My best friends father lost his job with a huge ‘Truck’ manufacturer around here.  He got to keep his health insurance but has to pay through the ‘cobra plan’.  I didn’t know what that was so I asked.  It’s where you keep the same health insurance but pay out the rear for it basically from what I gathered.  It’s hard to have a family with 4 kids and not have health insurance.

Christa, my friend, said her father checked into Kaiser Health Insurance and found very similar coverage that he has through cobra for far less there.  He learned about it from his sister in California.  She has insurance through kaiser permanente california.   They found out that Kaiser Permanente also offers insurance in 9 states and Washington DC.  When you are laid off, every penny counts and they helped save their family quite a bit of money.  I didn’t ask just how much because it’s none of my business but I know they’re happy with the savings so it must have been a pretty good savings.

We recycle paper at school, we recycle everything we can at home but I’m sure there are too many people that don’t.  I found the ultimate recycling guide on MSN Green.  It tells all the things you can recycle and why you should recycle some things like microwave ovens (they contain radiation) and other things like that.  People are used to just throwing stuff away and they really need to get the word out and have more recycle stations available and I bet even more people would recycle instead of just filling up our landfills with stuff that shouldn’t be there.

I can’t quite figure out why everyone is having such a time griping about the use of stem cells.  Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t we throwing away stem cells every single day when a baby is born by throwing the umbilical cord in the trash?  They say one mans trash is another mans treasure and in this case, it could be another mans cure for some awful disease in this ‘trash’.  The research is wide open and just in the beginning stages of who and what stem cells could help and possibly cure and yet it’s something that is still thrown away every single day.

If you go to http://www.celle.com, they have a new way of collecting stem cells.  It’s from a woman when she has her monthly cycle.  This company has come up with a way of collecting the stem cells from this.  They are a perfect match to the woman and may be a possible match for her closest relatives like siblings and parents.  Just think of the people this could help with some things that are simply thrown away just like a babies umbilical cord.  Amazing what can be done in this day in time.

I’m a high school graduate!!  Mom and Daddy got me a graduation gift I didn’t expect.  They got me a Toyota Prius.  It’s the coolest car I have ever seen.  It get’s 42 miles to a gallon of gas which means it won’t cost me an arm and a leg (or my first born) to drive it back and forth to college or help with the meals on wheels either.  They got me a metalic blue (which I love blue) with a cd player and a couple bells and whistles as they say but it’s perfect for me.  I absolutely love it!!!!!!!!!!  I think they said they had to order it about 6 months ago just to be able to get one for me in time for graduation.

This day was always a hard day for my uncle that was in WWII.  See, he was there.  He was on the beaches of Normandy.  Everyone that knew him, knew that this is one of the days you just don’t go visit him. I forgot one year and stopped by to see him and there he was, this big strong man, crying like a baby.I think I already told you that he brought back pictures he took while he was over there, pictures of piles of dead bodies from the concentration camps that the Germans had the Jewish prisoners in.  He was one of the men that bull dozed the mass graves to bury those poor people.  He saw more hate and death there than anyone should ever see and he never forgot those that he buried. He mourned for them just as he would have a member of our family because they were innocent people slaughtered for no reason other than hate.

Unfortunately he’s gone now but I will always remember that the biggest, strongest man I ever knew, was man enough to shed a tear and care for others. He was a part of a dying breed of ‘real men.’