In any event, today is my Mom’s birthday and I hope that she has the happiest birthday ever! Happy Birthday, Mom! I’ll be home tomorrow night to celebrate with our family dinner.

Enjoy.

The Happy Birthday Pug

Just wanted to send a shout out to the best Mother in the world on this, her birthday! Happy Birthday, Mom! As you can see, I’ve enlisted the help of the Happy Birthday Pug to celebrate. The Happy Birthday Pug is generally not enthusiastic about many things in its life other than sleeping and eating cookies; birthdays are no different.

However, I am pretty excited to be going home this weekend to have dinner with my Mom and my brothers. Of course, my older brother’s surprise 30th birthday party is going to be a hard act to follow, but they’re really two separate and distinct type of events.

Until then, though, here’s wishing a Happy Birthday to the best Mom in the world – enjoy the day, Mom!

I brought this stuff back with me to my home near the shore and when I got there, I immediately put the keyboard into a different storage area in my closet and I added the writing implements to a bucket of similar items. I’ve never been one to throw away items that still have some tangible use to them and I think that is a virtue. However, adding those extra pens and pencils to my bucket of pens and pencils got me to thinking about all of the stuff that we all probably have lying around in junk drawers or plastic bins or buckets, etc. How many of us have a bunch of old pens and pencils sitting around, but when we need something to write with we comment that we never have anything to use?

I bring up the brief story about bringing home pens, pencils, and a keyboard to comment on something that I’ve been trying to do for a few years now. When I started going to graduate school at Rutgers (which would be the spring semester of 2004), I realized that it made no sense for me to go out and buy new pens and notebooks and other things that you’d use in the classroom because I had leftovers from both college and high school. Seriously, who needs to go out and buy another notebook when you’ve probably only used 15 – 20 pages out of your last one or if you have sheets of loose leaf paper laying around? It’s insane the amount of resources that we all likely waste by not completely using all of the items that we purchase. Think of how much money you’ve probably spent on writing implements over the years when you had perfectly good ones lying around your home or office.

While these are “sustainable” and “environmentally-friendly” reasons to completely use the items that we purchase, there is another reason – it saves money! Why go out and spend even $2 or $3 on new pens when you have old ones sitting in a drawer? Why go spend $5 to $8 on notebooks when you have old pieces of paper that you can use? I’m currently taking a course in executive communication and the notebook that I’m using is an old black and white marble covered composition notebook from Mead that I purchased when I was in college. In the last ten years or so, I only used about 6 pages in that notebook. Just 6 pages! Talk about a waste…

And as a quick note – I’m not against going out and purchasing new stuff when it is needed. For example, the garbage can that I keep near the desk in my bedroom is broken and needs to be replaced. Sure, it gets the job done, but it’s broken and has a jagged edge. When I get a new garbage can, though, I’ll be sure to put this one in the recycling bin since it is made of plastic.

The pencil that I’m using to take notes during the executive communication class is probably older than some of the people reading this blog. I remember getting it in second or third grade and it has “Happy Thanksgiving” stamped across the side of it with a weird looking turkey and an odd pilgrim on either side. This is one of the pencils that had been sitting in my Mom’s shed for 10 to 15 years doing nothing. Sure, it’s a funny pencil, but it gets the job done and it is a bit of a conversation starter with my classmates (which usually starts with either, “Is that your kid’s pencil?” or “Does that say ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ on it?”).

The next time you think you need to go out and buy a pen or a pencil stop and think about whether or not you have a sufficient writing implement at home or in the office somewhere.

From the BBQ I went directly to my Mom’s house up in Morris County. Soon after arriving at my Mom’s place we headed over to my aunt and uncle’s house for a pre-wedding party for my older cousin, David, who was getting married the next day. This was also a lot of fun as my Grandmother and Aunt were at the party – both of whom I haven’t seen in a few years (probably since my Dad’s funeral almost two years ago).

Like most families, we tend to have an extremely fun time once the drinks start going down and the music gets turned on (and raucously “sung” at high volumes late into the night). And since he’s a dedicated reader of JerseySmarts.com, I’d like to give a shout out to Mike R. Happy?

The next day was my cousin’s wedding and reception, which was some of the most fun that I’ve had in a long, long time. Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook have probably already browsed through the pictures from the wedding, but I also created a Google photo album for those of you who aren’t on Facebook (yet).

I thought the ceremony was very well done. There were about 30 witnesses and I was sitting in the back row with my brothers. The wedding was emotional for my family since David is the first among the cousins to get married – which explained why my Mom, her sisters (including the groom’s Mom), and my Grandmother were in tears for a portion of the ceremony. It was a very nice wedding ceremony and I think that the pictures from the church show how it was very well put together.

The reception was also a good time. It’s always fun hanging out with family and friends for a celebration like a wedding. One funny occurrence – as I was walking outside for some fresh air, a kid came up to me and asked me if we knew each other from somewhere. I had no idea (and the memory wasn’t being assisted by the few beers that I had put away). To make a long story short, it turns out that the kid – who was one of the bride’s cousins – had just graduated from The College of New Jersey and is a member of my fraternity. He remembered me from all of the visits that I made to his chapter and the workshops that I put on while I was in charge of New Jersey for the fraternity. Small world, huh?

All in all, it was a great weekend. I hope for the best for my cousin and his wife and I hope that our family can get together more often to hang out and have some fun! Next on the agenda is a BBQ that my older brother’s girlfriend is throwing in a few weeks. I’m looking forward to that!

Last night’s live finale gave hope and inspiration to all of those people who feel that they have been “categorized” into not losing weight. In other words, those people who feel that they cannot lose weight because they are too old or are within a certain age range for a certain gender see now that it can be done. Jerry is 64 years old for goodness sake!

My only gripe with the finale was that it was too long. A three hour finale is completely unnecessary. The entire show could fit into a 90 minute show, which would be nice since there could either be a 30 minute pre-show or a 30 minute post-show. But NBC relies so strictly on the results it gets from audience testing that it completely misses how to put on a television production that makes viewers comfortable while watching the show. Sure, people tuned into the finale to see who was going to win, but the truth is that watching any NBC show is horrible because of the crappy timing and pacing of their shows.

Subscribe to JerseySmarts.com Newsletter Email: Visit this group

For those of you who are looking for even more commentary presented from a unique New Jersey point of view, be sure to follow JerseySmarts.com on Twitter @JVince81. Also, sign-up for our quarterly newsletter by using the sign-up form in the box to the left. The newsletter is sent four times each year to provide links to just a few of the top stories that you might have missed. That’s it – there’s no random sales pitch and we do not sell our mailing list to any third party advertising companies. The only updates you will ever receive are from JerseySmarts.com with links to the latest updates from this site. That’s it. Period.

Anyway, congratulations to Helen and Jerry as well as everyone who lost a ton of weight. Mike’s (the 18-year-old kid) transformation is also an amazing story. I’m happy for him and I hope that he sticks to a good diet and workout regime because he can now be healthy for the rest of his life.

Everyone knows that you’re supposed to walk some 10,000 steps in a day. For those of us who have jobs that require us to sit in one spot in front of a computer all day, that number can be hard to reach. Well, last week I took some 75,550 steps (according to my pedometer). I’ve been recording my steps for the last three or four years (can’t remember exactly), but the most that I’ve ever had in a week before is something like 72,000+ and that generally happens when I go to Nashville and walk around the city. So you can see, this is pretty good progress.

Again, even though I don’t want to make a regular routine out of this, I’m looking forward to getting up early tomorrow to get my workout in before I go to work. Not only are there not that many people at the gym, but I get to do a lot of reading while I’m on the treadmill (look for some more book reviews coming soon). Stay tuned for the latest and the greatest gym stories as they occur…

By the way, speaking of landmark achievements – Mother’s Day marked 14 days in a row that my Mom has gone without smoking. Unbelievable! My brothers and I are so incredibly proud of her. The last time that she didn’t smoke for 14 straight days was before she started smoking as a young girl. Amazing achievement, Mom! Good work!

Happy Mother’s Day!

First of all, did you know that May is Arthritis Awareness Month? There are over 300,000 children affected with juvenile arthritis in the United States alone – and some of them you would never know are suffering. For some the pain is private, with symptoms lasting for years before they receive the official diagnosis. Other kids have to drive hours to see their pediatric rheumatologist since there are such limited numbers across the country.

Kelly was diagnosed at 2 years old while other kids featured in this book were in their teens. Learning from her personal pain and struggle, Kelly wanted to make her book one that kids would want to read. She wanted to give kids an up-to-date resource guide that put familiar faces with the disease. Featured with Kelly are Allyson Shapiro – a reality TV star, Amanda White – a champion figure skater, and Shaun-Marie Robbins – a new mother who is having difficulty doing everyday mommy tasks.

On May 3rd and May 17, the NJ Chapter of the Arthritis Foundation is holding their annual Arthritis Walk across New Jersey. Kelly is the Public Relations Chair for the Princeton event and will be on hand to meet walkers and supporters. If you can, consider taking some time out of your day and supporting the Arthritis Foundation and meeting Kelly in Princeton!

Ms. Boyle appeared on Britain’s Got Talent, more specifically the episode that aired last weekend. And the reason why it’s important to note that she appeared on last weekend’s episode is because of how big of a phenomenon she’s become since then. As of this writing, the video of her on YouTube has garnered 29.9 million hits. In a week! Ms. Boyle is an internet sensation if there ever was one and she’s probably the most deserving one in history.

What is remarkable about Ms. Boyle is that the judges on Britain’s Got Talent (of which Simon Cowell is one) immediately wrote her off as a bland, hopelessly untalented wannabe. And the crowd in the theater was no better. They immediately fell back on to the sad innate biases of the 21st Century – that a 47-year-old, homely, somewhat frumpy looking virgin charity worker had nothing of significance to offer the world and thus, let’s laugh at her. In fact, if you watch the video linked above, you’ll hear that people are laughing at Ms. Boyle just as she stands on the stage. It’s ridiculous.

But the laughter immediately changes to adoration a few seconds into Ms. Boyle’s rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables. It’s stunning. It’s the type of real world reaction that the entertainment types cannot recreate and that no money can buy. And the humiliation embodied by the judges after Ms. Boyle’s amazing performance shows that there is at least some large degree of remorse that comes along with judging a book by its cover.

So, during a time when the global population is concerned about local, regional, and the worldwide economies and at a time when we’re not sure what the next day holds, it’s good to know that a person like Susan Boyle can become not just an internet sensation, but the hope of a generation. Like the rest of the world, America – and New Jersey – is pulling for Ms. Boyle to win this season of Britian’s Got Talent. Good luck!