One of the most common names that I keep hearing is spelled many ways but still could be either a girl’s name or a guy’s:

• Kary
• Cary
• Cari
• Carrie

I see and hear that name a lot. I must say that I know a lot more women and girls with the name, but there are some guys, too.

What a fun time we had. We grilled about 20 pounds of hamburgers and cut up a cold seedless watermelon. I had bags of chips and a gallon of macaroni salad, too. Great food and fun times were had by all.

So I still have to maintain a separate calendar. I wish I could customize the Facebook calendar and add in the ones that I want.

He’s been acting normal and eating regular food and doing everything like he was before he got sick, so that’s good news. Look at him sitting so pretty for me:

It is always nice to get something free to try – it surely must open the minds of a good percentage of people who might not otherwise try a particular food or drink but soon discover that they actually like the product. Part of this is due to favoring brands or flavor with which you grew up or are accustomed to eating and drinking. Part of it is due to a natural resistance to try new things without some incentive. And part of it, in my household anyway, is that the person doing the grocery shopping is a creature of habit and only searches out the brands and items that we know we like or prefer so they can get finished with the chore of shopping and get back home as quickly as possible.

Lately I’ve been using their search tool quite a bit. It’s easy to type in just a word or two and come up with a lot of different websites. What a difference from the old days of having to go to the mall and spend hours searching all the different stores to find things. Now everything is just a quick click away.

Nowadays you do all of that yourself. Which is fine if you are handy with tools and have someplace like a covered and lit garage to work on your car. The rest of us have to resort to our own devices. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can’t afford to take my car to Firestone every time a little happens to my car when they are going to charge $100 for every little maintenance job. Last week I took in the car and asked for an oil change and a new air filter. The bill was $100. That’s absurd – I was expected to pay $35, tops.

I’ll have to find someplace else to take care of these routine maintenance issues for me, because I can’t afford the excessive Firestone charges.

Then I came across the website for www.xperiencedays.com and knew that would be the answer for me. I can purchase a gift certificate for Mom for a Hot Air Balloon Ride and then they can call and schedule the ride at their own convenience. This will be something totally unique for them – even with all their travels and adventures, I know they have never had a hot air balloon ride before and I know she will be thrilled to spend a morning floating over the Shenandoah Valley.

I can’t wait to see her face light up when she opens this gift on Mother’s Day!

Well, these days, in my neighborhood, everyone is busy planting fancy shrubs and exotic bushes, sticking solar lights in a row across the front or along the walkway, and sticking a variety of different figures in their yard. The lady next door has a 2 foot concrete monk in a long robe, praying. The guy across the street has 5 plastic Canadian geese decoys, permanently planted in the yard as if they were in a corn field, feeding and gathering for their migration.

I’ve decided to put out a variety of critters, with an emphasis on frogs. I’m just starting my collection – we’ll see what cute little froggies I can find while I’m out shopping these next several weekends.

Doyle’s music career started back in the 60′s with some guys he knew in Texas. That turned into a good time with Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan and years of drug and alcohol abuse.

Somehow out of all those coma years he had a son who has grown into a talent in his own right, now playing with Eric Clapton on tour, and Doyle has a new album out that was nominated for 2008 Grammy award, called “Is It News.”

Hey Doyle – way to go!

The first time I saw the sign, I thought what is up with chicken poop? Is is a new fertilizer for your garden? Is it some sick new dietary supplement?

There was no other advertising, no TV commercials, no ads in the newspaper. I had no idea what was the big deal about chicken poop.

Now, just a year later, there is no longer any chicken poop stocked at any of the local Walgreens. And now I want some.

Casio has several atomic watches in their G-Force line, which is another strong selling point in my book. G-Force means it is super tough, and lots of guys need a tough watch – especially guys who work in construction or the military, and guys who go hunting and camping need a watch that is rugged. If you need a great birthday gift or even a going away gift for an active, outdoorsy guy in the office, you should take a look at the website www.bluedial.com and consider a casio watch. I would certainly get one for my boss on a special occasion.

My daughter has a nice pair of glasses that she uses for driving and for days when her allergies are acting up. The spring pollen really bothers her eyes, so she just wears her glasses every day when the pollen is bad. The rest of the time she would rather wear contacts. She feels more attractive without the glasses, but her allergies only last for a couple of weeks each year. And I think there may be some value in giving her eyes a break from the contacts for a few weeks, too.

Since everything is in bloom here right now, she back to glasses for a while. I think she’ll be ready to go back to contacts again around the first of the month. So now is the perfect time to shop for new contacts.

I found a site on the internet that has all the popular contacts brands and very good prices – they are even cheaper than the Sam’s Club prices. I compared the prices of her acuvue oasys lenses against the price the eye doctor was going to charge and also the Sam’s Club price, and found the website saves almost 70% from the retail price. I’ll go ahead and order 8 boxes for her and use the mail in rebate – we’ll end up saving over $60. That savings is for each eye, so we’ll actually save over $120 total!

If they have it in L.A., we are all going to go for the fight weekend and invite some of our top clients to come along as our guests. We have to be in California for a regional meeting anyway, and it’s far enough in the future that we can work around either the 13th or the 20th without any problem.

But rumor has it that there is a fight scheduled for Mayweather/De La Hoya on September 20, 2008 at MGM Grand Garden Arena. That would mess up our regional meeting tie-in, but I know most of the executives would still like to go, so now I’m on pins and needles to see which way it is going to go. Either way, the executives get to go – but the rest of us might have to miss it if it’s in Vegas.

I use a website to get tickets to all kinds of sporting events and concerts, so I’ll be checking the site every few days to see when tickets become available and for which venue. At our staff meeting this morning, the boss gave me the “go ahead” to buy up to 30 Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs Oscar De La Hoya tickets as soon as they go up for sale.

1. Get off Lists – go to the website for the Direct Marketing Association, dmachoice.org and click on “Remove my name from those lists.” This is free, takes about 4 months to see the full impact of reduced unwanted mail, and stays in effect for 3 years.

2. Don’t Get on New Lists – marketers build new lists from product registration forms, contests and sweepstakes. Don’t fill those out.

3. Protect Your Identity – Register at optoutprescreen.com to opt out of prescreened credit offers. These offers come from the four credit bureaus, Experian, Transunion, Innovis and Equifax, who sell your data to the credit card companies.

4. Remain Anonymous – Sign up for grocery store loyalty cards and other membership-based discounts when you don’t need to actually receive anything in the mail from them by using a fake name with no address.

It is a documentary of the way prison officials in Arkansas and other states allowed the collection of blood from inmates that were infected with contagious diseases, such as HIV and Hepatitis. This contaminated blood was then introduced into the nation’s blood supply and thousands of people were infested with HIV and Hepatitis.

The film is by Kelly Duda and well worth watching, because people are still dying as a result of their actions.