Moderation

Posted on January 24, 2014January 24, 2014 by Dusty Roads

One of my blogging friends recently wrote a post about her annual goals. She goes Birthday to Birthday instead of New Year to New Year. That’s a good idea too that I never even considered. But anyway… this year she chose a word to be her inspiration and guide for the year. She chose a great word…Balance. I’m sure she will enjoy success with a great word like balance. http://learnmoreeveryday.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/another-year-older-a-balancing-act/

If you can find a balance in life or a balance in all things or however you want to think about it, then surely you will have a roadmap for a nice year.

Not wanting to be a total copycat I wondered what would be a word for me if I were to use the same idea. My birthday is right around the corner and although Balance is something I could certainly use I felt another word might be even more appropriate for me. That word is MODERATION.

I go overboard on almost everything I do. Oh my choices and decisions start out good enough. I plot and I plan and then I implement and that’s when everything gets out of hand. I once described my life as feeling like I was on a run away train going 90 miles an hour and all I could do was HANG ON!

I always have more on my plate than I know what to do with.

A perfect example..my blog. I don’t have just one. I have this one which is my main baby, then I have www.dustyroadsphotos.com a companion photoblog, then I have my professional photo web page dustyroadsphotos.zenfolio.com, and my photo card shop, dustyroadsphotos.etsy.com and mustn’t forget flickr.com. Updating all of them takes a lot of time.

Then there’s the posting frequency. I see the traffic drop off dramatically when I miss a day so I set a goal for myself to write a post every day and to post a photo every day. So now I have to try to be creative both in writing and in photography and do it over and over and over again all while working full time and trying to get housework done. Cat hair piles up quickly.

Obviously there’s no moderation in that! 🙂

The other big area that needs moderation is food. Remember the line, I think from the movie Field of Dreams, “If you build it they will come”. Well, in my case it’s “if I cook it I will eat it” and I never mastered the trick of cooking for one. It’s just easier to cook in “bulk”. Of course then it can’t go to waste so it goes to my waist instead.

MODERATION…yup that’s what I need in my life. I guess that will be my word for the year. 🙂

Dreaming the Hawaiian Life

Posted on January 23, 2014January 23, 2014 by Dusty Roads

Since my 2 vacations in Hawaii the idea of living there is never far from my mind. Lately I’ve been missing Hawaii even more because there’s a great show about Hawaiian Real Estate on HGTV.

Hawaii is known to be an expensive place to live. As an island everything has to be brought in from the mainland. One of the largest and oldest cattle ranches in the United States is located on the Big Island. Known as the Parker Ranch is was founded in 1847, almost 30 years before most of the southwestern ranches on the mainland.

The ranch is a working cattle ranch even today and is now run by a charitable trust. The Ranch owns approximately 26,000 head of cattle, mostly Angus and Charolais breeds, with 17,000 pastured on the Ranch at any given time. The rest are in pasture or feedlots on the mainland. With about 300 breeding bulls, the cowherd is divided into two breeding seasons, winter and summer, with about 50% of the herd in each season.

When we visited the Big Island we drove past sections of the Parker Ranch but we didn’t take time for the tours.

One night we stopped at a local grocery and bought a steak to grill. Since we were on vacation I didn’t hesitate to buy it but I did notice it was expensive. It surprised me since we’d just heard about how big the Parker Ranch was and how much cattle was raised there.

Never being shy, we asked about the high price of beef and milk and were told that the Parker Ranch sends just about all of it’s beef cattle to the mainland for slaughter and then the butchered meat is shipped back. That extra step is the added cost but I will tell you it was one of the best steaks I have had in a long time. Well worth the extra money.

Back to the show, Hawaii Life, I was surprised that they show case many affordable homes less than $500,000. It looks like the real estate market is comparable to the Boston market. Of course , there are the million dollar homes too. 🙂

Anyway, in our meeting yesterday at work, our manager said the company is planning to expand into Hawaii. Of course that is on the drawing board and no one knows how soon it will actually happen, but maybe my dream of living there isn’t so far fetched after all!

Blue Skies

Posted on January 22, 2014January 22, 2014 by Dusty Roads

Talk about coincidence. I recently started reading Robyn Carr Books. I got hooked on her novels with a series called Virgin River Series.

I have been trying to track down all of the novels in that series. She’s a little bit of a departure from my usual reading. The Virgin River Series follows the lives of the residents of Virgin River. A little rural town in the mountains near Oregon. The series is a little like a soap opera in a book but there’s no infidelity, rather mishaps like a lost hunter, a forest fire, a school bus crash and so on. Things that could happen in any small town. The same characters are in each novel and you can follow their lives. Things like how they met their spouses, their births of their children, and how little misunderstanding an get twisted around until , in the end, it all works out.

While browsing in a used book store for another of her novels I ran across a book titled Blue Skies. It was by Robyn Carr but it wasn’t part of her Virgin River Series. When I couldn’t find any of those that I hadn’t read, I decided to pick up this book.

Little did I know that it would be a great supplement to what was going on with Southwest. Southwest Airlines is currently dealing with the embarrassment of having one of their passenger jets land at the wrong airport. Blue Skies is about the start up of a low cost airline as the other larger carriers struggle with the changes and realities of air travel since 9/11.

As I was reading I thought that one of the airlines in the book reminded me of Southwest. It had been a start-up not that many years ago and was dealing with the issues of growing into a major carrier. It had gone from a tiny local carrier to a much larger one and with the growth came the employee unrest, budget issues and all of the other headaches.

The principal characters leave the struggling Aries Airline to join another start-up. Of course the book is about the characters and the airline is just the back drop but it’s a fun read. At one point Nikki reminisces with her friend Dixie about how air travel has changed, how back in the day the crew were like “rock stars” and treated with respect and people dressed in their Sunday best and were polite. (I remember traveling like that)

Dixie’s comeback was and they made the “stews” weigh in before each flight and issued padding if you weren’t endowed enough.

I guess the romance of flying depended on where you were on the organizational chart.

It’s a fun book and easy reading but it was perfect timing considering the Southwest debacle.

Latest Snowfall Predictions

Posted on January 21, 2014January 21, 2014 by Dusty Roads

Mother Nature’s at it Again

Posted on January 21, 2014January 21, 2014 by Dusty Roads

So much for “clear skies”. The Northeast just went under a blizzard warning for tonight and tomorrow until 1pm. Up to 12 inches of snow and bitter cold is predicted. My co-workers who are flying JetBlue out of Logan (Boston) are scrambling. Flights are already being grounded. Even so some airlines are charging extra to re-book .

Work emails are flying telling us what the company will pay for and what to do if we have to arrive a day early.

I spent 45 minutes on hold for Southwest Airlines. According to their web site my plane tomorrow is on- time and scheduled. Once I got through to a real live person I was assured that I would be notified of any change but as of this minute the flight was scheduled to take off on time.