Tony Brewer View

This morning I was watching the news on television.  They were reporting that early this morning a car struck and killed a bicyclist, leaving the body beside the road and leaving the scene of the accident.  So it is a hit and run.  They say the bicyclist was struck from behind, so you know that the bicyclist was driving on the correct side of the road (bikes are supposed to ride with the flow of traffic.)  I can only imagine that the driver of the car was concerned that he (or she) would be arrested for something more serious than a car accident (maybe they were drunk or high, or wanted by the law for some other reason.)  But a hit and run is a much more serious charge than an accident that could be explained by something simple.   I hope they catch the person who was driving the car and throw the book at him (or her!)

About a week ago I was in the break room at work and people were talking about coffee.  One of the guys said that every day he stops at a convenience store and buys a 12 ounce coffee and puts ten packets of sugar in his coffee!  TEN PACKETS!  Now I hope you know as well as I do that is a lot of sugar!  I suggested that he try to cut back on that huge amount of sugar by cutting it with Splenda sweetener.  I’ve tried all of the different brands of artificial sweetener, and Splenda is the only one that I think tastes the most like sugar and doesn’t leave a nasty aftertaste.  Well, he said he’d think about it.  Yesterday I saw him again and asked him if he had tried Splenda at all yet.  He said that he had just tried it that morning and that he liked it very much, and would use it from now on.  I don’t know if he was telling the truth, or just saying that to get me off his back, but I hope for his health’s sake, that he was being honest!

We have a rural mailbox in front of our house.  It is a large sized mailbox, and it serves us well.  Every day when I get home from work I stop the car at the end of the driveway and roll down my window and pull out the mail.  Well, yesterday there was a large box crammed into the mailbox.  The postal worker had to work really hard to cram it into the mailbox because I had to actually get out of my car and use both hands and pull really hard to get it out of the mailbox. 

For a couple of minutes I thought I was going to have to get my tin snips to cut open the mailbox to get the package out!  I am NOT impressed that the postal worker did that – the box was obviously mangled in order to get the box into the mailbox, and it’s only by the good packaging job of bubble wrap inside the box that protected the contents from damage!  I’m thinking I should call the post office and ask them to NOT force boxes into the mailbox that don’t go in easily!

Teri and I have been trying to plan some vacation time together.  Of course, in this economy, with money being so tight, we are trying to find ways to have great vacations but saving as much money as possible while taking the vacations!  One of the best ways to save money on a vacation is by carefully planning the method of getting to the destination.  If our vacation is only a one week vacation and we are traveling someplace that takes more than a day to drive (or train to) we try to find cheap airline tickets. We feel that flying is a good use of our time when our vacation time is short. So we will spend a lot of time looking for great deals and http://www.lowfares.com/. Sometimes the research pays off and we end up saving hundreds of dollars on each ticket!

I just found a great way to compare the cheap airline ticket deals offered from different discount sites by going to just one site – the lowfares.com website! They have a wizard where you plug in your intended destination a dates and then they offer you the chance to compare the deals from different discount ticket websites! When you fill in the information they will find the different website deals so you can compare them right then and there. Much easier than going to the different sites and plugging the information into each site!

A few weeks ago I received a book in the mail from my nephew in New Jersey, with a note attached, suggesting that Teri and I read it. He said he thought it was a very good read that he thoroughly enjoyed and that he thought we would enjoy it as well. He said it was very well written, and it would bring us through the entire gamut of emotions.

The book is titled “Marley & Me; life and love with the world’s worst dog” and was written by John Grogan. Well, Teri read it first, and there were times when I caught her crying while she was reading the book. So I was feeling ambivalent about reading it myself! But when Teri finished reading the book, she said I should read it too. So I did read it, and they were both right. It is very well written, and it DID tug at my emotions quite a bit! It IS a good read, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a sentimental book that will draw you in and make you laugh, and make you cry.