My wife likes to use the checkbook to pay for things.  Not I.  I carry a very small amount of cash for those few things that require it and other than that, it’s the credit cards baby!  Credit cards rock as the way to pay because it all comes on one bill, with some you get cash back and if you are smart you use Low Interest Credit Cards.  This way if you see something you need but don’t have the cash right then and there, you can still get it and not be in a bind.  And as long as you pay them off right away you don’t get piled into problems either.  We NEVER leave town without our credit cards because you never know what might happen.  Twice we have had to have major work done on our car while hundreds of miles from home.  You might have something against them on principle but using credit cards is actually a very smart way to go.  Thank you to my sponsors over in the UK.

I just used the file sharing service I recently did a paid post for (see below).  I sent a bunch of picture files to Raphi in Germany.  She had missed them on my computer when she saved all her pictures and I wanted to get them to her.  It just goes to show you that not only do you make money at PayPerPost but you learn about stuff you can really use that you didn’t know existed before.

I absolutely love it when people come up with creative ways to fill needs.  This is one of those.  In most e-mail there is a limit as to how much memory and how big of files you can send in a file and they are usually pretty small.  This makes it hard to send a big file.  Our exchange student took thousands of pictures while she was here and it would have taken me for ever to send her enough e-mails to get them to her home in Germany.  But we can get around this obstacle by using Driveway - Online File Sharing.  In this way you upload your files to driveway and then send the link in your e-mail and you can send files that are up to 500 MB!  That is a lot of pictures I could send in one e-mail.  It even has password protection and soon they will have a feature to upload entire folders!  Oh, did I mention that they are FREE!  The world just keeps getting better!  Thank you to my cool sponsors at Driveway.com

   A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War Two owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
   “Very few people were true Nazis ” he said,” but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.”
   We are told again and again by “experts” and “talking heads” that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace.
Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.
   It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals.
   The hard quantifiable fact is that the “peaceful majority” the “silent majority” is cowed and extraneous.
   Communist Russia comprised Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.
   China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.
   The average Japanese individual prior to World War 2 was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel and bayonet.
   And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were “peace loving”?
   History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
   Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awake one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
   Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.
   As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

We took her to O’Hare last night and watched her leave through the maze of security.  It was hard.  It was very emotional for all of us.  We spent the night before doing a lot of things together for one last time.  Then came the last day and we made the long trip through Chicago (it took longer to get through Chicago than it did to get TO Chicago).  I miss her already and things seem very quiet.  Today I went through and deleted all her music etc. from my computer.  I will wait until she tells me she got her pictures (6 gig worth) safely installed on her computer at home before I take them off here.  I didn’t think it would upset me so much to see her go.  Having a family member die must really be terrible.  We only had her for 10 months and it was tough to see her leave.  By now she is safely sleeping in her own bed in her parents house trying to shake off 13 hours of jet lag and a 6 hour time difference.