Tall Grass

I don't know how well you can see in these two pictures the result of the recent rains and temperate weather in Carmichael. These pictures were taken after my making a couple of passes around the lawn. Where I've mowed, the lawn is about 4 inches tall. Where I haven't yet, is about 8 inches tall. It meant that I had to dump out the grass catcher every time I circled the lawn and sometimes ever before I had gone all the way around. Is summer already here?

Hail, Caesar!

What could be more natural than having Julius Caesar drop in to your Ancient Rome class the day your teacher can't make it. And he was thoughtful enough to bring along his last wife Calpurnia so they could both pose for pictures for us and explain their time period better than anyone else.

Julius Caesar & wife

During the break and after class, the class members surrounded Julius and Calpernia, asking numerous questions about life in ancient Rome. It was the most we had heard from the instructor's wife. She held her own very well.

Q & A session with Julius Casesar

Along with the elaborate toga, sandals, shirt & skirt, Dr. Warner (aka Julius Caesar) brought a replica of a Roman broadsword a student had made for him. Made of forged and hammered iron, it weighed somewhere between 6 and 10 pounds according to Lois Warner who compared it to a hammer she used in her craft.

Julius with sword in hand.

The good professor explained that the Roman sword was used almost exclusively like a bayonet. When a Roman soldier got close enough to his opponent he placed the tip of the sword in the approximate location of the navel and proceeded to shove it in and up, puncturing several internal organs including the heart. Then he would proceed to walk over the body of the dead opponent, pulling the blade out as he walked. The sword even feels much like a bayonet with no give in the blade at all.

Close-up of sword

The sword is so heavy that it would be very unwieldy in what we picture as a sword fight. But the Romans formed shoulder to shoulder columns five soldiers deep so that when the front soldiers tired or were killed, the next row of soldiers took their place. What the enemy would see would be an unstoppable machine of swords and shields.

Caesar on the phone alerting security.

Campus security being what it is, Caesar had to call in and report that he had a lethal weapon with him on campus that had previously been registered with Campus Security. It seems a little out of place to see Caesar with glasses using a cell phone. But then he always was a quick learner.

Another thing the professor told us today was that swords were prohibited in the Roman Senate and surrounding public areas so Julius Caesar was not killed with one of those broad swords. But many, if not most, of the people carried around wax tablets with which to take notes or reminders to themselves - a sort of Roman Palm Pilot. To scratch the images in the wax tablets one used a stylus (again like a Palm Pilot) about the size of a pencil. So when Julius Caesar was stabbed by his "friends" (including Brutus) he was being stabbed by dozens of pencils. How ignoble is that!

Camdan's growing up

Jessica accurately pointed out that Camdan is growing very fast. She was interested in getting more current pictures of him. The following pictures are the only really recent ones I have of Camdan and they don't show his developmental abilities. We saw him last week in a one-week period going from a roll to a bounce to a crawl as a method of getting around.

Maybe we can get Tiffany or Edward to upload some pictures.

Edward & Cub Scouts

Because we live a fairly long distance from most of our kids we don't get to see the small and large steps in the lives of each of our grandchildren. Some of these events are pretty important especially for the child. I'm thinking of baptism for example. We have been able to make it down south for a couple of such occasions but usually we're going to have to rely on Ed's family to see our grandchildren's growth.

Take Cub Scouting for instance. We've been able to see Timothy move from Tiger Cub to Wold to bear and to Webelos and Jacob is following in his brother's footsteps. What's especially gratifying about this is that when the pack has needed leadership Ed has stepped into the breach.

Our latest involvement with the cubs was their blue & gold dinner during which they also celebrtated the advancement of their Webelos to the scout troop of their choice. (The fact that this scout troop has 42 active boys might have something to do with their choice.)

Edward prepared many of the visual aids for the graduation ceremony including an advancement "bridge".

See the world through others' eyes

One of the advantages of having people visit you is that by conversing with them, you are able to see the world through their eyes. This is especially so if your visitors have keen observation skills and a ready tongue.


We just said goodbye to my oldest brother Bernell and his wife Nancy. They have been able to stay with us almost 3 days. During that time we have taken them to the Towe auto museum, the Rairoad museum, and a play at Chautauqua theater. We finally were tired enough to just sit around our family roof and swap lies.

Bernell and Nancy are in good health and they are both able to get away from their daily routines fairly easily. So they have traveled extensively, at least in comparison with us. And we get to visit through their eyes the dedication of the Finnish LDS temple, a less than ideal cruise to Hawaii, a tour of the Canadian Maritime provinces, and more. Bernell especially has a comment or observation about everywhere they've gone.

To add to our delightful weekend,

Steven & Lisa, from Santa Cruz

and our local kids Ed and his family

spent some time with us. The house is so quiet again, now.

Carefully closing the barn door

I had a first rate scare today. It was one of those situations when all you can think about is, "What could I have done differently? What should I have done differently? What can I do now?"

The immediate incident was the loss of my pda (personal data assistant) somewhere in Old Town Sacramento, sometime this afternoon. And that was about as far as I could definitely trace it. I find that I refer to the pda less and less so I couldn't recall using it for the whole afternoon, the whole day for that matter. And we had gone all over the place - from the Stanford Mansion to Fat City Cafe to the Railroad Museum.

My first thoughts were damage control/worst case analysis thoughts. What if someone gets all the names and addresses and starts calling the names on my contact list. There's little if any confidential information such as Social Security Numbers but there's certainly the nuisance factor. There's also the inconvenience or impossibility of reconstruction all the personal data in the PDS.

My second thoughts were on recovery strategy - what would be the highest prioritiies in trying to find the PDA and how could I maximize the probability of finding it. Would I advertise? Would it help?

Fortunately, the first place we inquired was the Railroad Museum. When I asked if they had a lost and found you'd have thought I had announced a reward for something (come to think of it, maybe I should have). They responded with "Why? Have you lost something?" When I described my loss, again the response was one of relief and gratefulness, just exactly the response I should have shown. Yes, it had been found and turned in. No, it was not damaged or compromised.

Now the question is, "Will I pay any attention to those questions about doing things differently?"

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

I can't find anywhere in my blog where I've talked about Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies. They are probably our family's favorite cookie and there have been times when the kids have fought over the last one in the cookie jar.

This time with family due to arrive this afternoon, I decided to do a double batch. By clicking on this recipe you should be able to get a clear picture and print it out.

The recipe is really just a list of ingredients that you add in sequence stirring as you go. I just leave the mixer on while I add each ingredient.



You scoop them onto ungreased cookie sheets and bake for 12 minutes at 375 degrees. I use a 1.5 inch scoop and it produces about 5 dozen cookies.


What do you think? Don't they look grand. They taste great, too!

To walk or not to walk

Parkinson's Disease has made me quite unsteady on my feet so that sometimes I'm doing good to stand up. Other times I can walk for half a mile holding my cane uselessly under my arm. People could easily think I'm a real phony.

Yesterday as I was walking back to my car from my film noir class, it felt like I didn't need a cane so I didn't use mine. Then today at Sam's Club I found that I couldn't control a shopping cart while holding a cup of soda. I ended up spilling my drink all over our groceiries. Fortunately most of them were plastic wrapped so all I lost was my drink.

Warts & all

Click on picture to see album

Last summer, Carolyn and I had our pictures taken at Glamour Shots, not exactly a place you expect two old cronies to go for pictures. Carolyn was preparing to undergo a series of chemotherapy and radiation therapy treatments and was concerned that she might not come out looking quite the same. I had the same concern about what the next couple of years might mean to me since so many ailments seem to be just waiting in line for us. So we splurged for the Glamour treatment. Had I known what my extra weight would look like I might have complained or worn a support belt or something. On the other hand, seeing the reality has helped me lose 12 pounds since then.

Glamour Shots does the makeup,hair styling, and sitting for nothing, betting on the chance that you'll love at least one and hopefully several poses which they then sell you for an exorbitant price. We bought a half dozen poses and were delighted with them. We even got the digital images and the copyright for them so we could use them anywhere.

Then yesterday the company called and asked if we wanted the rest of the poses for $100. That was a real bargain. I could hardly get my credit card out fast enough. They're now posted on my facebook account and you can see them by going to

Carolyn & Arnold's portraits

I was tempted to remove some of the less flattering ones but that would be unfair. I decided we should post them & allow comments and captions. Best one gets a prize, yet to be determined. Enjoy! (or not)

All for nothing - part 2

I'd like to muse today about a totally different meaning of the title phrase. It came about yesterday when I spent my usual time at Alta California Regional Center making sure that another pair of eyes looks over the purchase of services projections. This is a task which requires one half calculation, one half inspiration, and one half explanation. I had finished the calculation and inspiration parts on the current month in question and was going over the report to provide appropriate explanation. However, there was a section that just wasn't making any sense. A particular service appeared to have cost us less for seven months than it had for the first six months of the fiscal year.

When I explained this to my boss and showed him my backup work, he was equally puzzled. A few minutes later he came back with part of the explanation and together we pieced together the rest of it. The program I had used to get my basic information had been run while the purchase database was in heavy use. Rather than wait for records that were unavailable, the program had simply skipped those records. Net result, all that I had done that day was for nothing, absolutely nothing.

When explaining the situation to a friend of mine, he nodded in sympathy. He had worked several yeares for a company in the capacity of strategic analyst. As such he would often spend weeks and weeks developing and costing out potential strategies their company might implement as well as responses to strategies that might be implemented by their competitors. It was his estimate that 99% of what he worked on was never more than hypothetical.

That gave me a whole new way to look at my experience. Yesterday was an anomaly not the usual. So maybe it wasn't all for nothing after all.

All for nothing

It costs us a copay of $15 per doctor visit and sometimes I'm quick to complain about it. After all I'm old enough to remember when $15 could get you a complete physical. But I still complain. We've had doctors who understood my rancor about co-pays and made sure I walked out of his office with a prescription, an order for lab work, or a referral to another specialist. I've tried to tell them a "no need to find something that isn't there". I need to figure out a way to get across the message that a "NO" diagnosis is all right.

Today was a good example. I have been experiencing bursts of high blood pressure lately so I did two things: started lowing weight and went to see my doctor. My doctor ordered dozens of lab tests, a couple of x-rays, one new medication, and a consult with a erndochrinoligist. Only one test showed any abnormality and that was within expectations.

So Tuesday Carolyn & I paid our $15 and got a pretty thorough examination at the end of which the doctor said, "You look in good health." Did I pay $15 for nothing?

Ads should at least be interesting

The other day I commented about people making money from their blog. You may not realize it, but every time you visit a web site, you visit is probably being counted. There's nothing nefarious about this, it done to convince advertisers that people visit your page.

Even more important, if a visitor to your web site clicks on an ad, that click signals to the advertiser a heightened level of interest in that product whether the click intentional or not. Most advertisers also try to match the advertising with the page content. For example if a page topc is religious education,, the who are might be full of bibles for sale.

The computer can also track sites recently visited and prior ads clicked on. All this "puts your head in a place where computers or people could tailor the ads to their audience." Of course advertisers have always striven to accomplish this so that their advertising buck gets the most bang. But until recently I hadn't connected the value to the consumer of such ad tailoring. And when I've been the target of such tailoring I've just assumed it was creepy coincidences or Blind luck.

Overnight photos

Memo to self: Add to list of amazing things-- uploading, downloading, and overnight processing of digital photos.

It hasn't been too many years since we dropped off film at Costco after carefully filling out the processing envelope. We then waited a week or so and returned to that same Costco where we hunted through rows and rows of processed envelops. We would use stylized lettering on the envelopes or paint the corner with fluorescent highlighter in order to see our envelopes easier and quicker. Still it could take 15 minutes and more to find our films.

For an extra charge you could leave your photos at the nearby 1-hour processing and have your photos worked on while you are busy shopping in the store. When you absolutely had to have the pictures on a role you used the 1-hour because it didn't leave the premises.

Costco didn't lose a lot of films but they did lose one of ours. Almost by chance we found Costco's "lost film center" while exploring in the San Diego area. And even more amazing, we found the pictures in the lost roll.

Fast forward to today. Saturday evening I took 97 pictures of our ward's Valentine Dinner-Dance. While others were still cleaning up I came home to extract the portrait pictures we had taken of almost everyone. From these 31 pictures I cropped and did minor editing to effect a closer picture. I then uploaded the 62 pictures and instructed Walgren's which store I wanted to pick up the finished pictures.

At 8:00 a.m. the following day, I received an email saying the pictures were ready to pickup. I dropped in shortly after 10:30 to pick up and pay for 62 pictures (4 x 6 glossy) for about $8, The original images never left our house once they got there. If the store had lost the order, we could have easily recreated it. There was no long line or cramped bins stuffed with our pictures and everyone else's. And I got the 2 pictures I wanted from each couple for 13 cents a pop. And if I wanted to, I could share that album with a finite number of people so they could print their own pictures. What progress!

Hearts & Sweets, Dancing & Eats

Working with Carolyn on these church activities has given me a new appreciation for the amount of time, energy, and other resources it takes to stage a successful party. Carolyn spent days and many trips to the local dollar stores to find something that was very pretty yet tasteful and economical.

It's amazing to me how even paper plates and cups, and plastic silverware can still come off as clasy, especially if it means that much less clearning.

Tonya put together a giant heart-shaped backdrop for our slightly disquised porch swing. This was located close to but not actually on the path between the tables and the food. That allowed me (as professionalpicture taker) to "highly suggest" people have their pictures taken. I think we get about 99% picture taken.

As they say pon the society page - a good time was had by all. Somehow Carolyn pulled off another miracle by staging an adult activity for our ward. The music was oldies and other tunes you can dance to. And the food was planned potluck. Guests were invited to bring food that was red, pink, or white and many of us also dressed in that color scheme. The DJ, who wanted to contribute his time and expertise, played music that everyone seemed to enjoy whether they were dancing or just conversing on the sidelines.

40th reunion - planning stage

It still amazes me how fast you can get a presence on the Web. Our ward has decided to have a 40th anniversary this coming April and one of the first ideas out of the committee's brainstorming was "Let's have a website!" It got a little fuzzier after that when we started trying to pin down some of the details.

But a good friend in the ward took the assignment and within 6 hours had this much of the website up and going.

If any of you have seen particularly good web sites advertising reunions (family, church, school, football teams, etc.) could you share the URL (www.website.com, etc.) with us. Of course, you can check out our web site at www.LaSierraWardReunion.com.
.
See you at the party!

My bubble has been burst

First of all, thanks to all of you who extended your kind thoughts and prayers concerning my recent (and hopefully now gone) illness. Except for missing 24 hours, I don't think I'll suffer any long term effects.

Second, I want to confess that I had a secret motive and motivator for starting and continuing this blog. Dooce. For those of you familiar with the blogosphere Dooce is a legend, her blog legendary. I had been reading her blog approximately 3 months more than my blog has existed. Dooce is a legend at least partially because she was fired for including co-workers' antics on her blog. Although she claimed free speech protection, her bosses claimed disruption of the workplace. There was a big blogstorm about it which gave Dooce at least 15 minutes of fame but, what's more important, thousands of dedicated readers.

I must have come just after she started advertising on her blog because there were many readers who commented about how "tacky" and "commercial" they made her blog. Her answer was "too bad, I need the money". I decided I would take my blog commercial when I got 1,000 hits a day.

Now, in the latest issue of Newsweek (the one claiming that America is now socialized) on page 19 Danial Lyons reveals some numbers I hadn't seen before. Numbers such as "bloggers who run ads earn an average of $5,060 per year"; Daniel Lyons earned $1,039.81 during one month when he had 1.5 million hits; and that Dooce takes in between $500,000 and a million. He doesn't say how many hits Dooce gets but it's easily 1,000 times my count. I get about 1,500 hits per month or 1/1000th of Lyons site so my ballpark income monthly income would come out to $1.04, barely enough to buy a candy bar.

The good news for you readers is that it may be some time before you have to wade through ads on this blog!

Bug 1 Arnold 0

Sometime between noon and 4:00 pm yesterday some kind of nefarious stomach flu bug attacked me. I managed to make it home and return a Red Box video before collapsing in bed where Carolyn found me a couple hours later. I wasn't even fit to take a picture of let alone post a blog entry. Hopefully, some time in the next 15 hours 40 minutes I'll find time to make up for the mishap.

Light Cell Car

Often people discuss good ideas without doing the necessary enginering, or at least trying to make their ideas reasonably possible. For example, I've had people tell me that just putting solar cells on the tops of their cars would eliminate the need for gasoline fuel. Really?? I wonder.

When we visited the Towe Auto Museum on Saturday, we were lucky to see this concept car that is totally powered by solar cells. They found in developing the car that they had to maximize the area of solar cells, minimize the air resistance, and minimize the weight. This led to the design shown here on display Saturday.
This is the vehicle with the roof fully extended and braced in place so that driver and his assistants can work on the car.

Here we see the driver has climbed into his cockpit-like space and is given a good-luck hug and kiss from what appears to be his wife. This is not an idle gesture as the dirver is mere inches from the road when the car is underwway.


Now the driver starts lowering the top while he adjusts his earphones and helmet. He does not move during the drive.

Like the top of a peanut butter sandwich, the top of the car is lowered onto the bse and secured for take-off.

After checking all the systems are ready and making sure the top is secured to the base, the boards blocking the wheels are removed.

And he's ready to hit the road. One expects some kind of space ship sound but like electric hybrids in electric mode, this car's engine is virtually silent.


Without a warning sound, the car turned and smoothy moved out of the crowd and down the street.


Here it waited at the stop sign for it's companion vehicle. Because the car is illegal on most streets and freeways, it has to be accompanied by the van and trailer shown below.

If you'e interested in more information and pictures of the solar cell concept car check it out at www.xof1.com.

New semesterr for the Renaissance Society

Regular readers of this blog will probably remember that I have been a fairly regular devotee of the Renaissance Society, an education/networking program held every Friday on the campus of Sac State. The program is generally open only to those 55 and up. Last Friday was the first day of classes for this semester.

The general philosophy of Renaissance Society classes is that there is no instructor. Rather there is a coordinator who sees that the course material is assigned out to various students who actually make the presentation. I think there is some discussion going on about whether that is the best way to do things.

One of the classes I'm taking is about Ancient Rome from about 400 BC to 600 CE, I think. The instructor made no bones about the fact that he was going to do all the teaching. He said we deserve the best instruction on the subject and since he's been teaching it over 30 years he knows more about the subject than anyone else in the class. Okay, so he's a little arrogant but I'll grant that to someone who can lecture on Ancient Rome in Ancient Latin.

The other class I'm taking is Film Noir. According to Wikipedia: "Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation. " The Instructor for his class feels that Film Noir is more true to reality than most other film genres. Should also be interesting.

Happy Birthday dear Darwin

Why didn't I know until this year that Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln share a birthday. And not just the day of the year either. They were born on the same day, 200 years ago this coming Thursday. And apparently that book of his which has caused so much anti-science passion was also published on February 12 but 50 years after Darwin's birthday.















A coalition of several local organizations including the Sac State Departments of Anthropology and Biological Sciences, Humanist Association, Atheists and Other Freethinkers, Sacramento Organization for Rational Thinking, Social Responsibility Committee or the Sacramento Unitarian Church, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the National Center for Science Education sponsored a birthday party today for Darwin. In addition to cake, cookies, and punch for the occasion they also had a program that included the band "The Theory of Evolution", the "science" comedian Brian Malow, and the well-known author and editor of Skeptic Magazine Dr. Michael Shermer.

Dr. Shermer spoke mostly from his book "Why Darwin Matters" which he had available for sale and signing by the author after the program. In answer to a question from the audience about why science and religion have to be at odds with each other, he responded that he feels that comes from a small minority of religious fundamentalists who feel threatened by the idea that something besides God might have played a part in developing the marvelous and wonderful world we live in. He thinks that the wonders discovered by a scientist are often enough to generate a true spirituality in that scientist.

I would estimate attendance at 450 to 500. It was definitely more than the organizers expected as they kept setting up chairs until aboaut 30 minutes after the meeting started. I was interested to see many of the same people who attend the Rennaissance Society classes oon Friday. In any case, Carolyn and I enjoyed the afternoon program.

Sacramento Museum Day

Need I say more?

For those of you who know my wife Carolyn, this about says it all. For those who are less familiar with Carolyn, I will explain. Museum Day in Sacramento is always on the first Saturday of February. On that day all the museums in town throw their doors wide open, eliminating the entrance price for that day, and hope for the best. Many of the museums schedule special programs or raise funds by selling hot dogs and chili. The city provides a couple of busses which circle a route that connects many of the downtown museums, thus eliminating or at least reducing the parking and traffic problems in those areas.

Carolyn likes museums and can take about 4 times as much of one as I can. In fact, I enjoy visiting museums via coffee table picture book. I don't need all the walking and sore feet and whiny kids. But I humor her and go along and have a good time in spite of my grouchy attitude.

This year we managed to talk Ed and his family to join us. We also managed to reduce our goals to visiting two museums only.

The first one we went to was the Towe Automobile Museum.

We had been here before but not our kids or grandkids. Even though it was familiar to us, it was still somewhat overwhelming. However, crowd control was well handled and they had relatively inexpensive snacks such as hot dogs, chili, and nacho chips with cheese.

As expected, most of the displays are roped or chained off but there were a few which were designed for hands on experience like this replica of an old Model T Ford. The controlling pedals and levers actually worked allowing the kids to enjoy the feel of working the controls while the docent explained to Carolyn and me how they differed from today's system. The two flipper switches on the steering column, for example, might be windshield wipers and turn signal nowadays but 100 years ago one of those levers was the throttle (gas pedal) while the second was the spark advancer (changed the engine's power and ease of starting).

We might have stayed there much longer but Ed & Taffany's friends had arranged to meet us in Woodland.


Woodland is home to the Heidrich Agriculture History exhibit. Their exhibit, like that of Towe 's automobile musseum was organized more by brand than by functionality or time period. They were somewhat organized by era but there is so much overlap it is difficult to see the organization sometime.


As with the auto exhibit, there was way too much to absorb in one visit. But at least they had half size tractors to keep the youngest visitors quite cemetary. Carolyn and I agreed that this was one place we needed to take any of her brothers.

Power, power, everywhere nor any drop to drink...

You can tell by the title of this blog that we are a high class operation. Can anyone tell where this quote was stolen from (and altered slightly)?

Ever since buying the Toyota Highlander Hybrid I've wondered what would happen if I chanced to leave the lights on and ran the battery down. Because in addition to the common automobile 12 volt battery, the Highlander has several hundred pounds of higher voltage batteries that are actually used to run the car when electric power makes more sense than gasoline power.

Well, I need wonder no longer. This morning I went out to retrieve something from my car and noticed that the interior lights were awfully dim. Hhhmmmm, I thought as I circled the car and found the drivers side looking like this:
I opened it to find that the seat belt buckle had prevented the door from closing completely. If I'd tried to lock the car the alarm would have let me know a door was ajar but I didn't so it didn't. And, yes, this car acts exactly like other cars with discharged batteries, it doesn't start.

And that's when I'm thinking "power, power everywhere" but I couldn't tap into it. Fortunately, we have a jumper battery in the garage. I connected the cables like I would any other jumper battery, got into the Highlander and started the car. It idled for several minutes then dropped into all electric mode. I didn't think it would actually charge the battery in that mode so I turned it off and continued to prepare for my day.

I put the charging battery into my car just in cast I needed it. I didn't.

It's Raining

They're predicting a pretty serious drought in California this year because we just haven't had the rainfall and snowfall that we usually have by this time. It seems all the big storms just skipped over California and dumped everything on the rest of the nation. So when it rained today, almost everyone was in a good mood. Not that a couple of days of light rain is going to make any difference. And even with the rain it is unseasonably warm. It's like we're skippinig winter this year.

The End. And a new beginning

Hooray!! Hooray!! Hooray!!

This afternoon Carolyn received her final radiation therapy treatment for her most recent bout with cancer. She is scheduled for a wrap-up appointment with her oncologist next week and her surgeon the week after. That should be the end of this episode except for the periodic checkups. She will have those every 3 months for the first year, every 4 months for the second year, every 6 months for the third year, and once a year for the next two years. If nothing has recurred at that point, the medical establishment will deem her fully cured.

Thanks again to all of you who sent your prayers, thoughts, and best wishes. You are our true friends.

First day as a tax aide

I had asked for additional help with our library "pick list" assignment this morning and I'm glad I did. At the end of our usual 2 hours we still had 25% of the list still to pick off the library shelves. But I couldn't wait. I walked into the Library's Community Room and sat down at the computer which had no one sitting in front of it. The two site managers had already spent the previous half hour hooking three laptops and a printer into a simple network, bringing up the TaxWise program. Customers were already lining up,

Seconds later I was still seated at one of those computers but now had a customer in front of me I thanked her for her tolerance in advance and began asking questions to clarify the answers she had already written on her registration sheet. When I was through processing one return I looked around to see if someone would help by doing the quality control run through. I barely had time for a couple of swigs of my Coke before I had another customer.

In the next four hours I completed 3 returns as advertised. There were three of us so 12 people had their taxes done by our little group. The group leader said some very complimentary things about my work as she checked one of the returns and I felt like I could probably at least try a couple of weeks.

More than maximum?

With two degrees in Mathematics I've always felt it was the king of academic disciplines. Now I find that there is a scientific discipline positioned slightly above that of mathematicians. Physicists think they occupy that position but it is actually occupied by the advertising profession. How do I know this? There's proof right in front of my eyes.

Carolyn's vastly diminished stomach benefits from Mylanta, the antacid that kept me alive for so many years. The last couple of years that I used it, I regularly bought "Maximum Strength" Mylanta because it was twice as powerful as the regular strength but cost only about 50% more. I could take a much lower dose and still get the desired effect.

Anyway, Carolyn came home from the store this evening with a bottle of Maximum Strength Mylanta and a bottle of Ultimate Strength Mylanta which had a 25% greater amount of active ingredient for antacid. So there you go! Above "maximum" is "ultimate". Anybody care to guess what is lower than "minimum"?