Cheryl Beckham

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.

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.

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!

My passion for reading has been with me all of my life, although it take a back seat for several years after giving birth to my daughter, 12 years ago. Now that I am on my own once again, my ex has custody, for the time being, I have been excited about given more time on my hands in order to start some serious reading once again.

I have been a “Parrot Head” since way back and have always enjoyed the tropical type music that he is so well known for producing and I have heard that he has written some books lately, but have never seemed to be able to come upon any of his books until just recently.

So I was thrilled to find one of his books called “A Salty Piece of Land” at my favorite used book store, and for only $2 and I’ve really enjoyed the reading of it this past week. I’m glad that inside of the book it tells me the names of his other books that I will need to see if I can find at a good bargain also. I’m especially interesting in finding the one entitled “A Pirate Looks At Fifty”, if I can’t find it locally then I guess I could always look on-line and see if I can find it somewhere out there in cyber-world, for cheap.

A couple of friends and I stepped out last night for a bite to eat and afterwards we went to see the recently released movie WALL-E  at the mall. Since we went to the last showing of the evening, we all were pretty much still full from our late dinner, so no one went crazy with the popcorn and candies, or their $5 sodas, which helped keep the cost to a minimum. These days none of us can afford to splurge much on extras like that anyway.

The film turned out to be animated and mainly geared towards children. This film possessed a not so subtle theoretical prophecy of the future in hysterically exaggerated terms, with an underlying sub-plot of a sort of the “lone survivor”, “wrong side of the tracks working stiff”, falls for the “top-of-the-line” classy, highly advanced, come to save mankind and got no time for silliness, fembot! A kind of love affair between robots. That in itself is a hoot! None the less it was quite unlike any animated film I had ever seen before. You just have to chill out and laugh. So, in my book, ’twas well worth the time and money to be seen on the big screen. Pay attention to minor details all through the movie, and you’ll not only laugh your ass off, but may find yourself giving some thought to things you’d previously paid little attention to.