Serendipity

I almost always mistake that word for "stupidity"... but anyway...

A couple of interesting posts showed up in the RSS feed this morning.

First, I've been following the story about Apple cutting its iPhone prices, and making the early-adopters show their true colors as whiny, entitled little weenies. Which prompted this to show up this morning over at the CafePress.com web site:
















Funny stuff.

Then, I was reading some other stuff, and noted that Harley Davidson has lowered its earnings expectations for this next quarter, and has removed its entire earnings guidance for 2009 altogether. ("Guidance" numbers are used by analysts to help keep track of how a company is doing versus its own projections, and is then used to help substantiate stock prices and "buy/hold/sell" ratings for the stock.)

The story is that now that we Americans are no longer able to tap the equity in our homes, using them like ATM machines, we aren't buying the stupid things we used to buy, like big motorcycles, cars, boats, and luxury items in general. In short, we have to now go back to EARNING the things we want...

But, we WANT, WANT, WANT, don't we??

We are definitely an entitlement society, and until we figure out how to earn the things we want, we are going to be in trouble. If you dare, take a look at the national debt numbers. Pretty staggering.

So, on to another subject - I was reading an interesting post over at a friend's blog, and he talked about the birth of his kid, about 3 years ago. He noted that due to an umbilical cord issue, the youngling had to spend some time in the NICU right after the blessed event.

Two of our kids are twins - boy/girl twins... they are an interesting pair. Couldn't be more different from each other. The boy came out with a black eye, first, with a look on his face as if to say, GEEZ, get me OUTA here, that chick's got a mean left jab! The girl half showed up all pristine and pretty. Being twins, they were a tad early, and born via C-Section. So they didn't have the funky cone-head thing going on.

In this picture, the boy half is the tallest one, standing in the back row - this picture is a year old. The girl half is third from the left in the front row, with the strawberry blond hair.

They were both shy of five pounds each, which meant that they had to spend some time in the hospital before they gained enough weight to go home. The boy spent more time in the NICU than she did, because he also had a lung that needed a little help to finish becoming fully baked and inflated. Over the next several months of his life we had him back at the hospital a couple of times because of this same issue. We worried about him at the time, but it really wasn't that big a deal.

About 6 months ago, they turned 17. He is 6'3" and his football program listed him at 220 pounds, but he's really about 185 now. No matter what his actual weight is, he is a tank of a kid - long and lean. He has always been a happy-go-lucky easy going kid, rolls with the punches, nothing really bothers him too much. Typical kid in that way. When it was time to hand out punishment for this or that, and when a swat on the arse was warranted, he took his in stride, never cried, as if to say, "yeah, dude, that didn't really hurt."

As for the girl twin, if you so much as looked at her funny, it was a personal affront, and that was typically all the punishment that was needed, for that 10 minutes, anyway. She has always been mischievous, the social butterfly, and that is still the case today. She is having a bit if a hard time with her mother these days, and although that isn't a good thing, she is spending a bit more time over at our house than she usually does, and we are happy for that. She is a person who needs fairly consistent social input, and sitting around watching a movie or something like that isn't really an option for her. She needs to be out there doing stuff with friends. She will always be one of those who has a ton of friends all through her life - she still gets calls from old friends who moved away several years ago, who come into town and want to do something with her. She finds that both weird and very satisfying all at the same time.

No real point to all that, just some fun memories. That's all.