NURSES SHARE BABY NAMES THEY TRIED TO TALK PARENTS OUT OF _ Nurses and midwives were asked to share the baby names they tried to talk parents out of.
• My classmate’s mother was a maternity nurse, and she once had a couple who wanted to name their son “Collin,” but wanted to give him a unique spelling. So they chose to spell it C-O-L-O-N. They tried to name their son Colon — as in, the organ attached to your anus. When my classmate’s mother explained this to them, they were painfully embarrassed, and asked her to just use the usual spelling instead.
• My boss’s friend named their kid “Monster Galileo.” The nurse tried to talk them out it, but they insisted. The kid goes by “Galileo”.
• Had we had children, my ex-husband wanted to name our girl “Tangerine.” Fortunately, we never had any children.
• I tried to tell someone not to name their kid “Tarmac.” They’d recently learned the word from NASCAR.
• I worked at a registrar’s office for a while, and someone named their kid “Sweet Prayer Sunrise”.
• My dad wanted to name me “Sky” — but he thought replacing the ‘y’ with an ‘i’ would be cute. Thank God my mom didn’t go along with it, or I may have been named “Ski”.
• I had a coworker named Trina and when she was pregnant, she told me that she and her husband decided to name their baby “Latrine.” I had to explain to her that she was naming her poor baby after the hole in the ground that [people went to the bathroom in]. She was horrified and changed it to Katrina.
• My coworker went to school with a girl named Fallopia.
WORLD’S LARGET LAUNDROMAT _ If you’ve been to Chicago you know there’s enough to do to keep you busy for days, or even weeks. One stop you might make is the World’s Largest Laundromat, located in Berwyn, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. That’s the name of the palce. In terms of pure machine count and scale, it has maintained its dominance through several decades. The WLL has 301 machines in total: 140 washers and over 160 dryers. Some of the washers are “express” models capable of holding up to 90 pounds of laundry. The building spans roughly 13,500 square feet, which is about five times the size of an average U.S. laundromat. The WLL has 16 flat-screen TVs, arcade games, a massage chair, and a large indoor aviary filled with finches and miniature doves. It also offers free coffee and donuts every morning, and has an indoor play area for children. The roof is equipped with 36 solar thermal panels to help heat the massive amount of water used daily.
THE HIDDEN COSTS OF TOO MUCH STUFF _ It’s not just the gear, the gadgets and the gizmos. It’s the bigger house, the wasted energy, and the missed opportunities that come with them. “This is the stuff that is making us poor in America.” Financial planner and author Ilyce Glink we too often buy without stopping to consider:
1. Is it necessary?
2. Can I afford it?
3. The most important: What is this new thing really costing me?
The National Association of Home Builders says the average size of a home in 1970 was 1,500 square. Today it’s over 2,700. Most people’s spending is motivated by what they see around them. For example, when a focus group was asked why people renovated their kitchens, many said it was because their friends had done it.
