Ray's Daily

The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Bertrand Russell

It’s another one of those days. I have medical tests, a must-attend seminar and a funeral to go to. So I am going to plagiarize by stealing from some of my old Dailies. Fortunately there are enough new readers from various places in the world and old readers with memory problems that few will know the difference. I did feel I had to let you know though since a few will remember and hold me accountable. So let’s see what I will find from back when.

~~~

April 8, 2002

Life is about whom you love and whom you hurt.

It’s about whom you make happy or unhappy purposefully.

It’s about keeping or betraying trust.

It’s about friendship, used as a sanctity or a weapon.

It’s about what you say and mean, maybe hurtful, maybe heartening.

It’s about starting rumors and contributing to petty gossip.

It’s about what judgments you pass and why. And who your judgments are spread to.

It’s about whom you’ve ignored with full control and intention.

It’s about jealousy, fear, ignorance, and revenge.

It’s about carrying inner hate and love, letting it grow, and spreading it.

But most of all, it’s about using your life to touch or poison other people’s hearts in such a way that could have never occurred alone. Only you choose the way those hearts are affected, and those choices are what life’s all about.

~~~

April 10, 2002

A Friend sent this to me:

Don’t ever be reluctant to show your feelings, when you’re happy, give in to it, when you’re not, live with it.

Don’t ever be afraid to try to make things better, you might be surprised at the results.

Don’t ever take the weight of the world on your shoulders.

Don’t ever feel threatened by the future, take life one day at a time.

Don’t ever feel guilty about the past, what’s done is done, learn from any mistakes you might have made.

Don’t ever feel that you are alone, there is always somebody there for you to reach out to.

Don’t ever forget that you can achieve so many of the things you can imagine, it’s not as hard as it seems.

Don’t ever stop loving,

Don’t ever stop believing,

Don’t ever stop dreaming your dreams.

~~~

The heart is the happiest when it beats for others.

~~~

After a day of grueling maneuvers under the blazing Texas sun, the platoon stood in front of the barracks. "All right, ladies, think about this," bellowed the drill instructor. "If you could have ten minutes alone, right now, with anyone in the world, who would it be?"

Amid much mumbling, one voice was heard from the back row. "My recruiter."

~~~

What if your mother really IS right….. about everything?

~~~

A young man called his mother and announced excitedly that he had just met the woman of his dreams. Now what should he do?

His mother had an idea: "Why don’t you send her flowers, and on the card invite her to your apartment for a home-cooked meal?"

He thought this was a great strategy, and a week later, the woman came to dinner. His mother called the next day to see how things had gone.

"I was totally humiliated," he moaned. "She insisted on washing the dishes."

"What’s wrong with that?" asked his mother.

"We hadn’t started eating yet."

~~~

You can’t please everyone. But it is possible to make ’em all mad at the same time.

~~~

She said I am a very nervous flyer.  During a trip from California to Indiana, it didn’t help that my connecting flight from Denver was delayed twice because of mechanical problems.  Then, after we were aloft, I noticed the lights began flickering. I mentioned this to a flight attendant.  "I’ll take care of it," she said. Moments later the lights went out.  Clearly she had solved the problem by turning off all the lights.

A passenger across the aisle who had been watching me leaned over and said, "Whatever you do, please don’t ask about the engines."

~~~

"Wrinkles are hereditary. Parents get them from their children."

Doris Day

~~~

A Stanford Medical research group advertised for participants in a study of obsessive-compulsive disorder. They were looking for therapy clients who had been diagnosed with this disorder. The response was gratifying; they got 3,000 responses about three days after the ad came out.

All from the same person.

~~~

Many of our ambitions are nipped in the budget.

~~~

Grandma Levy, always a regular synagogue member had finally talked her cousin, a woman who had lived a riotous, free life, into joining the Temple.

"Tell me Rabbi," the old lady asked, "Do you feel that my cousin will have her sins forgiven after all those years?"

"Yes I do. I’m positive of it. You must remember that the greater the number of sins, the greater the glory."

"Really Rabbi?", the old lady replied thoughtfully. "I sure do wish I’d known that fifty years ago."

~~~

The toughest part of a diet isn’t watching what you eat. It’s watching what other people eat.

~~~

When Diane found out she was pregnant, she told the good news to anyone who would listen.  Diane’s 4-year-old son overheard some of his mother’s private conversations. One day when Diane and her 4-year-old were shopping, a woman asked the little boy if he   was excited about the new baby.

"Yes!" the 4-year-old said, "and I know what we’re going to name it, too."

"Really?" asked the lady.

"Yes." said the little boy, "If it’s a girl we’re going to call her Christina, and if it’s another boy we’re going to call it quits!"

~~~

Don’t just count your years, make your years count.

Ernest Meyers

~~~

"Next," the conference emcee announced, "we have the chief of the Minnesota State Patrol, Roger Ledding, who is here with his lovely wife, Beverly."

The chief took his place at the lectern.

"I’m a little nervous," he began, "getting up before this distinguished audience and speaking today. But not nearly as nervous as I will be tonight when I must go home with my wife, Audrey, and explain Beverly to her!"

~~~

“We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.”

Herman Melville

~~~

Stay well, do good work, and have fun.

 Ray Mitchell

Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

Management is not responsible for duplicates from previous dailies.

The editor is somewhat senile.

“Enjoy life. This is not a dress rehearsal.”

It seems like I have been pretty serious this week. We have talked a lot about our getting up, getting out and doing something for people. Today is a little bit different, it still is about doing something for people, the people being ourselves. We are going into the weekend and it is time to relax, throw our bonnet up in the air and just have fun.

The great thing is we get to decide what that might be. Recently I asked a friend if they had been dancing on tables only to find out later that the friend misinterpreted what I said as questioning if they had behaved badly. That was unfortunate but it was not what I meant. What I meant was like Zorba in “Zorba the Greek” we should feel free to live life with abandonment allowing ourselves to express our zest and exuberance. There is a latent child buried deep inside all of us that wants to play, to stick its tongue out and give the world the raspberry or sometimes just to roll around in the sand, we need to let the kid out once in awhile.

I think too many of us have become so scripted that we are on stage all the time, trying to be what we think the world expects us to be. The quote above reminds us that we are living our lives now and every day that passes is another page in our story, if we spend all our days in the dress rehearsal we will never be able to act in the play. So let yourself go, if you feel you have to go somewhere to feel free enough to do it, then go there. But please don’t let too much of your life go by missing what it has to offer. Here is how some others said it better:

"Did you know…that when you walk past a flower, whether it be in somebody’s garden or on a vacant hillside, the flower will always smile at you. The most polite way to respond, I’ve been told, is to cheerfully return the smile."

Ron Atchison

Time spent laughing is time spent with the gods. 

Japanese Proverb

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. 

Storm Jameson

~~~

So my friends I’ll leave you with one last thought, it is a quote I got from somewhere but I have forgotten where. “Live life so completely that when death comes to you like a thief in the night, there will be nothing left for him to steal.” Most of my life is behind me and I don’t want to waste what’s left, do you?

~~~

My son Earl is a construction foreman. One day he tumbled from a scaffold, managing to break his fall by grabbing on to parts of the scaffold on the way down. He received only minor scratches. Embarrassed by the fall, he climbed back up to continue working. Then he noticed his co-workers holding up hastily made signs reading, 9.6, 9.8, and 9.4.

~~~

The bride, upon her engagement, went to her mother and said, I’ve found a man just like father!"

Her mother replied, "So what do you want from me, sympathy?"

~~~

AUTO INSURANCE CLAIMS TESTAMONY

• "The accident happened because I had one eye on the truck in front, one eye on the pedestrian and the other on the car behind."
• "I started to slow down but the traffic was more stationary than I thought."
• Q: Could either driver have done anything to avoid the accident? A: Travelled by bus?
• The claimant had collided with a cow. The questions and answers on the claim form were – Q: What warning was given by you? A: Horn. Q: What warning was given by the other party? A: Moo.
• "On approach to the traffic lights the car in front suddenly broke."
• "I didn’t think the speed limit applied after midnight"
• "Windshield broken. Cause unknown. Probably Voodoo."
• "The car in front hit the pedestrian but he got up so I hit him again."
• "I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment."
• "The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intention."
• "I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way"
• "A truck backed through my windshield into my wife’s face"
• "A pedestrian hit me and went under my car."
• "In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole."
• "I was on my way to the doctor with rear end trouble when my universal joint gave way causing me to have an accident."
• "An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car and vanished."
• "I was thrown from the car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows."
• "Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have."
• "I thought my window was down, but I found it was up when I put my head through it."
• "The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him."
• "My car was legally parked as it backed into another vehicle."
• "I told the police that I was not injured, but on removing my hat found that I had a fractured skull."
• "The indirect cause of the accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth."
• "The telephone pole was approaching. I was attempting to swerve out of the way when I struck the front end."
• "I had been learning to drive with power steering. I turned the wheel to what I thought was enough and found myself in a different direction going the opposite way."
• "The pedestrian ran for the pavement, but I got him."
• "The accident occurred when I was attempting to bring my car out of a skid by steering it into the other vehicle."

~~~

Being like everyone else isn’t one of my strengths.

~~~

The local high school has a policy that the parents must call the school if a student is to be absent for the day.

Alice decided to skip school and go to the mall with her friends. So, she waited until her parents had left for work and called the school herself.

"Hi, I’m calling to report that Alice is unable to make it to school today, because she is ill."

The secretary at the high school answered, "I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll note her absence. Who is this calling, please?"

"This is my mother."

~~~

OK, I’m weird! But I’m saving up to become eccentric.

~~~

A rookie pitcher was struggling at the mound, so the catcher walked up to have a talk with him.

"I’ve figured out your problem," he told the young southpaw. "You always lose control at the same point in every game."

"When is that?"

"Right after the National Anthem."

~~~

“Live life fully while you’re here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You’re going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don’t try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.”

Anthony Robbins

~~~

Stay well, do good work, and have fun.

 Ray Mitchell

Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

Management is not responsible for duplicates from previous dailies.

The editor is somewhat senile.

“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.”

Ryunosuke Satoro

I had the good fortune today to have lunch with one of those heroes that you never hear about. My friend has devoted most of his life to others through the work he has chosen to do. He is a recognized expert on conflict resolution and peacemaking. What people don’t know is that he is also much more than that.

While so many of us agonize about the situation in Iraq and the middle East hoping that someone will find answers that lead to peace and an end to the suffering of the innocent, my friend and a handful of others have decided that if everyone waits nothing will happen. He knows that he does not have the power to change the world for everyone. The difference between him and others is that he knows he can make the world better for someone. He and about a dozen of his friends are going to Syria and Jordan to do what they can for some of the Iraqi refugees who are stuck without jobs and adequate food after being driven out of their homes by the death and destruction that exists in their home country.

My friend’s team will build a Habitat for Humanity home and will bring as much medicine and supplies as they can but most of all they will show the people that someone really cares. Just think what could be done if there were thousands like him leaving the U.S. everyday to show what people helping people can do. Shame on us if we let my friend’s demonstration of faith and humanity end with his trip.

At lunch we talked about the differences between people and our propensity to feel that the people we meet are our friends or not. The truth is that we are most often acquaintances who have yet to understand each other. Our only hope in our shrinking world is that we get to get know those we meet and that we find our common ground. We really don’t have to limit our contact to the people of the world to meetings between leaders or even worse to battlefield encounters, we can meet each other over coffee, the work we do together and just spending time together.

A child who is hungry whether it is my child or someone else’s is not hungry by choice, they are not combatants, political opponents, religious fanatics, they are but babies and young people that need some one to care and provide a little nurturing. My friend cares and through his efforts others will know he cares. If we become friends it will be awfully hard for us to become enemies.

So thanks Charlie! I wish I could be with you. But please know this, my heart and my mind will be with you and I am glad that we are friends. God speed, bring back news of your trip and how others may also get involved for you have the ability to inspire.

~~~

“If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, or joys, or base temptations, of heartaches and of remorse as his own . . . how much kinder, how much gentler he would be.”

William Allen White

~~~

There was this man who, many years ago, worked for a large business. That was his lifetime employment, but he wasn’t happy there. He wanted to go into business for himself. He saved his money and finally had enough so that he could quit and start his own business.

About two years later, I was on vacation and was going through the town where his business was located, so I stopped by for a visit.

"Hey, John! I heard that the first year is the hardest for a new business."

"Yeah, the first year was pretty rough, but we are doing pretty good now. In fact, I’m getting to where I only have to work half a day."

"Wow, that’s pretty nice. Maybe I should think about going into business for myself."

"Yeah, and the nicest part of it is that it doesn’t matter which twelve hours you work!"

~~~

There are two schools of thought on the leather jacket…one of them from the cow.

~~~

When it comes to tunes, my local music shop prefers the sound of silence.

A sign prominently displayed on a grand piano reads, "The management is not responsible for the actions of its employees if your child plays "Heart and Soul" or "Chopsticks" on this instrument.

~~~

Half the secret of getting along with people is consideration of their views; the other half is tolerance in one’s own views.

Daniel Frohmann

~~~

My English professor was stopped for speeding. When asked why she was driving so fast, she quoted Robert Frost: "I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep."

"But Miss," replied the officer, obviously familiar with the poet. "Frost chose the road less traveled and unfortunately for you, this wasn’t it!"

~~~

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.

Lord Byron

~~~

A visitor to a college campus paused to admire the new Hemingway Hall.

"It’s a pleasure to see a building named for Ernest Hemingway."

"Actually," said the guide, "it’s named for Joshua Hemingway. No relation."

"Oh? Was Joshua Hemingway a writer also?"

"Yes, indeed. He wrote a check."

~~~

A synonym is a word you use in place of one you can’t spell

~~~

An investment banker was on the pier of a small coastal village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. His boat was full of beautiful yellow tuna. The banker complimented the fisherman on his catch, asking how long it took to catch. The fisherman replied "only a short time." The banker asked why not stay out and catch more. The fisherman replied, "I’ve enough fish to feed my family."

The banker then asked what did the fisherman do with the rest of his time, and he replied, "I will sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, stroll into the village each evening, sip wine with my friends, play my guitar, … I have a full and busy life."

The banker was not impressed. "I have a Harvard MBA and could help you.

You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat and from those increased proceeds you could buy several boats and soon have a fleet. Instead of selling your fish to a middleman, you could control production, processing and distribution by building your own cannery. You could leave this small coastal village and move to the city then to New York where you could run your expanding enterprise."

The fisherman asked, "How long will this take?"

The banker said, "Ten to 20 years. Then you would announce an IPO and sell your stock to the public, making millions and millions."

"But what then?"

"Ah, now you get to the best part", said the banker smiling. "You could retire to a small coastal village where you could sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings, sip wine and play your guitar with your friends".

~~~

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.

Thomas Carlyle

~~~

A woman, her husband and their three rambunctious young sons were in their car waiting at a traffic light. The woman glanced over at the car next to them and noticed a blissfully happy mother with her baby daughter.

Looking at her husband, she said, "As soon as I lose my weight from the last baby, I want to try for a daughter."

The husband reached up to the dash, grabbed an open box of snacks and said, "Here. Have another cookie."

~~~

“No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.”

Amelia Earhart

~~~

Stay well, do good work, and have fun.

 Ray Mitchell

Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

Management is not responsible for duplicates from previous dailies.

The editor is somewhat senile.

“Dear Lord: The gods have been good to me. For the first time in my life, everything is absolutely perfect just the way it is. So here’s the deal: You freeze everything the way it is, and I won’t ask for anything more. If that is OK, please give me absolutely no sign. OK, deal. In gratitude, I present you this offering of cookies and milk. If you want me to eat them for you, give me no sign. Thy will be done.”

Dan Castellaneta

My tests at the Cardiologist office yesterday were surprisingly good as far as my traditional electrical Arterial Fibrillation is concerned. That is great news. If the combination of my last operation and my new meds keep me in sync I’ll not have to keep more ablation surgery. Now the issue is my lack of stamina that we hope is not created by my heart value leakage. So here is the plan – 90 days of reduced external activity and 90 days of stamina building exercise and diet changes. As you can guess I would much rather stay portly and eat everything in sight while still running around tilting windmills but I better not until I get back in shape. I don’t want them to decide a heart valve replacement is in my future. So another 3 months of a semi active lifestyle after which I hopefully be back in action. Don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning.

My other good news was the great job the ATT techs did in installing my new fiber optic driven television and internet service. 5 TV sets now have access to more than 300 channels, the DVR holds 120 hours of video and I can record up to four channels simultaneously. The DVR capability may really pay off during the Olympics and at other times when there are many on the air activities going on at the same time.

~~~

I also installed the new Norton 360 security suite. What a difference that made, everything is faster, my protection level has gone up a couple of notches and my system is backed up to one of my external drives on the fly.

I just realized that my shock find that everything worked well is due to the fact that I just don’t expect everything to happen they way it was promised anymore. Yes, I know I may regret saying that but so far no catastrophe has struck to prove me wrong.

So it is a good day, 70 degrees outside, sunshine, flowers in bloom, my health appears to be on the mend, and everything works better and faster, at my age you can’t hope for much more than that.

~~~

“I’ve noticed that being with you, I smile more often, I anger a little less quickly, the sun shines a little brighter, and life is so much sweeter. For being with you takes me to a different place: a place called love.”

Unknown

~~~

"Tips For Working Hard"

1. Never walk down the hall without a document in your hands. People with documents in their hands look like hardworking employees heading for important meetings. People with nothing in their hands look like they’re heading for the cafeteria. People with a newspaper in their hands look like they’re heading for the toilet. Above all, make sure you carry loads of stuff home with you at night, thus generating the false impression that you work longer hours than you do.

2. Use computers to look busy Any time you use a computer, it looks like "work" to the casual observer. You can send and receive personal email, calculate your finances and generally have a blast without doing anything remotely related to work. These aren’t exactly the societal benefits that the proponents of the computer revolution would like to talk about but they’re not bad either. When you get caught by your boss – and you *will* get caught – your best defense is to claim you’re teaching yourself to use new software, thus saving valuable training dollars.

3. Messy desk Top management can get away with a clean desk. For the rest of us, it looks like you’re not working hard enough. Build huge piles of documents around your workspace. To the observer, last year’s work looks the same as today’s work; it’s volume that counts. Pile them high and wide. If you know somebody is coming to your cubicle, bury the document you’ll need halfway down in an existing stack and rummage for it when he/she arrives.

4. Voice Mail Never answer your phone if you have voice mail. People don’t call you just because they want to give you something for nothing they call because they want YOU to do work for THEM. That’s no way to live. Screen all your calls through voice mail. If somebody leaves a voice mail message for you and it sounds like impending work, respond during lunch hour when you know they’re not there – it looks like you’re hardworking and conscientious even though you’re being a devious weasel. If you diligently employ the method of screening incoming calls and then returning calls when nobody is there, this will greatly increase the odds that the caller will give up or look for a solution that doesn’t involve you. The sweetest voice mail message you can ever hear is "Ignore my last message. I took care of it". If your voice mailbox has a limit on the number of messages it can hold, make sure you reach that limit frequently.

One way to do that is to never erase any incoming messages. If that takes too long, send yourself a few messages. Your callers will hear a recorded message that says, "Sorry, this mailbox is full" – a sure sign that you are a hardworking employee in high demand.

5. Looking Impatient and Annoyed According to George Costanza of ‘Seinfeld’, one should also always try to look impatient and annoyed to give your bosses the impression that you are always busy.

6. Appear to Work Late Always leave the office late, especially when the boss is still around. You could read magazines and storybooks that you always wanted to read but have no time until late before leaving. Make sure you walk past the boss’ room on your way out. Send important emails at unearthly hours (e.g.9:35pm, 7:05am, etc…) and during public holidays.

7. Creative Sighing for Effect Sigh loudly when there are many people around, giving the impression that you are very hard pressed

8. Stacking Strategy It is not enough to pile lots of documents on the table. Put lots of books on the floor etc… Can always borrow from library. Thick computer manuals are the best.

9. Build Vocabulary Read up on some computer magazines and pick out all the jargon and new products. Use it freely when in conversation with bosses. Remember: They don’t have to understand what you say, but you sure sound impressive.

~~~

"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there is a man on base."

Dave Barry

~~~

After just one year of marriage, Jill filed for divorce.

A friend, trying to console her said that you never know what a man’s like until you live with him.

"I should have left him right after the honeymoon. He didn’t even take me to Niagara Falls like he promised. All we did was drive through a car wash a couple of times, real slow."

~~~

I hate mornings. They’re so early

~~~

Two dapper old men sit on the porch of the retirement home every single afternoon. Two marriage-minded old ladies who move to the home set their sights on these most eligible of bachelors.

The first day, they dress up in their finest evening gowns and parade past the porch three times. The men don’t even look up. Every day for two weeks, the old ladies try something new to get their attention – new hats, new hairdos, new jewelry. But the men don’t give them a second glance.

Finally, the old ladies are so fed up one says to the other, "the only thing that’s going to get the attention of those old coots is a little flesh." The next afternoon, both ladies take off all their clothes in the bushes, then streak by the porch.

One of the old men says to the other, "My God, what did they have on today?"

The other codger shakes his head. "Can’t say for sure. But whatever they were wearing, it certainly needs ironing very badly."

~~~

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed. Never throw out anyone.

Audrey Hepburn

~~~

Two mothers are having a conversation about their children.

"How do you get your Pauly up so early on school mornings?" asks one of them.

"Oh, that’s easy," replies the other. "I just throw the cat on his bed."

"Why does that wake him up?"

"He sleeps with the dog."

~~~

“These things I warmly wish for you

Someone to love, some work to do,

A bit o’ sun, a bit o’ cheer,

And a guardian angel always near”

Irish Blessings quotes

~~~

Stay well, do good work, and have fun.

 Ray Mitchell

Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

Management is not responsible for duplicates from previous dailies.

The editor is somewhat senile.