No time for a dime?

Struggling to get through another grueling session on the elliptical machine at the YM, I look down in exhaus-tion and spot something shiny on the floor. Squinting, I realize it is a dime.

As you probably guessed, I did not interrupt my workout to pick it up. I also didn’t pick it up after my workout and didn’t point it out to the woman vacuuming near the elliptical. I was about to and then I figured I would be insulting her by suggesting she needed the dime.

Later I recalled that when I was a young child I would have stopped to pick up a penny. Has the value of money changed that much since I was young? This makes me feel old even though I’m relatively young for my age. I’m not sure I would have stopped my workout to pick up a quarter. This bothers me. Have I forgotten the value of money? Perhaps my family spends so much so quickly that I’ve become jaded. Picking up every piece of loose change from here to California wouldn’t even cover their fast food purchases for a month.

Let me know what you think. Please share with us the amount of money that would make you bend over and the last time you picked up money off the ground.

if my blog were an e-mail....

readers,
if my blog were an e-mail this is how it would look
i don’t capitalize or use punctuation
i simply start a new line for each new thought
i adopted this style to deal with 100+ e-mails each day
when writing a formal memo i capitalize and use punctuation
but 95 percent of my e-mail responses are in this style
my wife hates it and feels it is unprofessional
no one else has every complained
let me know what you think
ralph t

p.s.
i always sign "ralph t"
she doesn't understand that either
i worked with a ralph h for about 10 years and adopted the moniker
ralph h left about five years ago, but i continue
i've asked my wife to sign "mary t" so i know who she is

Don't call me "sir"!

Add “dude” to the list of things I don’t like to be called, right behind “sir” and “mister.”
The first time I noticed, I was in the locker room at the YMCA. Two men in their 20s came in and were planning on swimming. They couldn’t complete a sentence without using "dude" or "bro." They were nice, asking me about the YM and the pool. They were in the locker room again after my workout and we resumed talking. On my way out, one of them held up what looked like a nice ripe banana. “Do you want a banana dude,”? he asked. “They are good for you after you work out.”
I declined and walked out. For some reason, I didn’t like him calling me “dude.” A few days later a co-worker in his 20s called me “dude” after I asked him about an upcoming assignment. Again, it bothered me.
I’ve always hated sir and mister because they are too formal for me. As far as I’m concerned, everyone from 2 to 92 can call me "Ralph." In fact, I would prefer it.
I used to like when people called me “dude” because it is something young people say to each other. I hope this mood passes.

Let me know what you think.