLY upset me! And now I have to decide whether to leave it open a crack for the next few days, or keep it shut. What would you do?

Sometimes I add some spices to the crock pot when I’m cooking meat, but this time I just put the roast in the crock pot with no spices, and no water. I ended up having three people showing up at the dinner table, and it worked out fine – I warmed up some Bob Evans mashed potatoes, some canned green beans, and some chicken gravy. Nothing fancy, but it was still good eating. I was glad that I had put the roast in the crock pot – I don’t have any idea what I would have had for supper if I had waited until the last minute, when everyone walked in the door, hungry and tired. I love my crock pot!

When I think of all of the great ways the Internet has made life easier, I am simply amazed. For example, back when I was a young adult, looking for Flats to rent in Glasgow I had to depend on a newspaper advertisement. And if I was coming int own from a place far away from there I had to first rent a hotel room for several days before I could get my bearing.

Now it seems as easy as pie because with the Internet you can go to to a variety of websites designed to help people who are looking for Flats to rent in Edinburgh or Flats to rent in Aberdeen or any other place in the UK.

The website I was just looking at is called lettingweb.com, and what I like about the website is that in addition to looking for flats to rent, you can also use the searching wizard to find a room mate. I think that is an especially handy feature for single people, to be able to find not only a place to live, but someone to share the rental fees with. Yes, the Internet has definitely made life a lot easier for a lot of people.

I can still remember the summers that I spent at my cousin Betty’s farm when I was an kid. I was crazy about horses, and she had plenty of them. She ran a boarding and training stable, and she even had a grandson of the famous race horse “Man of War” in her stables. I was awestruck. I still have the old hand-me-down riding boots that no longer fit and the now too-small horse riding helmet that she let me keep. Her daughter BJ competed in horse events that I never did get to go see, but I do remember one summer that I stayed with them she was off with some friends on a dream trip Horseback Riding in Italy that they had given her as a college graduation present.

I sure wish my folks had given me such a great gift like that!

Thinking about it, I wondered if they were thinking that this “Fat Cow” company would be a “cash cow” for them. And I wondered why they didn’t just name the company Cash Cow. Maybe someone else already took that name. Anyway, this piqued my interest and I started clicking around and found a story about how this Fat Cow company was striving to make it’s company as ecologically friendly as possible. That made me think of how much fun they could have with an internal newsletter about the company with the headline reading “greener pastures for Fat Cow.”

I’d like to think it would be fun to work for a company that has a sense of humor like that.

Do you remember the old days when a young child wanted to sit at the table to eat, the parents (or grandparents) would put a big, fat, telephone directory on the seat of one of the adult’s dining room chairs so the child could sit there? Growing up in an urban area, I was used to seeing really fat telephone directories.   I had a strange kind of fascination with them.  I have no idea why, really. I just can remember whenever we would travel to a different city, when we would check into a motel I would go look for the local telephone directory and flip through the yellow pages.  I always felt that was the best way to get a really good idea of what the area was like.  And I can remember as a child, there were several times that I had a question about something and for some crazy reason I would call the telephone operator and ask her for the answer to my question. And you know something? The telephone operator always was very pleasant and had the answer I was looking for! Boy, those were the good ol’ days!

Now small business marketing involves much more than a listing in the White Pages and an advertisement in the Yellow Pages of the telephone directory.  The Internet has done its part to revolutionize local listings.  I still use the telephone directory for a lot of things, but usually it is only when I don’t have access to the Internet. I am always sure to keep a current telephone directory near the hard wired phone at home, and usually last year’s copy of the telephone directory in my car.

Whenever possible, however, I will generate a local search on my computer.  Doing that is often faster than using the paper version of the telephone directory.  It is definitely time to stop using the telephone directory as a booster seat – I think it is an endangered species.