The Little Prince - A book everyone should read.

Talita gave us a book a couple of weeks ago.  The book is a children’s book called The Little Prince. It is a pop-up book and I felt really quite silly reading it at first but was determined to read it since it was a gift from Talita. I found myself enjoying it. I hope the fact that Talita gave me a pop-up book isn’t a sign of her assessment of my intellect?

The narrator of the book is an airplane pilot who crashes in the Sahara desert. The crash damages his airplane and leaves the pilot with very little food or water. As he is worrying over his predicament, he is approached by the little prince. The prince is really quite serious for a little boy and he asks the pilot to draw him a sheep. The pilot obliges, and the two become friends. The pilot learns that the little prince comes from a small planet that the little prince calls Asteroid 325 but that people on Earth call Asteroid B-612. The little prince took great care of this planet, preventing any bad seeds from growing and making sure it was never overrun by baobab trees.

 One day on the Little Prince’s planet a mysterious rose sprouted on the planet and the little prince fell in love with it. But when he caught the rose in a lie one day, he decided that he could not trust her anymore. He grew lonely and decided to leave. Despite last-minute reconciliation with the rose, the prince set out to explore other planets and cure his loneliness. One of favorite lines in this book was from the rose to the little Prince:  “If you want to get to know the butterflies you have to put up with a few caterpillars.”

The Fox and Rose are the two characters in the book that teach us the most. The Rose appears only in a couple of chapters, but she is crucial to the novel as a whole because her melodramatic, proud nature is what causes the prince to leave his planet and begin his explorations. Also, the prince’s memory of his rose is what prompts his desire to return. As a character who gains significance because of how much time and effort the prince has invested in caring for her, the rose embodies the fox’s statement that love comes from investing in other people. Although the rose is, for the most part, vain and naïve, the prince still loves her deeply because of the time he has spent watering and caring for her

.

The fox appears quite suddenly and inexplicably while the prince is mourning the ordinariness of his rose after having come across the rose garden. After all he thought his rose was the only of its kind.  When the fox immediately sets about establishing a friendship between himself and the prince, it seems that instruction is the fox’s sole purpose. Yet when he begs the little prince to tame him, the fox appears to be the little prince’s pupil as well as his instructor. In his lessons about taming, the fox argues for the importance of ceremonies and rituals, showing that such tools are important even outside the strict world of grown-ups.

In his final encounter with the prince, the fox facilitates the prince’s departure by making sure the prince understands why his rose is so important to him. This encounter displays an ideal type of friendship because even though the prince’s departure causes the fox great pain, the fox behaves unselfishly and tells the little prince: "One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

While journeying from planet to planet, the narrator tells us, the little prince passes by neighboring asteroids and encounters for the first time the strange, narrow-minded world of grown-ups. On the first six planets the little prince visits, he meets a king, a vain man, a drunkard, a businessman, a lamplighter, and a geographer, all of whom live alone and are overly consumed by their chosen occupations. Such strange behavior amuses and angers the little prince. He does not understand their need to order people around, to be admired or to own everything. The exception was the lamplighter, whose faithfulness he admires. The little prince does not think much of the adults he visits, and he does not learn anything useful. However, he learns from the geographer that flowers do not last forever, and he begins to miss the rose he has left behind.  Even though the Prince gleans nothing from the other adults; the King, the vain man, the drunk, the businessman all have a small lesson to teach us.

There is much more to this book that I have left out. As I said, I first felt silly reading a pop-up book. It only took about 45 minutes to read but overall it was 45 minutes well spent. I know you can get this book without the pop ups and I would encourage everyone to read it. 

Vacations

Vacations

 Jackie and I are getting ready for next our vacation which had me thinking about other vacations we’ve had over the years. You see I’m not one to be really spontaneous, I am a planner.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t plan things out to the final detail but it is comforting to have some certainty with regard to our plans.  Jackie is somewhat the opposite of me meaning she could just wing it through the entire vacation.

Last year was the first vacation that we didn’t really plan anything. We kind of decided day by day what we would do and it wasn’t that bad .... it was pretty relaxing  overall. This vacation in February will be the same as far as just having an idea of what we will do a couple of days. January 2012 is taking a lot of planning and though since we are leaving the country. Anyway, I thought I would tell you about a few of our past vacations.

One vacation was in Canada. The one thing drilled into my head from this vacation is I remember the boys buying Canadian flags. Neither boy knew the Canadian National Anthem (O Canada) but that didn’t stop them from making up their own version. For hours or at least it seemed like hours the boys would aggressively wave the flags back and forth and sing at the top of their lungs: “Flag of Canaydia, Flag of Canaydia!” 

On every vacation and at least once while we were out eating one of the boys would secretly tell the server that one of the people in our party was celebrating a birthday. Here the crew from the restaurant would come clapping their hands or giving one of us a big “yahoo.” Sometimes they brought a small treat, goofy hat or glasses and a camera. It was always funny as long you weren’t the one celebrating your birthday. I don’t know if it was more embarrassing being the “birthday boy” or telling the server no one was really celebrating a birthday. Honestly, we finally relented and just played along…it was much easier.

One Florida vacation we decided to go to a place called Gulf World or something like that. This place was kind of a tourist trap and really hokey in a lot of ways.  I know that the boys and I were being pretty ornery. We made fun of pretty much everything and everybody at the park. I'm not sure at what point Jackie had enough but we reach that point. We thought she was going to leave us behind. She didn’t but the three of us behaved pretty much the rest of trip. I think we pushed Jackie over the edge on just about every trip. 

We made a trip to Tennessee over one Thanksgiving Holiday.  We had huge condo with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, huge family room and dining room. The master bathroom had a large garden tub with whirlpool. I don’t know which boy first put shampoo in the tube but we didn’t have a drop of shampoo left in the condo after they were finish. There were bubbles about four feet high, running all over the floor and under the bathroom door.

Thinking back to other vacations I remember a Disney vacation we took with the boys. Michael was probably 12 and Stephen was 10. We bought Disney park hopper passes. Side note: I don’t understand how parents of an infant can even begin to take a kid that age to Disney World. Seriously; a 9 month old in a stroller that will not remember one thing about the trip, come one! Back to the story, 12 and 10 years old were the perfect age for us to make this trip. We all were able to ride the rides together so it made it much more enjoyable.

We took the boys over the part of the park where you can interact with the Disney Characters; have a picture taken and so on. If you have never done this you basically go into a large room that is divided in several small areas with a different Disney Character stationed in each area. You go from area to area having your picture taken with each character…whoopee! The boys were not in to this at all.

Everything was going well until Goofy decided that Stephen “Gloomy Gus” needed cheering up.  Stephen didn’t want to be there and the rest of us didn’t either. We were trying to leave when Goofy decided to try several things to get Stephens attention included jumping in front of him, holding out his hand (paw) for Stephen to give him five and a few other things. Stephen avoided Goofy and even ignored most of his attempts. We encouraged Goofy to back off also.   I suppose Goofy thought he would try something else and he picked Stephen up. Wrong move Goofy! Stephen balled up his fist and clobbered the hell out of Goofy.

Enter the Disney Police/Security guy and the Disney equivalent of Barney Fife.  Barney, who was an ass, threatened us with expulsion from the park and even detention in the “Disney” jail. I will never forget this because he witnessed Stephen avoiding Goofy at every turn. As we left the Character area we felt like criminals but that wasn’t going to ruin our trip.

Let me back up for a little background on the vacation. I had to be in Orlando for a convention the week before this vacation. The day I flew into Orlando was the first day in Disney’s history that the park had to be closed for weather/ hurricane. My flight was the second to last flight allowed to land in Orlando. The next day Florida was effectively closed and tourist were discourage from coming to the state. The following week a tropical storm (which never made landfall) was expected to hit west-central part of Florida and again people were discouraged from coming to central Florida. There were no Tourists in central Florida. We had the place to ourselves. There were no wait times to do anything at Disney, you got in line and right on to the ride.  IT WAS GREAT!

Back to the story and on to Disney’s Tomorrow Land. We rode Space Mountain several times, did a couple of other things and found a show called the Alien Encounter which all of us wanted to see. They closed Alien Encounter several years ago but do you know what the real name of this show actually was? It was called: The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter! It had TERROR in the damn name! This show was scary as hell and we took Stephen and Michael in to see it…what were we thinking?  First thing that happened when you sit down is that a bar comes down over your shoulders which locks you in to the seat. You cannot get out of this seat regardless of how hard you try. This should have been a sign.

The Alien show starts off very slow but then it cuts loose with an alien escaping into the audience, strobe lights flashing, the sound of people dying, people in the audience screaming and an alien flying around the room. This was a great show if you were over 12 but it scared the hell out of Stephen and Michael.

Michael was okay  for a little while but Stephen was in full panic mode and neither Jackie nor I could move out of our seats. The more we tried the tighter the shoulder bars pushed down on us. I look at Jackie who is trying to settle Stephen down when I hear Michael break down and go into panic mode too. It seemed as if the show lasted hours but it was only a few minutes long. The show ended and our boys were bordering on being in shock. As the room empty’s we are trying to calm the boys down with people looking at Jackie and I as if we were the worst parents on earth for taking the boys into this show? I took us probably 20 minutes to calm Stephen down.

The next day we went to Disney MGM studio, now I think it is called Disney Hollywood Studio. Anyway, again we had the park to ourselves and were able to walk onto just about any ride we wanted to. We went on the Tower of Terror and Rock n Roller-coaster several times. I don’t remember the name of the next ride but it was something like the Indiana Jones adventure. Jackie decided she would wait for the boys and I while we went on this ride. Everything starts out okay but about 1 minute into the ride it stop. I didn’t just stop in a way that would make you comfortable, it stopped with the boys and I upside-down suspended in our seats and held in by our shoulder bars. Honestly, we thought it was part of the ride but the cart we were in released, righted itself and started swinging back and forth. The house lights came on as we continued to swing forward and back. Minutes pass before an employee (member of the Disney “cast”) announces that the ride was malfunctioning and they were doing everything they can to fix it. Eventually the cart came to a stop and they manually released our shoulder bars and we left the ride. We had five day park hoppers passes and had only used four days. The next day we went to Cape Kennedy…we had had enough misfortune at Disney World.

I have more vacation stories that I will add at another time…..

A few of my favorite lines from various movies.

Animal House: "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son."

Stripes: “Oh, it's not the speed really so much, I just wish I hadn't drunk all that cough syrup this morning.”

The Sand Lot: “You’re killing me smalls”

Tommy Boy: “The point is, how do you know the fairy isn't a crazy glue sniffer? "Building model airplanes" says the little fairy; well, we're not buying it. He sneaks into your house once, that's all it takes. The next thing you know, there's money missing off the dresser, and your daughter's knocked up. I’ve seen it a hundred times.”

The Big Lebowski: Q: “what do you do for recreation?” A: “Oh, the usual. I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback.”

Tommy Boy: “Because they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That's all it is, isn't it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer's sake, for your daughter's sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me.”

Airplane: "Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?"

Ferris Buellers Day Off:  “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Caddyshack: "So we finish 18 and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, 'Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.' And he says, 'Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.' So I got that goin' for me, which is nice."

Animal House: “Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!”

Fargo: "And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper."

This is all about me and it is random stuff.

Thanks to Mario Kart I panicked and swerved to miss banana peel in the parking lot a Lowes. Wouldn’t want to spin out! After playing some of the driving video games I am tempted to nudge the other drivers on the interstate. Just once it would be fun to have some type of turtle shell type seeking bomb to blow a left lane bandit off the road.

I had to replace the garbage disposal in our kitchen at home yesterday. I forgot to punch the drain out of it for the dishwasher. I realized this after the dishwasher leaked all over the kitchen floor. I’m surprised the old disposal lasted as long as it did. I think the boys must have run a half dozen forks knives and spoons through it. I know that Jackie found a paring knife in it. The knife was mangled almost beyond recognition.

I’m horrible at writing. I misspell, use incorrect grammar and in general just type the wrong letters. I don’t proof anything so who the hell knows what I mean sometimes.  I don’t sign my e-mails with “Regards” anymore since the T and G are so close to each other. One of my advertising reps is named Chris. Instead of writing “meeting with Chris” in my outlook calendar I wrote “meeting with Christ.” I guess it was a come to Jesus meeting.  I left the L out of public once; that was embarrassing. I read a church bulletin mistake where someone left the U out of Titus.

I love my Ipod. I have a huge number of songs on it and I picked every song. Now when I play my IPod I find myself skipping about five songs for everyone one I listen too! I thought I would enjoy listening to all the songs I chose but I guess not.

I lost my car keys one morning. I looked everywhere; the bedroom, the car, the van, in my backpack. I sent Jackie message asking if she knew where they were. After looking everywhere I found them in my hand!

I have a new smart phone. I keep some peoples name and number in my phone so I know not to answer it when they call. Is that wrong?

At the Ford Dealer convention for FRAC several years ago we had quite an opening party. We had a “beach” themed party with everything you could imagine including Reggae band, tiki hut bars, lady servers in grass skirts, tiki torches and so on. I had a few to many drinks and the rest of the convention I was known as the guy who sang the Banana Boat song with the Reggae Band.  At another work related convention I charged an $1800.00 bar tab to one of my co-workers hotel room. 

Story from a Business Seminar

A business woman named Cindy was in the airport VIP lounge on her way to Los Angeles. While in the VIP lounge, she noticed Donald Trump sitting on the sofa enjoying a brandy. As luck would have it, Cindy was meeting with a very important client who was running somewhat late.

Being a bold business woman, Cindy decided to go ahead and approach Mr. Trump, and introduced herself. Much to her surprise Mr. Trump turned out to be very nice. Encouraged by this she explained to "the Donald" that she was about to close a very important business deal and that she would be very grateful if he could say a quick "hello Cindy" to her when she was with her client. Mr. Trump consented to do just that.

Ten minutes later while Cindy was speaking with her client, she felt a rap on her shoulder. It was Donald Trump. Cindy turned about and looked at him as Trump said.

"Hi Cindy, what's going on?"

To which Cindy glibly replied, "Not now, Donald, can't you see I'm in a meeting!"