Modest Needs

My office mate turned me on to a very interesting organization the other day. It's called Modest Needs and it's pretty amazing.

Remember that movie "Pay it Forward" that came out a few years back with Kevin Spacey, Hellen Hunt and that Haley Joel Osment kid from "The Sixth Sense"? OK the flick blew, but the sentiment was good. Well, this organization took the pay it forward idea and ran with it.

People who are a little hard up and need a helping hand can post requests. Then, the rest of us less hard up folks offer to help them out. People generally ask for simple stuff like help paying the gas bill or a car payment - stuff like that. It's pretty cool.

I want to encourage any of ya'll who might find yourself with a little extra change in your pocket to just check it out. Who among us hasn't been strapped for cash at some point and had to make a decision to rob Peter to pay Paul?

Elevatorquette

So - what's with people that think they are the only person getting on or getting off an elevator? I was standing alone in the elevator today at the doctor's office. The door opens at the floor I needed and I started toward the door. To my surprise there was a man literally straddling the door as it opened. He began to just rush in - practically walked right over me.

I, being the polite girl that I am, said, "excuse me." He laughs and says "oh, I didn't expect anyone to be in here."

Um, why? Why would you think that there would not be anyone on an elevator at a medical complex at 10am on a Friday morning? Is there some unwritten rule that says no one goes to the doctor on Friday morning and anyone who does would not ride an elevator?

Ug. It just kind of bugged me.

Uh-Oh Someone's Bored

Check out some of these things I found instead of doing what I SHOULD be doing.





The Morning news announced the winner of its plagiarism contest:

Sloppy Seconds With Opal Mehta

by Bonnie Furlong

The rules were as follows:

- Your final piece is limited to 750 of other peoples' words; none of those words may be your own.
- All material must be cited (author, work, page number). This is the only part where you have to be honest; unlike professional publishers, we're actually going to check.
- You must plagiarize from a minimum of five different books by as many authors as you wish. The only demand we make is that those books were published at some point, somewhere.
- You must lift only phrases, whole sentences, or passages. No single-word citations allowed.



We heard this cool story on NPR on our way to play poker last Sunday. I meant to go to NPR.org and email it to my sister (thus making it one of the most emailed stories of the day) but I forgot all about it till right now. Maybe she heard it already, or maybe she'll see this blog and go check it out.



Careful, this one's very addictive.


OK - that's it for now.

Enjoy.

Lay Away

So, I'm driving to work this morning and the oddest most random thought pops into my head.

Lay Away.

Do people even do that anymore? Do stores offer this option anymore? My guess is no. I suppose with the advent and popularity of credit cards, there is no need for this once popular retail plan. And that makes me a little sad.

I remember being a kid and seeing cool things at the Twin Fair, Big N or Kings that I wanted. A Barbie, a pair of "high heeled" (1/2") shoes, or even a winter coat. I don't think we were poor really. I honestly have no concept. But I do know that we didn't just buy every little thing our hearts desired. And I always thought (though I can't say that we ever actually did) that maybe we could just put the desired item on lay away. As I understood it, you would put some small deposit down, they would hold the item in the "back" and you would periodically make payments until you had reached the final retail price at which time you could take it home. It was like saving up for something but paying on it as you saved. Kind of a neat idea, really.

But now we have credit cards with limits reaching into the thousands of dollars and, rather than storing the item in the "back" while paying it off, we take it home and begin enjoying it at a rate of 19% interest.

Yep, that's really all I have today. It just struck me as interesting. If any of ya'll are out and about at your local department stores this weekend, be sure to ask the sales gal if they have a lay away plan. Just curious.