Well mannered kids
February 22nd, 2010A few months ago I went to one of my favorite diners for a late lunch around 3pm on a weekday. As I entered the restaurant I noticed what appeared to be a Dad with 3 kids, a boy about 10, a girl about 8 and a girl about 5. My first thought was to go somewhere else since I did not want to eat around some noisy kids, but I sat at a booth, ordered my lunch, and begin to read. After a few moments I looked up and everything was still quite, I looked at the family, they were talking, laughing and having a fun time while being as quite as any other respectful person would be. Time passed, my lunch was served, I ate the entire meal in that same quiteness, several times I looked at the family,,,,, they continued to talk, laugh and have a great time while being very quite, respectful and extremely well disciplined. I was so impressed, I will repeat that, I was so impressed with this experience that as I was going to the cashier I stopped at the table and said to the Dad that I wanted to talk to him about his children. He immediately replied, Have we done something to disrupt your lunch? Of course I said No, just the opposite, I was impressed with how quite the diner was and thanked him. The Dad said they have a standing rule that says for any and all unsolicited positive comments these kids get from strangers because of them being well mannered and disciplined kids, the parents put additional $10.oo in the vacation kitty and the kids get to chose how to spend that money on the summer vacation. The kids had already accomplished that for the second time that day = $20.00. The $10.00 in my hand for my lunch, I gave to the Dad and said, Now they have $30.00. The kids all thanked me on their own without parental input, this was awesome. I paid the cashier, was walking thru the door and the boy said, Hey Mister, I turned to look and all 3 kids gave me the double thumbs up. I smiled and knew I was in the middle of something very special. I know a lot of parents have good intentions but sometimes kids can get carried away. I thought about this for a few days and came to the conclusion that my time would be better suited looking for the roses and not the thorns. It also reminded me of how quick we are to pre-judge people, places, and things. As parents you may try something like this, the prize could be a dollar or 5 dollars,,,, but the real prize is the advantages the well mannered and dsiciplined kids will have over those that aren’t. I wish you well in your parenting.
Field of Greens
December 6th, 2009A few months ago I did a vendor table at what is called The Feild of Greens. It took place on a nice organic food farm just outside of Walnut Grove, Gerogia. This was an all day event that is certainly family friendly with food, music, games for kids, and about 1,000 people who are all interested organic foods. A dozen or so of Atlantas best chefs were there cooking some awesome foods for tasting, wine was given away for tasting and many items were given away at the end of the day in a raffle/drawing. Sometime during the day a big beer truck was brought in and it became a very relaxed atmoshpere with kids able to roam freely on the property along with dogs of many kinds. Everybody was looking out for everyone with mutal respect and no rudeness was observed, all kids and pets were safe where ever they were on the property. Most of the other vendors were arts and crafts, organic food farmers and vendors, and other people like myself who are eco-friendly in our work with our own customers. Plenty of parking was available, the weather was warm with a little overcast and a slight breeze, and the day was a great success for me and the other vendors as well. Most of the arts/crafts people and the food farmers were doing demonstrations throughout the day and hoping to make new customers for themselves. A lot of organic food was tasted and purchased by the end of the day and I personally think everyone went away happy and glad they had come to the event. Just as things were unwinding for the day, a few clouds came up and we had rain at closing time. This was the 14th annual Feild of Greens and will occur again in mid September, 2010, mark your claendars accordingly. I will certainly be back.
Pontiac Solstice 2008
November 18th, 2009A few months ago I purchased a 2008 Pontiac solstice and I love it. I think it has the most stylish lines of all the 2 door sports coupes on the matket today. I recently went on a road trip to Deals Gap Tennessee/North Carolina. There is an eleven mile section of that road which has 318 turns in that 11 miles. I went on a week day so the traffic would be less and it was, the weather was also great and I was with an awesome friend. We put the top down and just cruised through the mountain side, sometimes along creeks and rivers,,, it was a spectacular journey. I had traveled the road a few times before on the Harley where you have to really watch the road, it was much more enjoyable on 4 wheels. Then everybody got behind some dingbat who only wanted to go 20 miles an hour with no regard for anyone else or the fact that traffic was backing up. Oh well, the world would certainly be a better place if all of the dingbats had to go ot the back of the line. Anyway, I love this car, many years ago in another life, I had an MGB while in school in San Diego. That was a fun car for the times. Today this Solstice is much more fun to drive and is an overall much better car with more options. Unfortunately, the car is basically more fun to drive when going about 15 to 20 miles an hour over the speed limit, so watch out all of you Solsticeites. I am going to put a luggage rack on the trunk deck, has anyone done that with any regrets. I did see a custom made luggage rack on a Solstice in northeast Arkansas that was purchased from the dealer where the car was purchased. I am researching that for more info later in this article. My car is Brazen Orange which sometimes looks red and other times looks orange,,, it also has a gold metal flake in the paint which shines very bright in the sunlight. I love this car and hope you love your Solstice as well.
The HERO guy on the interstate
September 14th, 2009A few days ago I had to go downtown Atlanta for a few errands and decided to drive my car, a 2008 Pontiac Solstice sports coup convetible. After finishing my business, I put the top down, my sunglasses on and started up 75 north on the connector. After going about 3 miles or so, some papers in my pocket blew out and were floating around in the car. I was slowing down to park on the outside shoulder and retrieve my papers, so I put on my emergency flashers and proceeded to stop. I leaned over to pick up the papers and immediately saw the big yellow rescue truck with flashers everywhere. I had not been on the side of the interstate for more than 10 seconds and help was already behind me. These guys are good. The driver got his stuff ready, departed the truck and walked along fast moving traffic towards my car. When the driver got to my car, he ask if anything was wrong and I answered no, I was only picking up papers that blew out of my pocket. He replied that it should be illegal for a car as pretty as mine to be broke down on the roadside, we laughed and I replied that it is illegal and we chuckeled some more. This man was very nice and polite, I thanked him for a quick response, apologized for taking him from more important duties,and we parted our ways. These men and women who are HERO drivers are constantly putting their lives on the line to help those of us who have stopped for any reason on the interstates. I applaud these people and ask that you slow down a bit when passing them or any other motorists that has a break down. HERO drivers are tops in my book.
Squirrel problem from a year ago!
September 4th, 2009I was called to a house in Virgina Highlands today that I inspected last year. At that time the house had a grey squirrel family living in the attic, I trapped the squirrels and relocated them to a rural area. The homeowners decided not to do any repairs last year so all of the openings were still in place and readily available for any nuisance animal to re-enter at their discretion. This is a rental house and the landlord just refused to pay a repair bill. Consequently, the tennants moved out and the landlord was faced with finding new tennants and still having the same problem areas in the structure. New tennants have recently moved in, complained about noises in the attic and wanted the problem corrected as the noises were scaring a 10 year girl. Now the landlord is more receptive to correcting the problem, has to pay another elimination charge plus the repair bill. The sooner the animal situation is properly diaginosed, the easier it is to correct all of the problems with nuisance animals. Always remember, complete and thorough inspections afford the opportunity for complete and thorough repairs. Complete and thorough repairs will always be the solution to invasion by any nuisance animal. Lastly, when you hire someone to do these repairs, make sure they have a warranty to back up their work and if necessary, ask for references from recent work. I am assuming you have already seen some proof of credentials, insurance and and a business license.
Nuisance animals = more than one problem
September 2nd, 2009Today I inspected a house which has bats in the attic. During my inspection I found rat droppings. The new attic insulation was put there 3 1/2 years ago which puts a time line on the situation for me. In the past 3 1/2 years rats have been coming and going at their leisure and the homeowners did not even know it. So, the original problem is bat removable, exclusion repairs to prevent future infesations, and soiled insulation removable and re-insulate those areas. In addition, more complete and thorough repairs are required in order to prevent rats from re-entering the structure, rodent elimination, and some more soiled insulation removable and re-insulating these areas will also be required from a health standpoint. Now you can see how one problem which goes uncorrected can ballon into some serious and major problems before it all is corrected. It is fairly common for most sturctures to have evidence of numerous animals in their attic and crawl spaces over a period of 20, 30, or 40 years. Sometimes this evidence is from an old infestation but still requires complete and thorough repairs in order to stop future infestations. Sometime this evidence is from current infestations and will require complete and thorough repairs to prevent future infestations from occurring. Anytime nuisance animals invade structures, the answer to the problem will be in exclusion repairs. One pest control company in Lawrenceville says that repairs should only be done as a last resort and that he can charge you to repeatedly put down more chemicals for rodent control and that will stop them from entering your structure. HOGWASH, if you want to keep animals out of your home, then you had better have a professional exclsuion repair specialist do complete and thorough repairs on the structure. Continuing to add more chemical to the environment is certainly not the solution to this problem but it sort of does give him job security as opposed to correcting the problem. If you are having someone do exclusionary repairs to your home, ask them to show proof of laibility insurance, Georgia DNR credentials, Georgia Dept of Ag credentials, a city or county business license and any thing else you wish in an effort to prove they are a professional company. This industry is full of theives and morons, buyer beware.