A few years ago my wife and I bought a new king sized bed. The bed we had been sleeping on was over twenty years old and even though we had slid a piece of plywood between the mattress and bed springs, it was simply time for it to retire. My wife kept complaining every morning that her hips hurt, and when we went on a vacation and slept on a different mattress my wife’s hips didn’t hurt anymore, so we decided it was time to give our mattress the “heave-ho” and buy a new one. Well, we bought a really nice bed on a payment plan that was 0% interest for the life of the loan, and we just made the last payment on the bed.
I’ve noticed that this bed is starting to show signs of indentations where we sleep and I’ve been trying to convince my wife that we should think about replacing this one. Of course, she doesn’t want to buy a new bed so soon – after all the last one we had lasted over twenty years! But this new bed only had a ten year warranty, and to be honest ever since my car accident I’ve slept better in my recliner. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in our bed since the accident. I’d really like to buy a set of new adjustable beds for our room so that I can adjust the bed the way I need it to be in order to sleep all night long.
A friend of mine is a vendor at a flea market in a city about an hour’s drive from my house. He invited me to bring some stuff of mine that I’d like to sell to the flea market today and put it in his booth to try to sell it. I figured “what have I got to lose?” so I took some stuff I’ve been wanting to get rid of and went down there. I’d never been to that flea market before. I was rather impressed, and I sold most of the stuff I wanted to get rid of! I think I might get into this flea market stuff! I’m going to ask my wife to come check it out with me next weekend and see what she thinks of it all.
With the economy going the way it has been going, I have to wonder just how valuable a college education really is nowadays. It seems that there are a lot of highly educated people out there that are trying to find a job, and are not having very good luck at it. When they apply for entry-level jobs, or manual labor jobs, many of them are being told that that they are “over qualified” and can’t get hired because the employer is concerned that the employee won’t stay there very long. It seems to me that it really is a gamble, no matter what you do.
It used to be thought that education is never a waste, but when I see how difficult a time my wife has been having finding a job using her degree in Business Administration, I have to wonder. So for all of those who are thinking about going back to school, I encourage them to try to find as many free scholarships as they possibly can to help pay for the courses. I cannot even imagine trying to pay for a college education in this day and age without being able to count on grants and scholarships! One good place to look on the Internet for ways to earn and win free college scholarships is the scholarshippoints.com website.
I’ve been hearing a lot about the lady who just gave birth to octuplets – she already had six children, and just had eight more – and ALL of them were by in vitro fertilization! I’ve heard that she isn’t even married, and is living at home with her parents. I can understand wanting to have a few kids, but fourteen is a LOT of kids! I cannot even imagine trying to take care of them all; the expense is going to be astronomical! I thought I had my hands full with just our three kids!
I never realized that there are hundreds of drug rehab centers in the state that we live in. I’ve never HAD to know that there were any until recently, when one of my wife’s relatives came clean with us and asked for help in finding a drug treatment center for him.
My wife found a very helpful website that specializes in helping people find the treatment centers they need. It’s not just focused on drug treatments, though; it also deals with alcohol rehab, sex addiction treatment, and just about any type of addiction you can think of.
The website is called treatment-centers.net and once you get to the main page you can click on the state you want to find help in, and it takes you to a page that has a huge list of the treatment centers in that state.
I found some stories on the BBC’s website that was talking about some hotels with a twist. There was one story about one hotel room that has a lot of items in it that are made of chocolate! I can’t imagine why anyone would do something like that! Chocolate doesn’t stay “fresh” very long, and it melts! And what about the kids that would actually try to eat some of the chocolate fixtures? It wouldn’t taste very good after a while, but kids would still try it, wouldn’t they? And that would ruin the looks of the room. So when that happens, what would the hotel do to try to repair the damage? Very weird!
My niece is in severe financial trouble. Her mother is encouraging her to file for bankruptcy. I told them that there is a website that deals with the US Bankruptcy Records that has helpful articles about the different types of bankruptcy. I told them to be sure to open it using the Firefox browser and not the IE browser because there is some incompatibility issues between their site and IE.
My wife got “the phone call” this morning at about 4:45 am that her office is closed for the day because of the icy road conditions. Although we really could use the money by her going to work, I was glad that work was cancelled. Our driveway is way too slippery to even think about trying to get out of the house this morning! My back is bothering me too much to take care of it, and we know it will just melt off in a short while so we haven’t bothered to try to do anything about it yet. I’m perfectly happy to just hunker down and stay put today! I feel sorry for the folks that have to drive to work today!
There seems to be so much more stress in today’s world revolving around dating than what was going on when I was young and single. I just always seemed to be able to find friends and dates without too much trouble. But then again, I grew up in a small town where everyone knew each other since childhood. Growing up and moving around from city to city can make creating a good social life as an adult very difficult.
That’s why the Great Expectations online service is a great service for people who want to meet new people to date. There are locations of Great Expectations St. Louis, Richmond, Kansas City, Charlotte, Houston and many other cities around the United States. They hold social events in a safe environment and do a background check on all of the members, to ensure that everyone is as safe as possible during their events.
There seems to be a Dark Angel marathon on television today. That is one of my favorite shows; I think Jessica Alba is really very attractive. I love science fiction movies anyway, and this one is actually conceivable in many ways, so I think it’s great! I love the great stunts and the action in the show. I don’t think I’ll be away from the tube very much today!
We live in an area that is largely horse farms. It seems that the biggest interest in the area is with horse-related activities, from horse & pony shows to fox hunts. When we drive from town to our house, we drive past a lot of horse farms. They really are beautiful horses! There is one pasture we drive past that my wife always looks closely at. There are some Belgium draft horses usuallyi n that field, and my wife always wants to catch a glimpse of them.
Almost a day doesn’t go by when I’m driving somewhere that I don’t end up driving behind someone’s horse trailer! I recently was talking with one of my neighbors about the “horse community” and how they manage to meet other people that are also “horse people.”
She told me that mostly they meet each other through events that they go to, but some of them also use online dating services. She said that she found out about a dating service that is dedicated exclusively to horse lovers that her friend has joined recently. The service offers FREE sign-up and gives members two levels of membership to choose from; a guest membership and a gold membership.
I’ve never tried frog legs before. I’ve only seen them on a restaurant’s menu once, and I thought that the whole idea of eating frog parts just totally grossed me out. My wife tells me that she tried one once, at a restaurant when she was a teenager. She did it at her grandmother’s urging, who told her that it “tastes like chicken.” She said she was really reluctant to try it, but she did to make her grandmother happy; she used to be a very fussy eater and never wanted to try anything new. Well, she did take a bite, agreed that it DID in fact, taste like chicken and did finish eating the entire leg. Not that there was a LOT of meat to an “entire leg.” But she’s never eaten another one since then. She figures that if something tastes like chicken, but costs MORE than chicken, she’d just eat chicken!
My wife and I have been starting to price and plan the renovations we want to do in our basement. We suspect that within the next year or two someone in our family will be living there. It could be an in-law that is having a streak of bad luck, or it could be our son who will be coming home from college! Anyway, we have been talking about putting in one of those great walkin tubs in the new bathroom down there. We think that this is a great time to be putting one in, and it makes the tub handicapped accessible as well. I like the idea of getting one with jets in it – I might spend some time soaking in it myself!
Today it was snowing when I got up. I turned on the television and was watching a lot of school closings being announced. I was surprised how many were being broadcast, because the weather really seemed mild to me. Well, snow flurries or not, I had errands I needed to run, so I hopped into my truck and headed out. I was very surprised when I got to my destination that so many stores were closed! The weather really wasn’t that bad, and the roads were good too! I think there’s a lot of scaredy-cats out there!
I like to have a few quality pairs of shoes in my closet to wear on special occasions. Sure, I have a few pairs of sneakers, and walking shoes, but I also like to have some “dress shoes.” A couple of days ago my wife was looking at my shoes and told me that my dress shoes are falling apart and it’s time to buy some new ones.
My wife started looking on the Internet to see what she could find in the way of some classy dress shoes that would be a reasonable price. She got side tracked by looking at the jildorshoes.com website, which appears to focus on women’s shoes. She was mesmerized by all of the great looking boots and shoes on their website. It’s been a long time since she’s done any kind of shoe shopping for either boots or dress shoes. She showed me a pair of boots on the web page of marc by marc jacobs shoes that she said she would be interested in buying before the winter is over. She said that the prices on the website were good prices and the selection spectacular.
I said that’s all well and good, but what about dress shoes for ME? She laughed, bookmarked the page, and kept searching. I hope to find some soon!
My mother and father in laws came over for a short visit and to join us for dinner today. We played a few rounds of a card game called spoons that my wife taught to us, then we played tripoly. We had a good time playing, laughing and visiting. Right at supper time my brother in law joined us too. We had appetizers of shrimp cocktail, veggie tray, and fruit tray. We had spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread for dinner, with a jello salad on the side. Cupcakes and ice cream for dessert. They brought the jello salad and a variety of ice teas to drink with dinner. No one went away hungry, which is a good thing. It was an enjoyable day.
I don’t know about you, but Debt Reduction is a hot topic in our household lately! My wife has been talking for a long time about how we need to be more careful with how we spend our money. She’s the bookkeeper of the family, and she has gotten quite concerned about the state of our finances. She’s been looking for a good paying full time job for a while now, and has only managed to find part time work. So she’s really been pushing hard for us to pinch every penny as hard as we can.
I’ve found some really great articles on managing and saving money and handling debt on the reducedebt.net website. I’m going to encourage everyone in my family to read them and see if they can apply any of the advice to what they do to help us save money.
I was so happy to see the warmer weather today! My sister-in-law needed me to do a little bit of work on her car, so it was good timing. A friend came over to help me out; she needed hinges welded onto her car door – they had broken off. It took quite a while to do it, but we got it done and fixed a few more things on it. The thermometer said it was only 50 degrees out, but working out in the driveway in the sun he felt much warmer than that. It was good to get outside in that kind of warmer air and tinker with a car! That is something I really love to do!
I really like a lot of shiny things. Not the same type as my wife – she likes shiny jewelry to wear; I like shiny things on my cars, and in my house. On my cars, I am all about chrome! In my house, I’m all about stainless steel! When we moved here we had to replace all of the kitchen appliances. My wife wanted almond colored appliances, but I lobbied for stainless steel.
To my surprise, I won that little negotiation! I think my wife was just happy to be getting new appliances and really didn’t care much about the color, as long as they worked! But I don’t want to stop with just the kitchen, I want to expand and buy some stainless steel fireplace accessories to put beside our family room fireplace. And a great Blomus stainless steel mailbox would be a great lock box to put by the front door for people that need to leave messages for us while bypassing the old one down by the roadside.
Some polished stainless steel garden globes would look great in the garden by the front door, too! Yup, I like shiny things!
It seems that every time I turn around, my wife is on the computer, using some form of online bill pay to authorize the payment of a bill that has come in the mail. She tells me that when the bill comes in the mail she goes on line immediately and authorizes the payment to be made by the due date, and then she files the bill in the “paid bills” part of the filing cabinet.
I asked her why she pays them before they are due – why not wait until the due date? She explained that when she authorizes the payment, there is a field she populates with the date that she wants it to be paid; it does not automatically get paid immediately. So the money stays in our checking account until close to the due date, and she doesn’t have to worry about a late payment!
I think that’s pretty smart! Plus paying online saves us the expense of buying checks, envelopes, and postage! And online bill pay (so far) is a free service. I hope it stays free!
Even before we moved into this house, we’ve had friends and relatives trying to talk us into getting Direct TV service for our television services. I’m pretty sure that the reason they were doing that was because their DirectSatTV provider was offering them a rebate of some kind to help bring in new customers. Seems to me that every time the conversation turns to Directv and they are singing the praises of their package that they ask me to mention their names if we decide to switch over from cable.
Every time I’ve looked into switching, I find that I am getting the best value with the provider that I have. I don’t need all of the bells and whistles, and I don’t care for the limitation of only 4 televisions per account! We have six televisions!
With the last batch of Angel Food Ministries food that we got last month, there were some items included that require to be deep fat fried. Neither my wife nor myself have ever deep fat fried anything in our lives! Can you believe that? My wife says she remembers that her step-mother used to deep fat fry things in her big pot, but didn’t remember how to do it.
Well, we couldn’t decide what to do with this particular item of food. We considered trying to give it away, or trying to cook it some other method, or just throw it away. Finally my wife came to the conclusion that chances are pretty good that if we continue to buy food from the Angel Food Ministries that we will probably get more food that needs to be deep fat fried. So we decided to buy ourselves an official deep fat fryer last weekend at the store. Now we just have to learn how to use it! One more gadget to figure out how to use, and where to store when not in use! Oh well, I hope it’s worth it!
My wife and I have been talking about retiring some of our old furniture. Some of the old hand-me-downs that we’ve loved for years are so well-loved that they are no longer safe to use, or would cost more to fix up than to replace. So we’re starting to take a look around the Internet to see what kind of good prices we can get to replace those items. We found a good discount place on the Internet that sells a wide selection of furniture ranging from kids furniture to living and dining room furniture to bedroom suites. Now the big challenge is to agree on what we like – we have very different tastes!
Well the traffic was not bad at all getting to the doctor’s office – in fact it was so light that we ended up arriving a lot earlier than we needed to – a whole hour early! I didn’t think ahead to bring something to read, so we drove up and down the road for a few minutes looking for a store that we could go in to buy a magazine, but the only stores we found were blocked off by police cars because of an accident, so I told my wife to just skip it and just go to the doctor’s. Surprisingly the doctor saw us right away, and we were in and out before my appointment time! That was a huge surprise! So we got home in time to see the Inauguration ceremony on television. Unbelievable how may people were there, braving the cold! I was glad to be warm and comfortable in my own home.
For a very long time my wife and I tried to convince my mother to let us get a wheel chair for her. She has been ill for a very long time. She is on oxygen 24/7 and cannot walk more than about twenty feet without having to stop and catch her breath. My wife used to take her to run errands when we lived near her (we moved away a while ago) and she would tell me how hard it was for my mother to run the errands, and how many stores did not have scooters or wheel chairs available for their customers. And then there have been times we wanted to take her to a show of some kind and there were no wheel chairs available there, either.
Sometimes we managed to borrow a wheelchair from a local hospital that my sister worked at to take my mother to a show, but those were not the kind that could easily fit into a car trunk and that was a pain in the neck! Finally my mother decided to look into buying one of those electric scooters, and we are all very pleased with how that has increased her ability to get around. Her insurance paid for it all, and now she can go just about anywhere she wants to go!
I have an appointment this morning at 8:30 at a doctor’s office in Northern VA today. I’ve seen this doctor before and it normally takes about 90 minutes to drive there from where I live, but with rush hour traffic my wife normally says we should plan on an extra 30 minutes to give us extra time in case there is a traffic jam. With the extra traffic we think is going to happen this morning because of the Inauguration, we are going to leave even earlier – we’re going to leave at 6am to get to an 8:30am appointment. Isn’t it awful that it takes that long to get to a qualified doctor? We’ve tried local doctors that claim to have the expertise but they don’t seem to have the expertise we need, which is discouraging. I guess I should be grateful that I don’t have a condition that requires this type of travel on a weekly basis! I know that there are people that DO have to travel even further for that for medical help. That would get real old real fast.
Schumacher Homes Ohio is one of the many branches of the custom home builder of the Schumacher Home family. The Schumacher Home Company has branches in many of the states. One of the advantages of a Schumacher Home is that it is a quality home that can be customized to fit the buyer’s family, so they are more likely to be comfortable and happy enough in their new custom home that they will not outgrow it and want to sell it in a few years. Another advantage is that with the newest construction methods; you know you are getting the latest technology with such important features such as insulation and energy saving appliances.
I was just reading one of my favorite websites, livescience.com and found a story about how the earth’s position has shifted over many centuries, which has caused the zodiac signs to change a little bit too. Well, that made sense to me and I kept clicking and reading. I ended up on a webpage where it gave me the chance to enter in my birthday and see whether or not my zodiac sign is really what I thought it was. Well, yes it is, but my son’s is different! And so is my sister-in-law’s! And my mother-in-law’s!
How funny is that!? Of course, these folks have been born “on the cusp” which means that they have traits of two signs, but it really is interesting that they are not the “sign” that they thought they were!
I’ve been telling my wife for the past couple of weeks now that I need a new pair of shoes. She keeps telling me to go out and buy a pair! I don’t think she is understanding that what I want is for her to go with me to buy them! I like to get her opinion when I’m shopping for things that I wear; after all, she is going to have to look at me wearing them! So I guess next time I bring it up I’ll have to spell it out that I actually want her to come with me!
I’ve also been telling her that I want to buy some new gray crew socks. That’s a departure for me; I usually only buy white crew socks. Again, she told me to go ahead and buy some. The problem is that she has been buying the family’s socks for so long that I’m not sure what brand it is that she buys! I just know that the socks that I want are the same socks that our son wears. I told her I’d use a laundry marker to mark the toes on the socks so we could keep them separate; I think we wear the same size.
I’ve been hearing that there are going to be 5,000 porta potties in the areas around DC that are going to have crowds for the inauguration. For the expected 2 million people that will be there, that is NOT a lot of porta potties! My wife was joking that if we were to go there, she thinks that the lines would be so long that she would have to spend all of her time in line for the porta potty! By the time she got to the porta potty and out again, she would have to go back to the end of the line to go in again! I guess going to the inauguration is NOT for the weak bladdered! We plan to watch the inauguration on television; the weathermen say it is going to be way too cold for us to want to actually be there! The crowds will be a nightmare unto themselves anyway. Nope, gonna stay home, where it’s warm and we can actually see and hear something besides the crowd’s noises!
