Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

I’ve been thinking this about California becoming the first state to legalize self-driving cars.

I was thrilled to hear this when it was first in the news, although careful attention revealed that it’s just the testing of the cars that became legal.  We still have a way to go before self-driving cars will be chauffeuring our kids to their ballet lessons and baseball games without us.

Where roadways are concerned, I am the most directionally-challenged person I know.  A friend of mine loves to tell the tale of the time I got lost in a church parking lot.  In my defense it was dark when we came out from the concert and the parking lot had quite a bit of one-way directional signage.  It’s always been this way for me, but the advent of MapBlast and GoogleMaps seems to have made it worse the last few years, as if having the printed paper in my hand somehow eggs on the traffic/street sign gods.

I keep a 3-ring binder in my breakfast room with printed directions to most of the places in my life. I grab the sheets out of the binder when I need them and put them back at the end of the trip.  Some of these directions are not used anymore; I have finally memorized how to get to the Teenager’s pediatrician and it got too dangerous for my pocketbook (& my waistline) to go to St. Agnes Bakery once a month.  Some of them were used once and have never been used again, like the gym in Big Lake where there was a gymnastics meet 3 years ago.   I’ve added quite a few pages in the last couple of years:  BiR, BiB, tim, Jacque & Lew, Steve, Caroline.   Many of the sheets have been spindled and mutilated from repeated trips in the car; some of them have coffee stains.   I even added alphabet tabs to the binder last year to make it easier to find the directions I want.

I expect that I’ll have this disability the rest of my life. I just hope that self-driving cars will come with GPS!

Where do you want your self-driving car to take you?

Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

(Part 2 in a Baboon Fantasy Series)

I’ve heard many people say “I know money doesn’t buy happiness but I’d like to be part of the test group.” Everyone can point to lots of examples of money being the root of all evil but still think they could handle extreme wealth better than others.

In my fantasy dog-free world, I do not want to win a billion-dollar lottery and have to hire an entourage the first week. Give me just enough cash so that I can #1: not have to work, #2: travel to an exotic place at last once a year and #3: write some nice-sized checks to a variety of my favorite causes.

I love my job but if I didn’t have to sit in a cube and arrange things for others, I don’t think I would miss it. Having no job would give me more time for gardening, reading, volunteering and maybe my house might get clean.  I already volunteer at a few places, but I’d love to volunteer at the library and maybe an animal shelter.

Although I’ve traveled quite a bit and been to some fun and exotic places, it’s always been on the client’s agenda; I’d love to do my own thing and take Young Adult along with me sometimes. Australian Outback, Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu, Alaska, Rio de Janiero, Prague…. this could go on for a bit.

One of the reasons that I volunteer a lot is that I don’t have much cash to spread around to some of my favorite causes. But I know that in addition to volunteers, organizations need money to keep them going. I’d like to be able to write a nice check each year to both of our zoos, Planned Parenthood, Feed My Starving Children, UNICEF, Haiti Mission, malaria prevention, Cantus, my daughter’s education.

I could probably add on to all these lists easily but I don’t want so much money that I have to spend a boatload of time managing it and I certainly don’t want to have to hire someone to manage it. So add a bit more for some meals out and a bit for my stamps/glitter/ribbon and I should be good to go!

What would you use a little extra cash for?