What's on My Reading List; Grit: Passion, Perseverance, and the Science of Success

Grit: Passion, Perseverance, and the Science of Success by Angela Duckworth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book started out great. Her explanation of grit and the examples provided were very interesting. I feel that people will be encouraged to read that perseverance can win over talent or skill. Perseverance puts the ball in my court instead of in my heredity or environment. How badly do I want to be great? How hard am I willing to work for it? Imagine if everyone could get that and get the voice in their head lined up with that thought. Wow!

The book then turned very ordinary and repetitive and even sounded

Indoor Dinner Beach Party

"One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter." ~Henry David Thoreau

This has been a long - no - the longest - coldest winter I can remember.  Looking forward to spring break and ready for the weather to turn we decided to bring our beach party inside for our family dinner night.

The menu:
Turkey burgers 2 ways
Baked Beans
Potato Chips
Kale Chips

For a beach party you can't forget the décor: beach decorations, paper plates, beach boys music, and of course, a beach ball.  We made up fun beach ball games around the dinner table. Here are several variations of our silly games.

To Do or Not To Do That is the Question

How is it that some people get so much farther ahead than others?  Some executives complete endless projects while some make projects endless. Some moms and dads get breakfast made, kids clothed, school bags packed, 2 loads of laundry done, kitchen cleaned up, grocery shopping complete and all of the errands run, all before 1:00 when others are just getting started at 1:00.

It would be easy to say, they have more help, they have better genes, magic worker fairies secretly appear
and get stuff done for them.  Here's their real secret.  Are you ready?  They make To-Do lists.  Successful people set goals and put them in writing and the majority of them make daily To-Do lists.

Why create daily To-Do lists?

Stumped on a Gift? Give the Gift of Your Time.

The hubby and I enjoyed a feel good movie on date night this week, Delivery Man with Vince Vaughn.  Man, he is tall!  If you were wondering, just like me, is he really that big or is everyone else puny?  Vince Vaughn is 6'5".  As you can tell, it was lady's choice.  Even though it averaged about 2 stars in the ratings, to all the men out there who might not want to go to this movie, you will leave the theater feeling good.  Take your wife, girlfriend, significant other...the night will end good for you ;).

There is a part of the movie that really got me thinking this holiday season. 

What Do We Value?

Based on my observations of this week I am left to wonder what do we value? 

I was in a technical train the trainer session where the instructor was using her own laptop to do the demonstrations.  When it came to showing everyone how to log all the way out effectively the big screen displayed her chosen home page which was Yahoo.  The headliner was a photo of a car buried in snow in Texas.  Everyone joked about how "lucky we are" to not have been hit by this snow blast.  I was the only one instantly concerned that a snow storm was bigger news than