Sophie's Story

   A few days ago a Facebook friend of mine shared an article from the New York Times. I would have skimmed right over it, but C insisted I read it. It's title is 'Love People, Not Pleasure'. It points out that fame and fortune tend to make people unhappier rather than happier. (Mind you this is a very simplistic statement. There is much more to the article and I recommend reading it.)    Can I get a big "Duh" here? This is a concept that has been preached over and over again. Most religions advocate such a stance. A few self-help programs teach it. Philosophers have philosophized about it. Everyone pretty much ignores it. It's not really true, right. We all know that he (or she) who dies with the most toys wins.    The message that bigger is always better, more is always better than less and that keeping up with the Joneses, the Kardashians and the Trumps is really what we all need to do dominates. Being happy with what you have is not good for business

   I was not looking forward to Saturday. It was going to be busy. I would be working with my intern and training in a new pharmacist. In addition I would be working with a relatively new tech. It would be a lot to handle in one day. I wasn't sure that I could do it. I had done it before and wasn't happy with how things turned out. I didn't feel like either the pharmacist or the intern were given what they deserved from me. I hoped it wouldn't happen again.   My hopes were in vain. I was going to have to do it again. The tech and pharmacist were going to be different people, but the situation was going to be exactly the same. I suppose that I didn't get it right the first time so fate was going to give me a second chance. I would have preferred to live with my first failure.   I told C that I would be in bad shape on Saturday night. Usually we go on a date, but I didn't think I would be up for it. It would be better if we stayed home so I wouldn't have t

   I needed to get out of town. It had been a rough couple of weeks and next month looked like it will also be pretty rough. C also needed to get out of town. We decided that what we needed was a long weekend. We needed to do something fun. We needed to be outside.    Where were we going to go? We thought of flying to Chicago. It's not very far away and both of us had flown there before relatively inexpensively. We checked into flights. It may have been inexpensive once upon a time, but not now. We could go to Madison. It was only four hours away, right. Wrong, it was five hours and too far to drive. What about Duluth? Well, we could go there, but there was not a hotel room to be had for the weekend we wanted to go. That was out.   I suggested Wausau. There were a few things to do there. It wasn't too far away. C and I could climb Rib Mountain. C looked at it and it didn't interest him. We could stay at the St. James Hotel in Red Wing and visit all the little towns on

   Last week when writing a column on movie quotes I went to the website IMDb. It stands for Internet Movie Database. I was looking for movie quotes and thought that would be the best site to get accurate quotes. I've discovered that it is a dangerous and possibly addictive website.    The reason for this is in a category innocently named "goofs". You'll find it off to the right side under "explore more" if you are looking up a movie. When you look at this section you will find mistakes that people have found while watching the film. Mistakes of all kinds are listed there. Some of the mistakes are large ones such as things that did not exist before the time the movie was set in being found in the film. For instance a 1950s car found in a movie set in the 1920s. Some of them are small like an actor's hairstyle changing during a scene or props disappearing and reappearing in different places.   There are instances where the sound isn't synchronize

   Sometimes when I'm having a bad day at work, my tech, Rae, will say, "Boo. Boo. Boo." Those three words sometimes start a quote war. It's the first line in her favorite part of the movie, 'The Princess Bride'.   Rae and I have use quotes from this movie to get us through some pretty bad days. It usually starts out as a game. We feed each other lines from the film and see if the other person can finish. Rae is much better than I am because she can do the lines with the correct accents. When Rae leaves for the day I will sometimes call out to her, "Have fun storming the castle!"   Some of my favourite quotes come from movies I have seen. I'd like to share a few of them with you today. Since I'm already on The Princess Bride, I'll start there.   There are so many quotes that I like from The Princess Bride. I like "I'll just have to find myself a new giant." I've been known to mutter this when I can't find so

    One thing that I have wanted to do for the past several weeks is go on a bike ride. It's the beginning of July and I had not even once been out on my bike. Normally C and I would have been out at least a couple of times by now.   Part of the problem is that many of the bike trails we like are currently flooded. The rain that had been keeping my sump pump busy has also been washing over the bike trails. The other challenge that that I seem to be slowly losing the amount of free time I have. I'm not sure why.   Yesterday I had to work, but only until one in the afternoon. I decided that it would be a good day to go out on the bike. I told anyone who asked me that C and I would be peddling away someplace. I asked C to find a trail that was not underwater.   C picked me up from work and I quickly changed clothes. He had spent all morning checking over the bikes, putting air in the tires and putting them on the bike rack. We wanted to be able to leave as soon as possible. W

   There has been a fair amount of press surrounding the excommunication of Kate Kelly from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The reason why I bring it up is because it brought a couple of topics that have been swimming around in the back of my head to front and center. In fact these thoughts have been so persistent that I can't ignore them any longer.   For the record The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is not the only church that does not allow women into it's lay clergy. The Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Evangelical Synod Lutheran Churches do not ordain women. The Wisconsin Evangelical Synod does allow women to participate as long as they have no authority over men. This means that women are not permitted to vote if it would mean women would have authority over men. The Roman Catholic church does not allow female clergy.   I bring this up because I feel there is this stereotype that the LDS is misogynistic. It is assumed that because there are n