Best E-mails of the Week 6/23/02

Here is a very simple little test comprising of four questions to
>determine
>the level of your intellect. Your replies must be spontaneous and
>immediate
>with no deliberating.
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>Ready, set, GO!
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>1) You are competing in a race, and overtake the runner in second place.
>In
>which position are you now?
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>Answer) If you answered that you're now in first place, then you're wrong.
>You overtook the second runner and took their place, therefore you're in
>second place.
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>For the next question try not to be so dim.
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>2) If you overtake the last runner, what position are you now in?
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>Answer) If you answered second-last, once again you're completely wrong.
>Think about it. How can you overtake the person coming in last?  If you're
>behind them then they can't be last.
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>It would appear that thinking is not one of your strong points.  Try
>again.
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>For this one, don't take any notes or use a calculator.  Remember your
>replies must be instantaneous.
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>3) Take 1000. Add 40. Add another 1000. Add 30.
>1000 again. Plus 20. Plus 1000. And plus 10. What is the total ?
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>Answer) 5000? Wrong again! The correct answer is 4100. Try it on paper.
>Today
>is clearly not your day.
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>4) Marie's father has five daughters:
>1. Chacha
>2. Cheche
>3. Chichi
>4. Chocho
>5. ???? What is the fifth daughter's name?
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>Answer) Chuchu? WRONG! It's obviously Marie. Read the question again.
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>You are the weakest link. Bye bye.
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The coach had put together the perfect team for the Detroit Lions. The only
thing he was missing was a good quarterback. He had scouted all the
colleges, and even the high schools, but he couldn't find a ringer
quarterback who could ensure a Super Bowl win.

Then one night, while watching CNN, he saw a war-zone scene in Bosnia. In
one corner of the background, he spotted a young Bosnian soldier with a
truly incredible arm. He threw a hand grenade straight into a 15th-story
window 200 yards away, ka-boom! He threw another hand
grenade into a group of 10 soldiers 100 yards away, ka-blooey! Then a car
passed, going 90 mph, bulls-eye!

"I've got to get this guy!" Coach said to himself. "He has the perfect arm!"
So, he brings him to the States and teaches him the great game of
football, and the Lions go on to win the Super Bowl for the first time in
history.

The young Bosnian is hailed as the Great Hero of football, and when Coach
asks him what he wants, all the young man wants to do is to call his mother.
"Mom," he says into the phone, "I just won the Super Bowl."
"I don't want to talk to you," the old woman says. "You deserted us. You
are not my son."
"I don't think you understand, Mother!" the young man pleads. "I just won
the greatest sporting event in the world. I'm here among thousands of my
adoring fans."
"No, let me tell you," his mother retorts. "At this very moment, there are
gunshots all around us. The neighborhood is a pile of rubble. Your two
brothers were beaten within an inch of their lives last week, and this week
your sister was attacked in broad daylight."
The old lady pauses, and then tearfully says, "..I'll never forgive you for
making us move to Detroit.

You'll feel good reading this! Think about them one at a time BEFORE going on to the next one
IT DOES MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD specially the thought at the end.
 

    1.    Falling in love.

    2.    Laughing so hard your face hurts.

    3.    A hot shower.

    4.    No lines at the supermarket

    5.    A special glance.

    6.    Getting mail.

    7.    Taking a drive on a pretty road.

    8.    Hearing your favorite song on the radio.

    9.    Lying in bed listening to the rain outside.

    10.    Hot towels fresh out of the dryer.

    11.    Finding the sweater you want is on sale for half price.

    12.    Chocolate milkshake. (or vanilla!) (or strawberry)

    13.    A long distance phone call.

    14.    A bubble bath.

    15.    Giggling.

    16.    A good conversation.

    17.    The beach.

    18.    Finding a 20 note in your coat from last winter.

    19.    Laughing at yourself.

    20.    Midnight phone calls that last for hours.

    21.    Running through sprinklers.

    22.    Laughing for absolutely no reason at all.

    23.    Having someone tell you that you're beautiful.

    24.    Laughing at an inside joke.

    25.    Friends.

    26.    Accidentally overhearing someone say something nice about
you.

    27.    Waking up and realizing you still have a few hours left to
sleep.

    28.    Your first kiss (either the very first or with a new
partner).

    29.    Making new friends or spending time with old ones.

    30.    Playing with a new puppy.

    31.    Having someone play with your hair.

    32.    Sweet dreams.

    33.    Hot chocolate.

    34.    Road trips with friends.

    35.    Swinging on swings.

    36.    Wrapping presents under the Christmas tree while eating
cookies and drinking your favorite tipple.

    37.    Song lyrics printed inside your new CD so you can sing along
without feeling stupid.

    38.    Going to a really good concert.

    39.    Making eye contact with a cute stranger.

    40.    Winning a really competitive game.

    41.    Making chocolate chip cookies.

    42.    Having your friends send you homemade cookies.

    43.    Spending time with close friends.

    44.    Seeing smiles and hearing laughter from your friends.

    45.    Holding hands with someone you care about.

    46.    Running into an old friend and realizing that some things
(good or bad) never change.
    47.    Riding the best roller coasters over and over.

    48.    Watching the expression on someone's face as they open a
much desired present from you.

    49.    Watching the sunrise.

    50.    Getting out of bed every morning and thanking God for
another beautiful day.

Patience

Patience is a virtue, find it where you can. Seldom in a woman, never in a man.

This is the commencement speech by the writer,
 Anna Quindlen, to the graduates at Villanova this year.

   **************************
 It's a great honor for me to be the third member of
 my family to receive an honorary doctorate from this
 great university.
 It's an honor to follow my great Uncle Jim, who was
 a gifted physician, and my Uncle Jack, who is a
 remarkable businessman. Both of them could have told
 you something important  about their professions,
 about  medicine or commerce.
 I have no specialized field of interest or  expertise,
 which puts me at a disadvantage talking to you
 today.
 I'm a novelist.
 My work is human nature. Real life is all I know.
Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work.
 The second is only part of the first.
Don't ever forget what a friend once wrote Senator
 Paul Tsongas when the senator decided not to run for
 re-election because he had been diagnosed with
 cancer:
No man ever said on his deathbed, 'I wish I had
 spent  more time at the office.'"
 Don't ever forget the words my father sent me on a
 postcard last year: "If you win the rat race, you're
 still a rat."
 Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned
 down  in the driveway of the Dakota: "Life is what happens
 while you are busy making other plans."
 You will walk out of here this afternoon with only
 one thing that no one else has. There will be
 hundreds  of people out there with your same degree; there
 will  be thousands of people doing what you want to do for
 a  living. But you will be the only person alive who
 has  sole custody of your life. Your particular life.
 Your  entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your
 life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not
 just the life of your mind, but the life of your
 heart. Not just your bank account but  your soul.
 People don't talk about the soul very much anymore.
 It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft
 a  spirit. But! a resume is a cold comfort on a w inter
 night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or
 when you've gotten back the test results and they're
 not so good.
 Here is my resume:
I am a good mother to three children. I have tried
 never to let my profession stand in the way of being
 a  good parent.
 I no longer consider myself the center of the
 universe.
 I show up.
 I listen.
 I try to laugh.
 I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to
 make marriage vows mean what they say.
 I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me.
 Without them, there would be nothing to say to you
 today, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But I
call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch.
 I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my job,!
 if  those other thing s were not true. You cannot be
 really  first rate at your work if your work is all you are.
 So here's what I wanted to tell you today:
 Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the
 next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger
 house.
Do you think you'd care so very much about those
 things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or
 found  a lump in your breast?
 Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt
 water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside
 Heights,  a life in which you stop and watch how a red tailed
 hawk circles over the water or the way a baby scowls
 with concentration when she tries to pick up a
 Cheerio  with her thumb and first finger.
 Get a life in which you are not alone.    Find
 people  you love, an d who love you. And remember that love
 is  not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an
 e-mail. Write a letter.
 Get a life in which you are generous. And realize
 that life is the best thing ever, and that you have
 no  business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about
 its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take
 money you would have spent on beers and give it to
 charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or
 sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do
 not  do good too, then doing well will never be enough.
It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our
 hours,  our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the
 color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a
 symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises
 again.
 It is so easy to exist instead of to live.
 I learned to live many years ago. Something really,
 really bad happened to me, something that changed my
 life in ways that, if I had my druthers,  I  would
 never  have been changed at all. And what I learned from it
 is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of
 all:
 I learned to love the journey, not the destination.
 I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that
 today is the only guarantee you get.
 I learned to look at all the good in the world and
 try to give some of it back because I believed in
 it,  completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in
 part, by telling others what I had learned.
 By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the
 field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the
 backyard with the sun on your face.
 Learn to be happy.
 And think of life as a terminal illness, because if
 you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it
 ought to be lived.
 

This is the Labyrinth that we walked on Friday night, for Summer Solstice.  It is a spiritual experience with history dating back to 1201AD France when pilgrims walked this maze instead of journeying to the Holy Land.    Have any of you readers walked labyrinths in your area? Peter