Lemonade Stand for the New Generation.

Recently, there has been a rash of police and politician crackdowns on a deep and dark underground business that's creeping it's way across the country - children's lemonade stands! Yes, it's true. These evil wrong-doers are actually selling lemon flavored beverages without a beverage selling license! Can you believe that? I was aghast when I learned of this dark business that was infecting our neighborhoods! Back to reality. Would you want to be the politician or policeman that had the raw, unadulterated nerve to actually shutdown a child's lemonade stand and issue them with a $500 fine as well? This falls under the Major Jerk category for law enforcement. One stand was closed down and fined because the business minded children saw an opportunity(which is what I thought we wanted to foster with our youngsters and I guess I was wrong) to sell drinks to people going to and from a tennis tournament. It's probably best that they didn't have a Retail POS System in their child sized drink concession booth or they probably would have seized the records of all the little glasses of drink they sold to show how it negatively impacted the vendors at the tournament! This nation is getting really good at stifling the imagination of our future business people. Imagine that, a capitalistic nation that stifles capitalism! I guess they want us to go into student loan debt for several years to learn what a lemonade stand could have taught them a decade sooner - for free! I was just thinking, that' all!

Buy Your House Yet? No? Too Bad!

If you wanted that cute Cape Cod style home with the white picket fence for your 1.5 children and haven't made the move yet - sorry! If you haven't done it yet you're probably going to be put off from doing so for the short haul, if not the long haul, unless you have sufficient cash to purchase a foreclosure home outright. There are still some options if you can't buy a home yet but still want to relocate and that's homes for rent by owner. These properties can be a great opportunity to experience a new neighborhood in possibly a new state without the financial commitment a purchase would have been. When I moved to Florida to the city I wanted to build a house I rented. The mistake I made was doing it over the phone without any references to where I'd live in relation to where I wanted to build as well as the neighborhood, as in neighbors. I was ever so glad to move away from that situation a year later when the lease was over. Do your homework and you'll pass the housing test with ease. Find out what the local publications are and start reading them, they have a lot to say but not always in one or two edition. I actually subscribed to the local paper a year before I relocated to get a feel for the changes the seasons bring, especially when the kids are out of school(police reports, etc.). Another thing is to see what major merchants and restaurants are local to see if they're interested in that city as well.

Paper or Fabric?

A close friend of mine went into an outpatient clinic for a small surgical procedure. The condition that she was there for required that she be put into a twilight sleep. I went in the back with her while she was being prepared for her appointment with the surgeon and was surprised at the appearance of the nurses in the back, both men and women. The scrubs of old were gone and all these new, colorful scrubs were everywhere, even with the male nurses. I remember as a child that the hospital was white and the world had colors and that was that. White was the ONLY thing that was clean and sterile to wear. Looking at the guys the last thing I would have thought was that they were doctors lab coats, mainly because of the way they fit and how they looked. They looked like vacation clothes. I even saw an orderly wearing olive green scrubs. I asked him if they were comfortable and he said that the old style was okay but the newer ones breathed a lot better because of the breathe-ability of the natural fabric as opposed to the synthetics of the past. I think this would work because they're always looking for some new ways to lift the spirits of the patients. Nothing looks more depressing than everyone in the same scrubs. One of the lab techs told me he got his at this link http://www.blueskyscrubs.com/categories/Scrubs/Scrubs-for-Men/ and it was easy to order his size(big guy).

I really feel for the patients in the recovery area where family or close friends tend to be while the patients come back around for the trip home. This is a tough time for most patients since they usually have an IV in one arm, an oxygen cannula in their nose, and they're trying desperately to keep their mind off of what they just went through. Who wants to see a nurse sweating next to them, it starts making you think there might be something wrong them.

Even if they made some of the older styles with better fabrics that would be a plus for them. Remember that service people service better when they feel better! There was even one nurse with scrubs flare pants on, which I thought was pretty cool since I grew up in the flared jeans days. It may seem a small issue to some but little things add up when it comes to patient morale. I say "why not?".

What Happened to the Susan B Anthony Dollar?

The Susan B Anthony dollar coin was one of the Treasury Dept's biggest wet towels. Nobody, I mean nobody wanted it once they realized that they have gotten one or more of them and dropped them in a vending machine thinking it was a quarter! This point is very true and was one of the primary reasons for the coins' failure rate being so extremely high. The government went and spent millions of dollars for an ad campaign to promote this round piece of gold coated metal but the money would have been better spent feeding the elderly or homeless people instead. They probably need to buy thousands of the best metal detectors they can find to recover the coins that were summarily tossed out of frustration into bureau drawers or into glove boxes in cars so they can melt them down and re-stamp them into the president dollar coins that look like a dollar coin, they're actually round this time. One last point of information. Susan's face is false, it wasn't hers. Woman's groups complained about the original rendition because the real Susan Anthony was young and attractive and the coin needed to look older and more serious. I don't think either would have done any better!