Aspire To Something Higher Thought of the Day - Inspirational Quotations

We had a fun Saturday night.

My wife & I went downtown Toronto to see a friend of ours open for Sarah McLachlan.  Pretty cool, huh?

Actually, our friend is the sister of a friend of ours; she and her husband live around the corner from us.  We’d met the sister a few times and we knew she was pursuing a career in music and had gotten a record deal with Warner Music. Her name is Meaghan Smith.  After you read this whole post, come back and check out her site and watch her video on there.

Well, she’s doing pretty good for herself!  She’s a lot like Nora Jones, the daughter of Ravi Shankar, the guy who worked with George Harrison and the Beatles.   Meaghan is on tour at the moment with Ron Sexsmith.

Anyway, somehow she got on the bill for this one night show; I think her manager at Warner also works for Sarah.  Well, this was the first time we saw Meaghan in concert and she was incredible!  Her music is beautiful, she’s got a great voice, and she is very interactive with the audience.  And she was cracking jokes like crazy and had the audience in stitches!  She’s hilarious.

During the intermission, we met our friends and Meaghan out in the hall and it was funny to see people “star struck” with her.  People really took to her.

Next, right before Sarah got on stage, a famous Indian guru came in that is involved with the concert; the proceeds were going to a charity for children that he started.  His name is Sri Ravi Shankar…which is different than the Ravi Shankar who’s the father of Nora Jones.  Weird, huh?

Sarah was really good.  She sounds SO GOOD live in concert.

After the show, Meaghan’s manager gave us backstage passes and we went to wait in her dressing room with our friends and band members, etc.  At one point, I was shocked when Ed Robertson from the Barenaked Ladies stuck his head in the room to congratulate the band.  It was funny because he looked at all of us in the eyes and treated us like we were all in the band.

Everyone was quiet after he left and I said, “Can you believe that just happened?”

Next, Sarah McLachlan’s manager came in and asked us if we wanted to meet Sarah.  Our friends had already met her before the concert, so they were ok.  But my wife and I just said, “No, it’s ok.”  Weird, huh?  I guess I felt like I didn’t have anything constructive to say to Sarah if we met her.  I mean, she meets thousands of people in similar scenarios, so why bother her with yet another?

Meaghan was gone for some time because she was signing CD’s and shirts and taking pictures with fans.  We went across the street a while later for a late dinner.  It was funny again to have people pointing and whispering in the restaurant; they had been at the show and recognized Meaghan.  Anyway, she paid for dinner.

It was a fun Saturday night!  I’d like to do that again!

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There are six things that keep us going:
First, the instinct to live, which we apparently have no part in making or deciding about.

Second, group consciousness and the desire that we have to win the approbation of our fellows within the group.

Third, the various interests that we may find in life, such as religion or art or some such other branch of esthetics.

Fourth, in our climate the habit of work.

Fifth, the sheer joy of physical life that we find in hours of well-earned recreation after hard work -games, fishing, tramping the hills, a good book before an open fire.

Sixth, and most important, the general feeling that we have that there is some abstract goodness or rightness in the world with which we may cooperate in making the world a fine place for a splendid race of men, women and children to live in.

-Frank Parker Day

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“Vacillating people seldom succeed. They seldom win the solid respect of their fellows. Successful men and women are very careful in reaching decisions and very persistent and determined in action thereafter.” -L.G. Elliott

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“If I wanted to become a tramp, I would seek information and advice from the most successful tramp I could find. If I wanted to become a failure I would seek advice from men who have never succeeded. If I wanted to succeed in all things, I would look around me for those who are succeeding, and do as they have done.” -Joseph Marshall Wade

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“All that I have accomplished, or expect or hope to accomplish, has been, and will be by that plodding, patient, persevering process of accretion which builds the ant heap particle by particle, thought by thought, fact by fact. If I was ever actuated by ambition its highest and warmest aspiration reached no further than the hope to set before the young men of any country an example in employing those invaluable fragments of time called odd moments.” -Elihu Burritt

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I regret that I didn’t get out more this past Thanksgiving weekend.

We were out at a country fair most of Saturday, and while there we:

• watched horse-jumping
• went on rides
• let the kids try to win carnival games (my son won a guitar seconds after I told him that these games are rigged and that he’d never win)
• bought fries, ice cream, sponge candy, a deep fried Mars bar, etc
• and more

Here’s a pic of this years biggest pumpkin contest:

THIS PUMPKIN IS 1066 POUNDS!!!!!

Crazy, isn’t it?  How many pumpkin pies do you think you could get out of this thing???

I DID TAKE SEVERAL other pictures of the fair, but I decided not to post them.

But here’s one I took during a short walk we took on Sunday.

We are hoping to go out on Wednesday and enjoy the season some more.  I took a vacation day for my wife’s birthday.  Normally, we go out somewhere *OVERNIGHT*, but she’s too busy with a new venture she’s started making baby blankets and nursing covers, etc.

We might take a day trip out to a place called “Lake on the Mountain“.

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“Let a man choose what condition he will, and let him accumulate around him all the goods and gratifications seemingly calculated to make him happy in it; if that man is left at any time without occupation or amusement, and reflects on what he is, the meagre, languid felicity of his present lot will not bear him up. He will turn necessarily to gloomy anticipations of the future; and unless his occupation calls him out of himself, he is inevitably wretched.” -Blaise Pascal

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