Law of the Garbage Truck
A good friend sent this to me. I hadn’t seen it before, and thought you might like to see it, too.
I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his breaks, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly.
So I asked, ‘Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!’
This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, ‘The Law of the Garbage Truck.’
He explained that many people are like garbage trucks.
They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger and full of disappointment.
As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they’ll dump it on you.
Don’t take it personally, just smile, wave, wish them well and move on.
Don’t take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets.
The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day.
Life’s too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so…..
‘Love the people who treat you right.
Pray for the ones who don’t.’
Sky Walk – I Couldn’t Do it
Today on Good Morning America, they hit the 3rd of America’s Seven Natural Wonders. It is the Grand Canyon, and they broadcast from the new skywalk that they built cantilevered out over the Canyon. It has a glass floor, and you walk out 4,000 feet above the bottom of the canyon.
I almost threw up.
Just looking at it makes my blood pressure jump; my heart is beating fast and my palms start to sweat.
I have a mild case of fear-of-heights. (Acrophobia) I feel unbalanced looking down, I feel like I could fall right over.
AdventureMan, thank God, has the same sensitivity, so he doesn’t tease me. I know we will visit this skywalk one day, and I wonder if he will be able to force himself to walk out on it. I already know I won’t be doing it. It’s just too stressful for me. . . . Even watching it on Good Morning America, I feel all stressed out!
Kuwait Green
There is a miracle in Kuwait. Suddenly, there are trees a bright, Easter-basket-grass green.
“What kind of miracle is that?” you might ask, you who live in other climates.
That bright spring-green is a miracle in a land where the true blue of the blue sky is often screened with haze, where the dominant color is a white beige sand, and, most important of all, where there has not been a truly significant rain the entire rainy season here.
The color is painfully beautiful, the eye seeks it out and feasts on its vibrancy in an otherwise dull landscape. The tree that is showing the vibrant green is a little willowy, graceful. The green is probably only for a day or two before it fades into a duller green – still welcome because it IS green.
The second tree is my favorite tree in Kuwait, but I don’t have a single Kuwaiti friend who can tell me what it is. They tell me it is a very old tree, a tree that can live a long time on very little water, a tree often used to screen houses and provide both shade and privacy. I love the laciness on its leaves, the delicacy of its foliage. In contrast to the spring-green tree, the foliage is a more grey-blue-green, and it is a much taller tree. There is a delicacy about this tree, an elegant restraint and a timelessness that fascinates me. If I were Kuwaiti, if I had my own compound, I would grow this tree, I would grow many of them and watch their lacy branches sway in the slightest breeze.
Can someone tell me the names for these trees?
(PS I had to look up it – it’s + Possessive to be sure I got it right, above. I didn’t get it right at first, but it is right now. If you have any confusion, don’t be alarmed – it confuses all of us. If you click on the blue type, there is a very simple way to remember when to use it and when to use it’s.)
MacDonalds MacKrisby
This is for my stateside readers. Wherever you go, except for Syria, there seems to be a MacDonalds. The funny thing is, in different countries, they have different specialties, things you never see in the USA. For example, while we lived in Qatar, they had a special called the MacArabia, which was kind of like a local fast food, but on a more Western bun. It was no where near as tasty as the local equivalent, but I think they add things to the menu to appeal to people forced to eat there when the kids insist. I am only guessing; I can’t even remember the last time I had anything from MacDonalds.
In Kuwait, they have added a new sandwich, the MacKrispy, a breaded fried chicken thing, sort of like a great big dry chicken nugget. Because Arabic does not have a “p”, the literal translation of the word (you can see it down by the little golden arches) is MacKrisby.
College Level Classes for Older Adults
AdventureMan and I fantasize about what retirement will look like, even though it is a few years ahead of us. It helps to think about what is coming and how we are going to handle it.
We have a house near my Mom, and Mom sent AdventureMan a clipping from the local paper about classes being taught for “older adults” (WHEN did THAT happen, we wonder, when did we become “older” adults???) with the sweet note that AdventureMan could teach a few classes.
Here are some of the classes offered at the college near us:
Africa: A Closer Look
The Canterbury Tales, Part I and Part II
Civil Liberties and Security
Current Issues Forum
End of Life Decisions
Geology of National Parks
The History of the Supreme Court
Jazz: Can You Dig it?
The Many Faces of Hinduism
Native Basketry of the columbia Plateau, Northwest Coast and Arctic Alaska
The Poetry of Billy Collins
The War of 1812
He’s excited about the idea. So as we were planning to pray together before he left for the day, we were chatting excitedly.
“You could teach some classes on buying hand woven carpets! or on Arabic culture! or you could teach about some aspect of Africa!” I suggest. (I have my own projects that keep me very busy.)
“I was thinking more about organizational classes – managing organizations, financial management, that kind of thing . . ” he responded, “You know, like organizing your life . . .”
(I can see that manic gleam come into his eye and I know what is coming next might well be something I don’t want to hear. . .)
“I’ve got it!” he exclaims, and he starts laughing, because he is already cracking himself up. “I can teach a class called . . . HOW TO ORGANIZE YOUR WIFE! Ha ha hahahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahhahahhahahah.”
I can’t help it. I am laughing too. But it’s not THAT funny, AdventureMan.
Al Ahmadi Minaret
I see a lot of new mosques going up in Kuwait, and I see a lot of renovations. I just wish someone would spruce up this beautiful old minaret in Al Ahmadi. Looks to me like it is well-built, just needs a new coat of paint. And then I start to wonder, do mosques have committees, like churches do? We have the committee for the church grounds, the committee to take care of the altar, the committee to welcome new members, the committee to work with church school programs for the children . . . it goes on and on!
Do mosques have citizens committees?
5,000 Real Estate Deeds Missing
The Kuwait Times website seems to be down so I can’t link directly to them, but this is at the top of the crime news on yesterday’s page 5:
5,000 Real Estate Deeds Missing
Kuwait: An owner of a real estate office registered a complaint with the Khaitan police claiming that 5,000 real estate deeds were stolen from his office’s locked-up drawers. However, both the owner and the police were baffled because the thieves could have carried off furniture and other valuable items, but preferred to steal the deeds instead. The case was handed over to special detectives who immediately launched an investigation.
This seems to me like the deeds were the target of the break-in. Aren’t deeds registered somewhere? So like even if these paper copies are stolen, can’t they be replaced? What would somebody gain by stealing these deeds? Can they claim the properties? Can they claim the properties were transferred to them? Can they hid transfers that someone doesn’t want disclosed? This sounds like a great mystery to me!
The Purg’s Not-Tag
The Purg has non-tagged us to link to The Purgatorian Blog with things that fascinate us.
It fascinates me that thirty year olds are sounding like really really OLD people, criticizing the young people just the way the adults used to criticize them, their choice in music, their ideas of fashion and I wonder how we change from young people who explore new ideas into old people who criticize new ideas?
It fascinates me that although we became “human” so long ago, we find the most amazing reasons to beat up on each other, kill each other, torture each other, and if you just step back a step or two, you begin to see that all the reasons to fight one another are flimsy compared to the great miracle of our creation. I wonder if we are really civilized? I wonder just how thin the veneer of civilization really is? How little it takes to turn us back into beasts?
It fascinates me how the things we own really own us. I have a horror of being forced, in the afterlife, to carry all the THINGS I consider important in this life on my back, like a turtle with it’s shell.
It fascinates me the trivia I give my attention to, the time I WASTE when I have things I really need to do.
I am fascinated by the darkness we all carry within us, and the heroic people I know who strive on a daily basis to overcome that darkness, to give their best in every situation, with earthly good humor and humility.
The Purg sent out this not-challenge to anyone interested to write a post on the sorts of thoughts that fascinate you.
Not So Fast!
The other day, I was taking breakfast to a friend. For me, I love Gulf breakfasts, I love fried Haloumi, I love felafel, I love hummous and even beans. I love hot fragrant flat bread, fresh out of the oven.
But I knew my friend needed some protein, so I went to a nearby MickyD’s.
It was not fast food. It was very very very very slow food. And even worse – when I got to my friends house, and gave her the BIG value breakfast, she opened the box and – it was pancakes. They were not just slow, they also gave me the WRONG order!
I have to tell you, I was astonished to see so many people there. People like me, women, families, sitting and visiting and eating at McDonalds as they would at a much nicer place, Pain Quotidien or Paul’s or some coffee place. And the McDonalds actually looked nicer than the run-of-the-mill McDonalds, it was clean and even had some relatively nice furniture. But it was NOT fast food!
Need Exercise . . .
Why is it that rainy cloudy days make you sleepier? It was extra dark this morning, no sunrise to speak of, a great morning just to snuggle back down under the covers for some extra snooze time.
I know this is perfect exercise weather. I just can’t seem to force myself to JUST DO IT!
moar funny pictures
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