Print Shop Wisdom

I took a flash drive in to Office Depot today.  I had a couple of pictures that I wanted to print 2' x 3' so that I can hang them in my living room.  I had a couple of thoughts I'd like to share.  First, the man at the counter checked the size of the pictures I had on the drive.  One was 7mb, one was 3mb and the last was 1mb.  He looked at the smallest one and said that it may come out a bit pixelated because the file size was small. I decided to risk it.  He printed my 7mb picture first and it came out GORGEOUS!! The detail in the shadowing and textures was amazing! I couldn't have been more pleased considering the huge print only costed $3.00.  The 1mb picture printed next.  It was not pixelated as I had feared, but it definately lacked the crispness that I got with the larger picture file.  So in an effort to liken all things to life, I propose that the more full you are, or the bigger your file size, the more beautiful and detailed your life will be.  If we can persue knowledge and experience, if we can open ourselves to the wealth of information offered in this world, the more rich and fulfilled our lives will be.  So take a different path on your walk! Try a different restaurant! Pick a book of a different genre for a change! Our eyes will be opened to a new world that was all around us all along. 
I mentioned that I had two thoughts to share... After the first picture was printed (a picture of my husband and I on our wedding day) the store employee said "This dress looks gorgeous". I immediately thanked him and agreed that it was a beautiful dress.  It took me a moment to realize that he was talking about the way the dress appeared on paper despite the low quality paper medium.  I must be very vain, I always assume people are complimenting me! I'm sure most people have had a conversation with a person where they interpreted half the things you said to them as either a slight or an outright insult.  It's so difficult to hold up this type of conversation, because you are choosing your words carefully and then halting the conversation to try to explain what you meant.  I would love it if everyone I talked to would just assume that I'm being polite and friendly, even when I'm not as eloquent as I wish I was.

Olde Fashioned Materialism

I was driving through the "village" in my town and the abnormal congestion and presence of some very old beautiful cars reminded me that the summer vintage car season was upon us.  As I slowly rolled down the boulevard, admiring the vibrant colors and shining chrome of the classic cars, I began to form a train of thought.  The first car in my train of thought was an admiration that someone could care for and maintain a material object for so many years and have it look like it just rolled out of a showroom the day before, as if time had stopped for that vehicle.  I looked at the beautiful lines and curves of the Thunderbirds, Speedsters, Packards and Cadillacs and wondered if any of the new models of cars on the road today would be considered classics in the future.  For some reason, no matter how well I maintain my Santa Fe, I can't imagine that one of my children will be showing it at a car show 40 or 50 years from now.  That lead me to the next car in my thought train.  We are very materialistic these days.  We spend so much money on things that we are fully aware are not going to last a whole lot longer than a decade, a year, a month etc.  This consumer society we live in drives us to constantly purchase newer and better models of the things we already have.  In fact, many things that we own are not designed to last very long without breaking.  How many of you are still using the same cell phone you used 5 years ago?  I get new phones, not because I need the new amazing tech, but because the memory or some chip in my phone is worn out and it is cheaper to buy new than to fix what is old.  This got me thinking about the cars again.  Classic cars are a vintage form of materialism.  A kind of materialism that you don't see as much today as you did 50 years ago.  The time and effort and money that people poured into their cars, rather than just scrapping them and buying new.  A 2012 Lamborghini Murcielago is an impressive sight to see, but it doesn't stick with me as does the sight of a perfectly restored 1965 Porche.  I think I prefer that vintage materialism to the consumer materialism that we have today.

Charitable Drinker

I do my grocery shopping in a questionable part of town.  There are usually groups teenagers wandering around the area, a possibly crazy woman walking down the middle of the 4 lane roadway.  As I was pulling out of the parking lot, a lady was making her way up the sidewalk with a shopping cart and several trash bags full of recycleables.  As she approached, a man sitting out on his stoop drinking a beer quickly finished off his drink and handed the lady his can.  It's nice to see charity happening in some of the more destitute parts of town. 

Cockroach

As I started up my shower this morning, I noticed a 1/2 inch cockroach in my bathtub. I don't mind bugs outside my house, but inside my house I find them ghastly! So I determined to drown the pest as I started my shower. My shower drain is not super fast, but it keeps up with the water flow. As I watched the cockroach float back and forth and orbit the drain, I thought is was dead already. I realized quickly that cockroaches are nearly impossible to kill without chemicals or a blunt object (as evidenced by the week a roach spent in my polyethalene kill jar before it could be added to my collection for my entomology class). But the bug just floated there, not moving it's legs or trying to save itself whatsoever. Until it was right at the cusp of the drain. Just as it was about to be pulled into the whirlpool of suction down the pipe, it frantically flipped itself and flailed it's legs until it was caught up in another current that took it away from the drain. I watched this happen four or five times, it floating, riding the currents without moving until it is nearly sucked down and then the agitated dance of survival. I thought to myself, is that the cockroach's secret to survival? Do nothing until the absolute moment of demise and then fight like a berzerker to escape death? What a horrible life lesson. I've had a religious upbringing and was always taught that you should work hard every day, live every day, as if it were your last, because you never know when will be your last day. Don't procrastinate the day of your repentance, so to speak. So why has this lesson from the cockroach not changed my whole outlook on life? Why has it not convinced me to sit around and do nothing when I am in danger until the moment before tragedy? Because I don't want to be a cockroach.