Petey’s Blog

Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying. Singing will keep you from smelling. Don’t try to do both at the same time – looks and sounds really bad and chances are you’ll swallow the gum in the process.

Why we say “bite the bullet”. Caught between a rock and hard place with no good way out, you may decide to “bite the bullet” and push ahead. Many a Civil War casualty carried from the field with mangled limbs faced drastic surgery without the aid of even whisky to help subdue the pain. In that case, the best medics could do for a fellow soldier was to offer a soft-lead bullet. Placed between the teeth, it was better than nothing.

Employers will jump on programs as they review promising results. At PepsiCo, smokers who won’t join health programs pay $600 more a year and have raised smoking cessation rates 14%. Boeing targets employees with complex medical problems for a program in which specialized teams of nurses and doctors monitor care. Average absence rates have fallen from 7.8 days per six months to 3.4 days, with health care savings of 20%.

Leo Tolstoy thought Shakespeare was crude, vulgar and senseless. Charles Darwin said, “I have tried lately to read Shakespeare and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.” George Bernard Shaw said, “What the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his.” So was this jealousy? Or, does it prove once again that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder?

One in six baby boomer women (16%) have a Kindle or other e-reader, and 67% of those who do not who do not, would like one. I love mine. In minutes you can download a favorite book while you wait for a delayed flight, or on vacation; read your favorite newspaper; adjust the font; and yes, sometimes you miss holding that hardback or smelling the newspaper ink, but the trade out is worth it.

Leslie Brenner, Restaurant Critic for the Dallas Morning News asked for diners’ pet peeves. The #1 peeve was Servers with boundary.

Talk about the need for downsizing! Naomi Seldin, Albany Times Union gives 20 reasons to feel good about getting serious about dumping all that extra STUFF.

I wrote the Million-Dollar Story in 1996 at the request of Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. It was published in one of their first Chicken Soup for the Soul books.