Easy on the starch, please
Just how flippin� sad is it that I spent all day yesterday on pins and needles, awaiting the delivery of my new washing machine? I�m not a laundry freak like the friend that recommended it but Mother of all that is Holy, I might really develop a taste for it with tools like this!

It comes with a video, people. I have to take some sort of class before I can make adequate use of this highly engineered machine. My clothes will suffer if I am not sufficiently informed on the levels of soap usage or the order of buttons to be pushed. I wonder if there�s a cam installed somewhere in the shiny new display area where customer service reps gauge your progress the first month of use? All of the sudden, I feel inferior to my washer. Sheesh.

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Two months ago, I attended a Professional Development day where I work. It was the usual tripe, with one exception: the speaker. She was, well, life-altering.

She spoke of not sweating the small stuff, but in a way that wasn�t clich� and easily forgettable. She gave examples of how she has stopped to smell the roses in her own life, and how it was absolutely something that everyone should do. I believed everything she said as I scribbled down her little gems for further consideration. Then she started talking about 9/11.

I�m glad I stayed to hear her presentation; there were some who couldn�t manage to listen to the entire thing. She had gotten three weeks off work as a compassionate leave to help at Ground Zero. She told us stories of some of her encounters and how it�s made a permanent impression on her and how she�s chosen to live her life from here on out. I sat at my table and quietly cried, wishing I�d had a tissue, or at least advance notice of the topic.

After the presentation, when I�d had a chance to dry up a little, she went on to outline what she called her Personal Life List. Everything she had achieved was highlighted. This left us wondering how she would manage to pay for a trip to the moon in the Space Shuttle or get a job at Tim Hortons or master the piano or any one of the 15 or 20 things she had left. Some of them were funny, some nostalgic. The main thing was she had a plan. Not a life plan, but a plan to improve her life by ensuring she fit in all sorts of interesting and varied things before she found herself in a rocking chair on the porch of some nursing home. I committed right there to making a list of my own.

There are four things on my list, one of which was highlighted last night. Not a bad start.

Posted at 1:45 p.m.