Feeling more like myself

For the last few months, I've haven't felt well. I didn't know what was wrong, but I was always tired and borderline unhappy. Not depressed, just not really happy. In fact, I didn't feel like I was feeling anything. It was weird and not at all like how I usually feel. I was not normal, mentally or physically.<br /><br />I blamed it on my weight gain of 40 pounds in the past seven months. I'm sure that was part of it, but yesterday I realized something else that changed about two months ago.<br /><br />A quick recap of the past nine months:<br /><br />August 2011 - Broke my wrist while bicycling and was in a fingertip to elbow cast for three months (first month was a fingertip to shoulder cast). Told would most likely have surgery. Missed a ton of work since I couldn't type (I'm a software developer). Fortunately it all healed and no surgery, but a stressful period.<br /><br />Sept 2011 - My sister had a catastrophic stroke that left her completely paralyzed on her right side, unable to speak intelligibly, read or write. Previously a very active woman and now she's in a wheelchair.<br /><br />Nov 2011 - After a battle with her eldest daughter, my niece, whom I no longer speak to (she is seriously crazy), I was appointed my sister's legal guardian by the State of Alaska.<br /><br />Dec 2011 - Found out from my sister she'd been abused when I visited her at her assisted living in Fairbanks, Alaska. I live in Seattle. I can't tell you the horror of her trying to explain to me about the "bad" person. The only word she could say, "bad", over and over and point to her window. And her unending tears as she tried to tell me who had hurt her and what had happened, both of which I'll never know for sure because I can't understand her. <br /><br />Jan 2012 - Moved my sister to Seattle to live close to me in a wonderful adult family home.<br /><br />Feb 2012 - Filed a Vulnerable Adult Order of Protection with the state to keep my crazy niece away from my sister for the next five years.<br /><br />Mar 2012 - Started a high-pressure, intense project at work with a very tight, unrealistic, but government-imposed deadline. Very much outside my comfort zone on this project.<br /><br />Apr 2012 - Started breaking out in horrible hives, first a couple times a week, then every day. Huge red welts would appear for no apparent reason and itch like crazy, on different parts of my body on different days. And of course, let's not forget the lip swelling that happened randomly and made me look like a freak-a-zoid. It was misery.<br /><br />Late Apr 2012 - On the advice of a nurse, I started taking a 24-hour Claritin on a daily basis. The hives and lip swelling immediately stopped. It had happened three times the day before. I was about ready to go to the emergency room.<br /><br />Late Apr 2012 - June 28, 2012 - felt out of sorts. Extremely tired all the time. Eating out of control. Exercise almost non-existent. Often would get up early, get dressed to go to the gym, but wouldn't go. Too tired.<br /><br />June 29, 2012 - yesterday - I got up, started to take the Claritin as I have every day for two months and although I have been hive free for that entire time, I decided to <u>not</u> take it. The pressure has lifted at work, my sister stuff has settled into a comfortable routine. I haven't spoken to the crazy niece since February and doubt I will ever speak to her again. Did I really need to continue taking the Claritin? I decided no, it was time to stop it.<br /><br />Within only a few  hours, I felt different. I felt like myself. It was very weird. I was sitting at my desk yesterday and thought, why do I feel so different? What changed? I feel happy. I feel excited about my plans for July 4th. Life isn't bad.<br /><br />I hadn't felt that feeling for months. Then it hit me, I stopped taking a pill I'd been taking every day for two months. Even though they claim Claritin has little to no side effects, I really noticed a difference in myself when I stopped taking it. I also slept better last night than I have in a long time. Like a rock. I didn't wake up once all night which is unusual.  <br /><br />I feel ready to get back on the wagon. My wagon of choice this time around is the Paleo diet. Thanks to <a href="http://www.escapefromobesity.net/2012/06/considering-whole-30.html" target="_blank">Lyn's post</a> ( and this <a href="http://www.escapefromobesity.net/2012/06/elimination-diet-and-getting-closer-to.html" target="_blank">one</a>) regarding the Whole 30, I thought this is a good time to figure out what foods make me feel good and the ones that make me feel lousy. If that tiny little Claritin pill has such a huge impact on my body, I know all the junk I'm dumping into my body must really be playing havoc with my physical and mental health.<br /><br />I've got the book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1936608898/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=escapefromobesity-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1936608898">It Starts with Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways</a>, downloaded to my Kindle. I've skimmed it but will do some serious reading today and get the right food in the house (and the wrong food out of the house).<br /><br />Today's plan:<br />Gym<br />Reading (the book referenced above) <br />Grocery shopping (including the Farmer's Market)<br />House cleaning - yuk<br />Take my sister for a color/cut and maybe a movie if she's up to it see a movie. <a href="http://magicmikemovie.warnerbros.com/" target="_blank">Magic Mike</a> - don't laugh - she loves that kind of stuff. I think she'll get a kick out of it. Rottentomatoes.com gave it an 80% rating (okay, I'll admit it, I love Matthew McConaughey)<span style="color: black;">.</span><br /><br />Tomorrow - I will try to mow our lawn if it dries out a little. I have never mowed our lawn or even tried to start the lawn mower. We've lived her 14 years but it's my husband's thing. It hasn't been mowed in five weeks. I've never seen it this tall. My husband is usually a freak about the lawn, , always working on it trying to make it the nicest lawn in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, he's in Denver again this weekend. Fifth time in the last six weeks (and he just started a new job five weeks ago).<br /><br />His dad was taken to ER again on Thursday but is back at the nursing home today. His dad is complaining he can't breath. He's on oxygen, but he can't get enough. It's the emphysema. Damned smoking for the past 50 years. I wish the Federal government would make cigarette sales illegal and put the tobacco companies out of business.<br /><br />The tobacco industry is something I will never understand. I understand the whole financial aspect of it, the big business, the jobs that would be lost, the taxes the state and federal governments would lose, the revenue for the Indian tribes (we have an Indian Smoke shop on almost every corner here), but I just don't get it. Cigarettes are poison. They kill people. Slowly and painfully. Yes, I know it's a choice but it doesn't make any sense that it's okay to sell cigarettes. Okay, stepping off my soapbox. This is a weight loss blog, not an anti-smoking blog. Still, it just makes me crazy!<br /><br />Okay, until tomorrow. I plan to be back to daily posting now that I'm myself again. :)

Feeling more like myself

For the last few months, I've haven't felt well. I didn't know what was wrong, but I was always tired and borderline unhappy. No...

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Financial Analyst (Planning budget | forecasting Material cost | Inventory |revenue | Microsoft Excel SAP/SOX ) (#108305)

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">Job Title:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";"> Financial Analyst</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">Location:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";"> Milpitas, CA</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">Duration:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";"> Fulltime</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">Job Description: </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">The ideal candidate will have a minimum of 3 years of experience. Day to day includes the following: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";"></span><div class="WordSection1"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">1.Responsible for reviewing and forecasting Book, Ship, Revenue and Warranty  line items</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">2.Responsible for all line items associated with Manufacturing costs, this includes, headcount , materials and allocations costs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">3.Responsible for reviewing standard costing and E&O Materials for Division</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">4.Responsible for all line items associated with Fixed Cost, these include but are not limited to Compensation, Project Spend, Allocations and Depreciation of Internal Tools, more items may be added later</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">5.This person will be the primary contact for Director of Engineering and Director of Marketing to forecast and track spending at a detail level</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">6.Understanding of SOX compliance/Internal Control Requirements</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">7.Participate in strategic planning for Finance</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">8.Monthly/ Quarterly close processes and meet regular corporate deliverables.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">9.Able to work/cooperate with different levels of the organization in Finance, Engineering, Marketing, Sales.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">Education and Experience:</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">1.Able to work independently and proactively </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">2.Energetic, openness to learning, dependable, responsible</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">3.Self driven and motivated to invest the time to learn new processes, add to existing ones</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">4.Strong communication skills, open to discussions to resolve issues</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">5.Strong technical skills in Excel modeling, SAP, TM1</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">6.Share KT values</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">7.Bachelor's Level Degree</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">Basic Qualifications:</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">Bachelor's Level Degree with at least  5 years of experience.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">OR</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">Master's Level Degree with at least 3 years of experience.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif";">Please send your resumes to <a href="mailto:vinod.sanker@kla-tencor.com">vinod.sanker@kla-tencor.com</a> </span></b></div></div><div class="WordSection1"><br /></div></div>

Financial Analyst (Planning budget | forecasting Material cost | Inventory |revenue | Microsoft Excel SAP/SOX ) (#108305)

Job Title: Financial Analyst Location: Milpitas, CA Duration: Fulltime Job Description: The ideal candidate will have a minimum of 3 year...

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Google #3: Google Docs tips and tricks

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy2Y3wdZauBritLMGGxXkuETxAtDrfAQSNQ1jjGWRDSwTc72f_MQn6ENngQ_L-FoQUNczdVgbl4gWhjbdhv5I0OJTTwqyBlgGBtEU2XuflXKVajyFIIhb9hmqL_GP_QLZ5_i77A2orypI/s1600-h/image%25255B3%25255D.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="image" border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic2e-2ODxih9KprpZ1rR5qFvHfvYEoGyBTKNZrudz2aIUyKabgS5XYCJjJzVqWw8zgDozk5N53PudAuO4VPkLx2TBWhWyEchq4tCq9_aFYk4eWQ2TiNi5WDv7xf4LhAwkz-SVf-vm2REM/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-width: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Internet is full of posts relating to all the things you can do with Google Docs. It is an amazing suite especially when it is used in combination with Google Chrome. </span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Some of my favourite tips</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: small;">1. I love the fact that you can upload any document such as a Microsoft PowerPoint and immediately be given an URL to share in whatever way you choose. This means that in a blog, for example, you might want to share a PowerPoint link without having to put it to Slideshare, or you might want to share a Word document. I thought Box.net was the best way to do this but Google Docs is just as good.</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: small;">2. The Chrome extensions are amazing! For example, I LOVE the way that when you are browsing the Internet and you come across a website you like...OK, you can bookmark it in Diigo, BUT, if you want a more tangible form like a PDF of the page you just click on the extension <i>Send to Google Docs. The DocWatch </i>extension is also useful for collaboration and seeing if the document you are working with has been added to since you last looked. The third extension I LOVE is not necessarily for Google Docs but is the <i>Dictionary</i> extension where you can double click on any word on a web page and get the meaning. This is so useful for our students. Is there any wonder that Chrome is my favourite browser! Across the top of my Google Chrome browser I have all the little extensions I love to use - <i>Scoop.it, scrible toolbar for annotating, Diigo, Send to Google Docs, WatchDoc, Dictionary </i>- the list is growing daily!</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: small;">The following presentation outlines a few of my favourite tips and tricks from Google Docs. </span></div><div id="__ss_13496009" style="width: 425px;"><b style="display: block; margin: 12px 0px 4px;"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/fionabeal/google-docs-tips-and-tricks" title="Google docs tips and tricks">Google docs tips and tricks</a></b><object height="355" id="__sse13496009" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=googledocstipsandtricks-120629110238-phpapp02&stripped_title=google-docs-tips-and-tricks&userName=fionabeal" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /> <param name="wmode" value="transparent" /> <embed name="__sse13496009" src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=googledocstipsandtricks-120629110238-phpapp02&stripped_title=google-docs-tips-and-tricks&userName=fionabeal" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object> <br /><div style="padding-bottom: 12px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">View more <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/">presentations</a> from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/fionabeal">Fiona Beal</a>.</div></div></div>

google Google #3: Google Docs tips and tricks

  The Internet is full of posts relating to all the things you can do with Google Docs. It is an amazing suite especially when it is used in...

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My Awesome WW Leader

I have been a WW member unofficially since I was 17 years old.   I have also had 5 WW leaders since I've started this journey.<br /><br />My unofficial membership began when my aunts and uncle proposed a little family weight loss competition.  Aunt Patty photocopied her Points slider and made one for me out of a manila envelope (back when Points were based on calories, fat and fiber, and eTools didn't even exist!).  She taught me the system, and so our competition began.  I think I managed to lose around 20-25 pounds during my first run on WW.  Not bad!  (I might even still have that homemade slider back at my parents house - mental note to look for that the next time I go home!)  <br /><br />Once I went away to college and actually had money to afford my own official WW membership, I started attending meetings at the local center at Penn State.  I cannot even remember if my leader was male or female at this center!  Shows how much of an impact they had on me.  Though I must say, it was during this time that I was most successful on WW, having removed nearly 50 lbs from my 5'8" frame!  Oh the glory!  I remember the amazing compliments that my college friends would offer me - definitely a highlight of my life!<br /><br />Then I moved to Virginia in 2006, slowly regaining those 50 lbs, and started attending meetings in Fairfax, VA.  My WW leader there was Wayne.   HILARIOUS guy and was so incredibly popular among the NoVA WW's that I eventually quit attending the meetings because I couldn't stand the crowd.  He was like a WW celebrity - women falling at his heels for attention with their own weight loss quips.  He had great information, but I was never able to form a connection with him, most likely due to the shear number of people attending his meetings.  However, I knew I needed to form some connection with my leader in order to hold me accountable.  So, eventually I quit attending Wayne's meetings in Fairfax.<br /><br />At one point in 2007, I actually cancelled my WW membership.  I decided that there was no sense in paying for it if I couldn't keep myself committed.  But then, once I returned home from a 3 month hiatus for work in Kansas City, Joel and I decided we would do WW together.  I started attending meetings again for a short duration, this time at a church in Arlington, VA.  The leader there was nice enough, but before long I quit attending (I don't think I ever knew her name!).  The people attending this meeting just wasn't doing it for me and the leader was just so-so.  I think around this time Joel and I both lost approximately 30 lbs but started slacking off thereafter.  <br /><br />Then I moved from Arlington to Alexandria in 2008 and decided to start attending meetings at another location once more.  This time I attended meetings at a center in Springfield.....with Wayne (again)!  By now I felt that Joel would be enough to hold me accountable, so I no longer felt the need to connect with my leader.  Wayne sure was hilarious just as he was in 2006, but again, his meetings were packed!  So, instead of attending his meetings, I started attending Mary's meetings on another night.  Another nice lady, but she wasn't cutting it either.  I wanted Wayne's enthusiasm and knowledge combined with Mary's attendance level.  This time I hung in there for a solid year, but once I moved to Waldorf, MD in 2009, I all together gave up on attending meetings.  I never felt like they were providing that much of a benefit for me and so I became strictly an eTools member.  <br /><br />I stayed as an eTools member for about 2 years.  Then, Joel and I moved back to Alexandria from Maryland in 2011.  <br /><br />Has all this moving annoyed you yet?  It sure did for me!<br /><br />A few weeks after moving back to the Old Dominion, I decided to start <a href="http://the-big-weight.blogspot.com/2011/07/living-life-making-friends.html" target="_blank">attending meetings again</a>.  I made this decision for a number of reasons, but mainly so that I could try to make some friends.  I was also at my heaviest weight ever (in the 260s), and I needed a boost.  I wanted to start fresh with WW, get the crash course in PointsPlus (which had just turned over from the previous Points system), and reinvigorate my weight loss journey.  A woman of persistence, I was willing to give meetings another go despite my experience, because I was determined to find a leader I could connect with and learn from.  He/she just had to be out there!<br /><br /><br />Enter Sharon.<br /><br />Sharon, with the shining smile and bright eyes, greeted me warmly as I weighed in at the Alexandria center for the first time in July 2011.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn that she was this location's leader.  From Day 1, Sharon was exactly what I was looking for in a leader.  Not only was she enthusiastic about WW,  but she had a ton of knowledge and experience to share.  She was always very willing to talk with you one on one and it was clear that she had personal connections with her members.  Sharon had immediately introduced me to another member who was around my age, sharing this member's success story with me.  Sharon's positive energy and warm demeanor always kept me coming back, despite the snail's pace at which the weight is coming off this time around.  Sharon, hands down, was the leader I had been looking for all along.<br /><br />Last week, during my Wednesday meeting, with about 5 minutes remaining, she told us she had an announcement to make.  Being the morbid person that I am, my mind shot to "she has cancer!".  Thankfully I was wrong, but the news still wasn't good.  Sharon informed us that June 27 would be her last meeting with us as our leader.  As she had tears in her eyes, she shared with us that her and her husband were going through a divorce and that she had to take time off to focus on her, her daughter and the sale of her much-loved home.  By this point, many of the members had tears running down their faces, me included.  Sharon went on to say that she had gained back a considerable amount of weight due to the emotional stress she was experiencing. She said she no longer felt good about projecting the WW principles to us, whenever she wasn't even capable of following them.  I'm pretty sure none of us were judging her on this!  Still, many of us expressed our support and concern to her at the end of the meeting.  I left the center with an extremely heavy heart.<br /><br />The irony in this story is that Sharon had weighed me in for this meeting, and I had told her that I didn't want to know my weight because I had just returned from our honeymoon.  She flashed her trademark smile and expressed genuine happiness for me as I shared our quick story with her.  Then, 30 minutes later, she shares her news.  But, that is the kind of person she is.  Despite the crap she has going on in her life, you would have never known.  Sharon was always smiling, always encouraging, always positive.  <br /><br />Last night was our last meeting with her until hopefully this fall.  She promises to come back to our meeting site at some point this summer to attend as a member, not a leader.  Her only request for us last night was that we pray for her.  She specifically said: "Don't feel bad for me.  Be glad for me.  I am going to have time to change my life and my daughter's life for the better.  All I ask is that you pray for me."<br /><br />I wanted to share this story with you so that you can pray for Sharon as well.<br /><br /><b style="color: #351c75;">How do you feel about your WW leader/Jenny Craig consultant/other well-being consultant? </b>

Weight Watchers My Awesome WW Leader

I have been a WW member unofficially since I was 17 years old.   I have also had 5 WW leaders since I've started this journey. My unoffi...

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you scare me, but i like you

<span style="background-color: white;">I started working on ideas for my living room a few weeks </span><span style="background-color: white;">ago</span><span style="background-color: white;"> and I'm having some good times with these fabric and paint ideas. (I'll share my board soon) I've realized though, that I have a color phobia. I'm usually down with all colors, and don't have any particular fear of using any of them...except for one.<br /></span><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Orange.<br /></span><br /><span style="background-color: white;">I've tried to use it a few times - in paint, fabric, accessories - and I almost always chicken out. Its sad. I'm thinking I might need therapy. </span><span style="background-color: white;"><br />This is my sole dip into the orange pool. Chicken.</span><br /><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXb8FwRZyQkKVBxLeGb1jmTOpxn6P9DjT7ocrW6_C31PoByLctHs7w4kK8eu8UZEPrjlofPgda_6oCbg9bAYZmHWLBiDn-kKLEprTRVsQ1mNfGVHGof0xJaXXx_NaH86VY70tcqBi4lYU-/s1600/P3145191.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXb8FwRZyQkKVBxLeGb1jmTOpxn6P9DjT7ocrW6_C31PoByLctHs7w4kK8eu8UZEPrjlofPgda_6oCbg9bAYZmHWLBiDn-kKLEprTRVsQ1mNfGVHGof0xJaXXx_NaH86VY70tcqBi4lYU-/s640/P3145191.JPG" width="424" /></a></div><br /><span style="background-color: white;">I really like orange. And I find that I <a href="http://pinterest.com/ladybaum/" target="_blank">pin it</a> a ton.</span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj61CL5oPI2EpNcNXAPUSTv2QricDjcrYkg20USntvFVLJVmJiE9cS8otZqOsS5_V-wX9ZU-oZs-E2ALBhM5YWcVam0l-XQQgwAZoC2GaxEXQioe60W0ny044T95BEx_I2DN-bLTrQLanG9/s1600/TobiFairley.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj61CL5oPI2EpNcNXAPUSTv2QricDjcrYkg20USntvFVLJVmJiE9cS8otZqOsS5_V-wX9ZU-oZs-E2ALBhM5YWcVam0l-XQQgwAZoC2GaxEXQioe60W0ny044T95BEx_I2DN-bLTrQLanG9/s640/TobiFairley.jpeg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://tobifairley.com/portfolio/glenwood/" target="_blank">Tobi Fairley</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtjSwp3ZRRqk7qhiOTUK8Ccgrj5B_6DLmArqup4OWiOcsF2BAUN3Pg1-WTi-qMT_h7EcfhfIGZp8hmS8dxGg461oh0fDW5ZKi3gvWwIVvYJOUAQSmwEKLfaa3QUH-nHoyVplfPbRuu4ywC/s1600/Style+at+Home+design+editor+Jessica+Waks.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtjSwp3ZRRqk7qhiOTUK8Ccgrj5B_6DLmArqup4OWiOcsF2BAUN3Pg1-WTi-qMT_h7EcfhfIGZp8hmS8dxGg461oh0fDW5ZKi3gvWwIVvYJOUAQSmwEKLfaa3QUH-nHoyVplfPbRuu4ywC/s640/Style+at+Home+design+editor+Jessica+Waks.jpeg" width="544" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.styleathome.com/homes/interiors/interior-girly-glam-bachelorette-pad/a/42127" target="_blank">Style at Home</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhdVhZP8Kr_-bTFqzXXpQQktsoKvmFMieVBDVCDaGKNFF2LxBmFB_OkLSzdq2gWoeAEhkRRsdBVYgcAUBBHXkynC27T80Ut7aX8aDSdCAv8BViaAqzdsMzeKnjZAKTH6hea6YttpA3q337/s1600/amyweaver.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="522" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhdVhZP8Kr_-bTFqzXXpQQktsoKvmFMieVBDVCDaGKNFF2LxBmFB_OkLSzdq2gWoeAEhkRRsdBVYgcAUBBHXkynC27T80Ut7aX8aDSdCAv8BViaAqzdsMzeKnjZAKTH6hea6YttpA3q337/s640/amyweaver.jpeg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amyweaverdesign.com/portfolio_2.html" target="_blank">Amy Weaver</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiythxczK-pM8vmpIS527-o9TLh_bCeBpptSFx2Br0RS7U6zVfpEq5Tx5Nc4jLSmpC_-wG9AazRARZ__mRvz893hGZJ3z5hxDNe51MD_wZEQQxbolijVoBGHX5PRC1pWDggdMJEd2XkNiSF/s1600/TobiFairley2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiythxczK-pM8vmpIS527-o9TLh_bCeBpptSFx2Br0RS7U6zVfpEq5Tx5Nc4jLSmpC_-wG9AazRARZ__mRvz893hGZJ3z5hxDNe51MD_wZEQQxbolijVoBGHX5PRC1pWDggdMJEd2XkNiSF/s640/TobiFairley2.jpeg" width="472" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://tobifairley.com/portfolio/energy-house/" target="_blank">Tobi Fairley</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikmQqw4fG7kBPTkkpnXZv4sz81NzIe0QrsFe5AtOaLJ2dbr2vpfdL9pH0Pqbb5h5NEU2Q7Jf2kfH60cbN6zAqqePy6x79OJD5BPXcFmK8ILbosEYYkAfsScy7SEHJH7PA_IfUdLX8e4FKu/s1600/MarthaStewart.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikmQqw4fG7kBPTkkpnXZv4sz81NzIe0QrsFe5AtOaLJ2dbr2vpfdL9pH0Pqbb5h5NEU2Q7Jf2kfH60cbN6zAqqePy6x79OJD5BPXcFmK8ILbosEYYkAfsScy7SEHJH7PA_IfUdLX8e4FKu/s640/MarthaStewart.jpeg" width="496" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.marthastewart.com/" target="_blank">Martha Stewart</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhORdmyZqeTt78Q1u8WrT_wf0476WbQSDIWEK6ZRFlXkJlaJma7Z7ncnX-xY3zsS1r-cSfzvQifa4E6yoV3yHq_jGI6nDKWPEfLDsUAyO-2stoP-5_RkxRj6gVaYN0y7K6E4BgMZ927XIsk/s1600/Style+at+Home+design+editor+Jessica+Waks-1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhORdmyZqeTt78Q1u8WrT_wf0476WbQSDIWEK6ZRFlXkJlaJma7Z7ncnX-xY3zsS1r-cSfzvQifa4E6yoV3yHq_jGI6nDKWPEfLDsUAyO-2stoP-5_RkxRj6gVaYN0y7K6E4BgMZ927XIsk/s640/Style+at+Home+design+editor+Jessica+Waks-1.jpeg" width="504" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.styleathome.com/homes/interiors/interior-girly-glam-bachelorette-pad/a/42127" target="_blank">Style at Home</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAXpp_bt8yuRkqmJawBGfYe_2loaMQ76vHRWPXIuqa2uDXFyMUIKDZLpzZ0bo3pDocSmtfGCJ5ZD3Vdco3kXfhxmjRcGXmNDd0vLBF3o5aowulOBrb80Ez6DGQIEzIpX8K7rIq8bmucre_/s1600/Color+pop.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAXpp_bt8yuRkqmJawBGfYe_2loaMQ76vHRWPXIuqa2uDXFyMUIKDZLpzZ0bo3pDocSmtfGCJ5ZD3Vdco3kXfhxmjRcGXmNDd0vLBF3o5aowulOBrb80Ez6DGQIEzIpX8K7rIq8bmucre_/s640/Color+pop.jpeg" width="514" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://amiecorley.com/" target="_blank">Amie Corley</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOOon-CfDvUt1pxh55xReU-Jpwkl-4qCpDQj1dJa4fE98IRJ5sSqPpwujvIL1t-uEBzwlTrtZ1s3FfBf67tqbkN5RJgaLBj-At9zd07yOXbMsBX0jSxv5zg4jEfsdx-Wu33FRMMPTEMRRW/s1600/mr-banks-beforeafter-guest-bedrooms.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOOon-CfDvUt1pxh55xReU-Jpwkl-4qCpDQj1dJa4fE98IRJ5sSqPpwujvIL1t-uEBzwlTrtZ1s3FfBf67tqbkN5RJgaLBj-At9zd07yOXbMsBX0jSxv5zg4jEfsdx-Wu33FRMMPTEMRRW/s640/mr-banks-beforeafter-guest-bedrooms.jpeg" width="424" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.peppermintbliss.com/2012/06/mr-banks-beforeafter-guest-bedrooms/" target="_blank">Peppermint Bliss</a></td></tr></tbody></table>Is there a color you are scared to use but always seem drawn to?<br /><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Also, before I go, a big THANK YOU to <a href="http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/before-after-restoring-a-dilapidated-deck-the-little-black-door-173326" target="_blank">Apartment Therapy for featuring our deck</a> redo this week. Can I get a WAHOO?! (And thanks to <a href="http://mybestfriendcraig.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Charmaine</a> for sending the link to me)</span>

you scare me, but i like you

I started working on ideas for my living room a few weeks  ago  and I'm having some good times with these fabric and paint ideas. (I'...

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Transformer: Thoughts from the Perfect Moment

Good morning, my friends. I read a recent ebook by Andy Andrews entitled "Perfect" that changed my perspective. The point on the book was that we notice all the things that are wrong, but do we notice the perfect moments? Kip had sent me the ebook with a note that "let's start looking for perfect."<br />This morning is one of those.<br /><br /><a href='https://picasaweb.google.com/115916382183421477315/BloggerPictures?authkey=Gv1sRgCNPCp6bK0YDF6gE#5749424083570633218'><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7DkWRPkvdLlTzw0f7l8L67_268WyBLhtOYVlAvB8u3H2q3r7kiGvKfndB1uzsuil2c0XtLYi2IhL98qeWMgXsezLeqItDxNLgfTT4KaHWyCyqYjE9iYrE93qPr3UL9GLOZ3rtpZ57dGnJ/s288/0.jpg" style="margin:5px" width="267"></a><br /><br />I get up so early (5 am most days) that for me to sleep until 7am is quite a feat. Up at 7am, it was still foggy here in North Georgia, where my husband finally got me away from the self-imposed rigor of my daily routines meant to keep my house neat, the 3 kids in line and moving in the right direction, and to write and share with you in fulfilling my God given purpose in life of encouraging and helping others.<br /><br />You'll be reading this post and living this morning with me in a week or so because my family has asked that I keep when I'm gone (unless to conferences) private until after we come back. We are pretty practical country people and there have been a spate of robberies in our local home town. While my house is not so fancy, I'd like to keep what is in it intact and respect my family's wishes.<br /><br />But this morning, I got up and grabbed one of those TIME magazines that just came in but I have not had time to read with the end of the school year. As a child, TIME was my introduction to the world. Starting at a young age, I read every one of "Dad's" magazines usually ignoring Better Homes or Southern Living for Newsweek, or TIME. Reading TIME always takes me back in time to when I was a young child on a Saturday morning wrapped up in a blanket on the couch reading it while cartoons played on the TV. <br /><br />The fog was out this morning as I settled into the garden tub overlooking the tops of the trees. I didn't put in my contacts so I wouldn't need reading glasses to get steamed up in the blistering hot water I was running in the tub. I started reading and stopped only to use my toe to turn off the water when I realized it was now running cold. Only half full (these mountain cabins don't have very large hot water heaters) I chose not to run the jets so I wouldn't wake up Kip in the other room. <br /><br />Fascinated by a flow chart showing the various options laid out to Greece and its struggles for fiscal responsibility and the impact on the Euro - I was transported to a world and wondered what my friend Craig in Greece has to say about the veracity of the reports that most of the cost cutting has been on the backs of schoolchildren and teachers in Greece. <br /><br />I read responses to a recent time magazine about Benjamin Netanyahu (another TIME I took time to read ;-) and found the critique fascinating of those within Israel who say that he gave access to foreign journalists that he wouldn't give to his own.<br /><br />I read TIME's cover story about Mitt Romney's life growing up and was curious about the unnamed malady his Mom had and the fact that she turned down a sizeable movie contract and could have been one of "those actresses" from the golden age that we watch in Turner Classic movies but instead chose to marry Mitt's Dad, George.<br /><br />As I read, the water turned cold and I got another tad of hot water from the hot water heater to heat things up. Not the steaming hot bath I hoped for but the view from the window made up for that. Over halfway through the magazine, I put it aside to look at the trees outside -- blurred like a water color painting by my not so great long distance eyesight, I realized that in the middle, there was a tree that looked a lot like a transformer. Yes, you know one of those transforming robots that my 11 year old watches on those movies with the tanned girl and quick witted Shia Labouf who looks just like my nephew Clint. There he was, staring at me.<br /><br />It was then I realized. It has been so long since my mind could wander. Wander through the random thoughts of a mind without a list. I sat there looking at my transformer friend and filled with gratitude for the moment. Many people in this world live such hard, desperate lives that to think of having such a moment would be the ultimate in vanity. I don't mind working and don't "live" for such moments away but as I write more and more, I realize that these moments nurture my creativity more than anything else. Not only that, I can relate to the Psalmist who said, "I lift mine eyes unto the hills where comest my strength." <br /><br />My family has been coming to these hills for at least 5 generations and I think perhaps it is something genetic - maybe our pale skin - that sends us here instead of the beach. (My son's nickname is "bleach" - just the way we're made.)<br /><br />So I looked at Mr. Transformer in the treetops and for a moment thought about being afraid -- he looked so real. But I teared up with the realization that the moment was Perfect. I had found a perfect moment and I wouldn't be afraid of that.<br /><br />Perfect because as I pondered all the different things I could do with my life that is left, that I'm perfectly at peace with asking God what He wants me to do with it and going that direction. (I profess that this is something many of you will find it very hard to understand and pray and wish you could.) <br /><br />Sometimes I worry that I don't really know where this life is heading with me. My oldest graduates this year with his sister following the next year. I look at June after we come back and it is literally completely booked until July 1. I have a second book due in early July and already have notes for a third and fourth. <br /><br />As the soul who inhabits this body, it is in my nature to ponder my own path -- I care about myself - of course I do. And one of the biggest things I've come learn after hitting 40 is the finite-ness of my own time. I can't do everything or be everywhere. When I was in Canada and my son got pneumonia it almost killed me. So, I've booked 3 events for the fall and a filming thing for a friend and that is probably just going to have to be it.<br /><br />There is definitely a force that tries to inhale me when I go to conferences. There is a certain pull to "be on stage" - be one of "those" people that we all secretly think of becoming that is up there while the rest of us listen. Those people who are lean, fit, have a perfect life, and have everything in order. Maybe if I travel all the time I could be "that."<br /><br />But reality has shown me that "that" would mean sacrificing "this." This is more moments with my babies and laughter with my husband. We laugh so hard sometimes at my house that I literally cry and we just can't stop. We talk about interesting things and work so hard together. My home is a fun place to be and I'm so grateful for the 19 years with this hero of a man that is my husband.<br /><br /><a href='https://picasaweb.google.com/115916382183421477315/BloggerPictures?authkey=Gv1sRgCNPCp6bK0YDF6gE#5749424096413979634'><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBBut0YTfrxUoPKPJTVsvKepgtJktt32BnyCwnY4Go23-Ja48Pep-eDsc0XlWdf7mAfuBcNuuLzwREOKM3_6yUibAKuvE7IzHrkWgVF8_Y4hwe7ha2K9sazpG-OTgw-4cFU4xNqmxJq_PQ/s288/1.jpg" style="margin:5px" width="267"></a><br /><br />You can see it is getting brighter and the fog is dispelling. So, as I ponder Mr.Transformer man, I get out of the bath, put down TIME, run to the kitchen for a banana because I don't want to fill up before the incredible breakfast that my husband always cooks on the first day of vacation (Stripling's sausage - yum)<br /><br />Then, I realize that in the spirit of continuing the perfect moment that what I want to do most is write. I used to write in journals for hours a day but now, this blog is my journal. Most of my writing is for you who read this blog. I admit that some days it is so very hard to write and I don't feel like it, but I know that 95% of what I accomplish daily is my habits. I mess up all the time and wish I could do better or spend more time writing for you (and me, because my ephiphanies often come as I compose) but this is my life.<br /><br />I keep thinking that maybe I can show teachers a new path. A path of being and STAYING a teacher while taking a little time out to speak to help send your children to college. And yes, paying for college has been on our mind a lot lately. Within 2 years we'll have 2 in college and every book I can write and speech I can give will help us do that which we can't afford even on the salary of a teacher and an engineer. <br /><br />It comes to me that there are more of you out there that may want to take this path. While I have an immense amount of respect for those who "do the speakers circuit" I totally know that isn't a life I want. My strength comes from my family and I love and adore getting out and speaking to any audience of teachers. To do it all the time, however, would be too much. I have babies to raise still.<br /><br />Who on earth will ever even read this meandering post but me? This has got to be the longest post I've ever written and it breaks every rule of blogging, I think, that I've learned EXCEPT one -- being transparent and being real.<br /><br />If I share with you my goals and you share with me yours then perhaps we can help each other along the way. I do know what I do want to be. I want to be an excellent author who helps people and makes their lives better.<br /><br />Recently I was in a webinar with a college professor and her students and one student told a story about an autistic boy that bought tears to my eyes. She said "Vicki, I read in your book about the autistic boy in Austria who presented online and didn't have a speech impediment then so I decided to try it with one of my students who had a terrible stutter. I want you to know that when he presented in the online classroom, his stutter went away completely. It changed his life and I cried." (This is one of the stories in Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds) - That is what I want to do. Help people.<br /><br />I want to write books that change lives and soon will move beyond education books. I'm never going to write a book just to write a book but will only write books that solve problems. I'm not going to pretend I'm perfect but will be real about what I share. I want to be incredibly helpful, kind, and respectful even to those who are unkind to me to model my faith and the forgiveness I've received to others who may mistake Christianity with hate mongers. <br /><br />Should the good Lord let me write books to reach through the paper and ipads and computer screens to improve someone's life in some way - then let it be. Wherever I share whether it is here, tumblr, pinterest, facebook, Twitter, let it be to help others. There are enough narcissists in the world and arrogance is repugnant. If anything I'm pretty normal and probably boring. People where I live think I'm geeky and that I can't carry on a normal conversation but I disagree with them.<br /><br />God has a plan for you and a plan for me. I pray for each of us to find it. Now,I hear sausage sizzling so I'm going to be done and enjoy this perfect moment even if it produced a quite imperfect blog post though one that accurately represents the mind of a very tired teacher.<br /><br />As you think about transforming - what are you transforming into? Do you like the direction you're heading? Are you willing to change course if you're going a direction you don't like? Do you know what is important to you so you can make decisions? <br /><br />Have you had your perfect moment yet this summer?<br /><br />Written June 3 or so in the mountains.<br />Posted using BlogPress from my iPad<br /><br /><p class='blogpress_location'>Location:<a href='http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Oak%20Hill%20Dr,,United%20States%4034.910152%2C-84.288187&z=10'>Oak Hill Dr,,United States</a></p>

Transformer: Thoughts from the Perfect Moment

Good morning, my friends. I read a recent ebook by Andy Andrews entitled "Perfect" that changed my perspective. The point on the ...

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ARGENTINEAN CENTRAL BANK TARGETS GROWTH, NOT LOW INFLATION

<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-ziniH6ND3NRwxJ1Xj5ZCpf1PNgoLJPPHALIlHJ6jh2Fh7BZ7PCmbawKrA6eK3xZsENl-6KgMt9XZvgeQYXUZ9jLeMa2zEuFuTGblor9n7kiWtDO2kvHdpPDD_20CMQZVHGxhjTZ5xGkw/s1600/banco-central1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-ziniH6ND3NRwxJ1Xj5ZCpf1PNgoLJPPHALIlHJ6jh2Fh7BZ7PCmbawKrA6eK3xZsENl-6KgMt9XZvgeQYXUZ9jLeMa2zEuFuTGblor9n7kiWtDO2kvHdpPDD_20CMQZVHGxhjTZ5xGkw/s640/banco-central1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="color: red; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="color: red; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="color: red; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>THE CENTRAL BANK OF ARGENTINA BREAKS RANKS WITH NEO-LIBERAL BANKING POLICY AND TARGETS JOBS OVER LOWER INFLATION </b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Transcript of YouTube video which can be viewed below </span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Washington</span>.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Most central banks around the world preach fiscal discipline. Inflation is their biggest concern. And even when they do enter into some stimulus policies, the final objective is still the issue of lowering debt. Well, one central bank in the world apparently has a growth agenda, and that's in ARGENTINA.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Now joining us to talk about this is John Weeks. John just was in ARGENTINA not very long ago. He's a professor emeritus at the University of London School of Oriental and AFRICAN Studies. He's the author of the book <i>Capital, Exploitation and Economic Crisis</i>. He runs <i>JWeeks.org</i>. And he now joins us again from London. Thanks, John.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: red; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">INDEPENDENT MONETARY POLICY TENDS TO BE DEFLATIONARY, NEGATIVE RATES, AND SLOW GROWTH.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">WEEKS: Thank you.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">JAY: So what did you make of what the central bank's doing in ARGENTINA?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">WEEKS: It's tremendously important, because in the 1990s ARGENTINA was the epitome of a neoliberal monetary policy. It had something called a currency board, and that currency board involves taking the foreign exchange you hold, which is, in the case of ARGENTINA, dollars, and that your domestic money supply is rigidly tied to the amount of dollars you hold. Of course, the amount of dollars you hold is a result of your imports and exports, the balance between the two, and so in effect you have no independent monetary policy. And it tended to be quite deflationary, that is, it tended to cause not only very low inflation, but actually negative rates, and also very slow growth.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: red; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">INFLATION NO LONGER BECOMES A CONSTRAINT</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">At the end of the 1990s, the disaster that that policy had inherent in it was realized, and in 2001 and 2002 ARGENTINA could no longer maintain that policy, because what it meant, basically, is that if you began to lose dollars because you were—ARGENTINA was running a trade deficit, it meant you had to contract the economy, because you had to take your domestic currency out of circulation, more and more of your domestic currency out of circulation. And that led initially to a severe recession in the economy. When that could no longer be maintained and they temporarily went off the currency board, you had hyperinflation for a year.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Okay. The current government of Cristina Fernández has repudiated that policy. They have introduced a new central bank law (they had actually been practicing it, but they formalized it in this last March) which completely ends the currency board regime and replaces it with a central bank that facilitates a growth-oriented policy of the government. And it also is concerned about inflation, but inflation no longer becomes a constraint, the tail that wags the whole dog.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">JAY: So how do they do that?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">WEEKS: Well, the economy has grown very rapidly since the end of the currency board. It's grown at about 7 percent since the currency board collapsed in 2002. That has been brought about by the flexible monetary policy which was allowed within the confines of the old rules but was not sufficiently flexible to be sustained, but primarily through a government which pursued a policy of active fiscal policy, expansionary fiscal policy, combined with public investments in infrastructure.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: red; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">INFLATION-TARGETING POLICY - COMPRESSING THE ECONOMY, REDUCING THE RATE OF GROWTH, IN ORDER TO KEEP THE RATE OF INFLATION DOWN</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">JAY: Okay. Well, what does that mean, "by flexible monetary policy," specifically?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">WEEKS: Well, what it means now is that—an inflation-targeting policy is what most governments in LATIN AMERICA—well, no, that's true—VENEZUELA'S doesn't, and—nor does BOLIVIA, but many, many governments in LATIN AMERICA and, of course, the dreaded EUROPEAN Central Bank follow. That means you set an inflation target, usually a low inflation target. That happens to be 2.5 percent in EUROPE. And then, if it appears that the economy is going to exceed that rate, then you rein in the economy by using the central bank interest rate, by making it harder for businesses and for individuals to borrow. So that in effect means that you're compressing the economy, reducing the rate of growth, in order to keep the rate of inflation down.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: red; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">FLEXIBLE MONETARY POLICY – GROWTH TARGET</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">A flexible monetary policy sets the rate of inflation consistent with a growth target. But that would be the simplest way. So instead of having an inflation target, you have a growth target. Say you have growth target of 5 percent, for example. Then it becomes a question of how much inflation you're going to allow with that growth target. And in the case of ARGENTINA, the government has been prepared to allow an inflation target upwards towards 10 to 15 percent, though it hasn't been that in every year. In most years it has been well below that, on the argument that it is more important for people to be employed and for them to have rising incomes and to have incomes that are rising faster than the rate of inflation so their real incomes are going up. So with the real incomes going up, you can live. You don't have to have a 2.5 percent or 3 percent rate of inflation, because you have a real economy expanding, so your money wages are expanding faster than rate of inflation.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: red; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">INFLATION FROM ZERO TO 25 PERCENT DO NOT LEAD TO HYPERINFLATION</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">JAY: So the argument one hears against this is that it gets out of control and inflation starts growing faster than real wages, so there's no real advantage to workers. That's the argument that given.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">WEEKS: Yeah. That's the argument. It says yes, a little bit of inflation leads to a lot. I would say that's similar to saying conventional war always leads to nuclear war. You know. Rapid inflation, high rates of inflation, are an entirely different phenomenon than what we're talking about. Rates of inflation of zero to 25 percent, all empirical evidence shows that rates of inflation from zero to 25 percent do not lead to hyperinflation. Hyperinflation results when there's some terrible breakdown in the economy, such as—in another interview I was talking about GREECE. If GREECE—if the GREEKS were to abandon the euro, they would get hyperinflation, because all of a sudden the whole institutional framework has changed so dramatically. Alright?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">I'm not in favor of 20 percent inflation, but I'm in favor of growth. And so the question becomes managing inflation in the context of growth, not managing growth in the context of inflation.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">JAY: So what are the numbers in ARGENTINA, then? What is inflation, and are wages keeping up with it?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: red; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">25% UNOFFICIAL INFLATION RATE VERSUS 15% OFFICIAL INFLATION RATE IS A MATTER ON HOW IT IS MEASURED: HIGH AND LOW INCOMES OR GNP AS A WHOLE </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">WEEKS: Wages are keeping up with inflation. There's considerable debate about what the current rate of inflation is, less about what it's been in the past. The critics of the government say that the rate of inflation is about 25 percent. The government says it's about 15 percent. This is partly a question of how you measure it and whether you're measuring low incomes or high incomes or GNP as a whole.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The point, the central point, is not the exact rate of inflation but the fact that the economy is growing and real incomes are growing, that is, in real terms, in terms—when we say <i>real terms</i>, what I mean by this: how much is being produced, the goods and services being produced, the real things people are consuming, the amount of food they eat, the amount of durable goods they can buy are going up. And this is true of the working class and of the middle class. And that's partly, I should say, the result of the government's taxation policy to prevent inequality from getting out of control.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: red; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">LOW INFLATION LEADS TO LOW GROWTH</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Let me put this slightly in context. So you asked me, you said that the argument against [incompr.] quite correct—against permitting or tolerating a certain degree of inflation is: further along the road you're going to come to regret it, because inflation will grow faster than wages and then there'll be a decline in income. Turn that argument around. If you pursue low inflation, you have low growth. You can never recapture the growth you missed. You know. If you're in a country that this year grows at 2 percent when it could grow at 4 percent, you'll never get those two percentage points back. And if you have unemployment, as in the UNITED STATES, around 8 percent and you could have unemployment down around 5 percent, that 3 percent of the workforce that's unemployed this year, they will never get this year back. You know. So it's—I think raising the question of what is foregone as a result of allowing inflation is completely spurious. The real question is: what do you forgo as a result of having low growth and high unemployment?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">JAY: Now, the other argument against this is what happens to people on fixed pensions. In ARGENTINA, are pension rates being raised at the same level as inflation?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>BANKS GAIN FROM A LOW-INFLATION REGIME AND LOSE IN A HIGH INFLATION REGIME </b></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">WEEKS: This is a somewhat complicated question, because there are public pensions and there are private pensions. It's difficult to pursue them all. But basically the answer is: yes, they are. But I think again that is a spurious—to a certain extent a spurious argument, because the real people who gain from a low-inflation regime are the banks, and they are the losers, usually, in a high-inflation regime. </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">So those people on fixed pensions are brought forth as an argument by the right wing in order to say, oh, we're not arguing for us; we're arguing for the little old ladies, you know, that have to go down to the market and make their pennies and make their pesos go so far. And inflation—sure, inflation undermines people's expenditure in the sense that it makes things more expensive, but you can deal with that if the economy's growing. You can deal with it by raising the state pension. You can do it formally by indexing and you can do it bit by bit. You can index wages. In the case of ARGENTINA, they have not indexed wages, but they do it through national bargaining. So there are mechanisms of dealing with moderate inflation. If you have slow growth and you have unemployment and you aren't prepared to reduce that employment, there's no way to deal with that except to pay poor relief.</span><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="266" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jsmMKmOZDRg?feature=player_embedded" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="320"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />

ARGENTINEAN CENTRAL BANK TARGETS GROWTH, NOT LOW INFLATION

THE CENTRAL BANK OF ARGENTINA BREAKS RANKS WITH NEO-LIBERAL BANKING POLICY AND TARGETS JOBS OVER LOWER INFLATION Transcript of YouTube video...

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Senior Electronic Design Engineer (Analog | FPGA | High linearity) (KT labs) (#108134)

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><b><span style="font-family: Arial;">Job Title:</span></b></span><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> Senior Electronic Design Engineer</span></span><span lang="en-us"><b><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></b></span><span lang="en-us"><br /> <b><span style="font-family: Arial;">Location:</span></b></span><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> Milpitas, CA<br /> </span></span><span lang="en-us"><b><span style="font-family: Arial;">Position:</span></b></span><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> Full time<br /> </span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><br /></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><b><span style="font-family: Arial;">Business Unit  </span></b></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">KT Labs is an established enterprise within the KLA-Tencor family where the focus is squarely on technical innovation beyond tomorrow's needs.  Where other members of the KT community strive to meet our customer's technical needs for today's and tomorrow's designs,  we at KT Labs look to their needs, meet with the advance R&D groups at customer's sites, envision and realize solutions far beyond today's needs.  It is this combination of technical challenges; our mission to evolve visionary solutions for our customer's that generates KT Labs' teams' greatest satisfaction.  We solve the very difficult problems quickly.  It is only the impossible that takes a bit more time.  The AR&D group, as part of KT labs, develops technologies through phase 2 for charge particle and surface analysis applications at KLA-Tencor. </span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">  </span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><b><span style="font-family: Arial;">Responsibilities  </span></b></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Contribute to system level architecture design and test planning.</span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Design and test electronic modules and test fixtures. </span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Test complex, high-speed (up to 500 MHz) circuit boards, subsystems, and integrate and test systems of well over 100 boards.  </span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Conduct design reviews of own designs, and prepare specification documents and test plans.</span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Work with parts and service vendors as needed to implement designs.</span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Perform FPGA coding in Verilog for electronics boards. </span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"></span></div><div dir="LTR"><br /></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><b><span style="font-family: Arial;">Preferred Qualifications  </span></b></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Able to integrate electronic subsystems with mechanical and optical systems and perform system tests.</span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">A good working knowledge of analog and digital electronic design.</span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Ability to collaborate with other technical staff and share ideas regarding complex systems</span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Ability to design circuits to demanding specifications of noise level, bandwidth, and linearity.</span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Experience writing FPGA programs (at least 1500 lines per program) in AHDL and/or Verilog.</span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Skilled at writing programs (of at least 3000 lines) in C++. </span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Experience with image acquisition or image processing. (desired)</span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Experience with MatLab.</span></span></div><ul dir="LTR"><ul dir="LTR"> <div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"></span><span lang="en-us"></span></div></ul></ul><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"></span><span lang="en-us"><b><span style="font-family: Arial;">Minimum Qualifications  </span></b></span></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Doctorate (Academic) with at least 3 years of electronics experience. OR Master's Level Degree with at least 6 years of electronics experience. OR Bachelor's Level Degree with at least 8 years of electronics experience.</span></span></div><div dir="LTR"><br /></div><div dir="LTR"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Kindly send your resumes to</span></span><span lang="en-us"> </span><a href="mailto:abhinav.rajkumar@kla-tencor.com"><span lang="en-us"><b><u><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial;">abhinav.rajkumar@kla-tencor.com</span></u></b></span><span lang="en-us"></span></a><span lang="en-us"></span></div></div>

Senior Electronic Design Engineer (Analog | FPGA | High linearity) (KT labs) (#108134)

Job Title: Senior Electronic Design Engineer   Location: Milpitas, CA Position: Full time Business Unit  KT Labs is an established ...

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William Wyler's "The Letter" (1940) - Starting with a Bang

<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk4MyE-ab_UvbiKxDTOS3DHYQCAGj7pZG9GohNAaZXZ7NjJqtDDKiaBpNaFWd1_dEGDWmjAHj2lGvWoZtsBKaF5fEElZvsLmSUxLnmf9qtoYo4Vsf0irQOfXS7sUDFApuT0MuvUUCPTBBj/s1600/bette+in+full+lace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk4MyE-ab_UvbiKxDTOS3DHYQCAGj7pZG9GohNAaZXZ7NjJqtDDKiaBpNaFWd1_dEGDWmjAHj2lGvWoZtsBKaF5fEElZvsLmSUxLnmf9qtoYo4Vsf0irQOfXS7sUDFApuT0MuvUUCPTBBj/s1600/bette+in+full+lace.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">  </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>This piece is my contribution for The Movie Projector's blogathon in honor of William Wyler. <a href="http://themovieprojector.blogspot.com/p/wm-wyler-blogathon.html" style="color: #cc0000;">Click here</a> for more information and links to participating blogs.</i><br /><br />Of director William Wyler, Bette Davis once declared, “It was <i>he</i> who helped me realize my full potential as an actress.” Of the actress, Wyler would recall, “She was a director’s dream.” Together they made three very popular and critically acclaimed Hollywood films. The pair first collaborated on the 1938 Warner Bros. production of <i>Jezebel</i>. For her performance Bette Davis won the second of her two Best Actress Academy Awards. Davis was sorely disappointed that Wyler had not received a Best Director nod for his work on the film and would later credit her Oscar-winning portrayal to him, “It was all Wyler,” she wrote.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTbM5WKKKgZHX72tpomrUSKppxwo7FGDJJVR4TsSx3XQW9VpEw7nDkvOLg3hpIzPcyQpvl1QiMTWXshH0Ybu2unxftCKZQsmr-Y_q5XNrr_GmzalAW5bSfQjMwXrut-NO25npGvMnEJGgP/s1600/bette-davis-william-wyler-lunch-break-jezebel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTbM5WKKKgZHX72tpomrUSKppxwo7FGDJJVR4TsSx3XQW9VpEw7nDkvOLg3hpIzPcyQpvl1QiMTWXshH0Ybu2unxftCKZQsmr-Y_q5XNrr_GmzalAW5bSfQjMwXrut-NO25npGvMnEJGgP/s320/bette-davis-william-wyler-lunch-break-jezebel.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bette Davis and William Wyler</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In January 1940, Warner Bros. announced that Bette Davis would star in a remake of a film adapted from a play <a href="http://www.online-literature.com/maugham/" style="color: #cc0000;">Somerset Maugham</a>had dramatized from his own short story, <i>The Letter</i>. In April, William Wyler was hired to direct, on loan from Samuel Goldwyn who would, in turn, be able to use Bette Davis for his upcoming <i>The Little Foxes</i>, which would be the last film Wyler and Davis would make together. In an interview years later, Wyler recalled that he had read Howard Koch’s script for <i>The Letter</i> and liked it and that he wanted to work with Davis again. His only regret was that cinematographer Gregg Toland was unavailable. For her part, Davis was eager to work with Wyler on another very promising project; Maugham’s sensational tale of British colonial “white mischief” was set in the exotic Far East and replete with adultery, deceit and murder.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: right;"></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg35RmizrqhirxyOFUBvB7UbmQw9_3rNSwAdU1gWDSuTIVgI5O5CdEmBMgoyYXQWwaBJS0zhzbaK2v3O-b85dBKhYVs_UGTC2Ddp19SL3FuCvqtchJSU1Cn6sw4GTY5RZ0ZA0J9JPSg4ghA/s1600/map-malay+bw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg35RmizrqhirxyOFUBvB7UbmQw9_3rNSwAdU1gWDSuTIVgI5O5CdEmBMgoyYXQWwaBJS0zhzbaK2v3O-b85dBKhYVs_UGTC2Ddp19SL3FuCvqtchJSU1Cn6sw4GTY5RZ0ZA0J9JPSg4ghA/s320/map-malay+bw.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Malay Peninsula</td></tr></tbody></table>By the time he traveled to British Malaya in 1921, Somerset Maugham was a well established writer of best-selling fiction and popular stage plays. While in the colonies he met an attorney, Courtenay Dickinson, who told him of a scandalous case he’d handled ten years earlier. In 1911, Dickinson represented the wife of the headmaster at a boys’ school in Kuala Lumpur who shot and killed a male friend one night while her husband was out. The headmaster was <a href="http://www.viweb.freehosting.net/proudlock.htm" style="color: #cc0000;">William J. Proudlock</a>, a British citizen, and his school was the prestigious Victorian Institute, founded in the capital city in 1894. Proudlock’s wife, Ethel, had been visited by William Crozier Stewart, an engineering consultant, while her husband was at dinner with an associate one night in April 1911. Though Mrs. Proudlock claimed that Stewart had attempted rape and that she shot him (several times) in self-defense, she was found guilty at trial and sentenced to death. The outcry of the local British community prevailed, however, and Ethel Proudlock was freed after serving a scant five months in prison. Maugham developed a fictionalized account of the case, with details changed and flourishes added; Maugham said of himself, “I have never pretended to be anything but a story teller.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Letter </i>first appeared in a collection of his short stories in 1924. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><div style="text-align: left;"></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div>Somerset Maugham’s stage adaptation of <i>The Letter</i>debuted in London in 1927, starring <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0178066/#Actress" style="color: #cc0000;">Gladys Cooper</a><span style="color: #cc0000;"> </span>as rubber plantation wife Leslie Crosbie and Nigel Bruce as plantation manager Robert Crosbie. The play premiered on Broadway later that year starring <a href="http://brbl-archive.library.yale.edu/exhibitions/cvvpw/gallery/cornell.html" style="color: #cc0000;">Katharine Cornell</a><span style="color: #cc0000;">.</span>In 1929, illustrious American actress <a href="http://www.jeanneeagels.com/" style="color: #cc0000;">Jeanne Eagels</a> played the lead in a Paramount film directed by Jean de Limur; her co-stars included Reginald Owen as Crosbie and Herbert Marshall as shooting victim Geoffrey Hammond. Eagels received a posthumous Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance.<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rvI2sUCLHCk" width="420"></iframe></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Jeanne Eagels and Reginald Owen, <i>The Letter </i>(1929) </span></div><br />Somerset Maugham’s short story opens in Singapore within the offices of Howard Joyce, the attorney representing Leslie Crosbie, who is charged with murder. Joyce’s clerk, Ong, ushers in Robert Crosbie, husband of the accused. The lawyer expresses concern that Crosbie is not bearing up well under the strain of his wife’s arrest and incarceration. Maugham re-engineered the opening to powerful dramatic effect when he adapted it for the stage. As the curtain rises, the sound of a pistol shot is heard. A man (Hammond) staggers across a sitting-room toward its veranda and cries “Oh, my God!” A woman (Crosbie) follows, firing her gun into him even after he has fallen.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0462321/" style="color: #cc0000;">Howard Koch</a>’s script for William Wyler’s film opened with an exterior shot of the Crosbie bungalow, the sound of a sudden gunshot followed by a woman stalking a man as he flees, her revolver blazing. Reading this scenario for the first time, Wyler thought it was literally “starting with a bang” and decided the scene should be set up “…with an opposite mood. A mood of silence, quiet, people sleeping…” Wyler also wanted to evoke “…a feeling of the dank, humid jungle atmosphere of rubber plantation country” and opened the film with an uncut and wordless 2-minute sequence:<br /><br />Under a vivid full moon and cloud cluttered night sky, the camera sweeps through a rubber plantation where a tree oozes latex into a collection pot as Malay workers lounge or sleep in hammocks and a white Cockatoo perches on a fence. A gunshot shatters the quiet and the startled bird takes flight. A man emerges onto the veranda of a lamp-lit bungalow and lurches down its steps. Close on his heels strides a woman with a gun, her face a study in fierce resolve. She fires shot after shot into his body until he is a crumpled a heap at the foot of the steps. The moon goes dark behind a drift of clouds as <a href="http://www.americancomposers.org/raksin_steiner.htm" style="color: #cc0000;">Max Steiner</a>’s ominous and hypnotic theme surges.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisDdo4XmvpoueG5IPXErxd_IKnowuPwy0oKsXVn5f_4q5JvFWRQfxb3K-UF2ZiwrnLbxSxWWUELwep0ZKC6y1j2eBxznvLRw_9BlBRvlXQkRQQo4g2OEbuNeDAPha9ToL2kqN1ucSJdm0h/s1600/full+moon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisDdo4XmvpoueG5IPXErxd_IKnowuPwy0oKsXVn5f_4q5JvFWRQfxb3K-UF2ZiwrnLbxSxWWUELwep0ZKC6y1j2eBxznvLRw_9BlBRvlXQkRQQo4g2OEbuNeDAPha9ToL2kqN1ucSJdm0h/s400/full+moon.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Wyler reflected,“…it was a more effective opening this way, by having this silence,” and Howard Koch, who fondly remembered working on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Letter</i>, remarked on Wyler’s fine-tuned “instinct for staging.” The opening sequence of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Letter</i>, which took a full day to shoot, establishes not only the film’s noirish mood and hot-house atmosphere, but also the controlled ferocity intrinsic to Leslie Crosbie’s character. From this spectacular beginning <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Letter</i> unfolds slowly and deliberately, revealing and suggesting its secrets with painstaking care. The film evolves with unrelenting tension and suspense and is remarkable for its astonishingly expressive camera work and atmospheric effects…</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The image of the full moon, breaking through heavy clouds or peering down between the fan-like leaves of palm trees, recurs and has been much discussed over the years. According to Wyler, the image of the moon was his attempt “to bring in something mysterious and supernatural” to the story. He knew that this repeated image would lend itself to many interpretations, but his own desire was to add “…a bit of supernaturalism, which I thought belonged.” Another of Wyler’s noteworthy atmospheric accents is the occasional sound of tinkling wind chimes. According to Wyler this was not a planned effect, but something he came up with during filming. There happened to be decorative Chinese wind chimes on the set and when the soundman began to complain that the tinkling annoyed him, the director considered the possibilities and decided they could be used to interesting effect. He thought the chimes made “…an eerie kind of noise, which would heighten the suspense.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL5Zo7SnC-MbuE11HgXjuUwB6lHPjOFa8GDGh-NIVXUjcaFk13oZVLcx3QMF00nQ0Q_RiwzATlsa3coipk9E8rUKuoTTrVNz2feixTVxPf_tFEiHP4v-HaGYhndsWej8kS6G6FOvYTkR9P/s1600/james+stephenson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL5Zo7SnC-MbuE11HgXjuUwB6lHPjOFa8GDGh-NIVXUjcaFk13oZVLcx3QMF00nQ0Q_RiwzATlsa3coipk9E8rUKuoTTrVNz2feixTVxPf_tFEiHP4v-HaGYhndsWej8kS6G6FOvYTkR9P/s320/james+stephenson.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">James Stephenson reads "the letter"</td></tr></tbody></table>At the time <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Letter </i>was released, William Wyler had recently commented that he believed the sole responsibility for the quality of any film rests entirely with its director. He felt that the director, whose every decision culminates in what ultimately appears onscreen, is accountable for everything including the performances of the players. <i>The Letter</i> is marked by high caliber acting all around and two impeccable portrayals in particular. Bette Davis is radiant yet coolly controlled as the emotionally repressed Leslie Crosbie, a woman capable of coy charm, relentless guile and calculating deceit - as well as violent rage. James Stephenson, in a breakthrough performance as Howard Joyce, Leslie’s attorney, depicts an intelligent, inherently civilized man manipulated into a wretched compromise. His Howard Joyce, suspicious of the case from the start, endures a visibly wrenching struggle with his own conscience as he becomes ever more entangled in the moral intricacies of Leslie’s defense. The scenes between Bette Davis and James Stephenson are some of the richest moments in the film.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">On one important point Wyler and Davis disagreed and that was how the actress should deliver her crucial line at the film’s climax. In the scene, Leslie and Robert Crosbie (Herbert Marshall) are alone together in a darkened room, their marriage in tatters. When Robert asks Leslie if she loves him, she at first says yes, then cracks and cries out, “….with all my heart, I still love the man I killed!” Wyler wanted Davis to look Herbert Marshall directly in the eye as she said these words, but Davis disagreed, she felt no woman could do that, it was too brutal, she would avert her eyes. The two fought and could not agree. Finally, and for the first time in her career, Bette Davis walked off the set. She soon returned and later recalled, “I came back eventually – end result, I did it his way. It played validly, heaven knows, but to this day I think my way was the right way.” She also remarked, “I lost, but I lost to an artist.” 37 years later, Davis was honored as the fifth recipient, and the first woman, to be gvien the Life Achievement Award by the American Film Institute (William Wyler had received the award the previous year). In her 1987 memoir <u>This ’n That</u>, she remembered that the high point of the evening, for her, was when Wyler spoke. He said, “If tonight I brought up the subject of [that] scene in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Letter</i>, Bette would insist on going back to Warner Brothers and reshooting it the way she wanted it.” According to Bette,  “Willie’s speech was short and funny and had the added advantage of being true.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">One battle Wyler did not win was with the Production Code. He had made a change to Maugham's ending. The author's and de Limur’s versions end with Leslie's realization that her punishment for her crime will be to live out her years in a country she despises with a man for whom she feels no passion. The closing line is her confession that even now she loves the man she shot. Wyler and Koch devised a more dramatic demise for Mrs. Crosbie, she would die by the dagger of Hammond’s widow. Wyler’s plan was that, “The thing should end with [Gale Sondergaard] killing Bette Davis.” But at the time “nobody could get away with killing somebody, so for censorship reasons we had to tack on the scene of her being arrested.” Wyler could never accept this “silly anticlimactic” ending and complained to the end of his days that the scene of Sondergaard's arrest still ought to be cut from his picture.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /><div style="text-align: center;">~</div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>The Letter </i>was nominated for seven Academy Awards: Best Picture (Warner Bros.), Best Director (Wyler), Best Actress (Davis), Best Supporting Actor (James Stephenson, who died suddenly in 1941), Best Music, Original Score (Max Steiner), Best Cinematography, Black and White (Tony Gaudio) and Best Film Editing (Warren Low). </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><i> ~</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>The Letter </i>airs on Turner Classic Movies Friday, June 29, 6:00am Eastern/3:00am Pacific. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/F-1sgvur72o" width="420"></iframe></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b><u>Sources</u></b>:<br /><i>A Talent for Trouble</i>, Jan Herman, Putnam (1995)<br /><i>William Wyler - The Authorized Biography</i>, Axel Madsen, Thomas Y. Crowell Co. (1973)<br /><i>Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis</i>, Ed Sikov, Henry Holt (2007)<br />"<a href="http://www.fathom.com/feature/35677/" style="color: #cc0000;">Imagery and Sound in William Wyler's <i>The Letter</i></a>," interview by Charles Higham, Columbia University Oral Research Office (1972)<br /><i>The Letter: A Play in Three Acts</i>, W. Somerset Maugham, George H. Duran Co. (1925)<br /><i>The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham</i>, Doubleday (1934)<br /><br /></div></div>

Bette Davis Gale Sondergaard Gladys Cooper Herbert Marshall James Stephenson Jeanne Eagels Katharine Cornell The Lady Eve (author) The Letter William Wyler William Wyler's "The Letter" (1940) - Starting with a Bang

  This piece is my contribution for The Movie Projector's blogathon in honor of William Wyler. Click here for more information and link...

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Google #2: You’ll definitely love using Google forms

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Google Forms is probably one of the most useful and often underutilized Google tools. They can be used for so many different things as I will show you below. They can be embedded into blogs, wikis and websites or can just be stand-a-lones on the web.  Each form creates its own spreadsheet that captures and collects the responses quickly and easily.  </span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjau-xbZLpHc01zN8Wn-iLrvdlpeQuKhWpvp1IYTfnA-RZDocC4MOqDcWBjaKpXmJEOM_XP-vVow3NIKIWXxnnLZPU4cLquJBhfwEQMptWTA_JCXhay84BrwpOIvfjJAl0K-vMPFj5MUp8/s1600/googleforms2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjau-xbZLpHc01zN8Wn-iLrvdlpeQuKhWpvp1IYTfnA-RZDocC4MOqDcWBjaKpXmJEOM_XP-vVow3NIKIWXxnnLZPU4cLquJBhfwEQMptWTA_JCXhay84BrwpOIvfjJAl0K-vMPFj5MUp8/s320/googleforms2.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Here are some of the uses I have discovered: </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">•You can use them for general surveys </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">•You can get quick input from others on various topics </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">•Use a Google form for various kinds of evaluation such as creating and posting short quizzes online.  </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">•Create a survey before and after a lesson/discussion </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">•Use it to collect data </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">•The students can fill in answers to questions in a test </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">•You can get feedback after a lesson </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">•It makes a great book review form </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Thus, a Google form is a great tool in the hands of an educator.  If you would like to make one, here are two presentations that could help. The first one looks at the seven different kinds of questions you can ask using a Google form. The second one shows you how to go about making a Google form. I hope you’ll find them helpful. </span></div><div id="__ss_13462782" style="width: 425px;"><b style="display: block; margin: 12px 0px 4px;"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/fionabeal/the-seven-question-types-to-use-on-a-google-form" title="The seven question types to use on a Google form">The seven question types to use on a Google form</a></b><object height="355" id="__sse13462782" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=whatcanyoudowithagoogleform-120626164425-phpapp02&stripped_title=the-seven-question-types-to-use-on-a-google-form&userName=fionabeal" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /> <param name="wmode" value="transparent" /> <embed name="__sse13462782" src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=whatcanyoudowithagoogleform-120626164425-phpapp02&stripped_title=the-seven-question-types-to-use-on-a-google-form&userName=fionabeal" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object> <br /><div style="padding-bottom: 12px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">View more <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/">presentations</a> from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/fionabeal">Fiona Beal</a>.</div></div><div id="__ss_11738513" style="width: 425px;"><b style="display: block; margin: 12px 0px 4px;"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/fionabeal/google-forms-so-easy-to-use" target="_blank" title="Google forms - so easy to use">Google forms - so easy to use</a></b> <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="355" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/11738513" style="border-bottom: #ccc 0px solid; border-left: #ccc 1px solid; border-right: #ccc 1px solid; border-top: #ccc 1px solid;" width="425"></iframe> <br /><div style="padding-bottom: 12px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">View more <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/thecroaker/death-by-powerpoint" target="_blank">PowerPoint</a> from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/fionabeal" target="_blank">Fiona Beal</a> </div></div></div>

30 days of web tools google Google #2: You’ll definitely love using Google forms

Google Forms is probably one of the most useful and often underutilized Google tools. They can be used for so many different things as I wil...

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