For those of you who haven't heard of it, the Friday Five happens every week (duh!) on revgalblogpals. This week's list is inspired by the coin in Sunday's gospel. So here's my answers.
1) When was the last time you flipped a coin or even saw one flipped in person?
I went to a football game the first Saturday in October. I'm pretty sure I saw the coin toss. It might have been the highlight of the game. The bands were the highlight of the afternoon.
2) Do you have any foreign coins in your house? If so, where are they from?
I have some Euros left over from the last trip to Italy. I'll be taking them back with me next April when we travel to Umbria.
3) A penny saved is a penny earned, they say. But let's get serious. Is there a special place in heaven for pennies, or do you think they'll find a special place in, well, the other place?
When I was a child, we had mite boxes. The boxes were handed out at the beginning of Lent and collected the Sunday after Easter. We were supposed to earn the mites/pennies we put in those boxes.
Then I grew up and got my own United Thank Offering box. Now I know that the UTO people suggest putting in a quarter every time you want to give thanks but I have a strong mental image of my dad putting all the loose change from his pocket into that box once or twice a week and that's what I do, too. So I just turned all my pennies, nickles and dimes in last Sunday when we had our fall Ingathering.
Pennies, then, have always been vehicles for giving thanks. I'll stick with the old song and say pennies are from heaven. ;-)
4) How much did you get from the tooth fairy when you were a child? and if you have children of your own, do they get coins, or paper money?
I got a dime per tooth. My kids got quarters. Our daughter had a lovely tooth pillow that a friend made. When she lost her first tooth, we got out the pillow, she put the tooth in the little pocket and we explained about putting the pillow on her bed so the tooth fairy could come get it and leave a surprise in its place. Well, Heather was having none of that. No alien being was coming into her bedroom for any reason whatsoever! We finally convinced her to leave it in the hall even though she would have preferred outside the front door. Now that I think about it, I may still owe my son for his teeth!
5) Did anyone in your household collect the state quarters? And did anyone in your household manage to sustain the interest required to stick with it?
I have a sister who collects them and I think she stayed the course. Alas, I'm not all that interested in what's on a coin to consider collecting it. Haven't they begun changing nickles now?
Friday, October 17, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
THE election
I've been on vacation for ten days. I had a great time and, yes, politics came up in conversation more than once. But we didn't take my car and so I was cut off from XMradio and the POTUS08 station - all election all the time.
Considering that I did my best to ignore all of the primaries - it was two years long! - I find it really amazing that I am now really interested in the election itself. Don't get me wrong, I have always exercised my right to vote but in the last decade, I haven't been excited about that. Now, I am listening to reporters, pollsters, commentators, speeches - XM plays them from start to finish without comment - and even morning conference calls from both campaigns. This is crazy! But it feels really good. It feels like this year we get to vote *for* someone. I've been going to the polls to cast a negative vote for far too long. Even the show hosts on the station sound excited.
I'm a Democrat mostly and will surely vote for Obama/Biden this year. That doesn't mean that I think either of them hung the moon or that there isn't room for improvement. For instance, I'd like candidates to really answer questions at debates rather than twist the questions to fit the prepared responses. I may have to go back to The West Wing and see the debate camp episode again to make me feel better about debates.
This afternoon, I had an email from the Obama campaign about the debate - okay, it came last week but I've been ignoring email on vacation - and the subject was "How do you think I did?" Alas, there was no way for me to answer the question! It was merely another request for money. It's not that I haven't contributed but I would have liked a chance to tell Obama that he needs to answer the questions directly so they really sound like answers and not "here's a piece of my campaign rhetoric that almost speaks to that question."
Ah well, I'm still excited about the election even though I live in a state that is so red you can't get an Obama bumper sticker here or a yard sign. Maybe by the next election, all states will be in play and everyone will campaign in all states rather than only in those where campaigning might make a difference. Even better, maybe by the next election, the parties will have discovered that the obscene amount of money spent by each campaign would have been better spent on anything else and we can just have a few televised debates, email flyers and skip all the racing around the country giving the same speech a zillion times. I don't know how they do that last part and instill life into that speech. If I have to preach the same text three times on Sunday, the folks at the third service get a pretty dull sermon. ;-)
So get out and vote for someone who you want to win! I may even have an election night party if I can find enough Democrats to do more than make a foursome for bridge or golf.
Considering that I did my best to ignore all of the primaries - it was two years long! - I find it really amazing that I am now really interested in the election itself. Don't get me wrong, I have always exercised my right to vote but in the last decade, I haven't been excited about that. Now, I am listening to reporters, pollsters, commentators, speeches - XM plays them from start to finish without comment - and even morning conference calls from both campaigns. This is crazy! But it feels really good. It feels like this year we get to vote *for* someone. I've been going to the polls to cast a negative vote for far too long. Even the show hosts on the station sound excited.
I'm a Democrat mostly and will surely vote for Obama/Biden this year. That doesn't mean that I think either of them hung the moon or that there isn't room for improvement. For instance, I'd like candidates to really answer questions at debates rather than twist the questions to fit the prepared responses. I may have to go back to The West Wing and see the debate camp episode again to make me feel better about debates.
This afternoon, I had an email from the Obama campaign about the debate - okay, it came last week but I've been ignoring email on vacation - and the subject was "How do you think I did?" Alas, there was no way for me to answer the question! It was merely another request for money. It's not that I haven't contributed but I would have liked a chance to tell Obama that he needs to answer the questions directly so they really sound like answers and not "here's a piece of my campaign rhetoric that almost speaks to that question."
Ah well, I'm still excited about the election even though I live in a state that is so red you can't get an Obama bumper sticker here or a yard sign. Maybe by the next election, all states will be in play and everyone will campaign in all states rather than only in those where campaigning might make a difference. Even better, maybe by the next election, the parties will have discovered that the obscene amount of money spent by each campaign would have been better spent on anything else and we can just have a few televised debates, email flyers and skip all the racing around the country giving the same speech a zillion times. I don't know how they do that last part and instill life into that speech. If I have to preach the same text three times on Sunday, the folks at the third service get a pretty dull sermon. ;-)
So get out and vote for someone who you want to win! I may even have an election night party if I can find enough Democrats to do more than make a foursome for bridge or golf.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)