Mishmash Musings

When I was in high school and college, I heard the word “potential” all the time. It was applied to my classmates and to myself by our teachers, advisers, and counselors, and it generally made us feel pretty good. The assumption was that we had the whole world at our feet and we could basically do anything we wanted.

Now that I’m in my 30s, however, no one ever tells me how much potential I have anymore. But why is that? Have I done something to show that I’ll never get beyond where I am now? Have I somehow hit rock bottom, with no chance of ever doing any better? It kind of makes me feel like I’m already washed up or something!

Adults have just as much potential as college students do, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the next 10 years brings my way!

I have so much to say on this subject that I know I won’t be able to fit it into a single post, so you can expect me to continue writing about this for a few more days (or weeks) to come.

Right after high school, I attended a small Catholic college somewhere in the Midwest (I won’t give exact locations or use real names here). The school had a seminary on the grounds, and because I took classes like Latin, Greek, and philosophy, I naturally met a lot of seminarians during the course of the year.

I became friends with one in particular — I’ll refer to him as CT. Even though he was a senior and I was a freshman, we really hit it off and found that we had several common interests, including the aforementioned Latin and Greek (we were in the same Greek class). I found myself seeking out CT’s company whenever I could, and I called him quite often. We talked about so many different things that I just couldn’t talk about with any of my other friends: language, etymology, theories about learning and knowledge… this was great stuff.

Anyway, I lost touch with CT soon after he graduated, but I was fortunate enough to reconnect with him recently. I never realized just how much I missed him until I started talking to him and hearing his voice again.

Reconnecting with CT also made me realize that I’ve got no one in my life that really… challenges me intellectually anymore. My current group of friends would much rather talk about family and the day-to-day problems of raising kids; no one brings up the heady stuff anymore. Oh, how I miss that!

Okay, I think that’s about all for now. I just wanted to get the basics up here today, and I’ll definitely be posting more about CT in the days to come.

I just wanted to wish all of you U.S. readers out there a Happy Memorial Day. I hope you’re able to spend a nice day with your families, barbecuing or doing whatever else to celebrate the unofficial start of the summer season.

I also hope that you take a moment to think about why we have this holiday in the first place, and to remember and thank the veterans who have given their lives defending our country. That’s the biggest sacrifice an individual can make, so let’s make sure we show our gratitude in some small way.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. - Horace

A friend of mine is something of an amateur coin collector. By that I mean she doesn’t go out of her way to spend thousands of dollars on rare coins, but she does have a pretty nice collection that is worth decent money.

I was just talking to her about her coins the other day, and I asked her how she got into collecting in the first place. She told me that her grandfather left her some gold coins when he died. She had the coins appraised, was surprised at how much they were worth, and decided to increase her collection whenever possible. This is exactly what happened with my cousin Matt, so I could understand where she was coming from.

My friend now views her coins as an investment, which makes sense. After all, gold does tend to maintain or increase its value at a better rate than other investment vehicles, thereby making it a relatively secure way to preserve your money.

Maybe I should get in on this trend and invest in gold as well!

I have never understood the whole idea behind collecting antiques. Why would anyone want to pay premium prices for old, used stuff that usually doesn’t even work anymore? I mean, I guess I could see why someone would want a historically significant item that belonged to a famous person, but other than that…? I don’t get it.

Anyway, I just read that someone bought an old camera for about $792,000. It was a Daguerreotype by Susse Freres of France, and is believed to have been manufactured in 1839. An anonymous online bidder bought the thing. What does the buyer plan on doing with it? Heck, your guess is as good as mine!

A couple weeks back, I mentioned how I usually end up taking a nap for a couple of hours during the daytime and how I needed blinds to help make the bedroom dark enough to accommodate sleeping at noon. Well, I actually followed through on that whole issue (which should show you how seriously I take my sleep) and made a purchase.

There’s no way I’d be able to install the blinds myself, so I’ve got someone coming out on Tuesday to take care of that for me. Thus far I’ve only purchased blinds for the bedroom, but will hopefully get around to taking care of the rest of the windows around the house within the next couple months or so.

I’m so excited that I’ll be able to sleep in a darkened room during the daytime!!

My big Tuesday project for last week was to get my accounting paperwork in order and take care of my taxes once and for all. Towards that end, I had to do some research on how to make estimated tax payments. Apparently, you don’t just send in a check like you do for regular year-end taxes.

Instead, I had to go register at www.eftps.gov, which is the official Electronic Federal Tax Payment System website. Once my registration is processed, I’ll be able to pay my estimated taxes by electronic transfers directly from my bank account.

Of course I’ve waited so long to register that I might not be able to make my upcoming June 15 payment on time. It can take up to 15 business days to process the EFTPS registration, so I’ll really be pushing the deadline on this one. I might have to pay by credit card and wait for September 15 to try out the EFTPS system.

I found out about a week ago that my aunt, uncle, and cousins are going to Florida on vacation in July. I’ve decided to buy them all Disney World tickets as my oldest cousin’s graduation present (she just finished college) so they can enjoy a day at the park.

I don’t mind giving them Disney passes as a gift, but they’re on their own for lodging. I’ve heard that my uncle is looking into an Orlando vacation rental right now to see what kind of deals they can get in July. That’s a peak time for family vacations, so I don’t know what’ll be available to them. I hope they can find a nice place to stay at!

When it rains here, it rains all. day. long. I can’t stand it because it makes everything so much harder — like trying to carry bags of groceries from the car to the house while also wielding an umbrella, and like trying to keep my son from splashing through puddles or falling down everywhere like he usually does. I absolutely hate going out in the rain, but since it lasts all day, I can’t very well avoid it. Ugh.

I recently started working outside the home again, but only on a part-time basis as a consultant. So even though I get a nice salary, I don’t get any benefits from the position. As a result, I’m left to look for a good life insurance policy that is also affordable.

I’ve heard from several people who said they had great luck finding cheap life insurance online, so that’s probably what I’m going to end up doing. I’ve run a few preliminary searches and have to admit that I’ve seen some pretty good deals on a few sites like Termco.com. I know their life insurance rates are much lower than the rates an agent from a nationwide company quoted to me a couple months ago, so when I’m ready to buy, I’ll probably go back to Termco.com.

I was really busy yesterday and didn’t get a chance to post an update here. Part of the reason I couldn’t get much blogging done was that my son’s school had their “Olympics Day,” which of course I had to attend.

Bear in mind that he’s just four years old, so there wasn’t much real action to speak of. The kids ran a couple of footraces (a 20-yard dash or something like that), jumped rope (with the teachers twirling the ropes for them), and played a kids version of basketball with very low nets.

My son is extremely shy, so he actually didn’t participate much. He started crying when it was his turn to race, and he absolutely refused to play basketball at all. I was a bit disappointed because he usually loves games and is always playing these kinds of things at home. He still has to get used to school, I guess.

I don’t know what’s going on with my computer right now, but recently it has been extremely SLOW. It takes forever to start up and shut down, and if I have more than one application running, they all get bogged down. Seriously, it takes close to a minute just to switch between the different windows I have open.

I think it could be a memory problem. I know it’s not a virus or any malicious spyware because I’ve got the latest version of Norton running and have scanned my hard drive numerous times. I’ve been talking about getting a computer memory upgrade for a while now, and probably shouldn’t put it off any more. It’s extremely frustrating when common tasks take two or three times longer than they should just because my CPU isn’t up to par.