Mishmash Musings

Someone I used to work with emailed me out of the blue and asked me to write her a reference/recommendation letter. The catch was that it had to be done within 24 hours! Being the nice person that I am, I complied with her request. I just wish she had given me a bit more notice so I didn’t have to rush through it.

Anyway, it’s been a long time since I had to write a recommendation, so I needed some guidance. I searched for some good samples and found these sites to contain particularly helpful information. Check them out the next time you need to write a reference or recommendation for someone.

About.com — Great samples for a range of jobs.

Monster.com — Basic template for recommendation letter

Monster.com — Specific example from same site

I’ve got friends who live in North Carolina and they’re currently in the market for a new home. I don’t know how they manage to handle looking around for houses on top of everything else that comes along with the holiday season, but they don’t seem to be bothered by the extra burden. The reason for that probably has to do with the fantastic Raleigh real estate agent that they’ve hooked up with.

In fact, my friends were raving so much about ListWise Realty Services that I just had to visit the website myself to see what makes ListWise different from other agencies. It didn’t take long to figure out that ListWise offers a full range of services that home buyers need.

It looks like good stuff, so check out ListWise Realty Services if you’re buying a home in the Raleigh, North Carolina area.

The news is so full of dire reports that it’s really nice to come across something like this once in a while. There’s a couple in Oklahoma that just celebrated their 77th wedding anniversary. Gene and Elinor Coleman, who are 96 and 94, respectively, were married on November 28, 1929 and have been together ever since.

According to the article, the two still “sit together like newlyweds, with his arm around her.” Gene says they hope they make it to their 80th.

I hope they do, too!

How stupid can people be? Apparently there’s no limit. I just read about a 21-year-old guy up in Canada who didn’t know how to deal with a feverish baby, so he got the brilliant idea to stuff her into the freezer — and close the door. The mother came home and rescued her baby, but I didn’t catch how long the child had been in the freezer for.

Anyway, the baby suffered first- and second-degree freezer burns but should be okay. The (hopefully “ex” by now) boyfriend has pleaded not guilty to the charges of criminal negligence and assault.

I love Christmas and all, but the lengths some people are willing to go to in order to score the “hottest” toys of the season just blow my mind. The PlayStation 3 retails for about $600 or something like that. But since Sony insists on debuting its products in very limited quantities, there’s a whole market out there for extremely high-priced auctions.

Here are just some of the asking prices for the PS3 units currently on eBay: $1999, $1600, $1500. And that’s not even including the “joke” listings that start at $10,000 or more. Unreal.

How about TMX Elmo? This doll retails for about $40. If you want to buy one from eBay, however, be prepared to shell out $500 or more.

Give me a break. As much as I love my child, I would never go to these lengths just for Christmas!! Call me a Scrooge, I guess.

I managed to make it through Black Friday unscathed. It’s been a few years since I ventured out on the busiest shopping day of the season, but I decided to go with my cousins just in case we came across a good deal. Of course, all the best items were snapped up by the frenzied hordes that waited outside for hours before the stores opened. We weren’t that crazy!

Anyway, I ended up not buying anything, but my cousins did get a couple of things they were eyeing at Best Buy.

Sometimes I read something in the news and I just have to ask, “Why?” Why would anyone in their right mind think that creating the world’s biggest rubber band ball would be a worthwhile pursuit? Aren’t there just a billion other things this guy could have spent his time and money on instead of using 175,000 rubber bands to build a 4,594-pound ball?

To each his own, I guess.

It’s not unusual to read about old women who end up with an entire apartment full of cats, but I think this is the first time I’ve heard about someone having this many dogs. The Humane Society in South Dakota received complaints about a particular rural residence and discovered that a woman had anywhere from 150-200 stray dogs on her property.

According to the article, people just started abandoning dogs near her house because they knew she would take them in.

While I think it’s noble of this woman to want to protect dogs, there’s no way a single person could properly care for that many animals, no matter how big the premises.

(Photo from Dog.com)

Yes, you read that headline correctly! I just came across a Wikipedia entry for a new “sport” called extreme ironing. Apparently, people “take an ironing board to a remote location and iron a few items of clothing.” There was even a World Championship back in 2002, but that was the only time the event was ever held.

What’s the point of extreme ironing? I have no idea.

Have you ever heard of the Roomba vacuuming robot? It’s a very cool product that vacuums your floors without you having to be around to monitor the action. It’s a robot that has sensors so that it knows where to go when cleaning. It avoids stairs, gets under furniture, and (according to the website), covers an area at least four times while cleaning.

I don’t know if this thing actually works because I don’t know anyone who has one. But I think it would be awesome not to have to vacuum anymore!

Well, I can’t say I didn’t see this problem coming. As soon as I heard that students and their parents were suing over grades (happened many years ago), I figured teachers would just start handing out A’s and B’s to avoid controversy.

Now, this AP article asserts that grade inflation is a real problem for college admissions boards. So many applicants have perfect high school records that it’s hard to determine which students to accept and which to reject.

“We’re seeing 30, 40 valedictorians at a high school because they don’t want to create these distinctions between students,” said Jess Lord, dean of admission and financial aid at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. “If we don’t have enough information, there’s a chance we’ll become more heavily reliant on test scores, and that’s a real negative to me.”

Thirty or forty valedictorians in a school? That’s ridiculous. I graduated back in 1992 and our class had 6 valedictorians, which I thought was a lot back then. Forty is just insane.

Full article right here.

I can’t believe what I’m reading here. OJ Simpson is releasing a book called, get this, If I Did It, and it’s apparently a “hypothetical” account of how he would have killed Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman if he had wanted to back then.

As if that weren’t sickening enough, I just came across an AP article that says both Barnes & Noble and Border’s will carry the book. I figured those two stores were above deriving profits from anything so sordid as this book appears to be, but I guess not. If they go through with this and do decide to sell the book there, I will no longer be a customer.

Full article here.