Make Money Easy For You

15 Short Funny Quotes for Humor Month

April is “Humor Month” and the very first day of this very month is loved by pranksters and jokers everywhere. To honor this comical time of year, we’re fondly revisiting fifteen short funny quotes that are sure to light smiles everywhere.

1. “The Internet is a great way to get on the Net.” ~ Bob Dole

2. “Ugliness is better than beauty. It lasts longer and in the end, gravity will get us all.” ~ Johnny Depp

3. “On cable TV they have a weather channel – 24 hours of weather. We had something like that where I grew up. We called it a window.” ~ Dan Spencer

4. “When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before.” ~ Mae West

5. “A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.” ~ Robert Frost

6. “There’s no half-singing in the shower, you’re either a rock star or an opera diva.” ~ Josh Groban

7. “I’m astounded by people who want to ‘know’ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.” ~ Woody Allen

8. “Charlie Brown is the one person I identify with. C.B. is such a loser. He wasn’t even the star of his own Halloween special.” ~ Chris Rock

9. “The difference between genius and stupidity is; genius has its limits.” ~ Albert Einstein

10. “I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.” ~ Groucho Marx

11. “People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” ~ Anonymous

12. “When I was born I was so surprised I didn’t talk for a year and a half.” ~ Gracie Allen

13. “If at first you don’t succeed, blame someone else and seek counseling.” ~ Erma Bonbeck

14. “My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So for today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.” ~ Dave Barry

15. “Procrastination is like a credit card; it’s a lot of fun until you get the bill.” ~ Christopher Parker

Here’s to a wonderful Humor Month! I hope you’ve enjoyed these short funny quotes. May your April be filled with laughter (and may you be lucky enough to have fewer April pranks played on you than you play on others). Remember, laughter is the best medicine and he who laughs loudest wins!

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Dealing with tire troubles

Tire safety performance is not to be ignored. Being a rider, you are responsible to keep your vehicle in a good condition. Tire proper maintenance allows you to enjoy miles of riding pleasure. As a rider, you do understand that tires affect the overall performance of your vehicle. It is therefore your obligation to regularly monitor your tires in order to make sure that they are ready and safe to use. Likewise, you must be aware of the things to consider when buying new tires as well as after you have purchased them.

While getting the right tires guarantees safe and good performance of your vehicle, you must still anticipate tire failures especially during a ride. Unforeseen inconveniences on the road might just hinder you on the go, Hence, you must always have the necessary requirements to troubleshoot them.

Troubles with tires are commonly encountered by most riders. When you experience this, you are definitely stopped from proceeding. For this reason, keeping your tire repair kits always on ready is a must. With tire repair kits readily available, minor troubles with tires are easy to handle. As a motorcycle rider, knowing the basic of tire repair is expected of you. Having the basic skills for tire repair allows you to save money. This is because you need not to visit auto repair shops for only minor errors. Thus, having tire repair kits indeed saves you from this costly stuff. Tire repair kits are not only used to fix your tire troubles, they are also needed for your tire maintenance requirements.

There are cases, however, when relying on your repair skills may not be safe and practical. Your tire repair kits are limited at some extent. Some tire troubles may require more adequate facilities to fix them. This time, you need the service of a motorcycle repair shop to check your bike. You must also understand that there are damages to tires that are permanent and non-repairable. Tire replacement is the only remedy in this case.

Tire troubles may be acquired in many ways. Motorcycle riders with underinflated or overloaded tires experience handling and steering difficulty. This leads to disappointing premature tire wear and can even cause catastrophic tire failure. In addition, overloading and underinflation can be aggravated by adding accessories and cargo. Excessive flexing due to underinflation or overload causes buildup of internal heat, fatigue cracking and eventual carcass breakup that lead to complete failure. Another contribution to tire damage is the use of trailers. Generally, the appearance of stress cracks in the tread grooves indicates underinflation or overload. You must immediately remove the tire when you see evidence of tread groove cracking.

Summing up all, requirements for tire usage are not complicated; you only need to practice consistent attention to your tires. You must also be conscious of the load and inflation pressure since these are critical tire elements.

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How to Care for Your Bufo Alvarius Toad

The Bufo Alvarius toad can live for quite a long time in captivity. The Sonoran Desert toad, in general, lives for five to fifteen years, but one toad lived to 36, although it was not a Bufo Alvarius. But if you have gone to all the trouble of searching the Sonoran Desert to find them, or have purchased either a single or a pair of Bufo Alvarius toads from a reputable source, such as Bouncing Bear Botanicals, you will surely want to give it or them proper care so they will live a long time and give you many years of pleasure.

The first care tip is handling. You should handle your toad as little as possible, and, especially if you have other pets in your home, always wash your hands both prior to and subsequent to touching your toad. This is because the skin of an amphibian is permeable, which is to say it is porous, and any toxic substances on your hands may easily be absorbed into their bloodstream. The reason why you should always wash your hands after touching the toad is because of the venom glands located on their head and legs. The toad venom has a milky appearance, and it may be sufficiently toxic to kill a small cat or dog. It can also cause serious irritation to eyes and nose, so make sure never to touch your face until after your hands have been cleaned.

Toads are sensitive to light, sound and vibrations, so their housing should be kept in a quiet place where there is not a lot of noise and goings-on. Never put their aquarium on top of a stereo speaker or TV set, or even near them, because the vibrations are not good for them. Toads are nocturnal animals. They rest in the day time and come out at night, so the place where you house your Bufo Alvarius toad should not be too brightly lit.

Probably the best place to keep your toads would be in an aquarium of a twenty gallon size or larger. These toads are very large and they are excellent at jumping, so make sure their aquarium has a cover that fits snugly. During the day, they like to burrow into the ground to conceal themselves, so the aquarium should have a floor made not with soil but with chunks of bark, smooth stones that are too big for them to swallow, peat moss or sphagnum moss that has been dried. These are cold-blooded animals, which means their body temperature comes from their environment, so keep your Bufo Alvarius in a place where the temperature ranges from 24 to 27 C or 75 to 80 F. Their living space should not be wet, but they do need a bowl of non-chlorinated water. They don’t drink the water, but they immerse themselves in it, absorbing it through their skin.

Feeding your pet toad should not be too problematic if you live in an area where there are lots of insects such as crickets, or at least a pet shop that sells them. In the wild, they eat anything from small rodents and fish to bees, wasps and scorpions. These Colorado River toads even eat smaller frogs and toads.

If you keep your toad’s accommodations clean and comfortable, and take proper steps to look after them, you should be able to enjoy the company of your Bufo Alvarius for many years.

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The Pitfalls of Over-Scheduling Your Child

It’s no secret that American children have jam-packed schedules and expectations that most adults never had to deal with. But you might be surprised to learn that many children carry around a PDA to store schedules and contact information, and a cell phone to stay connected to parents who may be at work or attending a sibling’s scheduled event.

Or maybe you’re not surprised at all. Maybe like so many moms and dads, you practically live out of your mini-van, carting your kids from one activity to the next. Maybe you too are beginning to wonder if the violin lessons and soccer games are really worth missing out on family dinner.

For some parents, the decision to schedule a seemingly nonstop array of activities and lessons is based on the desire to give their children an “edge” over other children with respect to college admission and other life goals. Other parents are mindful of the temptations so often indulged in after school, and would rather keep their kids busy than have them get involved in drugs, alcohol, or sex. Whereas some parents simply have a hard time saying no to their children’s requests to partake in extracurricular activities.

However you feel about the benefits of participating in a plethora of activities, over scheduling may be taking a toll on your child. With little or no room to relax and play, kids are stressed out. Over-scheduled kids often develop anxiety disorders and are more prone to illness.

Surprisingly, all of the extra homework and tutoring can cause over-scheduled students’ grades to suffer. Not as measurable is the effect all of this running about has on a child’s imagination. With no time to relax or be spontaneous, creative thinking has little chance of developing.

Not often discussed in the context of over-scheduling is the effect it has on the parents. Working full-time – either in or outside of the home – is stressful enough. When you add in numerous activities for each child, there is no time left for personal rejuvenation, or even sleep. When mom or dad is stressed out, it trickles down to the kids very fast. Not to mention the challenges over-scheduling poses to a relationship with a partner.

In an effort to fit everything in, families rarely experience time all together, and if they do, it is often in the car. The family dinner seems to be a thing of the past, yet it is this golden time when everyone comes together to share thoughts about the day. When a family is physically disconnected, it is easy to become emotionally disconnected. Without a strong bond with their parents, children are more likely to get involved in drugs, drinking, and promiscuous sex.

Perhaps most detrimental is the message parents are sending when they place supreme importance on achievement. Children learn by example more than anything else, and when the family culture is one of over-achievement, it can set your child up for a lifetime of stress.

In this type of environment, children may feel a low sense of self-worth, as if they can never truly measure up to your expectations. Also, the meaning of the lesson, the true benefit of the experience is lost. Instead, the honors classes, Varsity football, and volunteer activities are heralded for their ability to help your kids get into a great college.

Read more: The Pitfalls of Over-Scheduling Your Child

Beta Testing, Anyone? 10 Potent Strategies for Achieving Success

Successful beta testing starts even before your system is born! Does that idea sound strange? It’s not really that odd when you think that beta testing is meant to involve a methodical prove-in of a carefully designed system, such as an electronic device, Web site, or automated tool. It’s not meant to be a hit-or-miss, cross-your-fingers-and-hope-everything’s-OK Band-Aid that you can apply at the last minute.

We’ve all seen examples of software programs — even from well-known, respectable software companies — that arrive on our desktops barely breathing. They seem to be full of bugs, and thereby cause us more grief than they help us carry out work. Or we try to use a Web site that looks great, but we can’t get from the shopping cart to the order page. Or we buy a new widget, yet even using the instruction booklet, we can’t jump from the main menu to the critical functions the way we’re supposed to.

Are you anxious to catapult your business into the ranks of companies that frustrate their customers this way?

Of course not! Therefore, I’m confident that you will do things differently.

That’s why testing involves such a systematic, tedious, yet indispensable sequence of activities. Without a method to the madness, you’re not doing anything more than randomly banging on the system to see if by chance you can find a way to break it. So, what do you need to know to properly estimate the effort, carry out the process, and keep the testers happy? Here are 10 strategies for achieving testing success.

1. Design test scenarios.

What’s a “test scenario”? Each test scenario should be mirror image of a “use scenario” that’s been guiding a team to design and develop the system. A use scenario describes one typical interaction a customer has with the system. For instance, for an automated teller machine, one scenario involves a customer inserting a card in order to withdraw some cash. In another scenario, a customer makes a deposit. In another, he or she checks the balance.

Scenarios must represent any plausible ways in which users could interact with the system, including unusual and unintended actions. So both use scenarios and test scenarios should account for possible error conditions such as jammed cards, cancelled transactions, or overdrawn accounts.

2. Write a test procedure.

A test procedure specifies how testers will exercise the test scenarios, including the order to follow. In the ATM example, it might say, “Test withdrawing cash denominations in this order: $20, $30, $50, $100. Run another test in reverse order: $100, $50, $30, $20. Then run several tests in random order.” It should also explain what results to expect in each case.

You’ll want the procedure to test all new system features or changes. You’ll also want the procedure to test features in various combinations. For example, you might specify 1) withdrawing cash, then 2) checking balance information, and then 3) making a deposit. Be sure to vary the order, and test error conditions.

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Is True Success Active or Passive?

A simple definition of success could be something about achieving one’s goal or goals.

We often read or hear, “he achieved success” in such and such a year or upon completion of a project. Success seems to be viewed by many people as an end in itself. Once reached, some sort of cup or wreath is given to the victor, and they remain “successful” for all time. The term is, somewhat confusingly, applied in several types of situations. In baseball, a batter may be successful at a single time at bat, yet not be successful for the entire game or season. A politician runs a successful campaign when he or she is elected to the office which was sought. That same politician may run an unsuccessful campaign and yet be successful in bringing some important issue or issues to the attention of the electorate.

So, it is easy to look at success as being, as mentioned, the achievement of a specific goal, whether your own or someone else’s. After all, the ballplayer may be wanting a hit to reach a new record, and his manager may want the hit to make it to one more playoff so he can hold on to his job, and the owner may want the hit in order to win the game and create an atmosphere where he can sell more tickets to future games.

However, if we are to look at success as applied to an entire life, one home run, as successful as it may be at the moment doesn’t quite define a person. After all, to continue with the baseball motif, Bobby Thomson hit the “Shot Heard Round The World”, a home run that won the 1951 World Series to help the New York Giants win the pennant. He went on to have a good career as a ball player, but never achieved such a high level of (subjective) success as on that particular day. Oddly enough, waiting in the on-deck circle that day was a rookie who would achieve a level of success that Thomson never reached. He was a young kid named Willie Mays. At a later point, Hammerin’ Hank Aaron, one of the most successful ball players of all time, got his chance to play in the big leagues due to Thomson’s breaking his ankle.

Sticking with baseball just a little longer, let’s take a quick look at Roberto Clemente. As a ball player, he won four batting crowns and had 3,000 hits. His achievements as a baseball player include: All-Star (15): 1960-67, 1969-72; National League MVP 1966; Gold Glove (12): 1961-1972; 1971 World Series MVP. His life and career were cut short at age 38 when he died in a plane crash while flying relief supplies to Nicaraguan earthquake victims. Throughout his career, his humanitarianism earned him the respect and admiration of fans, players, and the public in general. If success is doing the right thing for the right reasons, then Roberto Clemente was a successful man, just as Mother Theresa was a successful woman.

While people who achieve what the public tends to applaud as success often do gain fame and wealth, they are also often NOT the people who are considered to be the real successes of a society. And, while we often hear a great deal about people who gain momentary success by achieving some great feat or goal, such as sailing around the world, or scoring the most points in a game, we hear for decades, and often for centuries after they are gone, about those whose lifetime of success was measured in small daily actions and attitudes which contributed to the betterment of their fellow humans or the improvement of the earth upon which we all depend so completely.

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The Three R’s of Success

We can create what we want, and this is evidenced by the unprecidented number of people who are starting their own businesses. How do these people do it? How are so many people finding success today? They pracrtice the three R’s.

Any endeavor you would begin starts with a question: “What do I want to come of this? What is my intent?” The first R for success is RESULTS. What results do you want? When you are starting a business or a project, clarify what you want. If you are already leading a department or an organization, clarify what you want.

Most people in the world do not know what they want. They know what they don’t want, and so they spend most of their time thinking about what they don’t want. People complain, worry, and criticize. None of these actions create what you want.

It begins with a dream, a thought of creating something meaningful. As leaders and entrepreneurs we must move beyond merely dreaming and clarify what results we want to produce. The key piece is feelings. How would success feel? The reason people do anything is based on how they think they will feel. Words like joy, fulfillment, delight, making a contribution, gratitude, meaning, and love come to mind. It is this feeling that creates the passion and drive that will have you doing what it takes to create your successful business.

Whenever people start telling me about how much money I can make in their business opportunity I tend to hang up, delete, or say “no thanks”. Money is great, and it usually isn’t enough of a motivator by itself. It is important to enjoy what you are doing. Money and business success may make you feel good. It is more likely that feeling good will help you make money and success. In other words, our ability to feel successful right now helps us to create the results we want. Success is created from the inside out.

Your vision for success is something you begin to live right now. Think, feel, walk, talk, and act like a successful person. Never say you are “trying to start a business.” You are either starting one or you aren’t!

Once you start you need to clarify your identity. What is your mission? The mission involves what you do, who you serve, and why it is important. What are your values? Values involve how you do business and how you treat people. Clarity about who you are and where you are going will lead to the results you want.

The second R is RESPONSIBILITY. Responsibility is your ability to respond. It means that you move beyond blaming and recognize that you create your experience, therefore it is you who must respond. Businesses will always have ups and downs and problems to solve. You can spend your energy focusing what you don’t want (the problem), or you can spend your energy focusing on what you do want (solutions).

As an executive coach I have seen so much waste and stress created by people blaming, being defensive, denying responsibility, and avoiding problems. At the same time I have seen businesses where people communicate openly and honestly, and consciously align their thoughts and behavior with the results they want to produce.

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How to Map Your Life

Success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees. Planning for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. When considering how to map your life, as with any hiking excursion, you need to define the following details: origin, destination, vehicle, backpack, landmarks, and route.

Origin: Who you are

A life map has a starting point. Your origin is who you are right now. Most people when asked to introduce themselves would say, “Hi, I’m Jean and I am a 17-year old, senior high school student.” It does not tell you about who Jean is; it only tells you her present preoccupation. To gain insights about yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs, values, and principles aside from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil status.

Moreover, you can also reflect on your experiences to give you insights on your good and not-so-good traits, skills, knowledge, strengths, and weaknesses. Upon introspection, Jean realized that she was highly motivated, generous, service-oriented, but impatient. Her inclination was in the biological-medical field. Furthermore, she believed that life must serve a purpose, and that wars were destructive to human dignity.

Destination: A vision of who you want to be

“Who do I want to be?” This is your vision. Now it is important that you know yourself so that you would have a clearer idea of who you want to be; and the things you want to change whether they are attitudes, habits, or points of view. If you hardly know yourself, then your vision and targets for the future would also be unclear.

Your destination should cover all aspects of your being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Continuing Jean’s story, after she defined her beliefs, values, and principles in life, she decided that she wanted to have a life dedicated in serving her fellowmen. The exact same criteria is needed for a person wanting to plan for wealth. Without addressing all aspects of your being, reaching your destination will become more complex.

Vehicle: Your mission

A vehicle is the means by which you can reach your destination. It can be analogized to your mission or vocation in life. To a great extent, your mission would depend on what you know about yourself.

Based on Jean’s self-assessment, she decided that she was suited to become a doctor, and that she wanted to become one. Her chosen vocation was a medical doctor. Describing her vision-mission fully: it was to live a life dedicated to serving her fellowmen as a doctor in conflict areas.

Travel Bag: Your knowledge, skills, and attitude

Food, drinks, medicines, and other traveling necessities are contained in a bag. Applying this concept to your life map, you also bring with you certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These determine your competence and help you in attaining your vision. Given such, there is a need for you to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present and what you need to gain along the way.

This two-fold assessment will give you insights on your landmarks or measures of success. Jean realized that she needed to gain professional knowledge and skills on medicine so that she could become a doctor. She knew that she was a bit impatient with people so she realized that this was something she wanted to change.

Landmarks and Route: Smart objectives

Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route determines the travel time. Thus, in planning out your life, you also need to have landmarks and a route. These landmarks are your measures of success.

These measures must be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. Thus you cannot set two major landmarks such as earning a master’s degree and a doctorate degree within a period of three years, since the minimum number of years to complete a master’s degree is two years.

Going back to Jean as an example, she identified the following landmarks in her life map: completing a bachelor’s degree in biology by the age of 21; completing medicine by the age of 27; earning her specialization in infectious diseases by the age of 30; getting deployed in local public hospitals of their town by the age of 32; and serving as doctor in war-torn areas by the age of 35.

Anticipate Turns, Detours, and Potholes

The purpose of your life map is to minimize hasty and spur-of-the-moment decisions that can make you lose your way. But oftentimes our plans are modified along the way due to some inconveniences, delays, and other situations beyond our control. Like in any path, there are turns, detours, and potholes; thus we must anticipate them and adjust accordingly.

Read more: How to Map Your Life

Job Hunting? The Internet May be Your Best Resource

If the thought of looking for a new job conjures up images of an oversized cup of coffee and a stack of Sunday classifieds, it might be time to re-think what a job hunt entails. Thanks to the Internet, newspapers are no longer the only “go-to” source for finding job prospects.

Search Online
Recent research has found that the Internet is the primary source of job postings for more than 71 percent of job-seekers. Newspapers continue to be popular and are typically used in conjunction with the Internet by many job seekers. However, the Internet is valued not only as a legitimate source of job postings, but as a fruitful source of jobs most likely to result in actual job offers. Some attribute this trend to the ability to use electronic media to more closely match an individual’s specific experience and abilities to specific jobs through resume optimizing — a process that can’t be accomplished via fax machine or a mail campaign.

Know What Works
There are several well-established job sites on the Internet, including Yahoo Hot Jobs, Career Builder, and Monster. Each site allows you to search for jobs by keywords, titles, and locations. In most cases, you can apply for the jobs online as well as post your resume for potential employers to view. Each site may present you with different results, though, depending on which sites companies use to publish their job postings. There are also several “niche” sites available that target specific professions, experience levels, or age groups. Sites such as TheLadders.com (for job seekers making $100,000 or more) currently make up 70 percent of the approximately 40,000 online job sites and may offer a great way to narrow your search, depending on what you’re looking for.

However, search engines designed specifically to troll a variety of job sites are also available and are a great way to search as many sites as possible all at once. Job search engines such as Indeed.com, Jobster, and SimplyHired.com will pull results from the big name job sites, as well as feed you results from the job boards of major corporations, associations, and newspapers. Results can be narrowed down to geographical areas, so local listings that may interest you will pull up as well.

Use Your Resources
Networking is still a popular means of locating jobs, although its usefulness in locating job opportunities may have diminished — although only a bit — in the shadow of the Internet. Online job postings are comprehensive and easy to sort through, but there’s still something to be said about rubbing elbows and making yourself known to key players in your industry. Make the best of your job search by using all the resources available to you: the Internet, the newspaper, and your real-world connections. A multi-pronged approach to the job market is sure to wield you the best results…and your next job!

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Success One Brick at a Time

Are you closer to your goals and dreams today than you were yesterday? Will you be closer to those goals and dreams when you wake up tomorrow morning? It all depends on the action you take everyday towards achieving them.

Most people would agree that it is very important to be very clear and precise about the things that you desire in your life. Almost all success courses and seminars highly encourage you to write down your goals and dreams, and to be very specific. It is indeed a huge key.

After writing them down, you need to make time on to review them a regular basis. You may even need to do a little fine tuning and revamping from time to time.

Many also advocate the great value in reading these affirmations, or goal statements every day. Some teachers even suggest that you do this two or three times a day. Some people write out their goals and dreams every morning on paper.

These and other methods help you to stay clear and focused on your goals and desires. Nothing really ever changes on the outside until there is change on the inside. But, after endeavoring to do exercises like this on a consistent basis, then what? Just wait for things to happen?

The question you need to ask yourself every morning is, “What action am I taking today to reach my goals and dreams?” While the above mentioned methods and exercises are extremely beneficial, they in and of themselves will not bring your goals and dreams into reality. However, they ought to inspire, encourage and motivate you to take action!

What kind of action?

Find something that you can do today, that is directly related to your goals and dreams. If you do, you will be closer to your goals and dreams when you wake up tomorrow morning. It could be a phone call to gather information. It could be reading a new book in order to gain insight into your particular field. It could be visiting someone or some place. The point is, do something.

Before you go to sleep at night, take a few moments to figure out exactly what you are going to do tomorrow that is directly related to your goals and dreams. Decide on at least one thing that you can do.

Many times people have wonderful goals and dreams. They even get very clear and specific. They incorporate some daily affirmations, or, use other methods to help get these dreams and goals locked into their minds. That’s all well and good. But then, they wait to take any action.

Oftentimes, people truly believe that they are already taking enough action. And somewhere in their thinking, they have decided that they will do something about their goals and dreams when the time is right, or when they have more time to really work on it.

Do you know why people get stuck into thinking that way? It is because big goals and big dreams seem big, and sometimes, too big. If you’re going to build a ten story brick building, you can’t just lay one or two bricks, can you? Well, why not?

Think about it. If you had all the bricks for that building right there next to you, how many bricks could you lay at a time? The building is built one brick at a time. Brick by brick, by brick, the building will be built.

Just because you don’t have a whole day, or a week, or month to work on your goals and dreams, you can still lay one or two bricks today. Who knows, maybe tomorrow you’ll have time to lay twenty or thirty. But, regardless of how busy you are, make time to lay at least one brick today!

If you do that, when you get up tomorrow morning, you will be closer to your goals and dreams than you are today. You will get there, one brick at a time.

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I Gave Him A Night To Remember

The love of my life was having a big birthday and I wanted to give him a gift he’d never forget. A gift that would prove my love beyond all doubt. But what could I do to make him feel like a king among men?

I could come to the door naked. Nah, been there, done that. I could slave all day and make a delicious meal. Nah, done that one already too.

Maybe a night of dancing and romancing. Or better yet, tickets to his favorite team and unlimited beer. I knew he’d love that, but would I? Now maybe that sounds selfish, but I wanted to get something out of it, too. Sports and a drunken lover are definitely not my thing.

I wracked my brain and asked around until coming up with what I hoped would be the perfect solution. I would get someone to write his life story in rhyme. I’d get all his friends together, throw a nice little bash at his favorite restaurant and then, at the appropriate moment, I’d read the tribute to him.

I wrote down everything I could think of about him. I went way back to his childhood. I even interviewed his siblings and his mother and got all kinds of juicy tidbits. I wanted it to be funny and sentimental all at once, but above all clever. Because he’s one smart cookie, that guy of mine, and I wanted him to really love it and be proud Then I went on the internet in search of someone who could write a combination roast and tribute that totally rhymed. I finally chose a service that sounded good and was inexpensive, considering that this would be totally custom-written for me. I was told it would be delivered to me by email and then I could have it framed, presented as a scroll, whatever I wanted.

Being the unreasonable woman that I am, I asked for it to be delivered in two weeks. Can you imagine? A whole life story in verse, written in two weeks. Well, I was told that it would be no problem. This was getting good! The best part was that I could decide exactly how much to spend. They charged a certain amount per stanza and I could decide, based on that, exactly how many stanzas I thought it would take to do the occasion justice.

Goodness, the price was totally reasonable. I couldn’t have bought him a nice gift for less. So I went for it. I went on the website, copied and pasted all the information I already had written out and stored in my notepad document. Then I went to the shopping cart and charged the proper amount and that was it! I was assured that my credit card wouldn’t actually be charged until I was totally happy with the poem and they would make any changes I wanted, free of charge!

I tried to forget about it for the next two weeks and kept busy doing last minute things for the party, which was going to be a big surprise. I have to admit to being just a wee bit nervous, wondering if the custom-written tribute would be delivered on time. I had been assured that it would be, but we all know how that can go.

So the two weeks flew by and suddenly I checked my email and there it was! I printed it out, went to Starbucks and sat down with a delicious large latte. Then I began to read and wow! I was totally blown away! It was clever. Funny. Sentimental. Mentioned everyone and everything I had asked for. All woven into a totally made to order poem. It was completely original and would not apply to another human being on the planet. And the rhyming was perfect! The writer was a genius!

Read more: I Gave Him A Night To Remember