A few days ago I found myself driving down a rural road near where I live that I had never driven down before. I had never gone down there before simply because I never had the need to go down there. I knew it was there, I just never paid it much attention. Well, this particular day there was a road block and detour that caused me to HAVE to drive down that road. The road was narrow, gravel, and very twisty-turny. At first I was aggravated that I had to drive down the road; it was rather badly washboarded and it was slowing me down! However I was really rather amused when about a mile down the road I saw a road sign that said “swan crossing.”
I’ve seen “deer crossing” and “moose crossing” signs before, but never “swan crossing” signs. Well, immediately after the next turn, sure enough, there were three swans walking across the road! There were two beautiful ponds with waterfalls on both sides of the road, with swans in both of them. Some of them were simply switching from one pond to the next. These swans had wide gold bands around their necks. I had to wonder who put the bands on them, and if it was simply a declaration of ownership, or some kind of scientific research! Either way, I was glad I went down the road and experienced the swan crossing!
Every now and then my wife and I go to the “big mall” that is over an hour’s drive from home. It’s a rare treat to go there; we usually only go there two or three times a year. We try to go on a day when we think it won’t be busy because we don’t like trying to fight the crowds and stand in line at the cash register for a long period of time.
But the big mall has some specialty stores in it that we just can’t go to locally, and we like going to them when we can. That’s when we stock up on my wife’s favorite reed diffuser oil, handmade soap, and aloe vera products . We try to go to the Sabon bath and beauty store for those products because my wife likes their products best. She says the fragrances don’t give her a headache the way other store’s products do!
She likes to use these types of items in gift baskets that she makes up to give to people on gift giving occasions, as well as use them throughout our own house. She loves how the reed diffusers can fragrance a room without having to burn any candles, or plug in anything electrical.
My sister has been complaining to me about how she has been trying to refinance the mortgage on her house. She has been talking with several financing companies, and she thought that she had one lined up to get her the loan that she wanted. She had sent them all of the information they had requested, and they said that they would call her back the next day to make an appointment for an appraiser, and to get her credit card information to charge the appraisal fee. They never called back! That was two weeks ago, and now she is worried that they were some kind of scam artist trying to get her personal information. I think she may be right! She’s been sending them emails asking them what’s going on and they don’t bother to respond. Very unsettling, and very rude!
As my parents get older, they have been having more difficulty navigating around their house. My mother is on oxygen 24 hours a day, and tires easily. When we go out shopping, or out to dinner, we have to stop frequently to let her rest. So my wife and I are considering buying an electric wheelchair for her to use.
Having something like that would enable us to take her a lot more places. We’d really enjoy taking her to shows and family parties, but it has been a major effort to do that in the past.
There are so many different options available to her; I’d like to get one that folds easily and fits into the trunk of my car. Something like the Breeze electric travel scooter from the thescooterstore.com website would be perfect!
Over the years my wife and I have been using credit cards to help us to get the things we need and want, with the intention of paying the balance off in full when the bill comes in. Unfortunately, the difficult economy we are in right now is making us rethink how we will be using our credit cards in the future. With kids in college, it is likely that there will be times when we might not be able to pay the balance off in full! Of course we would prefer to not be in that position, but there really is only so much one can do!
So we have been looking at the comparecards.com website to help us figure out if there are better credit card plans than the ones we have, hoping that we can find a better deal. I’m hoping that we can compare credit cards and find a way to save money. Maybe even apply for (and get) a no interest credit card! That would be great!
My wife was telling me that she read an article recently about how women are not only treated unfairly in the workplace, but also in the markeplace. Research has shown that when negotiation for a new car, white men are the most likely to get the best prices, followed by african-american men, followed by white women, followed by african-american women. Lesson? If you want to buy a new car, women should bring along a white man to do the negotiating for them so they will get the better deal! That’s certainly a sad state of affairs!
Today I suggested to my wife that she drive our son’s car to work so I could work on her car. Her car needs new brakes. So off she went in the Subaru, while I started to tear apart the Lumina. Well, the new brake kit I had bought was the wrong one, so after I had torn apart her car for nothing I had to put it back together and order the right kit.
And then when my wife got home from work she told me that the Subaru was making a bad noise. She insisted I go for a short drive with her so I could listen to it. Well, she was right, there IS a bad noise. I don’t know if it is a bad wheel bearing or a bad brake, but I’m going to have to tear it apart tomorrow and find out! When it rains, it pours!
Our kids have been bugging us to buy some exercise equipment to put in the family room. They have been complaining about how hard it is to travel to a gym to exercise, and that there are a lot of times when they don’t want to exercise outdoors because of inclement weather of biting insects. And of course our suggestions about doing jumping jacks, squats, and sit-ups are met with loud protests.
My biggest concern about investing money in exercise machines is that after spending a huge amount of money on an elliptical machine, exercise bike, or treadmill is that after only a couple of short months of use that the kids will decide that using the equipment to exercise is “boring” or “too much trouble” and that I will have wasted a lot of money.
Fortunately, I have a friend who has all three of those machines and he said that we could borrow one of them for a couple of months, then the other, and then the other and we can see how much use they get. And THEN we can decide whether or not to buy one! I think that’s a good idea, don’t you?
Well my wife has caught the latest virus that’s going around. I hate it when she gets sick! She tries so hard to keep doing the housework, and going to work, and she is too stubborn to just go to bed and rest! I think she is afraid that the world will stop turning if she takes a couple of days to recuperate!
I’ve called the doctor and he is calling in a prescription for her to the local pharmacy. Thank goodness they deliver! They should have her medicines out here any minute now!
I am totally amazed by the sheer number of diet pills that are on the market! I can only imagine how confused and frustrated people could become if they were looking for an effective and safe diet pill to take. Personally, I have been fortunate enough in my life to (so far) not be in the position to be concerned about my weight. I have a very fast metabolism. I expect though, in the not too distant future that my metabolism will slow down with age and I will have to be cautious about the foods that I eat.
I hope that I never have to resort to taking any kind of diet pills; I just don’t like taking pills! I don’t even like taking over the counter pain relief for a headache! But I digress. There are a huge number of diet pills “out there” and it can get confusing about which ones are the best ones to take. That’s why the consumerpricewatch.net website was created – to help the consumer to learn about the options that are out there. Their website rates and reviews many of the diet pills that are currently on the market. I was reading their nuphedragen reviews and was impressed with their candor about their concerns about its safety. I highly recommend this website to anyone that has questions they want answered about diet pills.
This time of year I get really nervous when there are severe thunderstorms. Especially at night! One of my friends has a brother that was struck by lightning – twice! The second time fried his brain so bad that he is now living permanently in a nursing home. It’s really sad because he was a nice guy with a nice family, and now he really can’t function at all.
At night when the thunderstorms hit, and the wind is roaring, I am worried that there may be a tornado coming and because it is dark out we can’t see it. There is a church near where we live that had its steeple ripped off by a tornado – twice! So I know we live in an area that tornadoes can happen. And I have seen the damage done to other buildings in the past, so I worry. I try to hide my fear, though; I don’t want the rest of the family and the dogs to see how much it upsets me. I try to act as if nothing is wrong at all.
My favorite kinds of vacations are the kind where we stay in a condominium. I really don’t like the old fashioned “rent one room with two beds and a bath” type of vacation. I really just can’t relax in a room like that – that kind of room is only for sleeping. No, I like having all the amenities of home; a full kitchen, separate living spaces, balconies with a nice view, and a laundry center right in the unit.
The newest North Myrtle Beach Resorts have all of those amenities, and are great place to unwind and relax. Or go out in search of nearby adventure! The North Myrtle Beach Resort area is conveniently located near amusement parks, great restaurants, and great shows. I’d like to go to the Grand Prix Raceway amusement park – one of my favorite things to do is watch NASCAR races, so I’m sure I could find some great things to do there! And the Oceanfront North Myrtle Beach Resort is just a few short steps from the ocean! Sounds like my kind of vacation spot!
I was just reading an article on Time.com that France has decided to extend their 35 hour work week. I didn’t know that France had a 35 hour work week! That meant that if they worked more than 35 hours, they got paid overtime! Anyway, France’s government has decided that they will allow businesses to require that their employees work longer hours without paying them. Understandably the businesses are happy about that, the employees not so much. I know I’d rather have a 35 hour work week!
My neighbor Bob tells me that his wife Mary is thinking about starting a day care center in his house. He says that his wife wants to stay home to raise their kids, and that the best way they can figure out how to afford that is if she gets paid to look after other people’s kids too. He’s been telling me that they are going to be putting in some lockers in the area that she will be tending the kids. So he’s asked me to keep an eye out for lockers for sale at a good price.
I was telling my wife about that, and she went online and found a website that specializes in lockers! She emailed the link to the site to Mary so she could take a look at the different types and sizes that they sell and pick out the locker she likes the best. They have a great variety of School Lockers, basket lockers, Gym Lockers, benches, Wood Lockers, locker accessories, and some really great specialty lockers that look like fine furniture! Definitely a good place to shop for lockers!
Today I decided to clean out the trunk of my wife’s car for her. I try to do that from time to time, to make sure that when we need the trunk space for something, there is space for it. I also like to lighten the load in the car as much as possible to get the best gas mileage we can get. Sometimes I’m surprised and amused by what I find in her trunk. For example, today I found a bag with a change of clothes in it (which actually is a pretty good idea) and a snow scraper, a shovel, and a bag of kitty litter. I know that carrying around a snow scraper, shovel, and kitty litter is a good idea in December, January, February, or even March! But here it is, in the middle of May, and she’s prepared for a snow storm? Sometimes I have to just shake my head in amusement!
Over the past year or so my wife has been getting and using coupons for a brand name automatic dish washing detergent. She has pretty much been sticking to the store brand in the past because that is usually the most economical, but lately she has found coupons for this name brand that make it a better deal. What is noticeably different about this name brand is that she has been buying the gel packs that are very convenient to use. You just take out a gel pack and put it in the dishwasher’s soap compartment. So there is no accidental overfilling of the soap dish. In the past there have been times when I’ve opened the dishwasher and found that the dish washing powder was just dumped out in a lump on the bottom of the dishwasher and it never dissolved. This gel pack stuff dissolves easily. I’ve never found a case when it didn’t dissolve. So, I like the gel packs, and am always glad when my wife buys them! Thank goodness for her coupon clipping!
A couple of weeks ago my wife happened to be working near the shop that her mother owns, and they were getting off of work at the same time. It only made sense that they get together for dinner before heading home. They don’t get the chance to see each other very often as we live about 2 1/2 hours away from them. So it was good that they got the chance to get together and enjoy a nice meal together that neither one of them had to cook!
So during dinner her mother was telling her that right now she is the only one living in her neighborhood! She lives in a secluded area that tends to be used for seasonal vacation homes, and right now most of the homeowners have been having some kind of problem or another and no one has been around for months!
Naturally, that gave my wife cause for concern. She has heard of many break-ins of people’s homes that live in secluded areas when no one is around. Her mother is not the kind of person who want to own any pets at all, so having a “guard dog” is out of the question for her. My wife told her mother that she felt very strongly that she needs to install an ADT Home Security system as soon as possible. With an adt home security system, the noise of the alarm going off might scare off the burglars that might break into her home. At the bare minimum, the adt system would alert the police, and alert her at work, or on her cell phone that there is something going on in the house so that she is prepared to deal with it before going home and perhaps walking in on a burglary in progress. That could be very harmful to her; walking in on a burglary in progress would NOT be a good thing! The adt alarm systems are one of the most affordable alarm systems, yet one of the most reliable.
When we saw her mother again this past weekend, on Mother’s Day, she told us that she had her alarm system installed last week! We were so glad to hear that!
In this tough economy, no one wants to hear that their hours are being cut back. Unfortunately, my sister tells me that she got a voice mail message on her cell phone today while she was running errands that her hours are being cut back at work. Since she only works part time to begin with (looking for a full time job) that cut-back hurts!
I wish there was something I could do to encourage her and help her out with her finances, but in these tough times it is hard to help anyone! I told her that I’d keep an ear to the ground and an eye out for job openings and let her know if I find anything for her!
I was just listening to the news on tv this morning, while reading my emails, and noticed a story about how freegans are dumpster diving for their meals. This particular story, though interesting, was kinda disturbing. I agree that there are a lot of grocery stores and restaurants that throw away perfectly good food, but I can’t imagine going through a dumpster full of trash to fish out the food to eat. If the food was segregated from other garbage, maybe. But the food is mixed in with all of the other garbage, it could have all kinds of bacteria and filth transferred to it that might not wash off.
That story kinda freaked me out!
I’ve been hearing a lot of advice recently from financial experts on how to best manage our money in these economic hard times. In the past, the advice has been to pay off credit cards as quickly as possible. This has been good advice because credit card debt has always been considered “bad debt” because interest rates have been high. However, in recent months the credit card companies have been cancelling accounts left and right. They are afraid that they are going to be stuck with a lot of unpaid credit card debt. Quite possibly because there has been a lot of publicity recently about how people can get out of paying most of their credit card debt! The companies are using the excuse that the cards have not been used recently, so they are cancelling them due to non-use. I think they are just afraid of losing money!
So more recently people have been advised to stop paying off their credit cards, and to keep low balances on them so that the credit card companies won’t close the accounts. And I think that people who have poor credit and are struggling to get credit cards approved would be well advised to get some prepaid credit cards so that they can start rebuilding their credit rating.
General life, Pets, Travel | Dean | 
May 31, 2009 5:17 pm | 
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