The Road to Farley is Less Traveled

Merriam Webster describes grief as deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement. And to be bereaved is to suffer the death of a loved one. This week, I have been wondering if all grief is the same or if some grief is more poignant than others. As a nation, we mourn the deaths of 20 children and seven adults in the shooting rampage in Newtown, Connecticut. For the families who are burying their loved ones this week, particularly as the holidays approach, it seems that no loss could be worse. Yesterday, I lost my beloved Sheltie, Bailey. She passed away while we were driving to Farley. Her death wasn't completely unexpected. She had just celebrated her 13th birthday the day before, and she had been battling heart disease for over six months. I dreaded the thought of losing her, but in my mind I always assumed she would get to a point where her quality of life had deteriorated, and I would have to make the painful choice to put her down. My sweet girl spared me tha...

The tragedy in Newtown, CT is just over 24 hours old and some are already using this horrific event to advance their personal causes. I read just a short time ago the names and ages of all the victims -- 20 of them were children ages 6 or 7. I cannot begin to imagine how frightened and confused those children must have been.  I saw a post circulating on Facebook last night that said something like, "Dear God, Why do you allow so much violence in our schools? Signed a Concerned Student. Dear Concerned Student, I'm not allowed in schools." Come on... this tragedy has nothing to do with the presence or lack thereof of God in public schools. If you read and believe in the Bible, Joshua 1:5 states, "No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you." That tells me that wherever I am, so is God. If you are a believer, I think it is safe to say that God was present at...

2012 marked the ninth presidential election I have voted in. I am a liberal and a staunch Democrat. I have voted for Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton twice, Al Gore, John Kerry, and now Barack Obama twice. I'm not saying I would never vote for a Republican, I did vote for Chuck Grassley once because I couldn't believe how unimaginative the Democrats were putting Roxanne Conlin up against him. My hard drive on my laptop crashed about 10 days ago, so I was kind of blissfully disconnected from social media leading up to and during the election. I say "kind of" because I did go rogue a couple of times when my Facebook withdrawal flared up, and I snuck a peek on my work laptop. I retrieved my laptop from the Geek Squad last night and got caught up on the days of posts I missed. It's funny to me how divisive our elections have become. Perhaps it's just me. To be honest, I can be very apathetic about many things. Or, maybe I just don...

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a died in the wool Democrat. My grandma was a Democrat, and my dad was an active Democrat and local politician at one time. I got my political leanings from them. As the years progressed, and I became older and wiser, my tolerance for political rhetoric has gotten very low. I suppose it started during the Clinton administration. While the country seemed to be prospering, those on the other side of the aisle put up numerous roadblocks to getting the business of running our country done -- to the point that there was even an unprecedented government shut down. I recognize that Bill wasn't exactly doing a lot to help his cause, what with "that woman, Monica Lewinsky" and the other numerous alleged transgressions. After the disappointing outcome of the 2000 election, with hanging chads and Supreme Court decisions, I would have been all set to complain about everything President Bush did or said until September 11th happened. Certainly, ...

Eighteen months ago, when I was really serious about being a blogger, I had great expectations for being witty and relevant and followed by thousands of devoted fans. I thought I was one viral blog away from my 15 minutes of fame. As you can see, I'm awful. I haven't posted a thing in over three months. Truth is, my life is pretty dull. If I am bored to death, why would anyone in their right mind want to read about my life. I can see now why reality shows are scripted. Life -- normal day-to-day, getting up and going to work, buying groceries, and doing laundry kind of life -- is tedious and not exciting. Until early May, I was very busy at work with a proposal effort. That's my non-blogging excuse, I was too busy. After we got it submitted, I was too burned out to consistently write anything else. Now, I have no excuses. Oh, I suppose I could use the "I'm focusing on my long-term genealogy project and family reunion planning" excuse, but I could still wr...

In the past week, I have experienced both good and not so good customer service. I'll start with the good experience. For my birthday, a friend gifted me with a Kindle. Now, I always considered myself "old school" when it came to books, and I may never have purchased an eReader on my own. But, having received one as a gift, I was not one to look a gift Kindle in the mouth. I have to say, I grew to love the Kindle. They are great for reading on the treadmill or stationary bike at the gym, slip easily into your purse or laptop bag during travel, and are "open" 24 hours a day for new purchases. While on business travel last week, I was flummoxed when I could not get the damn thing to turn on while waiting for my flight at Reagan National Airport. Upon my return, I did a quick Google search and found a recommendation to do a "reset" to fix my frozen Kindle problem. Well, that didn't resolve the issue. I opted for an online chat with an Amazon custome...

Don't get me wrong, I am blessed to have a stable job that provides a comfortable salary, benefits, challenges to keep me on my toes, and a somewhat flexible work schedule. Additionally, knock on wood, I am blessed with a pretty good immune system so I rarely suffer from colds, the flu, or other ailments that keep me away from the office. While I do find it very easy to use up all my vacation days, I am always left with more sick days at the end of the year than I am allowed to carryover. When I woke up at 5:15 this morning and was hoofing it around the block with Bailey, I seemed even more tired than normal. Now, this was sort of odd because I had actually gone to bed at 9 p.m. last night. Who knows, maybe I've got some freakish system where I function best with only between 5-6 hours of sleep (my usual). I vaguely remembered that I had NO meetings scheduled for today. Therefore, with a huge project looming that will keep me up nights and weekends, I zipped off an e-mail to ...

We are a full eight months to the presidential election, and I have already had it up to here with the negative campaigning, political posturing, and name calling. The latest items to irk me: Rick Santorum calls President Obama a "snob" for having the audacity to think that every American should be able to go to college. Rush Limbaugh calls a Georgetown college student a slut and suggests she posts her sexual encounters on the Internet for everyone to watch simply because she expects that her health insurance should cover contraception. Mitt Romney states he doesn't care about poor people. A Congressional hearing to discuss whether contraceptives should be included in health care coverage does not include any women. News reports circulate that Girl Scout cookie sales are funding abortions. The Susan Komen Foundation pulls funding to Planned Parenthood then restores it after a huge backlash. I could go on and on. It's insane. I like to think that I am a pretty...

I finished reading the book "Heaven is for Real" yesterday. If you haven't heard of the book, here's a brief description: Heaven Is for Real is the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn't know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear. Of course, my Catholic upbringing taught me about heaven and purgatory and limbo and hell. I don't know...I'm not sure I ever was that convinced about it. But, the story of Colton will make you question your beliefs, while giving you hope of one day seeing your loved ones again. Personally,  I cannot wait to see Grandma Scherrman again, not to mention to finally meet my Grandpa Scherrman. Today, I also learned that someone I was once very close to died. He was only 55...

I have to take a minute to brag about myself, even at the risk of jinxing myself in my future PC troubleshooting endeavors. Over the course of the last four weeks, I have had to perform a series of tune-ups on my laptop for a variety of reasons. I am pretty darn proud to report that I managed to handle these on my own and (knock on wood) everything still seems to be working fine. First issue was that I was lounging on the couch one night in my typical TV watching fashion with my laptop on my lap (duh). My Internet connection blanked out. This has periodically occurred before. My usual fix, go unplug the modem and wireless router and let it reset. I did that numerous times to no avail. Then I booted up my work laptop just to see if it was something specific to my laptop. Nope, it didn't connect either. My first troubleshooting effort was to unplug the wireless router and plug the modem directly into the laptop. Yes...that works, so obviously my router has crapped out. ( Wow, so sp...

I had a great birthday. I didn't think I could top my 40th birthday celebration in Jamaica. I mean, who wouldn't love 85 degrees, white sand beaches, clear blue sky, warm azure waters, fantastic sunsets, and all the Red Stripe you could want delivered right to your lounge chair on the beach in the first week of January. It was all for the pleasure of my mind. As I approached my 50th birthday, I toyed with the idea of again jetting off to a Caribbean island and basking in the warm sunshine (with my SPF 30 of course) for a few days. It is clearly a sign of aging when what you really want to do on your birthday is be around family and friends.   Turks & Caicos will have to wait for another day. I spent my actual birthday in Indiana, where we did a little gambling, had some cocktails, and enjoyed some wonderful meals. Note to all the smokers out there, you can still smoke in a bar or restaurant in Indiana. My official birthday soiree was at the Black Horse...

Go shawty, it's your birthday We gonna party like it's your birthday (Fifty cent) And I'm sure you will agree It couldn't fit more perfectly Than to have a world party on the day you came to be Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday (Stevie Wonder) Yes, people, I am now officially 50 years old. Technically it happened at 7:46 this morning, even though I started celebrating at 12:07 a.m. I don't feel any different. Of course, it's 9:35 a.m., and I am still in bed. So, that seems to be helping A LOT! Maybe I should start every day like this....oh, plus the three pudding shots I just did by myself. Why not pudding shots for breakfast on your birthday.