crossthreaded

I want to be involved in so many activities outside of work that I find that I’m not home very much. From tutoring to babysitting, teaching English, exercising, and more, my time at home is pretty precious. When my husband asks if I’m coming home tonight, it kinda makes me stop and think. I’m trying to currently rearrange and prioritize to be at home more, but I’m not very good at it.

On top of that, my mind is currently wondering whether one of the local refugee agencies would work with me to figure out how to take some of the newly arrived refugees to the mountains come spring or summer to get out of the city. I don’t know how to equitably do that. The thing with working with a group of people is that everybody has to be given an opportunity to have the same service. I don’t know if breaking it down by only mothers, or only young adults would work. . .So, my mind is reeling again with fun things to do that keep me occupied. I’ve not had so much time and so many opportunities to do stuff I liked in a long time. I’ve gone into overload mode for the last six months.

My latest obsession is GoodSearch.com. It still baffles me that I can raise money for an organization simply by searching the internet using goodsearch.com as my search engine. It’s powered by Yahoo!, so I’m not getting weird results, or no results at all, and a penny or so for every search I do goes directly to the organization I want to support.

I’m so excited about Good Search that I sent out an reminder to my co-workers today reminding them to use Good Search when they surfed the net for work. In the last month or so, we’ve raised $2.68 or so. That certainly doesn’t seem like much, but that’s only with seven or so people actually using Good Search for us on any semblance of a consistent basis. Imagine what that total could be even if only a couple hundred of the nearly 700 current active supporters our modest-sized non-profit used Good Search when they used the internet! I can’t even imagine the possibilities of what Good Search could do for an organization that really capitalizes on its potential.

Want to find an easy way to support your favorite charity (mine being the International Rescue Committee) without having to give any extra money or time? Who’d think it’s possible-except for the people who created GoodSearch.com?

At this site, you can install a search toolbar, powered by Yahoo!, that will raise a penny or so for your favorite charity that’s registered with GoodSearch each time you use the GoodSearch search engine to browse the Internet! The money is donated through advertisers, so no money comes out of your pocket directly. If you spread the word around, you can get a lot of money over time. In the last two or three weeks, the organization I work for (not the IRC), has raised $2.25, and that is mainly through the 7 staff members we have doing some searches online during working hours. Most of those staff members are only part-time, too.

GoodSearch is also partnered with GoodShop.com that will donate a portion of your internet purchases to your favorite charity.

Try them out! 

I made it through the last forty minutes of “A Gentleman’s Agreement” last night, and it was great. The movie speaks to getting up and doing something to correct something when we see it isn’t right.

The best part of the whole movie occurs when Gregory Peck’s character’s son comes home upset from playing with some kids. Peck is arguing with his fiance about why she passively allows anti-semitism to occur around her. Peck leaves her, and he tends to his son. He asks him what happened, and the boy says he was called names by some other kids for being Jewish. He never once let on that he was, in fact, not Jewish. His dad said that that it was a good thing he didn’t. It was good, even if his son was hurt, because, if he did admit that he was not Jewish, he would be admitting to the world that there is something superior in not being Jewish. He could have done so to make the kids get off his case, but he didn’t.

I want to be that kid when I grow up.

We began watching “A Gentleman’s Agreement,” starring Gregory Peck, last night. The movie was made in 1947, but it seems to still ring true today on several levels. I started to nod off during the middle of the movie last night more because I was exhausted than the movie being boring.

Peck plays a writer who moves to New York City to write a series of magazine articles about anti-semitism. He searches and searches for a way to present the issue in a new way that will truly grab people by the collar and make them pay attention. World War II had been over for two years, and the subject had been overdone in a lot of ways, especially in always being presented with “facts and figures.” Facts and figures are what Peck has to try to avoid in his writing, according to his editor.

Peck hits upon pretending to be Jewish himself as a way to get at the heart of anti-semitism, and this causes a lot of problems with his fiance, and in his world of work. On top of everything else, kids at school make comments to his son about being Jewish, and his mom has heart problems.

Winning three Oscars, being nominated for more, and winning several other awards, this movie struck a chord with the American public at a time when the nation of Israel was coming into being and the Second World War was finally over.

We’ve been trying to buy a house for nearly a year now. Our two offers on houses in the last state we lived in were turned down for various reasons, and then I got it in my head that it was time to move to a new place.

So, we’re still renting. There are a lot of ups to renting at this point, given that we can get out of our payments if we need to by waiting until the end of the lease, paying the rest of the lease in one lump sum, or maybe save some money by moving to a cheaper place.

However, like any young couple, we want a place we can call our own. Where we live, the houses, for the most part, do not have a lot of curbside appeal. So,our ideas of what kind of house we’d want to live in have had to change.

Our financial situation has changed, too. Work is intermittent for my husband, I took a large pay cut when we moved here, and now we don’t know how long my job will hold out. On top of all that, houses here are a lot more expensive than the last place we lived.

Still, I found four houses $100,000 and under today, and we went to look at them. Two of them, I was ready to call the realtor right then while we sat looking at the house from the curb. However, we decided it wouldn’t be fair to the realtor to come out to show us these places given that we aren’t even sure we could get preapproved for much of anything at this point, even with good credit. That, and we’re in no financial situation to buy right now, anyway.

The loan ball game seems to be in a state of flux, and I don’t know what is what anymore. Eight months or so ago, things were really different and more accessible for first-time buyers like us. I don’t know what is going on anymore. Our lease isn’t up until the end of July, so we couldn’t really move on those two houses anyway, even if we wanted to.

So, we’re still looking and wondering what is in store. The dog needs a place to run so he’s not running like a nut from one side of the room to the other, up the stairs, down the stairs, and back to where he started all the time. He’ll repeat this scenario about 5 or 6 times before calming down. I think we’re going a little stir crazy, too.