Category: Happiness

Economic Recovery is On the Way

At long last the drop in new Weekly Initial Job Claims is significant. It was 384,000 in the week of July12, 2008. Since that week, claims have not been below 404,000 and been as high as 670,000. Finally last week’s claims fell to 383,000. This is VERY GOOD NEWS!

The U.S. labor market is gradually improving as the recovery gains momentum. Last year at this time I could roll a bowling ball through the local shopping mall (Westfield Topanga) and not hit anyone because most people were in fear of losing their jobs. Today the mall is moderately busy and seems busier every week.

Is the recession over? No! Unemployment in California was at 12.5% during December. We still have long way to go.

WRONG E-MAIL ADDRESS

This one is priceless. A lesson to be learned from Typing the wrong email address!!

A Minneapolis couple decided to go to Florida to thaw out during a particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years earlier.

Because of hectic schedules, it was difficult to coordinate their travel schedules. So, the husband left Minnesota and flew to Florida on Thursday, with his wife flying down the following day.

The husband checked into the hotel. There was a computer in his room, so he decided to send an email to his wife. However, he accidentally left out one letter in her email address, and without realizing his error, sent the e-mail.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Houston , a widow had just returned home from her husband’s funeral. He was a minister who was called home to glory following a heart attack.

The widow decided to check her e-mail expecting messages from relatives and friends.. After reading the first message, she screamed and fainted.

The widow’s son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and saw the computer screen which read:

To: My Loving Wife
Subject: I’ve Arrived
Date: July 19, 2010

I know you’re surprised to hear from me.. They have computers here now and you are allowed to send emails to your loved ones. I’ve just arrived and have been checked in.

I’ve seen that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then! Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was.

P. S. Sure is freaking hot down here!!!!

Toastmasters: Making Every Word Count

This article appeared in  Bloomberg Businessweek’s January 24-30, 2011 edition.  The print edition includes photographs that are missing in the on-line copy.

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By helping workers find their inner voices, Toastmasters has become a behemoth

 

By Joel Stein

The 1,500 people walking around the Desert Springs Marriott appear as diverse as the Pitt-Jolie family. Yet despite being of both genders and of every age and race, they all seem like old, white insurance salesmen. They’re confident, friendly, and wearing boxy blazers affixed with thick, plastic name badges. And they’re probably not people the Pitt-Jolie family would hang out with.

They gathered in Palm Desert, Calif., last August for the annual Toastmasters International Convention. While Toastmasters has been teaching people how to improve their public speaking since 1924, the nonprofit started aggressively pushing for international growth when Daniel Rex became executive director in 2008. The 250,000-member organization now adds global Toastmasters at about 10 percent per year. (Much of the growth comes from India and Sri Lanka, places where people want to learn business skills—and English.) This month, Toastmasters begins its 2011 International Speech Contest in which 38,000 contestants from 113 countries compete for the chance to walk around a hotel next summer in a boxy suit and name tag—and the title of World Champion of Public Speaking.

Read the rest of this article here.

The Cost of Money

Our money is costing us too much money to mint.  Coin Update News posted an article this past February that advised that minting pennies costs 1.62 cents each and 5.79 cents to produce each nickel. The Canadians are considering doing away with the penny for the same reason. In addition many people believe inflation has made the lowly penny too inconsequential.

I personally do everything in my power to avoid having any pennies in my pocket because there isn’t anything left that costs just one penny.  A half gallon of milk costs $1.79 at Trader Joe’s.  If the price was $1.80 would anyone really care?  Gasoline is so expensive why not just price it in multiples of 5 cents?  After all, most of us buy gasoline in multiples of one dollar.  I hand the clerk a $20.00 bill and say “twenty on pump 3”.  I do not say “give me 10 gallons of gas on pump 3.”

This could be the start of an effort to make government more efficient and our lives a little simpler.

Should you Work until your Dying Day?

The question is: should you work until your dying day or should you retire and enjoy a few years of relaxation without working stress?

Richard Holbrooke, United States Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan died today as the result of a torn aorta.  He was 69 years old.  He became ill just this past Friday while working at the State Department.  I believe he really liked his work in foreign affairs but when did he just relax? Couldn’t he have focused on a golf course where the outcome was not crucial or perhaps become an amateur photographer traveling to distant places around the world?

Perhaps some of us really do love our jobs so much that we find it difficult to retire.  My Dad retired at the age of 70.  He was a structural engineer who held a masters degree from the University of Toronto.  His last full-time employment was at Ralph M. Parsons Company in Pasadena, California.  They had asked him to retire.  Following that he continued to work part-time, for another two years, on a contract basis at Atomics International.  He didn’t need the money but he loved the work.  Watching him in that transition to full retirement, I could see that he was unhappy with the spare time he had on his hands.  He was lonely for the office.

Now I have been retired for over four years and sometimes wish I had more things to occupy my life.  Then I recall, it was up at 5 AM for a one hour drive to an office.  Even as I wrote those words, I know it is fun to reminisce but never mind.  I enjoy reading Al Martinez’s (retired from the Los Angeles Times) bi-weekly column in the local newspaper (Los Angeles Daily News).  He doesn’t write anything complicated but seems to enjoy his work.

It Seldom Rains in the Winter Time

My grass is greener in the winter thanks to Oregon Rye grass seed that I spread on the lawn every fall.  The hot summer sun usually turns the lawn to a pale green and spotty brown. 

From the Los Angeles Daily News today

It was beginning to look a lot like the holidays a couple of weeks ago when near-freezing mornings sent L.A. residents out in heavy coats to rake autumn leaves.

But in the latest twist in a year of weather surprises, the days turned warm again.

And now there’s this.

Temperatures in the area are expected to near 80 degrees today – before spiking into the mid-80s on Sunday, possibly beating Southern California’s record highs for mid-December.

“And it’s supposed to be Christmas,” sighed Hoshivah Wilson as he stood in short sleeves outside Walmart in West Hills on Friday, collecting donations for a local charity.

This weekend’s hot spell is likely to be brief, perhaps the last hurrah for fall, before winter arrives Dec. 21.

Annual average rain is about 16 inches in Los Angeles and it rarely rains from May to October.  Snow?  That is in the mountains.