An event put on by Stanford Hospital to celebrate their part in their patients' victories over life-threatening injuries. What a great idea to allow former patients and their families to meet the people behind the roles that were so crucial in giving us our lives back. 

From Heather the amazing nurse who suggested we get an Ipod so  our daughter didn't have to hear all of the incessant beeping of various machines in ICU ,to the nurse who allowed us to stay by her bed way past visiting hours, to the doctors who knew how to re-grow tissue on her damaged knee it was one miracle after another.  And now. less than one year later it hardly seems real. 

So we will celebrate the victories and the skill and mostly the extraordinary talent and caring of the Trauma Center at Stanford Hospital and will give thanks that we are able to be part of an event like this. 

 

Big milestones require a proper ceremony.  Getting promoted from Brownies to Girl Scouts had a wonderful bridging ceremony that made you feel really special.  Marriage has a whole bunch of special elements which are designed to help you move into a new phase of life.  Retirement brings the obligatory gold watch to signify something (maybe that you will have too much time on your hands?) not sure about that one.  Anyway, ceremony is a big part of recognizing life-changing passages. 

So what to do for a daughter who is turning 18?  How do I show her that I have faith in her power to make good decisions, without sounding preachy?  How do I convey my love and respect for all that she has become in her brief 18 years?  How do I give her a gentle nudge without driving her away? And how do I instill in her a sense of the long line of mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers who have passed this milestone ahead of her and who stand in silent support of all her hopes and dreams?

Her path will not be the same as mine, but it feels right for her.  Maybe the best that I can offer her is a blank notebook - pages that are ready to be filled with her experiences and an endless world of opportunities to write her own story.

There are 4926 miles between Pleasanton, California and Atlanta, Georgia.   How do I know this?  Because I have just returned from an epic journey by car between those two cities with my husband (yes we are still married) and our Bassett Hound. 

On the drive East we were bombarded with snow and high winds through Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.  Once we got to Arkansas it turned to rain and just plain cold. Tennessee and Georgia were warmer and thankfully filled with Chick-Fil-A's so that made it nice!  The scenery was beautiful and the only painful memory was an unplanned interaction with a tumbleweed plant?, bush?, tree?.  It impaled itself on the grill of the car and left an ugly hole but it was either the tumbleweed or the car in the next lane during one particularly cold, windy stretch of road and we made the obvious choice. 

If you are interested, it seems that Sonic only goes so far as New Mexico when you are heading West and on many stretches of road you are lucky to find a truck stop for gas.  Restroom stops get harder to find in New Mexico and we found a number of places with either no rest rooms or all rest rooms closed.  The dog, however, found ample spots including one patch of desert on the side of Interstate 40. 

It is possible to consume  8000 calories per day without ever leaving the car, while only expending a maximum of about 40 calories by pushing the cruise button on and off and using the seek button to locate a radio station that works.

My new favorite fast food restaurant is Arby's which has a chicken salad wrap that feels almost healthy.  It was a nice change from the burgers that were available everywhere.

My advice to those planning a similar journey is  - have you considered flying? 

Why were there 12 days?  Why not 13 or 15?  What is the significance of 12 days? 

Obviously I am not the first to wonder about this as there are a number of sites dealing with this very issue.  Most of these sites agree that the 12 days have a significance in the Christian calendar and  that each of the gifts are Christian symbols. 

I am more interested in the numerical value chosen. The 12 days after Christmas to Ephiphany are meaningul in the church calendar.  But that doesn't explain why they became the 12 days before Christmas in the song. 

It turns out that 12 is an "abundant" number in mathematics.  That means if you add 12 to the sum of its other divisors, 1,2,3,4 and 6, the result is more than 2 X 12. 

I can picture an early mathematician creating the "12 days of Christmas" song to teach his math students more about abundance using the first abundant number, 12,  as his starting point. 

Now you've got something really interesting to talk about over that next glass of eggnog.

That's the price you will pay to buy a $25 roll of US presidential coins from the US Mint.  That's right.  The mint makes a $10 profit on each roll of 25 of these $1 coins that are actually in circulation. 

How do I know this you might wonder?  Well, I am one of the few people who is actually dumb enough to pay that price to get these coins.  There are four of these  in circulation for 2007: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. The banks don't seem to carry them at all. They might be able to find you a roll of re-circulated coins if you time it just right.  But I like to have the shiny new gold variety, with a single president represented.  So I go straight to the mint and order them online. 

I think this is a wonderful way to get children to learn the Presidents of the United States in order.  If they get it right, they can earn the appropriate coin. At least now I know the first 4 presidents in the right order.  It's going to take me a long time to get through the whole list at the rate of 4 new coins issued per year, but that's okay.  I'll get there eventually. 

And in the meantime, the US postal service stamp machines are actually providing these coins as change, so you might luck out and get your Washington dollar for a dollar.  As for me, each dollar of mine is actually a $1.43 gold piece.  That just makes them more special when I give them away. 

Yep, I'm talking about the folks who leave the light on for you.  Motel 6.  Last week, my friend and I headed to Burbank for a girls trip to the Ellen show and she suggested we go for the affordable motel option and stay at the "6".  Not wanting to be the un-adventurous one, I quickly agreed inspite of my own concern about the safety of such an establishment.   (The show was broadcast on Monday, if you're interested.)

As a frequent traveler and former Girl Scout counselor, I'm pretty comfortable just about anywhere.  I can even learn to live without a separate bottle of conditioner and shampoo - it's ok with me if I have to use the conditioning shampoo once in a while.  But those outside facing doors just don't give me a warm-fuzzy feelin'. 

But my friend Betsy is the adventurous, always-finding-fun-in-the -moment-type and I couldn't be the wet blanket on this adventure.  And she was only spending the day in town at my insistence that she accompany me for the second time to the Ellen Show. 

I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised.  The room was certainly spacious, clean and even had a working color TV.  I did think ahead and bring my own hair dryer and we did have to supply our own shampoo but hey for $60 it was quite the bargain.   That left us plenty of funds for food and Diet Cokes which were handily located right next to the room.  I will gladly put up with an outdoor entrance to have my own personal vending machine right next to the door.  

My first real earthquake.  I don't think I need to experience anything stronger. 

 Last week I was sitting at the computer and thought I felt a large truck rolling by the house (or a teenager with the bass turned up too loud on their car.)  Then I felt the front wall bend toward me and saw my poor southern-raised Basset Hound heading for the hills.  She didn't know what hit her.  I didn't either.

For a few more minutes the floor rolled underfoot and then it was calm again.  Quite an exciting adventure which I was glad to observe from the comfort of my own home, rather than the comfort of a bridge, overpass, or tunnel. 

Highway 29 is the famous stretch of road that runs right through the middle of Napa Valley.  It is the equivalent of the main drag at Myrtle Beach, SC if you happen to frequent the redneck rivieria like I do.

I have spent a lot of time travelling to and fro on this road in the last couple of months (and not due to a drinking problem, thank you) as a result of a consulting project I am working on.  Every time I look at the road signs, I am reminded of a fascinating person I met at a trade show who had a hobby of studying the highway numbering system.  She could tell you a number of facts about any highway based solely on its number. When I asked her about I-40 for example, she said all major interstate highways are two digits and even numbered ones run from east to west.  Higher numbered interstates are further north than lower numbers.  Odd numbered interstates run north and south and there are even rules for numbering the beltways around them.  

Since Highway 29 is a California state road,  I wondered what the numbering scheme there meant.  It appears that California tried to follow the logic of the federal scheme, with odd numbered highways indicating a north/ south orientation. 

I have also learned that Highway 29 covers a total of 106 miles with an average of 60,000 visitors per day.  That's a lot of traffic for a road that's not quite 30.  

To an accountant, the 15th of every month is a deadline for something. People think April 15th is the big deadline for tax returns.  Wrong. 

April 15th is the deadline for the 4 clients who file their taxes on time.  For the other 996 clients out of 1,000, April 15th is the day you extend their tax returns.  October 15th is the due date for those 996 extended returns.  Yep, it is the procrastinator's final chance to file within the government-mandated deadline for paying the piper. 

That means that 995 shoe boxes full of receipts show up at the accountants office around October 4th.  It's a crazy time of year for accountants. 

And then here comes November with it's sales tax, payroll tax, or estimated tax payment deadlines.  There's no rest for the weary, and no end of 15's for accountants.