Buckets and David Cook

I had to do some reading today about strategic vs. tactical planning in a business environment.

It is, or should be obvious that the reading I am speaking of is not “light” reading. It is reading

I have to do for a pre-session meeting for the Master’s program I am taking…So…this is pre-reading for a pre-session class! But I digress….

Strategic vs. Tactical planning…is the same as saying long-range vs. shorter range planning or, possibly another way to put it is Bucket Lists vs. those lists you make up daily or weekly and put on your IPhone so that you can jog your memory as to what needs to be accomplished on a short term basis….

I think those lists need a moniker, a real name, something other than “ those lists I keep on my IPhone so I can jog my memory as to what the heck it was I am supposed to do today!”

I have the answer.

“Pail List”…after all, a pail is substantially smaller than a bucket. It carries much less weight, and is still a method of conveying a list of things that need to be accomplished!

My “Pail List” consisted of ten items today, almost evenly divided between tasks that must be accomplished to improve the homestead, and tasks that need to be accomplished for my own benefit….

Up to this point, I have marked off/deleted nine of the ten items…I think that is a pretty good accomplishment for one day, and the day is not over yet.

Pail List. Brief, and to the point…I think I like it.

David Cook, in his latest album “This Loud Morning” is really dynamic, and is exactly what I like to listen to:

Old-school rock with really good lyrics, musicianship, and vocals. I did not know that he had been an American Idol winner…I don’t watch T.V. either. I guess that would make it hard to know that fact, though.

A real critic reviewed his album here. I like it!

Oh yes… the tenth item on my pail list was to write about a pail list on my blog…..

Done!

Have a great weekend!

Wednesday ads

Today, as on any given Wednesday, the flyer for each of the local grocery stores was stuffed between the folds of the local paper and distributed throughout the paper’s circulation area.

I began to wonder how many people actually knew, or even cared why the grocery store ads all came out on Wednesday? Is it a giant price-fixing conspiracy? Why not Sunday when the circulation is at its highest? Why not Friday, in time for “weekend Specials”;  Why Wednesday?

It seems that grocers and the Sperry and Hutchison Company need a way to perk up sales on the day that was notoriously the slowest grocery shopping day of the week…I am not sure when the tradition actually came into play, or where, but it seems that any grocer worth its salt for decades before  the 1970s gave away S & H green stamps. And Wednesday was double stamp day! That’s right; boys and girls, TWICE the normal amount of Sperry and Hutchison’s famous “S&H Green Stamps” could be yours for merely making your weekly trek to the grocer on a Wednesday! Believe me, it was a tradition in our household, as well as many, many other households. I believe Double stamp day was marketing genius, but that is for another entry.

I assume the tradition is just that now, and the fact that grocery store ads all come out on Wednesday  still boost sales somewhat, although I am sure the sales have leveled out somewhat.  S&H green stamps were out of production in the 80s and its meager distribution at that time did not raise much of a fuss. There were other saving stamps, Gold Bond, Royal, and others, but all went the way of the dinosaur, the dodo bird and the pet rock.

I miss those days of wandering what the accumulation of books of green stamps was going to purchase. Browsing the catalog seemed to be a tradition, too. Every Wednesday Evening, right after all those stamps were duly licked and affixed to the pages of the book used to collect them. ( I sure was a happy camper when I figured  out that a damp sponge was an acceptable substitute for my tongue)! The prices in the Green Stamp catalog were in numbers of books required for purchase. There was a redemption center in the nearest town of any size, and the people there would gladly order you whatever you had enough books for. The stamps were used to buy many Christmas gifts, and a catalog would get work quickly in the days following Thanksgiving.

The catalog was nowhere as extensive as A Sears or Montgomery Ward’s catalog, but still, the funding for the  wonderful model airplanes, BB guns, and footballs contained within were readily available and easily counted…there in those shoeboxes that have been accumulating for all these many months…

Double stamp day….Ain’t it crazy what a nostalgic trip thorough time an ad stuffed into the local newspaper can do? Make memories while you can, for you and those around you, and try to make them all good, you and your loved ones will appreciate it someday, I promise.

Slides

SLIDES

When we were younger we would , on special occasions like Christmas, and maybe birthdays, view the photographic slides of our family and places our family had been.

It was always a grand affair; setting up the screen, getting out the projector, leveling it on the coffee table, putting in the first of several hundred slides trying to get the focus just right, then the lights were turned off with the operator (It was quite a privilege to have attained the status of projector operator) would carefully insert the next slide, making sure it was oriented correctly. Upside down, and inverted , get it right or you, the one who attained the honor of projector operator, was the recipient of heckling until it was oriented correctly.

Most of the slides were in a somewhat chronological order starting somewhere in the forties and ending around the early sixties. It was a hodge-podge of family, places the family had been, and the homes of grandparents and relatives. It was my mother’s life…a slide show documented on two trays of slides. 

I’m not sure how the timing of the start of the viewing was done, but it always seemed that after the last slide was viewed, and everything was put away, it was time to go to bed; the day was done.

In life I am well into my second tray of slides, but I am not ready for that last slide and neither am I ready to put up the screen and call it a day, or life for that matter. I really don’t want to sit and review my life, it is not as happy or full of wonderful memories as some, and yes, there are regrets. To those who say they live without regrets, I say how can you go through life and never make a poor decision?

It is good to look back, to realize where you came from; it is not something I really want to do on a continuing basis, however. I haven’t done a very good job of documentation, either, and mostly what I have are memories. My slides are mostly in my mind; maybe3 that is why I am compelled to write…maybe it is a way of revealing my earlier years and sharing that revelation with people. 

I hope you enjoy my slideshow.

Two-A-Days

Lately I am in to two-a-days.

Nope I have not lost my mind and started practicing with a football team, I have

not become an exercise junky, nor am I a newlywed!

I am talking about the picking of wild blackberries. I have plenty of thorny vines

in the back of my property. Lately it seems that I have quite a bit of time on my hands,

and those juicy little berries were begging to become a main ingredient in a cobbler.

It is amazing how rapidly they mature, and how quickly they get over-ripe.

Berries that are not ready to be picked in the morning may well be ready in the evening

and the same is true for those slightly under mature in the evening; they will be ready first 

thing in the morning. Thus, I have been to two-a-days in the blackberry picking realm

for over a week. I have accumulated well over a quart of those pea-sized natural wonders

and have frozen them each morning and evening for safe keeping. Time is fast approaching

to make a creation from the fruits of my labor (literally)!

Fresh, hot, juicy blackberry cobbler ( maybe with a handful of blueberries thrown in for good measure. 

Top that all off with a large scoop of French vanilla  ice cream, and

just enjoy!....after about three or four more two-a-days, I will have quite enough to accomplish

that, and maybe even have enough berries to make a blackberry topping for the Ice cream.

All of this, of course is going to be make with real, pure cane sugar from Hawaii.

Michelle O.  and Mayor Bloomberg…you weren’t invited anyway!...but if any of my kind readers just happen to be downwind and get a sniff when that comes out of the oven….Come On Over!

A Team Player

I was raised to be fiercely independent and unemotional. ( I almost put some type of modifier in front of unemotional, but 'terribly' or 'awfully' aren't appropriate.) “If you don't make your own decisions, you are allowing someone else to make them for you!” is one of the life lessons I remember hearing as a young boy. I guess it stuck, maybe too well.

In today's world if one is not a “team player” one is, by default, an outcast. Never tell a future employer that you would rather make your own decisions and accept full responsibility for the the consequences if that decision happens to be wrong. It seems that independent thought has become a socially unacceptable asset.

Amadeus Mozart, Homer, Michelangelo, Vincent Van Gogh, Albert Einstein...well you get the idea. Were they a member of some huge team who gave us the Sistine Chapel, Starry Night, or Requiem?

No, these were all creative thinkers who preferred to “do it their way”.

I believe there is a place for team thinkers, group brainstorming, and understanding the needs of the many.

I just wonder why the ones who believe that a team is the only way to accomplish a goal do not allow that we independent thinkers may well be able to accomplish that same goal with a lot less overhead.

More on the unemotional statement later.