New Shoes in the Rain

I am not the kind of person who routinely longs for the good old days.  I like to think of myself as a fairly progressive person, and that I know how to adapt to changing times and circumstances. But some recent events have made me think about how things used to be, compared to how they are now. For example, political candidates were frequently judged to be finished in the eyes of the public when some thing either happened or a past event was found out.  Remember Gary Hart, the handsome Senator from Colorado who had worked for John F. Kennedy and was often compared to him?  Reporters covering his presidential campaign in 1988 apparently heard a lot of rumors about Hart and his many infidelities and when confronted about these rumors by the media, Hart challenged them to follow him and find out. They did. He was photographed secretly aboard a boat aptly named “Monkey Business” with a pretty young woman named Donna Rice sitting on his lap and at a townhouse in Washington, D...

Happy Saturday, friends!  Hope.you had a good week and are ready for some down time. I don’t consider myself an early adopter of most anything, but I suppose that’s always a little subjective.  I resisted the iPhone when it first came out, not only because I really, REALLY liked my Blackberry at the time, but also because I didn’t want to have to switch to AT&T’s cellular service, which I believe was called Cingular Wireless at the time.  I have had Verizon Wireless for a long, long time, and like their service overall.  So that didn’t interest me right away. When I finally did get my first iPhone, I was pretty well blown away, and have been an enthusiastic user of various versions of this device since.  I actually had an iPad before I had an iPhone, but learned enough with the workings of that tablet that I was able to troubleshoot for members of my work team who had iPhones.  The rest came rather naturally, of course. I was also a little slow to adapt...

Hope everyone's week is off to a good start. My premise today is rather simple.  When is it best to replace something that's older with a similar item that's newer?  What criteria do you use to make that decision?  Is it something you give a lot of thought to, or is it more impulsive? My answer, for better or worse, is that it depends. And I stand by that response. For instance, for fourteen years my car was a 2007 Honda Pilot SUV.  Bought it as a demonstrator with 4,400 miles already on it.  Went a lot of places in that car, numerous business trips to St. Louis, Birmingham, Atlanta, Nashville, Cleveland and many other destinations.  Transported me and my son to Cincinnati to see the Reds countless times, and later took along his two older children for games.  Survived a couple of multi-state baseball trips.  Went on vacation to Colorado for other lots of other weekend excursions.  I did all of the major required maintenance, but after the se...