Mary Anne has her own blog now
Monthly Archives: October 2011

Fire awareness

by Mary Anne

If I recall correctly, October is fire safety awareness month. At least it used to be! I can remember when I was a child in elementary school the teacher had her students print letters to Smokey the Bear in October, and we would be so excited when we got answers from him!

I found myself thinking about that when I was doing a CBT today at work about the proper storage and disposal of different materials. To be perfectly honest, I never even gave it a second thought about how there might be chemicals at work that would need to be stored in flammable lockers.

When I stop to think about how many liquids and solvents are flammable, I’m amazed that there isn’t some kind of building code that requires every house to have Flammable Cabinets in their garages and pantries!

I wonder how many house fires would be prevented if the homeowners kept their flammable liquids in the proper Flammable Cabinet Storage.


Niece in the hospital

by Mary Anne

My niece was rushed to the emergency room yesterday morning, complaining of stomach and back pain.  Apparently it was a very busy day for the ER, as she waited over seven hours before they saw her.

They told her that she has an infected kidney and kidney stones, and have admitted her.  I don’t know a whole lot about kidney stones, I guess I’m going to have to do some research on that.  I DO remember that my father had kidney stones and that he was in a lot of pain.  I’ve heard that a man having kidney stones is the closest thing that he can experience to the pain of a woman in labor.  Maybe when I tell my niece that, she’ll decide to put off having babies for a while!

I am expecting a progress call later this morning, I hope it is good news.


Magazine articles about making money at home

by Mary Anne

Every couple of months I’ll buy a magazine that has headlines that catch my eye, like how to save hundreds of dollars on groceries, and/or how to make money at home. I’m always hopeful that I’ll learn something that I don’t already know and that new knowledge will make our lives here at home a lot easier.

I just bought a magazine like that this past weekend. This magazine was promising both of those stories. Usually I spend a couple of minutes in the check out line skimming the articles to see if the magazine is any good or not, but this time I didn’t have the time to do that. The article about saving money on food was the same-old-same-old advice; use coupons, shop sales, buy store brand. I have a word of caution here – I don’t always buy the store brand because it is not always cheaper! I needed to buy some Truvia this past weekend and saw that there is a store brand of it, but the price was higher per unit.

As for making money at home, the article suggested that people look into using the Internet to make money. Specifically the article was talking about bloggers putting paid advertising on their blogs. I went to the Internet to get more information about that and found the bizzclick Home page and looked at the Advertiser page and the Publisher page and soon realized that if I depended on pay-per-click income that I’d starve to death under a bridge somewhere. I know my brother makes money doing that, and more power to him!


Shopping with coupons

by Mary Anne

I love to shop with coupons!  When I bought my Roomba vacuum I used a coupon that was in the Sunday paper for 20% off any one item.  Since the Roomba was about $300, I saved about $60, which is a lot of money (both to spend and to save!)  But I am thinking the purchase will be worth it because right now I could use the help with the house cleaning!

Today I went grocery shopping and saved $20 on the items that we bought. These items were things that we actually use everyday. I’m so glad that I can save money that way.


The new guy

by Mary Anne

Working with the new man, Sunday, (yes, his name is Sunday) I’ve been learning a little bit about his native country, Nigeria. I’ve been helping him to better understand some of the nuances of the English language and some of the customs (and jokes) that seem so foreign to him. Sometimes it is really funny when someone at work says something and he completely misunderstands it. But sometimes that leads to misunderstandings and frustrations in a bad way.

His wife recently had a baby girl; their very first baby. Sunday was telling us that she sings Nigerian Songs to the baby and that they watch Nigerian Movies at home on his days off. We tried to convince him that he should start to watch shows like Sesame Street with his daughter, but he said he didn’t have any interest in watching shows like that.  I’ve noticed that there are a lot of adults that don’t like to watch children’s shows with their kids, and I think that is a shame – I can remember watching Sesame Street with my kids when they were small! I suggested that he put on headphones and listen to Online Nigerian Music while watching children’s shows with his daughter to at least give her the impression that he was spending time with her watching something geared towards children. But knowing him, he won’t follow my advice. Guys rarely do.

 


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