Dave’s Gardening Corner: Update on Killing Grape Hyacinths

It’s been almost three years since I last posted on my war with the grape hyacinths (aka Muscari). Time for an update.

The good news is that my front yard has now been almost grape hyacinth free for a full year. I have painstakingly gone through and pulled each and every bulb by hand. Last year, I found maybe ten bulbs total, which I immediately removed and killed. My back yard had a total of two bulbs, which met a similar fate.

I have a long strip along the parking area in my back yard that is infested, however, and last Saturday I began that war. My guess is that I pulled close to a thousand bulbs, most in very tight bunches that came out of the  ground in fistfuls. I will have some more work to do back there, but I have full expectation of winning that particular battle in the coming weeks with the occasional grape hyacinth surviving until next year.

That strip connects to a small field behind my house that is literally overrun with the stupid things. I’m half-tempted to install a plastic barrier about 12 inches down that will stop them from spreading my way. It won’t take care of the seeds themselves, but I can battle those one-on-one. I could also be convinced to spray a heavy dose of ground kill on the areas closest to my property….

In the front yard, the source of the problem (two houses down) is a total loss. Sadly, the house between us gave up as well. He decided to go the weed killer route, and I can now attest from personal experience that it doesn’t work. His lawn is spotted with sprouts. As much as I can, I make small efforts to help him by pulling bulbs, but there’s only so much I can do without digging holes throughout his lawn.

The only good news is that there is a driveway between my lawn and his. Hopefully it is enough to keep them at bay.

Remember, if you choose to plant grape hyacinths, I will do my best to resist raining fire and brimstone down on your lawn, but I can’t promise you anything.

You’ve been warned.

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Money can’t buy you happiness

We all knew it was true all along, but now we really do know it.

A recent study (I’m still looking in vain for the article…) showed an interesting attitude about money. The researchers took a large sampling of test subjects where half the subjects were self-declared wealthy and the other half were not. The participants were then exposed to simple sensations that could be called pleasurable.

What the study found was that the self-declared wealthy group took less satisfaction in the pleasurable experiences than the “poor” group. The study then took the poor group, divided it in half, and repeated the experiment with just that group. The first half of the poor group was shown an image of a pile of money before being stimulated and the second half was shown the same image but it had been blurred to the point of being unrecognizable. Interestingly, the results showed that the first half that saw the pile of money had a reduced perception of satisfaction and mirrored the results of the wealthy group, while the second half who saw only the blurred image mirrored the results of the original poor group.

So what does that mean? Well, the correlation that the researchers pulled was that money, and even thinking about or dwelling on money, had the effect of dulling our ability to enjoy the simple pleasures of life.

My opinion of the personal application is that we’ll be much happier in life if we allow money and the accumulation thereof to be the result of our lives and not the purpose of our lives. I think, in many ways, that the Book of Mormon supports this idea well when it says in Jacob 2:18 -19:

But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God.

And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good—to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted.

Surely a person who approaches life and wealth in this way will be infinitely happier than the inverse.

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Kaboom! New Laptop

That’s one of those titles that doesn’t really need much of a follow up, does it?

The monitor has been on the fritz for several months now (since before Christmas). We had figured out how to make it work well enough for basic use, which is all we use it for now that we have the iPad. The “fix” involved putting a bit of pressure on a specific spot on the screen. We think there is a loose connection in there somewhere, but after several attempts to find it and taking apart the computer twice, I discovered the pressure point.

Seemed good enough for me.

Last night, though, as I was trying to find the point, which has become increasingly difficult to find, I heard a snap, and this big nasty break started to spread across the monitor. Everything that is either horizontal or vertically aligned with the break is gone. Black. Right now, you can see a narrow band across the very top of the monitor and the bottom-right quarter. That’s it. Just shy of completely useless.

Sigh…. We had hoped to save the money by not buying a new one, but what can you do? The thing is as dead as dead can be. Ah well… ’twas old and nearing the end of its life anyway.

Sadly, the other laptop we have that is a full seven years older is still working well enough. It is so old that I doubt it could handle most of today’s software, but still….

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Releasing Pressure

Courtney and I had an interesting conversation yesterday that led to some new insights into our relationship with each other and even with money. We’ve been Dave Ramsey fans for about three years now, and in that time, we’ve done a lot of incredible things. The biggest success is that we’ve paid down over $40,000 of debt to the point that all we really have left is the mortgage. That, more than anything, is what has made life imminently possible for us during the recent recession. In fact, we’ve thrived when many have not.

In short, Dave Ramsey has been good for us.

On the other hand, though, we realized that we’ve gone too far in some ways. We’ve been so focused on getting out of debt and being responsible with our money that we’ve largely forgotten how to have fun. How to live life. I don’t blame Dave Ramsey for that; rather, I blame the over-zealousness that both Courtney and I have had to be debt free and past all this.

I was talking with a friend about how frustrated I was sometimes that life seemed to be moving so slowly and especially how it seemed like we never enjoyed anything anymore. He pointed out that he and his wife regularly and intentionally spend money in ways that, while not necessarily wasteful, are surely outside of the relative strictness of our plan. And it dawned on me that that was essential.

To be fair, Dave Ramsey has always recommended that you include a Blow Money category in your budgets. This is money that is unattached to any strings, any expectations, or any rules. It’s literally money to blow. My first understanding of the term was that it was money to blow, as in waste. Of course, Courtney and I both saw that as bad and limited our Blow Money budget to only $10 a month. And we’ve done that for over three years now.

But yesterday the light bulb went off. Blow money isn’t money to waste; it’s money to release the inevitable pressure of living a life that asks you to wait, asks you to put certain things first, and asks you to delay pleasure. Our frustration comes not from our successes, but rather the lack of celebrations. The lack of doing those things that let us step back, take a deep breath, and attack again. We’ve never been lazy with our finances, but to say that we’ve plateaued a time or two would be an understatement.

The Japan Earthquake and nuclear crisis paints a picture for me–Each reactor is surrounded by a containment vessel, which is designed to hold the radiation in. However, when the pressure in the vessel reaches a critical point, the vessel vents some of the pressure, which prevents a major disaster even if it does release a minimal amount of radiation. I see us working the same way. Our financial containment vessel is strong and has managed to hold in the pressure of what we are doing for over three years now, but we’re at the point of needing to release something. And we can do that without blowing the whole thing.

To put it all in perspective, we sat down last night and talked about how long it’s been since we’ve done things as a family:

• Go to the movies–We’ve been twice in the last three years as a family (both times in the last six months). Granted, we wouldn’t have gone anyway until Myron was old enough to enjoy it.
• Go out to eat–Four times in the last year. Granted, it’s harder with Courtney’s sugar allergy, but still.
• Go on a real vacation–Four years. Granted, Myron again, but… four years?

None of those things are essential to happiness or salvation, true, but they can be done in ways that are healthy, constructive, and beneficial for our family. Most importantly, they are a productive step back from the difficulty of what we are doing.

Last night, for the first impromptu time in three years, I loaded up the family in the car, and we went out to eat. It was fun. It cost $35. I spent half the time being annoyed at myself that we could buy half-a-week of groceries with that money and the rest of the time beating those thoughts back. But it sure was nice to release some pressure last night.

Come the new month, we’ll find a fatter, if only a little bit, Blow Money envelope. It’ll slow down some of our goals and progress a bit, but it’ll make the eventual accomplishment of the same all the more likely.

In your own financial goals and efforts, make sure you plan for you.

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Myron’s Eye

We had Myron’s one-year update for his eye today. I find it hard to believe that a year has already gone by, and at the same time, I find it hard to believe that it has only been a year.

The news is… okay.

It turns out that his lazy eye is back in full force. It’s not as bad as it was pre-surgery, but the problem is returning in a new way (true lazy eye as opposed to the outright crossed eyes). The good news is that a lazy eye is likely treatable by simply doing patching. We have instructions to do just that for the next six to eight weeks, four+ hours a day.

We had hoped for a clean bill of health, knew it wouldn’t be that, and are satisfied with the progress that has happened anyway. We are, as usual, quite hopeful that all will be well given time. He’s resilient and strong, and his body has responded as it should.

We will probably do a fast for him this coming Fast Sunday; any prayers and other efforts would be greatly appreciated. I’ve always felt that the Lord will heal this particular affliction after we’ve proved our faith.

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In Defense of the Family

I read a very interesting article in the latest Ensign, by Sister Julie B. Beck, who is one of my most favorite church leaders. One of the things I love about her is that she is so… honest. She is sincere in her words and her approach, and she speaks directly to you. Love it.

One of the comments she made in the article that has really stuck with me was a quote by a prophet. Here’s the quote, and I’d love you to take a wild guess at the date it was said and who said it:

Many of the social restraints which in the past have helped to reinforce and to shore up the family are dissolving and disappearing. The time will come when only those who believe deeply and actively in the family will be able to preserve their families in the midst of the gathering evil around us. …

… There are those who would define the family in such a nontraditional way that they would define it out of existence. …

We of all people, brothers and sisters, should not be taken in by the specious arguments that the family unit is somehow tied to a particular phase of development a moral society is going through. We are free to resist those moves which downplay the significance of the family and which play up the significance of selfish individualism. We know the family to be eternal.

Any guesses?

It was President Kimball, and the date was President Kimball, and the date was November 1980.

And yet you would not have been surprised to see that it had been President Monson and November 2010 either, would you?

The family has been under attack for many years now, and church leaders have been urging us to take an active stance in its defense.

If you haven’t read that article from Sister Beck, go do it. It’s inspiring. It’s actionable. It’s hopeful.

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Movie Review: Unstoppable

Unstoppable was part two of the double-header that brought Megamind to us. I was really nervous because I find it so hard to watch two movies in a row, especially when you have no idea if they are even good.

I was pleased.

The Good

If you are a fan of intense movies, like The Fugitive, you’ll like this. It was solidly intense even if there were a few parts that were dramatized to the point of being a little too unbelievable. The drama starts early and doesn’t let up until the very end.

Denzel Washington is, as always, solid. He always presents such an honest and trustworthy character, like Harrison Ford. I personally hope someone casts him in the role of the villain some day because that would be just as disturbing as when Ford played the bad guy in What Lies Beneath. There’s something about seeing the guy who is always good suddenly be bad that really messes with your mind.

Chris Pine, the other lead, was also good. I’m glad to see his star rising, especially after his performance in the latest Star Trek.

But back to the movie….

The film plays out like your standard WE’RE-ALL-GOING-TO-DIE film, but you can’t fault the film for it. It’s the formula, it’s what we, as an audience, want to see, and it works. Another thing I enjoyed is that the film didn’t necessarily try to waste time giving everyone interesting back stories that made us want to love them. Instead, it focused almost entirely on the disaster at hand while also offering enough personal information to keep us happy, aware, and satisfied.

The Bad

Language. Lots of it.

And it was also cliche. There were plenty of the expected narrow misses, the jerk boss who was fired and replaced by one of the heroes (of course). There was the standard brief argument between our two leads about chasing the runaway down and saving the day. The standard scary moment when you think all is lost. The rough relationships between the leads that eventually smooth over. The lost relationships with families that are resolved because of the tragedy. All cliche.

But… That is expected. It’s part of the genre, and it works.

I was also vaguely disappointed that the film didn’t play up some of the narrow misses more. The first is a narrow head-on hit with another train full of school kids. You know it’s happening, but the film never paints it in a way that truly leaves you scared. Never. In contrast, they have the runaway smash through a horse trailer, and in that one, you are very much aware of how narrow it was and how dangerous the situation is. I was disappointed that the second miss involving two horses was so much more powerful than the miss involving a train full of kids. Reverse those.

Conclusion

It was good. I liked it. Is it as good as The Fugitive? No, but then again, few films are. The intensity is there, but it wasn’t the masterpiece that The Fugitive was. Was it an appropriate follow up for a double-header? Sure.

For what it was designed to do, it worked. I noticed myself needing to consciously remind my shoulders to relax and just watch. Courtney went from laying down at the start of the film to siting upright for the majority.

Rating: 3 out of 4. I wouldn’t necessarily buy it, but it is a film to throw in every now and then when you’re in the mood.

 

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Movie Review: Megamind

In a word: Hilarious.

The Good

I have been begging Courtney to get this one for weeks now. In fact, I’ve been scouring the local Red Box for a week straight hoping to get my hands on it. Why? I truly don’t know. I can’t stand Will Ferrell (one of the lead voice actors). I’m normally not a big fan of Shrek, the same company that made Megamind, and half a dozen other reasons. For all the anticipation, I should have been paying closer attention to the writing on the wall that said I wasn’t going to like it.

I’m glad I ignored the writing.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie start to finish. The one-liners, the relationships, the self-conscious and inept super-villian…. I even really appreciated the plot twists with Metroman. Just funny stuff.

I won’t say too much more (mostly because I’m not sure how to describe my pleasure over this film), but I will say that no longer are the Incredibles the only super-hero show in town. Megamind gives them a solid run for their money.

The Bad

Hmm…. There was a touch of language, which I’m more sensitive to when watching a kid movie. That’s about it.

Conclusion

This is not the best film of the year. It has plot holes. It has miscues. That being said, it’s funny start to finish, interesting for both kids and adults, and a new family favorite.

Rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars and a solid BUY!

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Book Review: Indispensable by Monday, by Larry Myler

Oh, how the abandoned Book List calls to me….

Despite the best laid plans, I haven’t paid much attention to my Book List. I got busy with school, work, and a dozen other things. However, recently my CEO gave me a book, Indispensable by Monday, by Larry Myler, that fit in well with my overall theme.

The Good

Honestly, my favorite part of the book was that it helped me understand who my CEO is better. A recent job change has added some new responsibilities to my plate that brings me into fairly regular one-on-one contact with the CEO, and I’ve found the book helpful in understanding how and why he thinks the way he does.

Myler also presented a new (to me) way of looking at business, expenses, and value in a company. I had always kind of taken the approach that every dollar in a business was more or less equal to any other dollar. Not quite true. Myler illustrates that found dollars are more valuable than earned dollars, and that you, as an employee, can become infinitely more valuable to your company by actively finding dollars. The difference between found dollars and earned dollars is that found dollars go directly, and entirely, to the bottom line. Earned dollars, however, have all sorts of expenses associated with them that, in the end, reduces them to mere pennies. Depending on the company, finding $1,000 dollars in savings may very well be the equivalent of producing tens of thousands in sales, and Myler suggests that few employees understand the basic principles behind that that allows them to present themselves as truly valuable, and therefore indispensable, employees.

That is knowledge I greatly appreciate having.

The Bad

I struggled with this book in a lot of ways. Myler gives numerous suggestions for improving your worth in a company, but as I reviewed the list, I actually felt somewhat powerless to enact the changes he suggested. It just didn’t seem reasonable. For example, Myler pointed out that one of the first things he does when consulting with a company is to review the utility rates and ensure that they are being charged appropriately. While we may scoff at the idea, he pointed out that finding even $5,000 in annual savings in this one area that all businesses have may, depending on the company, result in huge savings over the long-term. And he’s right. However, how am I as a low-totem employee, supposed to enact that kind of change?

Myler would probably strongly disagree with me on this, but I realized halfway through the book that much of what he was saying applies really to managers, directors, and others who have more direct influence. Yes, you and I can and should do much to improve our worth to the company, but many of the changes are simply beyond our abilities to enact.

And if I may add the caveat on that…. It’s not so much that you and I can’t do those things, but that many businesses don’t necessarily encourage or allow that. Let’s be honest, how many of you work for a company that would grant you access to the Lease Agreement for your office if you asked for it? The utility bill? How many of you work for a company that would freely offer up sensitive financial data for your review? How many of you work for a company that would allow you to freely review internal processes for cost savings, especially if your job had nothing to do with those areas?

I guess what I’m saying is that I do agree with Myler, but I find his suggestions impractical for most of us because our business cultures don’t encourage that. Even knowing that my CEO is a big fan of this book, I cannot see the situation where I could gain access to the resources I would need to enable me to even begin researching those changes. I just can’t.

In my new role, I’ve been responsible for improving employee engagement and helping our company improve internally. If I’ve noticed anything it is that the employees themselves are quite eager to grow, to learn, and to do more than ever before. They are willing to see the company succeed and accomplish wonderful things. They are eager, hungry, and willing, and when they are given the chance, they respond. But what I haven’t seen yet is the reciprocation of the same from the upper echelons. I haven’t seen those attitudes encouraged. In fact, I’ve seen them squashed. I haven’t seen those people supported. In fact, I’ve seen a steady stream of them leaving because they gave up.

That’s not to say that there isn’t hope and potential, that there aren’t managers who have caught that vision and work and act in ways that encourage growth, because I have also seen that as well. But the principles in Myler’s book only work effectively in a two-way street system where the give is as great if not greater than the take, where the trust is greater than the distrust, and where the support and encouragement is ubiquitously dominant over any other attitude.

Let’s be honest…. I’d work for Myler in a heart beat if he actually behaves as he says we should (I believe he does). In the meantime, I’ll settle for pushing my company more in that direction as well.

Conclusion

Hmm…. I didn’t care for the book that much at first; I freely admit that. But I also purposefully waited a few days to write the review the allow time for my thoughts to congeal a little and separate and combine again in new ways. Thinking back at it, I think Myler doesn’t necessarily account for the fact that most companies don’t function as he portrays. That’s a negative. However, he does paint an attractive picture of mutual cooperation across the breadth of a company that, if it existed, would be a benefit to all.

I’d like to work for that company.

NOTE: Please recognize that this is a public post, not private, and that your comments and questions might not necessarily reflect highly on my current position if they were ever seen. I’ve been careful to write what I’ve written in ways that I feel are fully defensible and justifiable. If your comments don’t reflect that and have the potential to cause me harm, I reserve the right to edit them.

And having put this note on here, I can only imagine the hilariously awesome remarks most of you are concocting in your minds…. And yes, Sarah L., I’m mostly looking at you.

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Of Carrots, Eggs, and Coffee

Hmmm… That sounds like an utterly awful recipe.

In truth, it is the object lesson from a class I just attended. My work offers short one-hour classes on various topics, many of them related to mental health. This particular class talked about hardiness.

Most of what we talked about was a repeat (good though) from the class I just finished in Psychology, but there were some very good points. And the object lesson, coming up, was particularly effective for me. To be brief….

Hardiness is made up of three specific elements known as the Three Cs:

• Control–This can be defined as understanding what is within our circle of influence and then choosing to exercise the control we can. It also recognizes that there are things that we cannot control.
  We are more hardy as we focus our energies on those things within our power to control.
• Commitment–Think of your value systems. People who have a commitment to value systems don’t struggle as much when faced with certain challenges or stressors.
  It’s not a perfect comparison, but I see this being related to the idea of making choices prior to facing conflict. If we’ve already chosen that we aren’t going to do drugs, when drugs are offered to us, we don’t go through that process. We are committed to who we are, and that commitment helps define us as individuals.
  I believe this also has a measure of influencing our perceptions of self-worth.
• Challenge–The Third C is the ability to accept challenges and the perception of stressors as challenges instead of threats. Life, and its problems, is something we can overcome as opposed to something we consistently must defeat, and that attitude makes us hardier individuals.

That’s the basics. Now to the Carrots, Eggs, and Coffee.

The instructor brought with her three tubs. In each tub was an object that had been boiled, and she compared the boiling process to the stressors we might face in life: work, schooling, family, economy, etc. The first she showed us was the tub of carrots. The carrots were squishy, mushy, and quite soft. The second was the egg, which had gone from fragile and runny to hard. The third was the coffee, which had originally been a bean and was now a liquid.

The point is that boiling (stressors) change us. They change each of us in unique ways to our time, our personalities, and our lives. Sometimes challenges make us soft. Sometimes challenges make us hard. And sometimes challenges change us completely from one thing to another. The point is that becoming soft is not a sign of weakness just as becoming hard is not a sign of strength. Each change is really a result of our attitudes, perception of the event, and hardiness.

The class was interesting and a good reminder that we are all different, we all handle things in our own way, and, especially, we are all affected in our own way.

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