It all starts with these six essential life skills:

1. Managing Money
2. Cleaning
3. Driving and Car Maintenance
4. Cooking
5. Laundry
6. Making Appointments and Keeping Them

Wicked, an open-ended show, has enjoyed capacity crowds for almost every performance and it’s weekly gross  is over a million dollars. It broke the record for the highest weekly box office gross in Broadway history.

Based on the character in The Wizard of Oz, it is set in the days prior to Dorothy’s arrival from Kansas. It’s a great idea brought to life on the stage and deserves it’s long running success.

A friend of mine has an acting part in this movie short. It was put out a few years ago and made news overseas. I think it won an award at the Cannes International Film Festival. She is the operator who takes his call. I think she does great, although i have to admit that I never ever thought of her in this way before.

Here are the choices:

• Cooler weather
• Trees changing colors
• College football
• NFL games
• New television shows
• Fall fashions
• Hunting
• Fall school break
• Daylight savings time change

Sometimes it stops if we turn the handle slightly to the right as we push down on it. Sometimes that doesn’t work and I have to push on it very hard. But that seems risky – what if we push it down too hard and it totally breaks?

So I’m thinking about a do it yourself kitchen faucet replacement, I saw some new faucets in the Lowe’s flyer this morning that are not too expensive. I think I’ll stop by Lowe’s one of these next couple days and take at look at what they have in stock.

Found a video tonight of one of my favorite artists, Michelle Wright. She was really big back in the early 90′s, and then she stopped getting gigs in the U. S. for some reason. Thankfully, she was able to tour in Canada and has a very strong fan base in Canada.

I hear she has a new album coming out this week. I hope that WalMart will be carrying her new album – that seems to be the best place locally to buy music these days. A lot of the other record shops have gone out of business and we don’t have many choices left.

Now I am looking for an online broker to get my start with investing. I don’t really want to call a local brokerage office and hear a lot of sales pitches. I think I know which stocks I want to buy and I would rather try online trading and see how I do on my own. If I mess up, it will be my own fault and I am OK with that.

Stock Trading is still the basis for a lot of people’s retirement plans. I don’t want to be retired and start learning about the market. I want to learn now and get the learning curve behind me before it is critical to my financial health.

She is a good writer. I’ll give her that. But I think she sucks at mothering and usually disagree with just about every opinion that she ventures. I only read it when the wife brings it up and makes me read it so we can discuss the topic of the week.

This week’s blog is about being a step mother and how difficult it can be dealing with the birthmother. She wrote it in retaliation for a blog written by a birth mother on another site who voiced many legitimate concerns about a step mother. They both tried to be politically correct but it was obvious that both are irked with their own situations.

The odd part is that both bloggers referred to the birth father as the “biodad.” I have heard the term “baby daddy,” but the term biodad was a new one to me. It sounds kinda creepy. Like something created in a science lab.

This printer was on sale for $39 and the box had a bonus of the serial cable included. This machine is a Copier, Scanner, and Fax, and does a good job on photos. It even has a preset button to print on 4 x 6 photo paper, which is what I prefer to use.

I’m looking forward to hooking up this baby and giving her a test run tonight!

Before heading out to Office Deport I checked the web sites for HP and Epsen printers, and compared some of the different models in the $100 and under range. I know these are cheap printers, but that’s all I want for casual use at home.

I decided to go with Epsen because the ink cartridges are each one color and you only replace the one color at a time as it runs out. With the HP, the cartridges are all three colors in one container, and when one color runs out, then you have to replace the entire cartridge. So you are throwing away good ink and wasting money.

The main think I’m looking for this weekend is a cheap printer on sale somewhere. The Sunday newspaper always has ads from Staple, Office Depot, Office Mac, Best Buy, etc. Surely I can find something good in the sales flyers and go get a new printer later today or tomorrow.

If not, I’ll check the internet for HP and Epsen, and see if they have any online specials that I can take advantage of. The only drawback to ordering online is that I will have to pay for shipping or wait several days for the order to arrive. I would rather find something locally and be able to carry it home with me so I can be printing again by tomorrow night.

I have not had to personally deal with teenagers and drug issues, but I do know several people at work who are dealing with it now. My heart go out to anyone who has to find a teen rehab for their kid. Thankfully, there are places that can help.

Teen addiction statistics are more alarming every day. Based on anonymous surveys of high school students, the National Institute on Drug Abuse has been tracking prevalence and use of various substances by teens since 1975. Although the reported use of most drugs has declined slightly the past 4 – 5 years, the use of marijuana has been fairly consistent and there is an increase in the use of prescription drugs, in particular Oxycotin and Vicodin. The increased abuse of prescription drugs is the most alarming to me. These teens are obviously getting the drugs from relatives or buying them on the street.

The kids of today are our promise of a future for our society. We must help these kids live drug free, and if we need to build more rehab centers or fund more programs, then we must do what it takes to find a workable solution for drug addiction.

We liked the movie overall. I wonder how much truth is behind the story line in this war and the Afghanistan war? Time will tell.