Who Needs Role Models?

I’m trying to wake up.

It’s been a while since I’ve written. That seven word sentence says so much more than it seems. I haven’t written in this blog since October. Other sites I write for have languished even longer. This would be fine if I could say I was working on other things. But I can’t even say that. I finished working on my RWD videos in early fall and then the world fell in on me. I can’t even say what, if anything, happened. Mostly because nothing happened. Nothing. Happened.

  For a few weeks now, I have been creating a motivational image for myself. Some of them I really like. Most are based off a quote that I find somewhere. Today’s quote was found in my Focus app and is apparently a Latin proverb. Either way, it’s good advice. Or as Dory might say “Just keep swimming…”

We were farming today. With a small tractor, a medium amount of mud, and a lot of manure, err, I mean compost.

Insurance to cover what they won’t cover

This is fucked up. My insurance company wants me to pay them gap insurance for a gap in the insurance they are selling me.

What is gap insurance you ask?

Gap insurance is insurance that covers you if your car breaks down soon after you buy it. Your car insurance won’t cover your expenses if your brand new car gets totaled immediately after you buy it. You won’t be able to buy the same car again because they won’t give you the amount of money that you spent on the car.

Mark and I got a Christmas box from a relative who can’t be bothered to remember our last name. We’ve been married for 18+ years, and we both changed our name when we married. We combined the letters of both our last names into a new last name because we wanted to represent the blending of our lives in a more tangible way than just merging the linens and sharing the bills.

I was watching this TEDx video: Margaret Heffernan “Dare to Disagree” and it really made me think.

https://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_dare_to_disagree

One of the reasons I suspect I was laid off from About.com was because I had the temerity to disagree with staff. I would point out bugs and flaws in their code or design. I had discussions with both editors and senior executives about how the site could be improved and what I thought was going wrong and right.

My son and I love Legos. He loves to build them, and I love to help. Plus I love the different scenes you can build and I’m especially impressed with the Hobbit and LoTR sets. We just bought the Smaug set and had a blast putting it together. Now Smaug can fight the Indominus Rex from Jurassic World and we’ll finally know which is more powerful—dragons or dinosaurs. When we bought the Smaug set, we were sent a survey asking us what we thought of the purchase process. So I filled it out. Our local Lego store is in a mall, and is like what I imagine most Lego stores are like—crowded and a lot of fun. So I gave them, primarily, 4 and 5 star ratings. But one of the questions asked what I thought of the store’s online promotions. I had to honestly give that a low rating (1 or 2 stars, I forget now) because the promotions have always been a source of frustration for our family. This low rating got me a reply from the store manager asking me what my specific issue was. I replied:

I have been playing with hypermiling (the idea that how we drive affects our gas milage) for a few years now, and I find it very entertaining. I mostly enjoy the reactions I get from people both on and off the road when I’m doing it. But today’s reaction was perhaps the best I’ve ever seen. But before I tell that story, let me explain what I do, and to a certain extent, what hypermiling is. When I drive I try to get the best mileage out of my car as I can. And to do so I have a number of driving habits that are different from other drivers on the road, including: