I get by (barely) as a handy person

Written by Shelley Plett Tuesday, 05 April 2011 14:56

“There’s nothing to match curling up with a good book when there's a repair job to be done around the house.” —Joe Ryan

 

I jammed my finger, trimmed two extra layers of plastic shims to force fit the strike plate, dropped and found the handle spring three times, had to remove and re-cut the length of the black plastic thing twice because pathetic as it is, I cannot for the life of me visualize how long 3/8 of an inch is on the first (or second) try, and I nearly lost the entire door in a big gust of wind.

Not unlike the birth of a child, all of this pain was worth it. Because in the end, I replaced an old storm door handle that wouldn’t catch with a brand new one that does.

Let’s get the minor details out of the way...

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Women who laid tracks for the train

Written by Shelley Plett Tuesday, 22 March 2011 14:27

“Signora, between Austria and Italy, there is a section of the Alps called the Semmering. It is an impossibly steep, very high part of the mountains. They built a train track over these Alps to connect Vienna and Venice. They built these tracks even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip. They built it because they knew someday, the train would come.” —Martini, “Under the Tuscan Sun”

 

I know a lot of successful people who have followed the rules laid out in front of them, did all the right things in the right order and never hit a hiccup along the way (that’s remotely visible anyway).

I also know a few who have come into their own by way of impossibly steep mountains. I don’t think they...

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How sarcasm really changed my life

Written by Shelley Plett Tuesday, 08 March 2011 14:42

“Most parents don’t want sarcastic kids. But, in case your home is a little too quiet and you’d like to spice up the conversation, I can tell you the secret to getting them.... You lead by example. Then, you’re in a hurry to make a purchase at your local department store and the clerks are too busy talking among themselves to help you, turn to your child and say in a loud voice, “This would be a good place to open a department store.” (Don’t worry about offending the clerks…besides, your child’s education is your highest priority.) As your child watches you use sarcasm, his or her knowledge will grow. And then one day, your child’s brain cells that control sarcasm will come to life and you’ll experience the...

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Passion still needed in a ‘nice’ world

Written by Shelley Plett Tuesday, 22 February 2011 17:05

“You taught me to be nice, so nice that now I am so full of niceness, I have no sense of right and wrong, no outrage, no passion.”—Garrison Keillor

 

I was reading a marketing blog after searching for something completely non-related to marketing blogs, because that’s how search engines work.

Since it was only seven paragraphs long and fate and Bing apparently thought I needed to read it, I did.

It was titled, “All things to all people,” and went on to explain why being “this” is unachievable. The author used a percentage that I’d heard somewhere before, the 80/20 rule: 80 percent of a businesses’ business comes from 20 percent of its customers.

I believe it and I think it crosses over to other...

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