Cheryl Beckham

In like a lamb. As much as I have been looking forward to nicer weather, now that we have warmer temps, I am a little nervous. If the old saying of  “In like a lamb, out like a lion,” is true, then the bad weather will be coming back again before this month is over. I hope that does not prove true this year. We have had enough bad weather ans the kids have missed too much school already.

Years ago I must have expressed out loud in front of someone, somewhere, something about the cuteness of a frog lawn ornament, that had caught my eye, for some reason. I didn’t even buy the frog, but some how that was to be the start of the many, many frogs that have now seemingly taken over my house and lawn. Word got out and frogs are a constant, but welcomed gesture from folks, as a gift, a token, a present, a tip (after all, I am a bar tender, and we receive quite a variety of tips now and then) from virtually everywhere from all types of people that I have/had a relationship with over the years. I must have a frog made out of any and every type of material that is known to man, in all kinds of sizes, and stances.

For Christmas I was given a frog aquarium kit, which requires a check to be sent in with the order for the frogs to come in the mail, or I could go down to one of the many pet stores that have popped up all over the place in the past few years. I’m sure at least one will have baby frogs for sale, it seems like the more humane way to receive new members of the family. But going to the pet stores, any of them like PetCo, Puppy Palace, and Petsmart always leaves me with me wallet emptied out and my heart broken from not being able to take home more of the critters that are all there, just waiting for a home, and knowing that their chances of being purchased and treated adequately highly reduces most of their survival rates.

One of the places that I try not to go in to are the A.S.P.C.A. and Animal Shelters, I have never left one yet with out crying like a baby and feeling like a piece of scum, and dirty. Not something that I enjoy or look forward to doing, ever.

I was brave just now and downloaded the new WordPress upgrade to the 2.7 version and here I am, wow this is pretty cool. I have been told that this updated version was hitting the stands and at first was a bit uncomfortable with the idea of something that has been noted as a pretty drastic change, but I’m proud that I went ahead and dove in, head first as they say.

Now for the real swimming lessons. I’m a pretty decent and competent swimmer, a good thing that I excel at treading water, ha ha!

Live and Learn

Tomorrow is the beginning of another school year for my 12 year old daughter, I am finding it hard to believe that she is now a 7th grader and is in middle school, and what ever happened to calling it Junior High School anyway.

Seeing that she lives with her Dad and he leaves for work earlier than her bus arrives, I volunteered to pick her up and drive her to school for the first few days, until she feels a bit more sure of herself, being a new school and all. She is such a shy one and she is very nervous about the whole thing, I wish I could go with her and make sure everyone is nice to her, I’m sure their are millions of mothers (and fathers) who feel the same way. Kids can be so incredibly cruel and I just hate thinking of anyone being mean and/or nasty towards her in any way. This is one wonderful little girl and is full of such goodness and humanity, she has the soul of an old Native American woman and deserves nothing but the best!

It’s late, I just got off of the phone with her, making sure she has everything that she needs and has it all ready to go for in the morning. Seems that they had to make a run to the store today to get her a new alarm clock and now she is all set to go. Hope she sleeps well.

Google recently bought out a company whose services seem pretty impressive, so much so that I wanted to share what I have learned about it.

Grand Central is a company that will give you a “phone number for life.” That is only one part of it all. Part of the service includes the ability to ring multiple phones at the same time. You can put up to five number into the system and when you get a call it will ring all of them and transfer the call to the first number that answers it. You can even have an address book where you can define groups of people (friends, family, work, other). You can set preferences about which phones ring for which groups. So I can set it that friends and family ring my home phone, but work and others (anybody not in your address book is in the others category) don’t. It has a call recording feature (a message is announced to both parties); voice mails are retrievable by phone or online; you can set up a temporary number to forward calls to in addition to the configured 5 via phone or online; you can set ring back and voice mail messages specific to each group.

All and all it really looks to be a really nice service and is by invite only, but free. I understand that they have stated that there will always be a free version, but it appears that someday they will start charging for some of their premium features.

Now my question is, how does one go about getting an invite, looks like I have some researching to do now!