When I get really bored at night and don’t feel like just going to sleep, I look up random things on the Internet.  Tonight, I ended up looking up hair loss vitamins.  I am not going bald and my family’s health history says that I probably won’t.  In fact, I was at the barber’s today getting my hair cut.  I was just reading a magazine article about hair loss vitamins and didn’t get too far into it before it was my turn.  Apparently, for men, there are no vitamins that will help re-grow hair.  Once you go bald, you can’t go back.  Unless of course you feel like investing in a really effective toupee and no one can tell that you’re actually bald, but that’s not really the same thing.  However, women do have hope.  Female pattern baldness exists as well as male pattern baldness and there are hair loss vitamins that do help them.  My understanding is that this is nature’s way of rewarding women for putting up with the extreme pain and discomfort of bearing and giving birth to a child.  Men can’t have children; therefore they have to go bald as their punishment.  Well, a lot of men have to.  Not all.  Some of us are nicer to women and therefore get to keep more of our hair. 

I went to college and graduated as an engineer and I always found it worthwhile as well as a necessity to have a home alarm. For this reason I started a company that sells all types of security devices at a good price. See, I know that there are many in competition with me, and I know that there are a lot of different kinds of alarm systems as well. Therefore I design my own technology and sell it at low costs. I am now selling affordable home alarms. When I say affordable I mean really, dirt cheap. It costs me nothing to make them and all I do is make money off of it. All I have I have to do is supervise and make sure everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing and when they are supposed to be doing it. Why not give the people what they really want and can afford while making a pretty penny at the same time? I enjoy distributing products that keep my country safe and I am quite proud of my job. I also believe that my employees are happy with it, as they also receive a free alarm system for their hard work. But most importantly, the customers are happy with the product, and with the prices.

Jim it turns out had lasik done and had had a major side effect.  His vision was actually over corrected.  I didn't even know that could be one of the side effects of lasik.    Jim has been out of the picture lately.  We used to go to a support group but I had to drop out because I was doing so much traveling, but I called him the other day just to see how he and Sue were doing.  Jim has lost about 50 pounds and has his blood sugar under control and is feeling pretty good.  I wanted to find out what doctor he used.  Tara did too.  I went back to the support group meeting the next Tuesday.  Jim was there and looking good.  Mr. Callahan was there too.  I'm always amazed to see him.  He's 94 years old, and is running in the Chicago Marathon next October.   Jim gave me the name of his doctor, and Mr. Callahan chimed in.  Turns out Mr. Callahan had had lasik done too.  About 4 years ago.  I wondered about his eyes.  He didn't wear any glasses for reading or anything else.  His doctor turned out to be the same as Jim's doctor.  It's a small world.  Neither Mr. Callahan or Jim are unhappy that they got the treatments. 

Our basement is in reality a rec room.  My husband needed somewhere to entertain so that I would not have to worry about cleaning up incessantly after him.  He can simple close the door to the base.  But, after he started the remodeling project in the basement.  He has decided he wanted a really nice rec room.  He has the big screen TV on the far wall.  It is really a very nice addition.  You can sit at one end of the basement, which is pretty big, and see a really clear picture.  He figured out how to make some wire closet organizers work for him as a place to store all his media equipment.  It looks really nice, especially after he painted them the same color as the wall.  I think the pool table is the main attraction though.  He even installed the lights that hang about the pool table himself.  He saved a lot of money by doing all these things himself.  What he wants to do with all this money he saved is buy all new furniture for the basement.  I promised to put up some curtains at the windows.  It should be a really cozy place.

My father got into a hit-and-run car accident a few weeks ago. Luckily, he was not seriously injured, but he did suffer a concussion and had to take an ambulance ride to the ER. He was able to get the license number for the police, and they were able to track down the driver. The driver was arrested for leaving the scene of an accident, which helped my father’s lawsuit case. He wound up hiring a personal injury attorney to make sure he got everything together correctly. After awhile he found out that the person had no car insurance, he started to reconsider going through the attorney. Having a lawyer would have been very expensive, and he wasn’t sure that suing the guy would produce any settlement since he didn’t even have a job. It was very frustrating. In the end, he decided to dismiss the lawyer, go it on his own and proceed with the suit, which turned out to be an excellent decision. The guy really had no case, especially with a criminal charge against him. We turned out to be quite lucky; my father made a full recovery, won the suit and was able to have all his medical and legal expenses paid as well as the damage to his car.

Tara is the creative one.  And once she gets her mind set to do something, she does it full speed.  She used her contacts at the school district to get a contract to write a child's e-book all about type 2 diabetes.  It was about how to prevent it and what to do once you are diagnosed.  She asked me to read it when she was finished.   I said that I'm not an editor, but would give it a shot.  It was a good book.  I guess it's needed now too, with so many kids being overweight and not eating right.  Most of the kids won't have type 2 of course, but some will.  Those that have some symptoms can ask their parents about it.  Hopefully that will lead to treatment.  The school was behind it all the way, which made Tara happy.  She didn't get a lot of money for the effort, but thought is was worth it if it keeps just one kid from heading down a path of sickness.  Later, she found that her book had been nominated for a district wide prize.  I could tell that this made her happy, but I think she was just happy in knowing she may help someone stay healthy.

The Internet is one of the most valuable tools that I have access to.  Keeping in touch with friends and family has become a little easier with e-mail and instant message chatting and I can stay more up-to-date with my loved ones’ lives by seeing new photos or reading blogs that they have posted.  With websites such as MySpace or FaceBook, you can also get a glimpse of how people you know see themselves from their own perspective.  I can even search for people I have lost contact with and maybe even find a few of those long lost acquaintances but if anyone is ever searching for me, they can simply Google my name and locate me at the touch of a few clicks. 

As long as the Internet is handy, then I can win almost any argument by proving myself with facts supplied to me from a plethora of websites that backup my knowledge.  It’s also enough to drive me a little nuts when I blank on the name of an actor in a movie that I’m watching.  It will be on the very tip of my tongue so instead of racking my brain, I’ll just toddle over to the computer and look up the film on the Internet.  Or if I really want to finally get the lyrics right to a song that I’ve been misinterpreting and mumbling along to for years, then all I have to do is plug in a few keywords and the information is readily available.

Without the Internet, I wouldn’t be able to find music that is always new to me or check on the latest news updates going on anywhere in the world.  If I’m curious to know more about a subject or would like to see beautiful pictures of places that I can only imagine traveling to, then it’s like I have the world’s biggest library right at my fingertips.  It’s a little less organized than a real library and you might have to keep a watchful eye out for pedophiles and stalkers but you just have to be careful which links you click on, especially since you can unwittingly download some nasty viruses to your machine when you’re simply surfing through Internet porn.

You can hawk all your crap on eBay or Craig’s List and find almost anything your heart desires, even treasures similar to the toys you had as a kid that have long since disappeared.  Or you can check out what’s happening around town for the weekend and find a new restaurant for a bite to eat or even have dinner or groceries delivered to your home with the convenience of the Internet.  You can also meet your future spouse online but I’d have to be hard up to use Match.com as a relationship resource.  There’s just something unnatural to me about telling your grandchildren that you met your wife on the Internet. 

Lastly, the Internet also makes looking for a new job easier.  In the old days, you would have to spend money on printing along with the additional expense of postage to mail out hard copies of resumes and cover letters.  Now with so many job postings online, you can quickly locate positions you are interested in and respond to potential employers almost immediately via e-mail.