We were at it again, browsing through the little specialty shops in the town that is just a couple of minutes from my brother-in-law’s vacation home.  There are all kinds of unique shops there and the shopkeepers are a very friendly bunch.  Sometimes they even put on fairs and showcase their wears up and down the main street.  There are all kinds of things to catch your interest. Once we found a shop that specialized in handmade to order glass, and we got a unique set of stemware for our dining room table.  We discovered another shop whose premise is all about natural healing, herbal remedies and home-grown cures.  It was quite an eye opener t hear the owner talk about all the ways you can cure ailments other than going to the doctor and getting a prescription.  She talked about how her grandmother used to use nature to come up with all sorts of cures that people now run to the doctor for, like a cough or a rash.  I thought her talks were quiet interesting as she showed us around her shop.  She even has a book published about how good it is to go back to nature.

Last Christmas, my parents gave me a wooden closet organizer.  The Christmas before that one, they gave a telescope.  And the Christmas before that, they got me a space heater.  All right, I really appreciated the space heater since the heat’s not that great in my apartment and it’s up on the third floor of my building.  I know they say heat rises up and that my heating bill isn’t that bad, but I live in Chicago, the windy city.  At night, the wind is constantly bashing against my windows and the chill seeps in.  All I can do when that happens is crank up the heat and turn on my space heater.  Yeah, like all my other gifts, it was practical and I found a use for it, but this is Christmas we’re talking about here.  I wanted a new Playstation, not a wooden closet organizer.  I might be grown up and out of my parents’ house, but I’m still just a big kid at heart.  Everyone is around Christmas.  It’s what the holiday is all about.  While sleeping on Christmas Eve, I dreamed of video games and new DVD’s and a new Ipod.  That’s what I really wanted. 

My parents are getting on in years, I wouldn’t necessarily call them old, but they are certainly well on their way.  My youngest brother just went off to college to be some sort of scientist, leaving them alone in the house for the first time in over thirty years.  The neighborhood isn’t quite as nice as it used to be, and my wife and I wanted to make sure that they were safe, so we paid for them to have a Brinks home security system installed.  We had checked out several different security companies, and out of them all, Brinks seemed to be the best choice by far.  Their systems are very affordable and seem to be very easy to use, which is a big plus for older people who aren’t too technologically savvy, like my parents.  The system we chose for them did a lot more than just burglary protection as well: it comes with smoke detectors, heat detectors, carbon monoxide detectors and moisture sensors to warn home owners of leaks, it’s really a whole house protection system.  I could tell that my Mom was a bit nervous; knowing that there was only her and my Dad in the house now, but the mere mention of having a security system installed seemed to put her mind at ease.

Science truly amazes me.  In particular, medicine amazes me.  Every year, every month actually, doctors and researchers and specialists come up with more and more lifesaving and changing advances.  Take Lasik Advances.  This is the type of laser eye surgery that you would get to correct your vision and any problems it is experiencing.  This type of surgery has become safer and safer and can now correct a whole range of vision problems.  Before, some people might have seen it as being somewhat risky and would have preferred to just wear glasses to build their vision back up.  Now it is safer and cheaper and people don’t think twice about getting the procedure done on them.  That’s only the tip of the iceberg though.  Think about cancer.  Just a decade or so ago, it was a death sentence for people.  Now there’s treatment and therapy and medicines that can send it into remission and help people live a full life despite having cancer.  Consider that most people only used to live up to their 30s and 40s.  Now life spans are twice as long or more.  They’re even saying 30 is the new 20 and 50 is the new 40.  Medicine is truly a phenomenon. 

The cases pertaining to personal injury involves the incidents where personal injuries are involved due to negligence of the other party. Such cases have strong legal procedures followed up carefully in the legal institutions. Thus the Personal Injury Attorney in New York is very active to resolve dispute arising due to accidents on roads or at any private place. The laws pertaining to these cases are very complex thus require assistance from the experts to resolve the issue. The cases involving personal injury comprise compensation from the other party as well as compensation from the insurance company. The attorneys handling the cases pertaining to personal injuries conducts thorough research in the case. The reports of the research are very crucial in deciding upon the amount of compensation to be demanded from the other party. There are several legal firms in New York offering services of the best attorney available in the city. Thus making choice among them is often a difficult task. In order to find best suite it is very important to study their past record. This gives a fair idea regarding their performance in the past. The trial cost quoted by the legal firms should also be taken under consideration while making choice.     

There is a big anxiety with diabetes testers everyday concerning the operation of their glucose meters. Patients don't like poking their fingers all the time when they want to test themselves for their blood sugar level. Think about the difficulty of testing yourself many times a day. You would have to choose the lancet type and clean the area and then poke yourself. Then you have to milk the finger to get a small sample of blood to add to the active testing strip to insert into the machine to gain an accurate and fast reading on the glucose monitor you have at home. You will eventually work your way around all ten fingers until they have no feeling left. These fingers will be numb and not have much sensation left in them. There are some newer non-invasive methods of testing blood sugar levels for diabetics. Imagine if you will never have to deal with another test strip again. You will not have to deal with the mess. Your finger pain will be gone and you won't have to deal with another poke again. If your fingers are sore and fed up with the pokes then please make sure that you ask you doctor about the new methods of non-invasive techniques and methods of glucose testing. It is a great option.

I was never a good student in school.  I was just trying to do the bare minimum to graduate and get the hell out of there so I could just get on with my life.  I received better grades in the classes I enjoyed but I still never worked to my full potential and didn’t apply myself the way I could have.  Even with English, my favorite subject, I was always more interested in the book I was reading for leisure than the required reading I was supposed to be tested on for class.

I got by without cheating but I couldn’t even work a graphing calculator properly and could barely even wrap my head around some of the theorems we were studying.  I did do better with ecology though.  Being away from the confinement of the classroom and its rows of desks and chairs and outside identifying birds and flowers suited me much more.  What can I say?  Math and science were never my strong suits.  

Luckily for me though, I had a few teachers on my side that would give me passing grades even though I didn’t deserve it or sign me out of the classes I ditched so I wouldn’t get in trouble with the dean’s office.  One teacher would even take me aside and offer me cookies if I seemed to be having a particularly grueling day.  I thought I was getting away with murder but some of my teachers obviously saw more in me than I saw in myself at that young age.  They saw that I was an artist and that I would never be a mathematician or scientist, so they gave me the grades I needed to fulfill my class requirements.  I’m sure some of them questioned my future since I was shy and had a hard time articulating myself.  I was known around school for my eccentric behavior but still I had few friends.  I didn’t know where to fit in or how to break out of my shell and just about everything I did at that age was awkward to some extent. 

But those few teachers, I don’t know what they saw in me.  Maybe they felt sorry for me or maybe they just thought I was a dumb kid who was never going to amount to anything and definitely wasn’t going to understand whatever it was they were trying to teach me.  Or perhaps they noticed the glint in my eye that said to hell with this place, I want to be on my own experiencing the world in my own way, creating my own experiments that didn’t go by the book and that had nothing to do with the experiments being performed in the science lab.  Who knows, maybe they just saw that I was a little awkward and needed some additional help.  Whatever it was, they were angels.  If it weren’t for those teachers and their help, I never would have received a high school diploma, let alone passed science class.

 

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