Whenever my wife and I travel anywhere these days it seems as if everyone stares at us.  I would like to think that it is because she is stunningly beautiful and I am dashingly handsome, but I have a feeling it is neither.  It most likely has to do with our traveling companions.  No outing is quite the same unless we take all four of our canine babies with us.  I think they are the ones getting the looks that include the ‘oohs’ and the ‘ahhs’.  The looks my wife and I are getting are probably more similar to bewilderment, mixed with that underlying whisper of, “Holy cow, four do

Admittedly, I’ve been out of the loop for quite a while now. For over ten years I have used the same quiet little financial institution (an employer promoted credit union) to conduct all my financial transactions. I have been satisfied by their customer-service and attention to detail ever since joining. Banking, if you want to call it that, was simple, efficient, and without pain or hassle.

One of the most exciting things about summer is the freedom to hop in your car and go wherever the day takes you.  As a teenager, I remember traveling all over the city and country trying to find anything to quench my thrist for adventure.  My friends and I would inevitably pick a driver and then head out on the open road.  It was in that instant that we were presented with the most problematic dilema of our travels: who would pay for the gas?

My dad remembers being a kid. He used to walk to school, uphill both ways. It always seemed to be a perpetual, driving snow . . . even in summer (yeah, they had school 365 days of the year back then). Times were hard. Typically, these trips to school were made even more difficult because he had to carry his little brother on his back and all their books in his arms. These were the golden years of attempting to get an education.

I did not endure such hardships growing up. I traveled about a block or two to a community bus stop and waited in whatever weather Mother Nature thought was appropriate until the big, yellow school bus arrived. This was a great time for socializing. Not at home and not yet at school; there was an intrinsic freedom at the bus stop.