Tag: susan beckett

This is going to be hard to believe, but in 1980 a young lady named Rosie Ruiz cheated her way to a win at the Boston Marathon. How does someone do that? Many believe Rosie jumped onto the subway for sixteen miles, then got off the subway, then got back into the marathon, and crossed the finish line! Her cheating was found out and, of course, she was stripped of her "first place" champion title. The story made headlines and Rosie acquired public notoriety and lasting name recognition. To this day, "Doing a Rosie" is runners' slang for cheating by taking a shortcut.

My husband and I just celebrated our 48th wedding anniversary this past week. When first married, we had a weekly grocery budget of twenty-five dollars. For that monumental amount we filled our cart. No more! Those days, unfortunately, are long gone! And not only are we all spending more today, but a sneaky little tactic called shrinkflation is cleverly being used by companies to shrink the package size instead of popping up costs. So we are getting fewer paper towels, smaller candy bars, less chips and cereal, fewer trash bags - and sadly, even my beloved ice cream has been noticeably melted down.

This has been a very blue week here at the Beckett abode. We had to put our beloved Roxie down - our thirteen-year-old Maltese. I cried till my heart hurt. Our Roxie was older than our two youngest granddaughters and she had become a fixture in the family. She was just a mere seven-week-old puppy when I brought her home; she snuggled into the palm of my right hand as I drove with my left. Always so sweet and cute and loving, she had a quirky little smile that she'd throw out there whenever she wanted to be mischievous plus cute, and it melted our hearts every time. This morning when I fed Boogie, our two-year-old Coton, I had to miss Roxie all over again, as only one bowl of food went down on the kitchen floor. And Boogie misses his Roxie - how do your tell your other dog/person what's happened?!

My husband often uses his GPS navigation device while driving to sites never before visited. Recently, we took my mother for an unexpected trip to the ER, and with her living in Fallbrook, we wanted the quickest route to our destination. Being 5 pm - peak traffic hours - we chose to drive south and ended up using GPS to guide us. Alas, the GPS had a mind of its own that evening and we took more than one wrong turn. Ughhh. So frustrating when time and purpose are of the essence. When we needed it the most, the system failed us!

Pretend for a minute that you are a brainiac and have just discovered the cure for cancer. No doubt about it - you nailed it. So now, do you donate this priceless information or charge an exorbitant fee? Or, let’s pretend for a sec that you are a genius who has worked relentlessly on a car that runs only on water, and….you did it. It’s a miracle! So, how do you share this world-changing knowledge? And what’s your price tag? Or, do you behave like Martin Shkreli, the CEO of an American drug company who fitly earned the nickname “most hated man in America?” After buying the rights to a drug used to treat those with weakened immune systems, Martin jacked up the price of the drug by 5,000% - it went from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill. What a great guy. Not!