One of the things that I’ve noticed is that the average level of humidity inside our house is quite low. My wife and I are constantly running humidifiers and applying various creams and moisturizers to our skin to combat over-dry skin. Especially in the winter, my skin gets so dry that the skin on the pads of my thumbs actually develop deep and painful cracks! I keep telling my wife that we need to turn our entire house into a big cigar humidor to take care of our skin problems! Her reply is usually something along the line of moving to a tropical island would be her preference.
I went out and sat on the ground yesterday and decided to pull a few weeds out of my miniature garden that I started last year. Much to my surprise and pleasure, I noticed everything was growing very nicely! All my lilies and irises and sedum and daisies, and of course wild onions everywhere! Even my three kinds of weeds were pretty! (Although I did pull them out!)
My wife told me that when I planted all of this stuff, that half of it probably wouldn’t come in because the soil is terrible. Well, she was half right! The other half is everything is extremely healthy and growing just the same, even though the dirt is pretty bad! I can’t wait to expand it and put in some hostas and some more hibiscus and along the edge of my property I want to plant some more crape myrtle trees and shrubs.
Had a couple of friends over after work for drinks and a chance for me to change clothes before going out tonight. Yahoo – it is finally a nice weather Friday!!!!!!
Last winter’s bad weather is long gone and today was gorgeous. That’ is one of the funny things about living in the South. The winters are kinda weird. One day you can play golf and the next day it’s sleet and ice. Today, I saw a woman wearing a halter top and a college kid wearing a muscle tee, khaki shorts and sneakers with no socks, while yesterday it was cold enough to see your breathe in the early morning hours.
Anyway, since it was nice out, we took our drinks out on the deck and found our next door neighbors doing the same thing! We chatted a bit and had a nice time. They filled us in with their plans on heading south in the near future to check out some of the highlands nc golf communities that are popular these days. It really got me thinking that maybe we should do this more often. Especially with the deck part – the city skyline was gorgeous with a red and purple sunset tonight.
My daughter called me over the weekend and was talking to me about how she wants to get a new credit card. She already has a couple of cards, but she doesn’t get any kind of rewards for using them. She is very interested in getting a card that gives her rewards, with no annual fees, and a low interest rate. I suggested that she check out the website creditcardsclub.com. That website has a listing of the many different cards that are available, and has a short written review on each one, describing the interest rate, the rewards (or lack thereof,) and annual fees. There are also several different interesting articles on the site about safeguarding your credit, repairing bad credit, and how to avoid scams of fake credit repair companies.
I personally like the Discover Card rewards cards, but not all businesses accept Discover Cards, so it is my opinion that it is a good idea to also have a MasterCard or Visa on hand. I told her that if she ends up talking to a service representative on the phone about the cards she is interested in apply to get to be very cautious to ask very specific questions regarding the limitations on the rewards. Some of the cards get very tricky!
Knowing that my father-in-law was a professional musician, sometimes I find myself in a position of having to negotiate with my wife and kids about certain music-related things. For example, when the boys were younger we considered purchasing a youth drum set at guitar center but ended up buying a different set that had a muffler attachment. I’m all for encouraging the family to pursue music, but I also need to be able to keep my sanity while the kids are practicing their music!
