Milk Shakes

I’ve always enjoyed a good milk shake. I’ve heard that Wendy’s is now serving milk shakes, so today I decided to give one a try. I was disappointed, it tasted just like the ones that you get from McDonald’s. I should have just kept on driving another mile and a half and gone to Dairy Queen. They at least use real ice cream.

April 15th

Tomorrow is the big day for most of us that have to file with the I.R.S. every year. I’m sure that a few of the post offices will be staying open a bit later tomorrow evening and that there will be long lines up until closing. Even with so many of us doing our taxes online the Post Office still makes a killing each year come April.

More politics

I thought the number of phone calls I got during the presidential election were bad!  I’ve been getting several phone calls every day from the organizations behind the different gubernatorial candidates!  It is very aggravating!  The phone rings, I answer it.  There is a long pause at the other end and then a recording starts off about the upcoming gubernatorial election.  I immediately hang up.  I already know who I am going to vote for, and these calls are not going to change my mind.  I just wish the calls would stop!

Disputing a credit card charge

There used to be a time when the credit card companies backed me up when I made a claim, disputing a payment. Well, those days sure seem to be over! There was a charge on my American Express card last May for $197 for a product that I did order. However I then subsequently cancelled that order and the merchandise was never received. I have proof that I contacted the company and cancelled the order, and I have an email from the company acknowledging the cancellation. Yet American Express keeps telling me that the charge is valid and that I have to pay it! So every month I have to reopen the claim. It is getting very tiring and I am thinking about cancelling that credit card! I have plenty of other credit cards that I can use – I don’t need the aggravation that goes along with this one!

Fruit flies

I understand that fruit flies come into the house via the fresh fruit that we buy at the grocery store, but I don’t understand how they travel from the kitchen area all the way into the bathroom.  It just doesn’t make sense to me that we didn’t have any kind of drain flies in the bathroom until we brought fruit in the house and started seeing fruit flies around the compost bucket!  My wife tells me that they are just fruit flies, and there really isn’t a whole lot we can about them if we want to keep bringing fruit into the house.  That’s really too bad, I enjoy the fresh fruit, but I hate the fruit flies!

Freecycle

I think Freecycle is great, but it has its limitations. We get (and give) some great stuff for free, but there are times when it can be aggravating. For example, when you are trying to negotiate a pickup or dropoff, the other party involved doesn’t seem to want to exchange telephone numbers, they simply state that they are leaving something by the curb for you to pick up at a certain time. But sometimes that certain time is simply impossible to meet, and when you send them an email about it to try to let them know (and renegotiate) they don’t always respond. So it can get quite frustrating!  And if you are trying to give something away and the person doesn’t show up to get it, and doesn’t call you to let you know that they aren’t coming (or got lost) or to renegotiate a different time, that is very frustrating as well!

Maybe they ought to develop a rating/ranking system like e-bay, where feedback is given.  I think that would make it a lot easier to use!

So sad to see

I’ve been trying to mentor some young people on job-hunting. I see how earnest they are, wanting to find work, and I try to help them out as much as I can. Whenever I hear of a job opening somewhere, I fill them in. I know that a lot of jobs are landed through social networking, and many jobs are not even advertised in any form. These folks have been looking for years, and are not on unemployment. It’s a miracle that they have not turned to crime.

I give them pep talks and help them work on their resume, and tell them I have confidence in them. It is so sad to see how hard they are working trying to find a job and they get turned away time and time again. It is very sad to see – they are disillusioned and discouraged. One of the things that upsets me is that these discouraged and disillusioned job-seekers are not even counted as part of the “unemployment figures” that the government releases. So when the government says that the economy is looking up because unemployment is down, that is just a lie. Very sad.

Get it in writing

I am really sad to say that gone are the days when a man’s word was as good as his handshake. There have been too many times when I have put my trust in people who are my relatives, and supposedly good friends that when they borrow something from me that they will return it. It’s really sad to think that I cannot trust my own friends and relatives anymore! What makes it really sad is that I hate to say “no” to them when they come to me and ask me to borrow something. But weeks go by and when I ask for it back they sometimes claim that they never borrowed it!

 My wife tells me that when they borrow something that I should have them put in writing that they are borrowing it and when they will return it. I hate to think that I have to do that with my own friends and family, but I think that it has come to that! And she says to tell them that if it isn’t returned by the “due date” that they can not borrow anything else until it IS returned. I hate to take that heavy-handed course, but I can’t afford to keep lending out things and never getting them back!

Sad that people can be so mean

I am a member of a yahoo community group.  I was reading today on the yahoo group that one lady is looking for a new home for her daughter’s pet goat.  The reason behind it is sad – her daughter’s neighbor is mad at the daughter because a few month’s ago the neighbor’s pit bull dog was running around loose (which is illegal in this state) and attacked one of the daughter’s goats. 

The neighbor had to pay damages, and he’s mad about it.  So ever since he has been calling all kinds of agencies to report the daughter for any and everything he can think of.  The authorities come out and talk to her and find nothing wrong, but she is tired of the authorities knocking on her door a couple of times a week.  So she is looking for a new home for her pet goat because many of the calls to the authorities revolve around her having the goat.  I think it is very sad that people can be so mean and vengeful.  I hope she finds a good home for her goat!

Banking choices

The banking industry is certainly growing!  And it appears to be growing at our expense.  I went to open a savings account the other day and the bank told me that I had to maintain a certain minimum balance on my savings or they would charge me a monthly maintenance fee!  On my SAVINGS?  I don’t think so!  A few days ago a good friend of mine told me that he had received a check from a customer of his and he deposited it and wrote checks against it.  Well, you guessed it!  That check bounced, so his checks bounced and he is being slapped with NSF fees all over the place!  I can remember once depositing a check in my account from a relative and it bounced, and I got charged a return check fee myself!  I think that should be illegal, for the banks to charge the innocent customer a fee for that!

More and more I’ve been thinking that prepaid debit cards just might be the direction to go.  They are becoming easier to get, easier to use, and if you arrange for direct deposit from your pension or paycheck, many times you can get the cards without any monthly fees.  And now some of them can even be set up with online billpay!  That is a great convenience to have – online billpay makes keeping track of finances a lot easier!

A major aggravation

I seem to be running across a lot of people lately who are aggravating me to no end. These people are unemployed simply because they want to be able to smoke their marijuana and do their other recreational drugs, and so many employers are now requiring drug tests. These people are collecting food stamps, unemployment/welfare benefits and are finding ways to make ends meet through black market means. I think that people should be required to take drug tests before being given any kind of government assistance. I deeply resent having to pay taxes to support people who would rather do drugs than work and pay their fair share of taxes.

Scary times

I’ve been rather busy lately, but it seems to me that the news is telling me some scary things lately. I’m not sure that I WANT to know what they are saying! The elections in Iran are being contested, rallies are being held where masses of people are chanting “death to America” and “death to England.” And North Korea is imprisoning women reporters to hard labor prison camps and threatening the world with nuclear weapons if we impose sanctions on them! These are scary times, indeed! It is scary to realize that it is possible for so many lunatics to rise to power and threaten the security of the rest of the world! Makes one want to not turn on the news!

Taking a token male

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!

The aggravation of owning vehicles

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!

Severe thunderstorms

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.

Short work week!

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!

No hands can opener

I received, as a Christmas gift, a No-Hands Can opener that is battery operated. The can opener would open the can, but would not let go of the can’s lid! So I mentioned that problem to the person who gave it to me, and they swapped it out for a new one for me.

This new one will only go around the can’s lid for about an inch, and then stops. It won’t let go of the can lid, so it is stuck on the can. This makes using the thing a challenge! I have put fresh batteries in it twice, hoping that would “fix it” but it didn’t make a difference.

I noticed that there was a sticker on the opener that said the name of the company that made it. I sent an email to the Sharper Image, telling them about this problem, told them that it is apparent that it is defective and to please replace the product.

They replied that they need the receipt in order to do that. I contacted the person who gave it to me, and she said that she threw the receipt away. I have told that to the company; I offered to send them the defective unit and they have ignored my reply.

I’m not used to that kind of poor customer service. I am used to the policies of companies like LL Bean that stand behind their product, receipt or no receipt, the only question being “Is the customer satisfied?”

I will try my best to avoid doing business with that company in the future, as I feel that customer service/satisfaction is very important. There is a sticker on the unit, proving it came from them, I don’t think that they should require any more proof than that.

Mowing the lawn

I love to mow the lawn.  Some people may think I’m crazy, but it really is something that I love to do.  I love riding around on my Walker zero-radius mower.  I mow the lawn in practically no time at all!  The challenge this year has been to find a time to mow the lawn when it hasn’t been raining!  Seems to me that every time I want to get out there and mow, it starts to rain.  Although I have mowed the lawn before when it is wet, it just doesn’t look as nice as when it is dry.  We’ve been having a spell where it has rained every day for over a week, and it is killing me watching the grass grow and not being able to mow it!

Overkill

I was reading an article on the msnbc website about how a teenage boy who attends a Christian private school in Ohio that forbids dancing, rock music and handholding has been suspended because he went to his girlfriend’s prom.  At the prom, they danced to rock music and held hands!  Oh the shame!  I understand that some religions forbid certain activities, but I think that this school suspension is a little bit extreme!

Overheard at the pharmacy

Yesterday I went to the pharmacy to pick up some allergy medicine for my wife.  The poor dear has been suffering from her spring allergies and had run out of her antihistamine.  She likes one of the brands that you have to buy from behind the pharmacy counter.  What a pain in the neck it is to have to go through all of that rigamarole to buy something that is supposed to be “over the counter” medicine with no prescription required!

But that is not the point of this post.  While standing in line to be waited on, I heard a guy at the counter telling the pharmacist that he wanted to buy all of the Tamiflu in the pharmacy so he could sell it online and make a huge profit off of the fears of ”the people” catching the swine flu!  Well, the pharmacist told him that he needs a prescription to buy Tamiflu, and he tried to argue with her.  Of course he went home empty handed, but I was quite angered by his desire to try to hoard the medicine and make a fortune with it over the Internet!  What a low-class kind of guy!