Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The Price of Everything - very interesting book!

I just picked this up last week and already I'm sucked into its pages.  It's non-fiction of course (that's my style) and full of facts but written in an easy prose that can be followed even if you flunked economics 101.  I never had a course in economics!  But this book is fascinating and really does look at the psychology behind prices and how what we're willing to pay for things sort of defines who we are.  Pick it up at Borders or Amazon.com.  Speaking of prices...I used a 50% off coupon at Borders when I purchased this!

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Craft hour at the Posey house.

Tonight I almost lost my mind.  That's right, I did something domestic and crafty with my daughter - who was so excited she was beside herself!  And, to make matters even more strange & spectacular, her father (who has no craft skills that I've ever seen) participated in this rare event with the kid.  It all started when I began drinking beer.  Now, this was weeks ago - but I decided to start trying "new" beers as a sort of taste test.  This takes forever because I can at most drink probably 3 or 4 a week.  So one day I pryed the bottle cap off a British beer and liked the design on the cap...so I sat it on the bar in the kitchen (not unusual for an odd assortment of things to be on the bar).  And then over the past few weeks I kept adding bottle caps.  Now, the bar isn't too far from the refrigerator...where my little 6 year old artiste puts her MULTITUDE of drawings.  Inevitably she runs out of magnets to hold up said drawings.  So one day when my eyes saw the bottle caps and the drawings I thought, *eureka* *holy moly* I've got a solution!  So today we spend a ton of money at the craft store buying all sorts of things to help us make these magnets, including a very cool (uh warm really) hot glue gun and a (super awesome I love it) 1 inch round circle punch.  And when Sarah saw a unpainted wooden treasure chest that needed paint and decoration...well she of course had to have it...and I looked straight at Hal and said "um, that's all you." I wish I could say our little craft hour was cheap but it wasn't!  But it was fun and I hope all these supplies will keep the kiddo busy for the next 100 or so days until school starts back.  Tomorrow is Day 1 of summer vacation!

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Osama's death not a reason to party.

So Osama was killed Sunday by U.S. forces. That was kind of good to hear...and when I say kind of, I mean it. Images on television of people rallying in Times Square New York, and in front of the White House shouting U.S.A. and "hey hey, goodbye" totally surprised me. Are we really, as a people, celebrating the assassination of Osama bin Laden? Yes, he was a monster. Yes he killed many, many people through his commands, his subservients and his terror. I get all that. I still remember the exact moment I heard of the horrors happening on September 11, 2001. I did not know anyone personally who died in those attacks, however I felt the grief in what unfolded during those hours and days. It forever changed my perspective, maybe in the same way D-day or the Kennedy assassinations did for those generations. But no matter how I shake my head, I can't understand cheering for someone's death.

Is that the Christian thing to do? Regardless your religion or spiritual beliefs, is celebrating the killing of another person truly what you're supposed to do? I can agree with a collective exhale, with a sigh of relief, even with a desire to see a picture of his dead body just to be sure. But hooting and hollering and singing and partying doesn't seem right.

The mistakes that man made in the name of his religion, his mental illness, his unique and awful badness - those mistakes will bite him in the tail one day - karma is real and it really can be a "bitch." But us celebrating might bring on a bit of bad karma too. It feels good to shed the world of evil - and he was certainly evil in this lifetime - but we are not the judge, and whether or not we like it, his life did serve a dreadful purpose that might just be too big for us to understand, let alone agree with.

I feel good for our servicemen, for the victim's families, for our government...but I do feel wary of what may come. What will Osama's followers feel when they see footage of us celebrating in our streets? We need to calm down and treat this situation with the grim respect it deserves.