After seeing all the puddling around town as I was driving to work, I’d say we got a big dose of much-needed rain. I was pleasantly surprised at how my peppers have suddenly perked up and now beginning to take off, so hopefully the rains will arrive again when needed. Saturday’s rain was so heavy, it caused one of my sunflowers to tip over, but I did manage to get it quickly staked back up, and today it was looking like nothing had ever happened to it.
My morning was filled with a number of errands which had to be run, which included my having to get a large and rather expensive mirror out of storage and loaded into my vehicle, just so I could get it delivered down to a glass company, so they could cut two pieces out of it which I was needing for that vintage medicine cabinet, along with another one which would be inserted in a wooden chimney cabinet I managed to bring back to life. Both of those cabinets had those nasty yellowed mirrors in them which I truly despise, so once the new ones are installed, both pieces will be looking just like new. When I removed the mirror from the chimney cabinet, I happened to notice a date stamp on it which was December of 1928, which was a verification of the year it was created. I knew it was old, but I didn’t think it was that close to a hundred. About four years ago I purchased it for $75 from a client who was having a rummage sale, and even though I didn’t really have a use for it, the piece ‘spoke’ to me, and now going forward, I know why, because it’s gonna fit perfectly next to a chimney. Just out of curiosity, I went online to see if there were any vintage ones for sale, and there wasn’t one to be found. I do know they’ve always been a popular piece which people used in either their kitchens or bathrooms.
After I had a quick bite for lunch, I went to my computer and started checking on the recent news, and while I was clicking around, a link popped up which was an invitation to test one’s foreign language skills, so curious me, punched in ‘German’. Well after having crawled down another unnecessary rabbit hole, I discovered I’d missed passing their Level 2 by one point, and mostly because some of the questions were audio, and most of them I gave the wrong answers, and only because the speakers were talking too fast for me to understand them. For about five minutes I was angry with myself for not having done better, but then this little voice in my head said, “Come on Mr. Chodur! You actually thought you’d go sliding back into that language after all these years? Really?” One important thing I was reminded of today, was the many times I would tell people who were learning English as their second language, the fact that they must speak slowly and clearly, and if possible, they should encourage the native speakers to do the same. Gosh, I still can’t believe how many years it’s been since I attempted to carry on a normal conversation in German with someone, but one thing I did notice, was my having retained enough knowledge regarding the conjugation of their verbs and the word order in their sentences. That was definitely something I wasn’t expecting during today’s lunch hour.
My mid-afternoon appointment was with an advertising representative who’d contacted me last week, and after a good 45 minutes of questions and answers, I decided to run with their program, so hopefully it won’t be money ill-spent, because when thinking back on all the thousands of dollars that went down the drain with my office’s advertising in the Globe Gazette over these many years, I’ve been very careful about not getting pulled back into throwing good money to the wind. I’m going to remain confident it’ll end up being a good investment.
I had a nice chat with yesterday’s buyer this afternoon, and without a doubt, she’s exceptionally excited over the purchase of her new home. I couldn’t help offering up a compliment regarding her ability to envision that home once she has it the way she wants it. A little fixing, improving and painting, along with some additional yard work, will transform that home into a real beauty. It’s definitely a classic example of how no matter if it’s cut or in the rough, a diamond is still a diamond, and for sure, she got a diamond.
My last appointment for the day, was my meeting-up with a customer, and after we got all the real estate stuff ironed-out, we somehow ended up on the subject of miracles, Divine interventions, and the everyday by-products of deep and meaningful prayer which enables us to become more mindful of ourselves, and the active world around us. I normally don’t become vocal whenever on such subjects, but since I’ve known my customer for a number of years, I felt comfortable talking about such things. Yes, we had a good exchange of thoughts on the subject.
Earlier this morning while on the phone with a client, I was having to endure some sharp words regarding the direction our City’s government is taking our community. One of the outbursts was, “I’ll guarantee not one of them has taken a class on critical thinking.”, and after he quieted down a bit, I shared similar thoughts.
Considering how disjointed and lacking any real direction our City fathers possess, all I can say is, there’s no following-thru with their thought processes regarding causes and effects on a long-term basis. Just for your information, part of Wikipedia’s definition of critical thinking is as follows: “Critical thinking is the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments in order to form a judgment by the application of rational, skeptical, and unbiased analyses and evaluation.”, and where I think they’ve dropped the ball, is their not having applied rational, skeptical and unbiased analyses and evaluations on this whole financial nightmare that’s been taking place with the ‘bridge to nowhere’, the ‘ghost hotel’, the expired Southbridge Mall, and that never-ending money pit of an ice arena. There’s no doubt in my mind, the art of critical thinking was never applied to those current pipe dreams.
Tonight’s One-liner is: The first thing you get from the humanities when they’re well taught, is critical thinking.
