1. Advice for the new year: The best way to find something that is lost among your stuff ("It's gotta be here somewhere") is to buy another one. When you get the new one, I can almost guarantee that you'll find the old one that same day. Maybe within minutes.
3. Sticker shock: To help you understand why seniors have a hard time dealing with prices these days, here's what I used to earn. As a teenager, I made 75-cents an hour as a file clerk working in an office in downtown Chattanooga in the afternoon, after school was out. In my first full-time job in 1959, I made $1 an hour. That's $40 a week, which equals $2,080 a year before taxes were taken out.
4. Now let's look at rent: Compare that $2,080 annual salary in #3 with this statistic I found using Google: "The average asking rent is now $1,900 — with single-family houses averaging $2,018 a month." It blows my mind!
5. Does this make cents? Yes, I spelled it correctly. When I typed #3 above, I needed the "cent" sign. Typewriters used to have that cent-symbol "back in my day." My laptop doesn't have any such thing! Is that because a cent is almost worthless these days?
9. Word of the Day: clunk·y /ˈkləNGkē / adjective INFORMAL = awkwardly solid, heavy, and outdated. Example: "Even last year's laptops look clunky." (See #6 above.)
- pen and paper
- pills and phone
- keys and comb
- clippers and Kleenex
- mask and money
- plus calendar and Kindle, if I take my cart (too big for my pockets)
11. The last thing I did in 2022: I changed the calendar on the bulletin board beside the elevator on my floor. Oh, wait! No, I came home from changing the calendar and fed Clawdia. She was eating as fireworks hailed a (hopefully less pandemic-y) New Year.
13. I have decided I won't stop at an arbitrary number just because Colleen has done a Thursday Thirteen for years. So I'll keep sharing until it's time to post my thoughts.
14. Library books checked out: I've blogged about how many books I had checked out of the library at any one time: one, four, seven, fourteen, etc. One (very unusual) time, I had ZERO books checked out. The shocker, even to me, is that I now have 26 books checked out. Yes, that number is 26. That's proof I'm a "bookie," isn't it?
15. I have a conundrum: Why don't the words tough, cough, and dough rhyme? On the other hand, these words DO rhyme: dew, do, and due. Why? Can you explain it?
16. Word of the Day (see # 15)
co·nun·drum / kəˈnəndrəm / noun = a confusing and difficult problem or question.
17. We can now officially end sentences with prepositions if we want to. (So I just did!)
- Richard Bach
- Roberta C. Bondi — my former professor
- Lisa Genova — whose book Remember I just downloaded onto my Kindle
- Beth Kephart
- Stephen J. Patterson
- John Pavlovitz
- Jodi Picoult — whom I've meet in person
- Joan Uda, who's my best friend — so I picked up my phone and called her. (The photo shows Joan and me when I visited her in 2019.)
19. On New Year's Day, I read a children's book while waiting for someone: Henry and Mudge and Annie's Perfect Pet ~ by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Suçie Stevenson, 2000, 40 pages. I rate it 10/10. Annie needs a pet that's soft and dry and doesn't fly — one that's quiet and careful, just like Annie. (Spoiler: it's a soft white rabbit, but you won't find a rabbit among the animals shown on the cover.)
20. Study the cover carefully (as a child might do), and tell me what pets you find.
2 comments:
Amusing thoughts.
#7 - That cent tips, that's what I do too, it's a great method but of course, the down side is, we will not know how to do it if there's nothing to copy.
#10 - Leaving the house isn't just picking up your bag anymore. Too many things to consider.
#12 - Yes, on masks, because it seems the infection rate rises when people don't wear them. It's not anything has changed just because they say mask is optional, certainly, there is no cure.
#16 - Conundrum is an interesting word, it has 'drum' in it that make thing of people drumming their fingers with impatience.
Have a lovely day.
I'm continually shocked at the price of things. Our first house was $45,000 new. We could barely afford it. I was teaching school, making $9,000 a year. My parents bought a house in the town I grew up in for $20,000 in 1965. My friend bought a house across the street a few months ago and paid $195,000. Whew.
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