The Little Things In Life

I'm sure everyone has noticed how little things can mean so much to a person. For instance, perhaps just getting someone's mail for them or helping carry groceries brings the most joy to them. For most people, raking their leaves and shoveling their driveway is something they will never forget.

For my grandma, it was cleaning out her rain gutters on her house. As far as she can remember, its been four years since it was done. Well, the gutter was pulled away from the house and sagging in an eight foot section and there were weeds and small trees growing in it. But probably the most humiliating thing for her was people walking by and saying, "gonna harvest the crops before winter?" or "people always said people in [blank] always grew their trees higher." To her, it was embarrassing. So Tuesday night, I went down with a ladder and started cleaning them out. Unfortunately, I only got one side of the house done before it got dark. I never called and told her ahead of time that I was coming and it turned out she was at one of her sister's house playing cards with her. Well, she called home to have my grandpa pick her up. She came home and said I should have called her before I came and I said, "well grandma, I didn't want to interrupt your busy social life." She got a kick out of it. I plan on going down Friday morning and finishing the rest of them.

In high school, my math teacher broke or fractured his ankle and had a big, clunky boot on so he couldn't go outside and shovel snow. (You have to understand that most students didn't like him because he liked to yell, but he only yelled to get his point across. I always liked him and talked to him about things outside of class that were troublesome in my life. To me he was more of a friend that anything else.) It happened to be a snow-day that day for school and I was shoveling our driveway and thought to my self my teacher could probably use a hand. So I went over and started shoveling his small driveway (probably twenty-five feet long by eight feet wide). I saw tracks through the snow that looked like his tire tracks so I thought he was gone. It turned out his wife had left to go to the store and he was home alone. I was almost done with the driveway when he poked his head out the door and told me I'd better come in before I leave. So I did as he asked and when I got inside, he said to me "so were you shoveling and thought of poor-old Mr.[blank]?" I said ya and he said how glad he was I came over because now he didn't have to worry about his wife being out there shoveling the wet, heavy snow. We sat and talked for probably a good hour and then I left. My teacher proceeded to tell all of his math classes how Matt had come over and shoveled his driveway (I found out about this because an underclassman told me he was telling everyone).

After doing these things, you get a feeling of great accomplishment. To me, it never seems to matter the size of the task, but how much it means to the other person. I guess the moral of the story is to go out of your way once in a while to do something nice for another person, whether you know them or not. I usually never think about how much time it took, rather how thankful and happy that person is.

Sickness

Does anyone really like to be sick? Think about it. You miss school. When you miss school, you don't get to learn what the rest of the class did and if you missed a test, you have to make more time to make it up. And for most teachers, they take points off for missing and only allow you to miss so many classes. When one person in a class gets sick, certain people get paranoid about getting sick; especially when a "pandemic" is occurring. Some people carry around sanitizer and even disinfectant wipes to wipe off keyboards, desks and mice. Then later in life, you miss work which means you miss out on pay, then you can't buy what you want or go where you want. Things really start to add up fast. But when you really think about it, most of the time, it's just a common cold. Everyone gets them. They come and go. Nothing to worry about, except being miserable for about a week.

But can you imagine having a life-threatening illness or even cancer? I don't think anyone ever wants to think about these possibilities. Nobody would ever wish such a terrible thing onto another person. We all wish there was some "magic cure" for everything. However, this is not reality. In reality, people suffer and the majority with die because of their illness or cancer. For those that do win the battle, their life is changed forever.

Sometime after I was born, my mom was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. For those that don't know what the thyroid gland does or where it is, it is located in your neck and helps regulate your body temperature. Her thyroid was removed and she underwent treatment. I am unsure what kind of treatment it was, but it worked. Well, needless to say, mom won her battle with cancer and today lives a completely normal life. The only thing that is different now from before is that ever since her thyroid was removed, she has to take a supplement pill every morning. For as long as I can remember, she's always been the cold one in the winter.

One way to look at this is I never had to watch her suffer, but on the other, I was never there for her. There is not a day that goes by that I am not thankful that she is here with me. I'm not sure, and quite frankly never want to think about, what life would be like without her. All that I know is one should never give up hope. Don't ever think that this is the end or there's nothing else worth living for. Because the more you think about it, the more reasons you'll find to live.

Maintenance

Do you ever think about how many things that a person owns that requires maintenance? Think about it. There's a car, a house, all the appliances in a house, computers, motorcycles, ATVs, bicycles, boats, airplanes; you name it, and it typically requires maintenance.

Probably the first thing everyone owns that needs maintenance is a car. First it's an oil change which typically costs $25 if you have someone else do it for you. Then it's brake pads and shoes, and if it is bad enough, rotors and drums. About 50,000 miles later, if they were new when you bought the car, tires. Tires can get expensive. If you have a common rim size, say 16 inch and not low-profile, tires are relatively inexpensive. But if you get into low-profile, larger rim sizes, and truck tires, then the price goes up. Typically when the price for the tire goes up, so does the labor cost. Finally, the most expensive repair, not including body work, is the engine and transmission. I know someone that had a transmission go out and ended up spending $1,500 on a rebuilt one. A rebuilt transmission means that the transmission is used, but the inside components have been replaced and usually means it is a little cheaper.

A house is a whole other story. You have the structure to maintain; siding, the roof, electrical, plumbing, and windows, along with everything in it; appliances, flooring, carpeting, furniture, and everything else that makes a house a home. Appliances die, roofs age and become leaky, windows start to be less efficient and leak air out, plumbing rusts and starts to leak, and furnaces and air conditioners fail. Then there is the interior. Furniture becomes "outdated" and worn down, walls are repainted to co-ordinate with the new furniture, carpet becomes broken down and ragged, and hardwood floors show their age and need to be refinished.

Everything adds up. Usually when you let things go, you end up paying more than you would have if you had done "preventative maintenance." My outlook is that if you think or something looks like it should be repaired, repair it. Don't wait until it is too late. I look at it like this: I can either buy what I need when it is on sale before the old item breaks or I can buy what I need when I need it and spend more money.

I like to be prepared and research products before I buy them. Waiting until I need something means that I am rushed through the research phase and might not get what I want and need, and may end up spending more.

Always check multiple places (stores and websites) and multiple brands. You can narrow it down to a handful of brands, but don't think that you have to buy top-of-the-line. You'll probably be paying for the name more than the quality in the product.

I wrote about this because a family member is having problems with their oil in the engine and I have to figure out what is wrong.

Me

Well, nobody really knows me, so I guess that's a good place to start.

I was born in La Crosse and went to high school here. In high school I was in charge of all the audio/video equipment for all four years. I had to setup for meetings, concerts, movies, plays, and just about any other thing you could think of. This meant that I had to give up quite a bit of my free time. I never really thought about going to any other college because I was intrigued by the style at WTC. I wanted the hands on thing, not my head in a book all the time thing.

I work evenings at a restaurant. I probably work too much for a student, but I gotta pay the bills somehow plus work slows down in the winter.

I built my own computer in the eighth grade (P4 3.0GHz, 4GB memory, 500GB and 160GB WesternDigital SATA hard drives, ATI Radeon X700 256MB, DVD+/-RW Dual Layer). Today it still serves as my best computer.

I own a 1998 Chevy K1500 Silverado (Z71, 350cu in., ext. cab, 4x4). I bought it on my eighteenth birthday. I put a complete sound system in it (Kenwood Excelon). I ran all new speaker wiring, built a custom center console to house the amp and a 10inch sub woofer. My favorite part about it is that the head unit can read music off of a USB thumb drive. It was really nice in my old truck because it had a manual transmission and I didn't have a free hand to change the CD. The reason I put a system in my truck was because I liked to listen to music with a lot of bass to it and my brother always yells at me to turn down the bass. In my truck, no one can yell at me (as long as I'm not stopped next to someone, then I turn it down to be polite).

I also own a 1984 Honda Nighthawk S CB700SC. It's a really fun bike. I like it because there is no weight on my wrists like a sport bike, but it handles like one. Plus the bike gets three times the gas mileage the truck does so eventually it will pay for itself. You probably won't see too many of them around. I only know of four others in La Crosse.

Lately I've been interested in 5.1 surround sound. I bought a receiver off eBay, a DVD player, center speaker and surround speakers from Amazon, was given two floor standing speakers that sound great, and bought a 32inch CRT TV from a friend. Its not a fancy system at all. The surround (rear) speakers are actually bookshelf speakers which don't have a lot of bass, but they don't really need a lot of it. The floor standing speakers (front) are probably ten years old and have amazing bass. The TV doesn't have HDMI or high-definition, just one component input and it weights 175 pounds. I just like things to sound balanced . Call me whatever you want, but I hate it when things don't sound good.

Well, I guess that's enough rambling on for now. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

1998 Chevy K1500 Silverado