Like anything, it takes work!

There are countless ways of attaining greatness, but any road to reaching one's maximum potential must be built on a bedrock of respect for the individual, a commitment to excellence, and a rejection of mediocrity.

- Buck Rodgers

Howl, our visiting cat . . .

If your room was next to the front door, you would understand why we call the cat Howl. Seems Howl wants a snack around four in the morning. Fortunately, he/she doesn't persist and we do not hurry from our warm beds to provide desired food.

The cat is still skittish but welcomed a bit of yarn to play with today. Howl must have had a busy night as he was curled up on the porch this morning and sound asleep.

I like his/her markings with the Siamese coloring but the striped legs and tale. Howl's blue eyes don't show up well in the photos but they are a light, clear blue.

Right now, the cat is lurking under the bushes and eyeing the yarn so I closed the door to give her time to investigate the matter.

Where in the world is Garden Grove?

The computer is an amazing instrument and there are few people I know that aren't on some kind of social network, e-mail, etc. Besides the joys of connecting and meeting people, we still have to be careful. It is amazing how we will quickly bypass someone on the street who tries to befriend us out of the blue yet think nothing of chatting away with complete strangers who want to friend us on-line. I'm always surprised when people post pictures of their children and list home addresses for the world to see.

Someone told me that a good rule of thumb is to internet search your own name once in awhile and see what comes up. It lets you see what is out there in the world about yourself and you can check to see if it stems from something you are involved with or prompt you to check further if you don't recognize the source.

One search that I do from time to time is to run my name and my family members' names through those people finder sites. Without enrolling for money, all you can access is the name, age, and town of residence. Some of them list all the places you might have lived. That's all you need, however, because if it shows someplace you have never lived, you might have a reason for concern. With so much identity theft these days, any abnormality in anything you deal with, needs to be checked out.

Recently, I went through my protection ritual and along with the two places shown as my recent or former towns of resident, there was a third one! I was surprised and a bit shocked. It listed Garden Grove as a city where I either used to live or am now currently receiving mail. Uh, I have never been to Garden Grove much less lived there. In fact, I'm not even sure where the place is which concerns me as to why it has been linked to my name. Fortunately, nothing else amiss seems to be coming from this but you can be sure I'm  contacting our identity protection company and notifying the police of a possible problem.

Just thought I'd share that to remind everyone to be as careful on the computer highways as they are on the physical highways of the world.