Sewing Machines for Beginners

When you’re a mother of all boys, there are some topics and items you don’t shop for much. One of those items would be sewing machines for beginners. There’s not really a whole lot of sewing going on at my house. There used to be, though. I took home ec in high school. I’ve made my share of pillows. I think I even made a dress once. (Pretty sure I never actually WORE it, however.)

Good Management Practice – Create Alternatives

Somewhere along the line I had read that being a manager means having to choose between a set of of alternatives, often with limited information. Yes sometimes that happens, but good management practice would suggest the best become experienced at creating additional alternatives and gaining additional information. That is truly a skill of the most successful managers.

They are either adept through experience at seeing alternatives that subordinates and other do not see or creative at developing additional alternatives. Additional alternatives are sometimes the alternative answer to a problem, or the leverage to move the original problem to a more acceptable position.

Tax Advisers Can Be Wrong, Too

As Tax time rolls around we get the same advice every year.”If you get a large refund you are not managing your money well”. You know what? Tax advisers can be wrong, too.

The mathematicians, the anally focused financial advisers, the tax accountants who are so proud that they can calculate the amount of their taxes to the nearest decimal point all rush to tell the rest of how to manage our money, how to maximize the return on our investment to the nearest nano of a percentage point. Technically, theoretically, as mathematicians they are right, and if you have excess disposable income and are not struggling paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet this argument may apply to you, but this position does not allow for the fact that we are people, we are not all the same and we are not perfect and we react to all the variables of our lives as needed at the moment.

How I Ended Up Buying a Motorola Droid

Here’s the story of how I ended up buying a Motorola Droid even though I hung up on a sales person who tried to sell me one a few months ago and told the salesperson in the Verizon store last week that I thought it was highly unattractive. Now, I wouldn’t trade it for any other phone.