Um ... NATURAL Formation?

During our family Spring Break trip to Arizona, my mom and dad took us to the Arizona Museum of NATURAL History.  I have typed the word "natural" in all CAPS because this post is about a beef I have with their liberal use of that term as related to the following picture.

As you walk through the initial entry way into the heart of the museum, there are dozens of photographs or pieces of artwork depicting different NATURAL formations in earth's history.  Many of the depictions are inspiring and beautiful, and I found myself willingly accepting the arguably arbitrary historical timelines under which these phenomena were NATURALLY visible.  I'm sure you sciency people out there will get all riled up and defensive, but I find it a little difficult to just accept the concept of 300 million years ago versus 2-4 billion years ago.  Isn't that a bit BIG of a range?!  Really covering your bases there huh?!  But I digress ...

Amid all these images, I came across a NATURAL formation that was formed exactly 1.6 billion years ago.  It is utterly amazing that real living people were finally born which looked exactly like these NATURAL head shapes (which have a whole history about them being carved unnaturally by human hands within just the past century).

At least the kids enjoyed digging through recycled tires to find buried "dinosaur bones."  I wonder if the museum curators believe those are NATURAL too?

The picture to the right is where the kids panned for "gold" (which was also not NATURAL at all).  Just so many false claims!

(Please note the sarcasm of this entire post.  I am neither truly angry nor truly devoid of any intelligence).


Song Of The Day:
Although he is now a successful country singer, Darius Rucker used to front the band Hootie and the Blowfish.  I thought of their song "Time" as related to this post, for obvious reasons.  Listen along and see if you can catch some sarcasm in the words of the tune as you think about this post.

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Where Does The Time Go ?

It's basically August now.

 

In 2013 ... which means it's almost 2014.

 

School starts tomorrow for 4 of my kids.

 

Next year I will have a child in high school!

 

Summer is over, for all intents and purposes.

Today at work my "empty agenda" quickly filled up with meetings and conversations and assorted busy work.  All of a sudden I looked up and it was 3:30pm.  The day was nearly over.

My landscaping project(s) at home are fast approaching their overall deadlines.

In so many different areas, I feel time just slipping away at a breakneck pace.  I am not sure why this is.  My time is being replaced with memories and experiences, but it just seems to move so fast.


Song Of The Day:
Nothing else like music takes me back to a time when minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months didn't disappear as swiftly.  One of my classic favorite time has gone so quickly songs is "Endless Summer Nights" by Richard Marx.  I am grateful for the memories I have collected in exchange for my minutes and hours, but I do sometimes find myself pining for long, lazy nights.

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Do We Remember To Say Thank You ?

I know several of my recent posts have had a more negative or frustrated tone, which is probably why I found myself in a very reflective mood today.  Sundays are always great for reflecting on life.

Today my thoughts were centered around gratitude for people who have graciously sacrificied their most precious commodity (time) on behalf of me or others I care about.  Just one brief example should illustrate my point.

Yesterday, Trent V (our troop Scoutmaster), spent almost his entire day (before 7:00am until after 7:00pm) supporting our Boy Scouts.  Now I was there too, and I drove, etc. BUT there is a big difference here.  Trent doesn't have a son in our troop.  In fact, Trent has no real obligation to support these scouts, other than his own desires to serve other people and help these boys learn how to be successful men (husbands, fathers, adults, etc.)

Let me be clear here.  For scout leaders or other adults there is literally NOTHING to do at camp all day long!

There is no wifi or internet.  In fact, most of our phones were out of range, so you cannot even make calls or communicate with others outside the camp area.  Unless you want to learn about whatever merit badge one of the boys is learning about, it is just a lot of sitting and trying to stay cool and not get eaten alive by mosquitos or other bugs.

Trent did the best he could to put his time to good use (planning a lesson for church, catching up on some reading, taking a hike on the LONG nature trail - he did NOT expect it to be as long as it was), but at the end of the day it was mostly just a lost day.

I know I thanked him for being there, but I wonder if I really showed enough gratitude for his sacrifice of time.  And this is just one example.  There are many others I need to make sure know I appreciate their time and effort.


Song Of The Day:
I was unable to find the song "On A Hopeful Note" by John Jarvis on YouTube.  It is a very uplifting piece of music that fits perfectly with this post.  BUT ... I did find "A Perfect Rain" and it is a nice substitute!  :)

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Has It Really Been 15 Years ?!

Today I celebrated my 15 year anniversary working at Progressive Insurance.  Of course I was on a family road trip driving cross country to Alabama, but in spirit I did think a little about my work journey over the past decade and a half.

It sure has flown by very, very quickly.

Me @ Progressive Field for
MLB Opening Day in 2012
(All expenses paid trip!)
*I was on the field for the
Opening Ceremonies

In March of 1998, when I first started work here, things were quite a bit different.  A few examples will highlight this pretty quickly:

- The Internet was pretty much brand-new still.  The dot-com craze had not yet begun, yet we had a Progressive.com website that already began to win awards.

- Progressive did not write auto insurance in all 50 states (NJ and MA were to litigious, and we had limited growth in FL and CA).

- Cell phones were just barely beginning to eliminate "pagers" as the popular hand-held device (PDAs were on the way ... what's a Smart Phone?)

- Popular advertising icons did not include Flo.  They were instead beer ads with frogs, horses, and silly frat-house humor.  In fact, you almost never saw an insurance commercial on TV.

My picture of most of my
Progessive gear (which
earned me the trip to
Opening Day 2012)

I actually only started with Progressive because I needed a more stable and steady income, since I was engaged to be married in May.  I only started in "Customer Service" because my other option was "AutoPro" and I thought that meant working on cars or something (it actually was the name of our sales department back then).  I could go on and on with stories, but they would have little meaning for anyone other than myself.  Suffice it to say, I am VERY happy that I applied and was hired all those years ago.  Thanks for 15 great years Progressive!  Here's to 15+ more!

Song Of The Day:

There are many different songs about time and how things change that could easily apply for this post ... but I've landed on "Time" by Hootie and the Blowfish for two reasons:

          1. I really dig the song.

          2. It's about time we have some Hootie in this blog!  :)

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