This will probably be my last post on TARP and the various bailouts. To me, this is a personal issue. I figured I should take a few minutes to explain why.
I have been a capitalist for as far back as I can remember. Where some people study and practice music, and are therefore musicians, I am a businessperson.
My two degrees are in business. I served my 13 years in Fortune 500 companies. I even took my life savings and hung out my shingle and now am one of the fortunate individuals who actually owns a profitable business.
As most folks who know me can attest, my belief in capitalism borders on the religious. I'm not the only one. For as far back as I can remember, others have espoused that the pain and excesses of capitalism, though distasteful, sometimes heart-breaking, and occassionally cruel, in the end resulted in a better world for everyone.
During the cold war, next to human rights, this belief in capitalism, more than our military differences, defined us as different from the Soviets. The Soviets had an economy that was run by a few talented minds. We had an economy that was run by millions and millions of minds.
In the end, it wasn't a contest. Our economy grew and prospered. Theirs died. It wasn't tanks in Europe that won the war. It was businesspeople like me.
TARP? It is rumored that one nameless congresswoman, on the day TARP passed, said, "I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say this may be the day America died."
I agree. The day TARP passed, it became clear that we were not a free-market society, run by millions of businesspeople. Instead, we are a command economy, like the Soviets, where regardless of merit, politically connected people prosper and the rest of the country suffers.
Those who think TARP was a good thing are basically in agreement with Tim Geithner when he says it was "deeply unfair", but that it was absolutely necessary.
To this, I have so many thoughts, but the main one is this: to embrace this school of thought, you have to believe in the following:
1. That the end justifies the means.
2. That the rights of people are not as important as the goals of the state.
3. That some companies which are big, well-connected and chock full of cash, should not have to bear the consequences of their actions.
Number 1 and 2 are straight out of my 8th grade civics book on the differences between us and the communists during the cold war. The biggest difference between us and them was supposed to be that we had rules. We followed them. Everybody had to follow them.
Even the rich and powerful had to follow them.
In communist countries? Individuals were inconsequential and only the state mattered. And that meant that the state could do anything it wanted, at any time, if it felt it would advance its goals.
That TARP was morally wrong is not even debatable. Even its most ardent supporters tip their hat to this fact, though they prefer to use terms like "unfair". However, the basic premise of unfairness is that it is wrong.
There isn't a person in America who defends TARP on moral grounds.
Problem #1: TARP was morally wrong.
So, the supporters of TARP then go on to say it was necessary. They said that without it, unemployment would rise over 8% and bank lending would stop. They turned out to be totally wrong on both those counts.
We passed TARP, unemployment shot up to 10% and businesses have a harder time than ever getting loans. In addition, it was supposed to stop mortgage foreclosures and it has been an outright failure at doing that.
The end result is that TARP saved the bankers and nobody else.
Would things have been worse without TARP? I'm not sure they would. How can I make such an extreme statement? Let me ask you this: Lehman brothers failed. Would things be better today if they were still around? of course not. In an economy this size, Lehman's collapse basically didn't matter in the long-term.
It caused a short-term shock, but frankly, it SHOULD have caused a short-term shock. It should have caused the kind of reaction that caused Wall Street banks to agree to reasonable regulation and change their irresponsible ways.
So, would ALL Wall Street banks have failed? No. Most of them weren't in that much danger. When TARP money was distributed, they literally gathered the CEOs of the largest banks in a room at the White House and told them they had to take the money.
What about the guys who didn't want or need the money? They were forced to take it so as not to stigmatize those who DID want and need the money.
A few more would have failed, but the majority of them were accessing other sources of capital to get them over a short-term hump. (See Warren Buffet and Bear Sterns for an example.) The strong would have survived. The weak would have failed. You know: capitalism.
The reality is that TARP was relatively small in impact relative to other actions by the government to prop up the banks, many of which are happening still, today.
So, the argument that it was necessary? I'd say SOMETHING was necessary, but TARP wasn't.
It asked for no sacrifices on the part of banks. It imposed no new regulations or safeguards (and only the true kool-aid drinkers are dense enough to think that Obama's Wall Street reform bill was written by anybody other than Wall Street). It was, frankly, a rushed piece of legislation that didn't accomplish its stated goals, but simply gave cheap cash to a few banks, many of which didn't want or need the cash.
This is like saying that a kid has fallen off their bike. They need some neosporin and a bandage. So, instead, they get skin grafts and 5 months in the ICU and the doctor harvests their kidney to pay the medical bills. Did something need to be done? Yes. Did what was done "work"... yes, in a manner of speaking. But was it the right thing to do?
Just like TARP, a well-intentioned, morally evil solution that solves the immediate problem is not the right thing to do. Not just from a moral standpoint, but from a practical standpoint as well.
Point #2: TARP was so badly executed and the desired results could have been obtained far better by many, many other solutions, that to say it was "necessary" is giving too much credit to a very, very bad solution.
Lastly, now the TARPoids are trying to say that TARP won't end up costing us anything in the long run. From a pure dollars and cents standpoint, that is probably true. Part of this is that the public's outrage over TARP was so obvious that they only spent half the money. They didn't dare spend the other half. As Bankers cashed their gozillion dollar bonuses, the voters became furious and everybody associated with TARP started to try and distance themselves from the outrageous behavior of the folks on Wall Street.
If left to their own devices, they'd have spent the other half. Democracy worked. They didn't spend the money.
So, did it cost us? You can say "no" only if you believe that there's no problem with a society where hard-working people are thrown out on the street while the millionaires and billionaires who caused the problem continue to rake in millions and billions.
So, to bring it back full-circle, from a social justice standpoint, TARP was a complete betrayal of America. It truly was the day America died.
It cost us. It cost us dearly. It laid naked the fact that the government exists only for the benefit of bankers and other politically connected types. It made all too obvious the fact that the government won't help an individual citizen, because an individual's rights simply don't matter in America. Only money matters, and only if the money can be counted in the hundreds of millions or preferrably billions.
I will vote out anybody who voted for TARP. I hope everybody else does the same.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
The Right Answer on Two Current Topics...
1. The Rutgers student who killed himself? Honestly, I don't see all the fuss about it. It would be one thing if he had been killed during a hate-crime. That's something that probably warrants nationwide coverage. However, let's be serious, here, he killed himself.
I'm not condoning the actions of his douchebag room-mate. What he did was beyond the pale. There are federal and state laws that cover this sort of thing and the guy deserves to go to jail for a few years. He probably will, especially given the amount of publicity surrounding this case.
What I don't understand is how this is being blasted across all media as a sort of gay-rights martyr event. I think this young man deserved the same rights as any other person. Clearly, he felt humiliated because of his jerkwad room-mate's actions.
People are portraying this as a call to action. I'm just having trouble understanding what, particularly, the action is supposed to be. I mean, if the message here is that you shouldn't film people having sex without their knowledge, I'm all for that. In fact, so is society. It's actually a crime, punishable by genuine jail time.
If the message is that you shouldn't harass gay people, I'm okay with that, too. I have a special loathing for people who are so busybody that they think they have the right to run around telling other consenting adults how to live their lives.
If the message is that you shouldn't text people and say hateful things, I'm on board with that as well. The kid was a private citizen, not a public figure. I really think the law is behind the curve when it comes to cyber-bullying. We live in an age where a handful of miscreants can publicly humiliate pretty much anybody they want to. We just don't know how to deal with it.
However, turning this into a gay issue? I take exception to that. I don't believe that people should be segmented into little sub-groups with different rights. I believe that human rights should be universal. Making this a gay issue contributes to the problem, in my opinion. Why? Because doing so treats gay people as a subset of the population that is separate and distinct from the rest of society. Considering gay people different is the source of the problem.
People have a reasonable right to have their private conduct, especially their sexual lives, kept private. (With a handful of commonsense caveats, mainly that the conduct is between two consenting adults.)
It's not the fact that gay sex was broadcast on the internet that is the cause for outrage. Gay sex deserves no more rights or protections than any other form of sex.
However, it deserves no less protection, either. I would be just as outraged if somebody took secret footage of their room-mate having heterosexual sex and posted it on the internet. Doing that would also be humiliating to the people involved.
Would it be humiliating in the same way? To the same degree? Why even enter that debate? It's bad, unacceptable behavior to violate a person's privacy that way. Why would we start a game of, "oh, but this one is worse!" It's simply unacceptable no matter who it is happening to.
Saying one is more unacceptable than the other divides the population and reduces the chance for common ground. Very few people want to be shown on the internet having sex. So, let's keep this where it belongs: a privacy issue that applies to nearly everybody. Let's not run off down a rabbit hole of trying to make it a gay-rights issue.
Even the straightest, most fundamentalist Christian or Muslim who is having sex within their own marriage doesn't want somebody to take secret footage and post it on the internet.
It's a human right, and a human expectation of privacy. It should be treated as such. By doing so, it protects not just gay people, but every person.
So, yeah, I'm sad for this young man. I think it must be hard to be gay, sometimes, even in 2010. However, it's hard to be a lot of things in life. I wish he hadn't killed himself, but by doing so, he reacted very, very badly to a very bad situation.
That's not tragedy. That's pathos.
This is something that would have blown over eventually, and with society's enlightenment on the issue of gay rights, it would have been a non-issue in no time. So, I don't think this kid is a martyr. His room-mate is a total cad, and deserves to go to jail. However, he didn't kill anybody.
2. We're now at about the 2 year mark on the huge financial crisis and the government's response to it. I am still of the opinion that the politicians involved need to be punished severely.
The consensus is that the various myriad bailouts did actually have a positive impact on the economy. This is what the politicians envisioned when they voted for the bailouts in their various forms. It is illustrative to remember that when the congress voted down the first TARP vote, the dow dropped 700 points in a single day.
I think the government needed to get involved. Where I have a problem is that they got involved only for a few companies. Wall street banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG and GM and Chrysler. The rest of the economy? The bottom line is that the government didn't consider the rest of the economy worth any effort at all. Their view was that by saving the monied and politically connected interests, that the effects would trickle through the rest of the economy.
The end result? A huge, positive impact for those companies who received direct government asisstance. The rest of the economy? Not so much. We're still surviving, but unlike Wall Street, we aren't getting record profits and windfalls.
So, why do I think we need to punish the politicians if they can show that they did, indeed, help the economy?
Because what they did was so absolutely utterly bad. We departed completely from property-rights-based capitalism, and went straight into command-economy communism. The government picked the winners and losers. It rewarded those who were connected, and left everybody else to rot.
If the government was going to do this, they needed to do it in such a way that the reality was reflected for everybody concerned. The banks needed the government in order to survive. The government needed to demand conditions and concessions.
For instance, I think they should have demanded concessions such as everybody working for a bailed out bank only gets paid 1/3 of their normal salary.
Lots of ideas like this were floated during the entire history of the many, many bailouts. However, government officials, starting with Hank Paulson and going all the way through to Tim Geithner held the line that no conditions, whatsoever, should be placed on banks.
Basically, that the government should simply mortgage everybody in the United States up to their eyeballs, and the banks shouldn't have to do anything in order to receive this charity.
We could have had a bigger net economic impact if, for instance, we had actually demanded that banks need to conduct small-business lending as a condition of receiving the bailouts. We wouldn't have had to deal with social-justice outrage if we had demanded that the employees of these banks, who should have been unemployed because their banks were bankrupt, were paid something more closely aligned with a reasonable wage, instead of six, seven, and in a few publicized cases, eight-figure bonuses.
Right now, the Wall Street bankers are particularly infuriating because they're crowing that the government will get most (not all) of the bailout money back. There are a few problems with this.
The first is that it's an outrageous lie. We may get (most, but not nearly all of) the TARP funds back, but the government has the banks hooked up to so many forms of welfare right now, it's a joke. Banks basically don't lend money anymore. They don't have to. How are they racking up profits?
They're just stealing their money from the taxpayer, still, every single day. How? One way is that they're borrowing money from the fed's discount window at essentially 0% interest. Then, they're turning around and buying t-bills with the money.
Basically, they're borrowing money from the government for free, then loaning the money back to the government at interest. How can they do this? They own politicians. You don't. Which means, right now, the Wall Street banks are forcing YOU to loan them money, almost interest-free, and then forcing YOU to pay them interest when they loan that money back to you.
To call Wall Street bankers scum would be to do a terrible disservice to scum. They're worse than crackwhores because at least crackwhores are doing something for their money.
The second reason why it's infuriating to see Wall Street patting itself on the back is that... hey... other companies weren't given giant rescue packages.
A company like mine has never gotten government assistance. Not an SBA loan, not a bailout. Nothing. So, in my opinion, any company that got bailout money should have to wait behind every company that never got bailout money.
It's a simply situation of both economic and moral injustice that competent businesspeople, such as me, had to support incompetent businesspeople at a time when we, ourselves, were struggling.
Basically, the government's message was this: "I know you're having a hard time, but we're going to borrow a mountain of money, which you and your kids will be responsible, forever, in order to make sure this Wall Street banker will get a bonus bigger than what your profitable company will pay you over the next 40 years."
Wall Street is partying. Hard. They had bigger bonuses than ever in 2009. They'll be even bigger in 2010. The government forced you to pay for it. We're sufferring, and they expect us to think nothing is wrong.
Things like this are why the conclusion that the bailouts were morally wrong is inescapable. For perpetuating this evil, the politicans who approved it need to be voted out of office.
The Democrats are facing a severe thrashing. Frankly, they deserve it. They've controlled congress for 4 years and the White House for 2. Their main argument appears to be that yes, they're a bunch of incompetent, ineffective, corrupt jerks, but the Republicans are worse.
I have to admit, there's some merit to that argument. However, I think we need to throw the Democrats out. If the Republicans show up and they're the same idiots as we had in 2005, we should throw them out, too. We should keep throwing incumbents out until we get some politicians who understand that you can't just spit in the face of the American people and expect to keep your job.
So, Wall Street? Scumbags and thieves. There's no other way to describe them. The banking industry used to be necessary in order to aggregate capital, assume risk and spur industry. Now, it doesn't exist to do that at all. They exist to steal money from the American people, and to invent new "products" that add no value, whatsoever, to anything, but which scrape a micropenny from a ton of transactions.
They're worthless and letting them fail was the right thing to do. I hope we have another banking crisis, soon.
As a personal editorial note, I can't believe we're facing the biggest economic crisis of the past 80 years, and the two ass-clowns who we picked to handle it were an idiot and a wussy. Is it too much to ask for a strong leader who isn't a moron? I mean, Ronald Reagan would be nice. Bill Clinton would be nice. Heck, even George Bush the Greater, would be nice.
As for Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson? They both belong in the communist Hall of Fame.
By the way, I want to throw a shout-out to Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup. Although initially, he was probably more dense and irresponsible than most in the face of this crisis, he has finally woken up, at least, to the political reality of what's happened. For the second year in a row, he's done his job for a salary of $1.
I would like to hope that he is doing so as a sign of solidary and contrition for all the little people whose lives his company's conduct has ruined. So, despite the fact that I think most Wall Street bankers are thieves and moral degenerates who belong in prison, I still hold out hope that some of them are vaguely human. Pandit is doing a good thing and deserves a pat on the back for it.
Now, if only he could convince some of his amoral and utterly despicable minions and peers to do the same.
I'm not condoning the actions of his douchebag room-mate. What he did was beyond the pale. There are federal and state laws that cover this sort of thing and the guy deserves to go to jail for a few years. He probably will, especially given the amount of publicity surrounding this case.
What I don't understand is how this is being blasted across all media as a sort of gay-rights martyr event. I think this young man deserved the same rights as any other person. Clearly, he felt humiliated because of his jerkwad room-mate's actions.
People are portraying this as a call to action. I'm just having trouble understanding what, particularly, the action is supposed to be. I mean, if the message here is that you shouldn't film people having sex without their knowledge, I'm all for that. In fact, so is society. It's actually a crime, punishable by genuine jail time.
If the message is that you shouldn't harass gay people, I'm okay with that, too. I have a special loathing for people who are so busybody that they think they have the right to run around telling other consenting adults how to live their lives.
If the message is that you shouldn't text people and say hateful things, I'm on board with that as well. The kid was a private citizen, not a public figure. I really think the law is behind the curve when it comes to cyber-bullying. We live in an age where a handful of miscreants can publicly humiliate pretty much anybody they want to. We just don't know how to deal with it.
However, turning this into a gay issue? I take exception to that. I don't believe that people should be segmented into little sub-groups with different rights. I believe that human rights should be universal. Making this a gay issue contributes to the problem, in my opinion. Why? Because doing so treats gay people as a subset of the population that is separate and distinct from the rest of society. Considering gay people different is the source of the problem.
People have a reasonable right to have their private conduct, especially their sexual lives, kept private. (With a handful of commonsense caveats, mainly that the conduct is between two consenting adults.)
It's not the fact that gay sex was broadcast on the internet that is the cause for outrage. Gay sex deserves no more rights or protections than any other form of sex.
However, it deserves no less protection, either. I would be just as outraged if somebody took secret footage of their room-mate having heterosexual sex and posted it on the internet. Doing that would also be humiliating to the people involved.
Would it be humiliating in the same way? To the same degree? Why even enter that debate? It's bad, unacceptable behavior to violate a person's privacy that way. Why would we start a game of, "oh, but this one is worse!" It's simply unacceptable no matter who it is happening to.
Saying one is more unacceptable than the other divides the population and reduces the chance for common ground. Very few people want to be shown on the internet having sex. So, let's keep this where it belongs: a privacy issue that applies to nearly everybody. Let's not run off down a rabbit hole of trying to make it a gay-rights issue.
Even the straightest, most fundamentalist Christian or Muslim who is having sex within their own marriage doesn't want somebody to take secret footage and post it on the internet.
It's a human right, and a human expectation of privacy. It should be treated as such. By doing so, it protects not just gay people, but every person.
So, yeah, I'm sad for this young man. I think it must be hard to be gay, sometimes, even in 2010. However, it's hard to be a lot of things in life. I wish he hadn't killed himself, but by doing so, he reacted very, very badly to a very bad situation.
That's not tragedy. That's pathos.
This is something that would have blown over eventually, and with society's enlightenment on the issue of gay rights, it would have been a non-issue in no time. So, I don't think this kid is a martyr. His room-mate is a total cad, and deserves to go to jail. However, he didn't kill anybody.
2. We're now at about the 2 year mark on the huge financial crisis and the government's response to it. I am still of the opinion that the politicians involved need to be punished severely.
The consensus is that the various myriad bailouts did actually have a positive impact on the economy. This is what the politicians envisioned when they voted for the bailouts in their various forms. It is illustrative to remember that when the congress voted down the first TARP vote, the dow dropped 700 points in a single day.
I think the government needed to get involved. Where I have a problem is that they got involved only for a few companies. Wall street banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG and GM and Chrysler. The rest of the economy? The bottom line is that the government didn't consider the rest of the economy worth any effort at all. Their view was that by saving the monied and politically connected interests, that the effects would trickle through the rest of the economy.
The end result? A huge, positive impact for those companies who received direct government asisstance. The rest of the economy? Not so much. We're still surviving, but unlike Wall Street, we aren't getting record profits and windfalls.
So, why do I think we need to punish the politicians if they can show that they did, indeed, help the economy?
Because what they did was so absolutely utterly bad. We departed completely from property-rights-based capitalism, and went straight into command-economy communism. The government picked the winners and losers. It rewarded those who were connected, and left everybody else to rot.
If the government was going to do this, they needed to do it in such a way that the reality was reflected for everybody concerned. The banks needed the government in order to survive. The government needed to demand conditions and concessions.
For instance, I think they should have demanded concessions such as everybody working for a bailed out bank only gets paid 1/3 of their normal salary.
Lots of ideas like this were floated during the entire history of the many, many bailouts. However, government officials, starting with Hank Paulson and going all the way through to Tim Geithner held the line that no conditions, whatsoever, should be placed on banks.
Basically, that the government should simply mortgage everybody in the United States up to their eyeballs, and the banks shouldn't have to do anything in order to receive this charity.
We could have had a bigger net economic impact if, for instance, we had actually demanded that banks need to conduct small-business lending as a condition of receiving the bailouts. We wouldn't have had to deal with social-justice outrage if we had demanded that the employees of these banks, who should have been unemployed because their banks were bankrupt, were paid something more closely aligned with a reasonable wage, instead of six, seven, and in a few publicized cases, eight-figure bonuses.
Right now, the Wall Street bankers are particularly infuriating because they're crowing that the government will get most (not all) of the bailout money back. There are a few problems with this.
The first is that it's an outrageous lie. We may get (most, but not nearly all of) the TARP funds back, but the government has the banks hooked up to so many forms of welfare right now, it's a joke. Banks basically don't lend money anymore. They don't have to. How are they racking up profits?
They're just stealing their money from the taxpayer, still, every single day. How? One way is that they're borrowing money from the fed's discount window at essentially 0% interest. Then, they're turning around and buying t-bills with the money.
Basically, they're borrowing money from the government for free, then loaning the money back to the government at interest. How can they do this? They own politicians. You don't. Which means, right now, the Wall Street banks are forcing YOU to loan them money, almost interest-free, and then forcing YOU to pay them interest when they loan that money back to you.
To call Wall Street bankers scum would be to do a terrible disservice to scum. They're worse than crackwhores because at least crackwhores are doing something for their money.
The second reason why it's infuriating to see Wall Street patting itself on the back is that... hey... other companies weren't given giant rescue packages.
A company like mine has never gotten government assistance. Not an SBA loan, not a bailout. Nothing. So, in my opinion, any company that got bailout money should have to wait behind every company that never got bailout money.
It's a simply situation of both economic and moral injustice that competent businesspeople, such as me, had to support incompetent businesspeople at a time when we, ourselves, were struggling.
Basically, the government's message was this: "I know you're having a hard time, but we're going to borrow a mountain of money, which you and your kids will be responsible, forever, in order to make sure this Wall Street banker will get a bonus bigger than what your profitable company will pay you over the next 40 years."
Wall Street is partying. Hard. They had bigger bonuses than ever in 2009. They'll be even bigger in 2010. The government forced you to pay for it. We're sufferring, and they expect us to think nothing is wrong.
Things like this are why the conclusion that the bailouts were morally wrong is inescapable. For perpetuating this evil, the politicans who approved it need to be voted out of office.
The Democrats are facing a severe thrashing. Frankly, they deserve it. They've controlled congress for 4 years and the White House for 2. Their main argument appears to be that yes, they're a bunch of incompetent, ineffective, corrupt jerks, but the Republicans are worse.
I have to admit, there's some merit to that argument. However, I think we need to throw the Democrats out. If the Republicans show up and they're the same idiots as we had in 2005, we should throw them out, too. We should keep throwing incumbents out until we get some politicians who understand that you can't just spit in the face of the American people and expect to keep your job.
So, Wall Street? Scumbags and thieves. There's no other way to describe them. The banking industry used to be necessary in order to aggregate capital, assume risk and spur industry. Now, it doesn't exist to do that at all. They exist to steal money from the American people, and to invent new "products" that add no value, whatsoever, to anything, but which scrape a micropenny from a ton of transactions.
They're worthless and letting them fail was the right thing to do. I hope we have another banking crisis, soon.
As a personal editorial note, I can't believe we're facing the biggest economic crisis of the past 80 years, and the two ass-clowns who we picked to handle it were an idiot and a wussy. Is it too much to ask for a strong leader who isn't a moron? I mean, Ronald Reagan would be nice. Bill Clinton would be nice. Heck, even George Bush the Greater, would be nice.
As for Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson? They both belong in the communist Hall of Fame.
By the way, I want to throw a shout-out to Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup. Although initially, he was probably more dense and irresponsible than most in the face of this crisis, he has finally woken up, at least, to the political reality of what's happened. For the second year in a row, he's done his job for a salary of $1.
I would like to hope that he is doing so as a sign of solidary and contrition for all the little people whose lives his company's conduct has ruined. So, despite the fact that I think most Wall Street bankers are thieves and moral degenerates who belong in prison, I still hold out hope that some of them are vaguely human. Pandit is doing a good thing and deserves a pat on the back for it.
Now, if only he could convince some of his amoral and utterly despicable minions and peers to do the same.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Things are going well... oddly, I feel sorta drained...
My Dad came to visit over the weekend. It was a blast. Rob and Veronica came up and we watched the Russel Crowe "Robin Hood" on Blu-ray. Not particularly recommended, but it had its moments.
Dad wanted to watch the Ohio State massacre. So, I got a cheap antenna at Target for $10. You can get about 3 or 4 channels over the air with it, but you have to re-aim it for each one. Still, I got great reception on the game and was able to watch in HD. I watched the Browns in HD the next day... that's not a good thing, for the most part.
I need to go ahead and get cable and internet for the place, but I can't quite figure out what it'll cost. With two really nice TVs, I'd like to get HD. I'm guessing between cable and internet, that'll be $100 a month. It's not a monumental sum, but for some reason, I hate to commit to it and order it. I'll probably go ahead, though.
I think the reason I'm feeling bummed is that it looks like no work is going to get done on my house for a while. Probably not for a month or two, and maybe not until next year. There are nice-ish parts of the house. The downstairs half-bath is about 95% done. The living room is only really needing flooring.
Overall, though, it's a house that's like a construction zone and not many parts of it are very nice at all. I get depressed a lot when I walk in the place.
I'm e-baying off some stuff and already shipped off one guitar. It feels good to un-clutter. The guitars I'm selling are going for what I wanted. I like having a bunch of stuff, but I find myself more than willing to sell off my crap to make sure Logan has what he wants/needs. In a lot of ways, I figure my prime is basically done, and it's his turn, now. Sometimes I would get sorta sick thinking of all the absolute crap I own. Wishing I'd never bought it in the first place.
I think I'll continue to get rid of stuff, strategically. I'm not going to be living in austerity or anything of the sort. However, I need to get to where I have, say, 1 of each kind of gun, instead of 2 or 3.
Selling that stuff doesn't hurt my quality of life in any imagineable way.
However, the guns and 4-wheeler I thought about selling aren't selling very well at all. The 4-wheeler is probably because of the season and the economy. The guns? When Obama was elected, everybody who wanted a gun ran out and bought one. So, nobody is buying guns these days. That, and the economy. So, I'll be keeping that stuff, I think.
The guitars, though? I loved having the collection, but I literally never touched the things. I'll keep two Mexican Stratocasters. One for me and one for the boy. However, I doubt I play more than 10 or 20 hours a year, now. So, not-having electric guitars isn't that big of a deal for me.
Logan had a football game on Saturday and scored another touchdown. He's scored half his team's touchdowns this year. A little of it is that I think his coach remembers him from last year. He didn't play nearly the key role in the offense last year, but I think the coach remembers the times when he got to play QB and really impacted the game.
On Sunday at baseball practice, he looked oddly very sharp. That's good. I was hoping the time off would let him sort of recharge and spin down and I think it's not hurting him at all. About once a week is all I want him working out for baseball.
Took my Arabic test and got a 109 out of 100 if my extra credit answers are included. The prof really isn't trying to give anybody a hard time. If you put in at least a little work, you're going to get a good grade.
I'll grunt out the rest of this semester, but I'm not doing this again in the Spring. Having a couple of extra appointments every week is a pain in the butt and it works out poorly with both my reserve service and with being able to watch Logan if Tessa gets called in to work the hospital at the last minute.
So, I'll grunt out the rest of this year, but after that, I'll get rosetta stone or something.
At work, we're really busy, which is nice. However, we have a potential cash flow crunch coming up. These are the times when it's not much fun to be captain of the ship. I've gotten us through worse in the past, though, and I can get us through this. By mid-November, we should be one step closer to being in good health.
I think I just need a good night's sleep. I'm feeling a little worn out today.
Dad wanted to watch the Ohio State massacre. So, I got a cheap antenna at Target for $10. You can get about 3 or 4 channels over the air with it, but you have to re-aim it for each one. Still, I got great reception on the game and was able to watch in HD. I watched the Browns in HD the next day... that's not a good thing, for the most part.
I need to go ahead and get cable and internet for the place, but I can't quite figure out what it'll cost. With two really nice TVs, I'd like to get HD. I'm guessing between cable and internet, that'll be $100 a month. It's not a monumental sum, but for some reason, I hate to commit to it and order it. I'll probably go ahead, though.
I think the reason I'm feeling bummed is that it looks like no work is going to get done on my house for a while. Probably not for a month or two, and maybe not until next year. There are nice-ish parts of the house. The downstairs half-bath is about 95% done. The living room is only really needing flooring.
Overall, though, it's a house that's like a construction zone and not many parts of it are very nice at all. I get depressed a lot when I walk in the place.
I'm e-baying off some stuff and already shipped off one guitar. It feels good to un-clutter. The guitars I'm selling are going for what I wanted. I like having a bunch of stuff, but I find myself more than willing to sell off my crap to make sure Logan has what he wants/needs. In a lot of ways, I figure my prime is basically done, and it's his turn, now. Sometimes I would get sorta sick thinking of all the absolute crap I own. Wishing I'd never bought it in the first place.
I think I'll continue to get rid of stuff, strategically. I'm not going to be living in austerity or anything of the sort. However, I need to get to where I have, say, 1 of each kind of gun, instead of 2 or 3.
Selling that stuff doesn't hurt my quality of life in any imagineable way.
However, the guns and 4-wheeler I thought about selling aren't selling very well at all. The 4-wheeler is probably because of the season and the economy. The guns? When Obama was elected, everybody who wanted a gun ran out and bought one. So, nobody is buying guns these days. That, and the economy. So, I'll be keeping that stuff, I think.
The guitars, though? I loved having the collection, but I literally never touched the things. I'll keep two Mexican Stratocasters. One for me and one for the boy. However, I doubt I play more than 10 or 20 hours a year, now. So, not-having electric guitars isn't that big of a deal for me.
Logan had a football game on Saturday and scored another touchdown. He's scored half his team's touchdowns this year. A little of it is that I think his coach remembers him from last year. He didn't play nearly the key role in the offense last year, but I think the coach remembers the times when he got to play QB and really impacted the game.
On Sunday at baseball practice, he looked oddly very sharp. That's good. I was hoping the time off would let him sort of recharge and spin down and I think it's not hurting him at all. About once a week is all I want him working out for baseball.
Took my Arabic test and got a 109 out of 100 if my extra credit answers are included. The prof really isn't trying to give anybody a hard time. If you put in at least a little work, you're going to get a good grade.
I'll grunt out the rest of this semester, but I'm not doing this again in the Spring. Having a couple of extra appointments every week is a pain in the butt and it works out poorly with both my reserve service and with being able to watch Logan if Tessa gets called in to work the hospital at the last minute.
So, I'll grunt out the rest of this year, but after that, I'll get rosetta stone or something.
At work, we're really busy, which is nice. However, we have a potential cash flow crunch coming up. These are the times when it's not much fun to be captain of the ship. I've gotten us through worse in the past, though, and I can get us through this. By mid-November, we should be one step closer to being in good health.
I think I just need a good night's sleep. I'm feeling a little worn out today.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Row, row, row your... um... rowing machine.
Got on the rowing machine for the first time last night. Good stuff.
It didn't beat me up like running does. That's probably good. I started off too fast. Sort of like running, you have to temper your enthusiasm for the first few minutes, because what seems like easy stuff gets a lot harder after you've been doing it for a while.
I adjusted the drag factor (resistance) with the little vent-adjustment device on the side. Once you do that, you can get the computer to tell you your exact resistance because the vent-adjustment is not that precise. My factor was 115. What, precisely, that means, I'm not too sure.
Seems to be good enough for what I want to do for now.
I didn't have any music down there. I'm fixing that by dragging down some speakers for my iPod.
I tried a few different 500 meter workouts, but so far the one I like best is the 2,000 meter workout. I was able to do it, completely, twice. The first time was just a tad under 10 minutes. The second time, I was at 9:10. I was trying to break 9:00, but I started my final sprint just a little too soon and gassed out.
I did a total of 6,000 yards, and the other 2,000 were either 500 meter repeats and/or just general goofing around.
It's sort of interesting that the machine remembers what you did. So, you can race against previous bests, etc. Next session, I'll probably try to establish a 10K PR.
They actually had a marathon as one of the possibilities. I can't imagine spending that kind of time rowing.
This is going to work out well. I obviously want to maintain my cardio-vascular health, and my heart doesn't care whether I get the exercise rowing, running or riding a bike. I need to be able to do at least a reasonable amount of running for the Navy, but meeting the minimums isn't usually that bad.
Having the rowing machine will let me cut down a bit on the running. At the current time, I am thinking of cutting down to 3 or 4 days a week, max. It's taking a toll on my knees for sure.
Having healthy heart and arteries is nice, but so is being able to walk when you're old.
The other nice thing about jumbling things up is that the more you do one exercise, the more your body adapts to it. So, you get better at it, but it doesn't stress your system as much. By doing mutiple forms of exercise, your body gets better benefit from each session, I think.
Checking the C2 web-site, rowing seems to be mostly interval work, like swimming. When I was in peak swimming shape, I almost never swam more than 500 yards during any one interval. Yet, it translated to optimal performance in the water.
I think the only reason you don't do all-interval workouts with running is because of the risk of injury. Interval workouts probably are optimal in terms of increasing performance.
Other than that, took my Arabic test and did pretty well. I need to put some more of my junk up for auction. The house is a money pit. Basically, nothing is new.
Logan has a football game tomorrow and a scrimmage on Sunday. As always, a great weekend if you're a Dad who likes watching sports.
It didn't beat me up like running does. That's probably good. I started off too fast. Sort of like running, you have to temper your enthusiasm for the first few minutes, because what seems like easy stuff gets a lot harder after you've been doing it for a while.
I adjusted the drag factor (resistance) with the little vent-adjustment device on the side. Once you do that, you can get the computer to tell you your exact resistance because the vent-adjustment is not that precise. My factor was 115. What, precisely, that means, I'm not too sure.
Seems to be good enough for what I want to do for now.
I didn't have any music down there. I'm fixing that by dragging down some speakers for my iPod.
I tried a few different 500 meter workouts, but so far the one I like best is the 2,000 meter workout. I was able to do it, completely, twice. The first time was just a tad under 10 minutes. The second time, I was at 9:10. I was trying to break 9:00, but I started my final sprint just a little too soon and gassed out.
I did a total of 6,000 yards, and the other 2,000 were either 500 meter repeats and/or just general goofing around.
It's sort of interesting that the machine remembers what you did. So, you can race against previous bests, etc. Next session, I'll probably try to establish a 10K PR.
They actually had a marathon as one of the possibilities. I can't imagine spending that kind of time rowing.
This is going to work out well. I obviously want to maintain my cardio-vascular health, and my heart doesn't care whether I get the exercise rowing, running or riding a bike. I need to be able to do at least a reasonable amount of running for the Navy, but meeting the minimums isn't usually that bad.
Having the rowing machine will let me cut down a bit on the running. At the current time, I am thinking of cutting down to 3 or 4 days a week, max. It's taking a toll on my knees for sure.
Having healthy heart and arteries is nice, but so is being able to walk when you're old.
The other nice thing about jumbling things up is that the more you do one exercise, the more your body adapts to it. So, you get better at it, but it doesn't stress your system as much. By doing mutiple forms of exercise, your body gets better benefit from each session, I think.
Checking the C2 web-site, rowing seems to be mostly interval work, like swimming. When I was in peak swimming shape, I almost never swam more than 500 yards during any one interval. Yet, it translated to optimal performance in the water.
I think the only reason you don't do all-interval workouts with running is because of the risk of injury. Interval workouts probably are optimal in terms of increasing performance.
Other than that, took my Arabic test and did pretty well. I need to put some more of my junk up for auction. The house is a money pit. Basically, nothing is new.
Logan has a football game tomorrow and a scrimmage on Sunday. As always, a great weekend if you're a Dad who likes watching sports.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
What bothers me about raising taxes on the top earners...
Ya know, I think I finally figured out why I'm vehemently opposed to letting the Bush Tax cuts expire on top wage earners.
Now, I have never paid taxes in that bracket (okay, one year I did, but it was an extraordinary circumstance). During my best years, I came darned close. Now, I'm not even in the ballpark. I'm lucky to be eating a bratwurst at a tailgate party in the parking lot.
Here's what bothers me about it, though. I think our taxes are too high. If you have a good job and a good income, you're paying about half your money to the government. I don't care what your philosophy, but when 50 cents of every dollar you make goes to other people, I think that's crap.
I don't like the argument of, "oh, it only hoses over a few people, and not you! So, let's do it!" Using that logic, it'd be okay to grant civil rights to everybody except, say, Jews or black people. After all, it wouldn't affect me, personally. Hell, who cares if some black guy or jew doesn't get to vote. So long as I get to vote, screw them, right?
I think it's pretty easy to see the flaw in the "it only affects others, not you" argument when painted in that stark light. Taxes are too high. On me, on most people who pay taxes (only about half the wage-earners out there), and on people who make a lot more than me.
I believe that taxes should be lower, and government should be smaller, and there should be fewer people in the wagon and more people pulling.
So, to try to appeal to me by saying, "Well, it only affects other people, not you"... well... that sort of pisses me off. It's like saying it's okay to do a very bad thing so long as you promise only to do it to somebody else.
I'm also suspicious enough of the government to know that whey they say they're going to raise taxes on somebody else, that means they have the power to raise taxes on anybody and everybody. What I want is government that never raises taxes, ever, for any reason, and lowers them whenever possible.
There are practical constraints on this. I vote for school levies, for instance. However, as a principle, I want government that does what people are supposed to do: lives within its means.
It doesn't work if a person goes out, buys a yacht and a Lexus and supports their deadbeat relatives in a 5,000 square foot mansion, for them to then go to their employer and say, "hey, I need more money".
That's what the government is doing. Instead of saying, "Gee, we can't afford a Lexus and my deadbeat cousin needs to get his own place to live and find a job", the government is basically saying they love to spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, and to make that happen, people who work need a smaller and smaller piece of their own paychecks.
The other thing that bothers me, and I think this is one of those conservative / liberal litmus tests, is that I want to be wealthy one day. I am doing what I can to make that happen. I don't want incentives removed for this. I put everything I have on the line every day. I expect a reward when/if I start breathing the rare air of $250,000+ a year.
So, I don't care how many times they say that this only screws over a small amount of people. That's not good social policy. That's just divide and conquer: tell a majority that it's okay to screw over a minority. Our basic premises of civil rights are designed to protect us against the tyranny of the majority. As one person eloquently put it, majority rule is like two lions and a sheep deciding what they're going to have for lunch.
In any event, got a lot going on. Test in a few hours. I'm about 1/3 of the way through studying. Will go to school early and try to find a quiet place to finish.
I'm totally pumped to do my rowing machine workout today.
Gotta buy a bunch of stuff for my Dad's visit tomorrow. Need another bed and some food for the fridge.
Now, back to studying.
Now, I have never paid taxes in that bracket (okay, one year I did, but it was an extraordinary circumstance). During my best years, I came darned close. Now, I'm not even in the ballpark. I'm lucky to be eating a bratwurst at a tailgate party in the parking lot.
Here's what bothers me about it, though. I think our taxes are too high. If you have a good job and a good income, you're paying about half your money to the government. I don't care what your philosophy, but when 50 cents of every dollar you make goes to other people, I think that's crap.
I don't like the argument of, "oh, it only hoses over a few people, and not you! So, let's do it!" Using that logic, it'd be okay to grant civil rights to everybody except, say, Jews or black people. After all, it wouldn't affect me, personally. Hell, who cares if some black guy or jew doesn't get to vote. So long as I get to vote, screw them, right?
I think it's pretty easy to see the flaw in the "it only affects others, not you" argument when painted in that stark light. Taxes are too high. On me, on most people who pay taxes (only about half the wage-earners out there), and on people who make a lot more than me.
I believe that taxes should be lower, and government should be smaller, and there should be fewer people in the wagon and more people pulling.
So, to try to appeal to me by saying, "Well, it only affects other people, not you"... well... that sort of pisses me off. It's like saying it's okay to do a very bad thing so long as you promise only to do it to somebody else.
I'm also suspicious enough of the government to know that whey they say they're going to raise taxes on somebody else, that means they have the power to raise taxes on anybody and everybody. What I want is government that never raises taxes, ever, for any reason, and lowers them whenever possible.
There are practical constraints on this. I vote for school levies, for instance. However, as a principle, I want government that does what people are supposed to do: lives within its means.
It doesn't work if a person goes out, buys a yacht and a Lexus and supports their deadbeat relatives in a 5,000 square foot mansion, for them to then go to their employer and say, "hey, I need more money".
That's what the government is doing. Instead of saying, "Gee, we can't afford a Lexus and my deadbeat cousin needs to get his own place to live and find a job", the government is basically saying they love to spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, and to make that happen, people who work need a smaller and smaller piece of their own paychecks.
The other thing that bothers me, and I think this is one of those conservative / liberal litmus tests, is that I want to be wealthy one day. I am doing what I can to make that happen. I don't want incentives removed for this. I put everything I have on the line every day. I expect a reward when/if I start breathing the rare air of $250,000+ a year.
So, I don't care how many times they say that this only screws over a small amount of people. That's not good social policy. That's just divide and conquer: tell a majority that it's okay to screw over a minority. Our basic premises of civil rights are designed to protect us against the tyranny of the majority. As one person eloquently put it, majority rule is like two lions and a sheep deciding what they're going to have for lunch.
In any event, got a lot going on. Test in a few hours. I'm about 1/3 of the way through studying. Will go to school early and try to find a quiet place to finish.
I'm totally pumped to do my rowing machine workout today.
Gotta buy a bunch of stuff for my Dad's visit tomorrow. Need another bed and some food for the fridge.
Now, back to studying.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Jimmy the Cultural Ignoramus
In Arabic last night, we watched some films of people engaging in basic conversation. Couldn't tell you what they were saying, but I did notice that all the women were smokin' hot and wearing form-fitting clothing.
Apparently, Egypt is the middle east's version of Bollywood (which is India's version of Hollywood... why I didn't just say Egypt is the middle east's version of Hollywood is beyond me... but I digress...)
So, learning Egyptian dialect is a good bet because most people in the Middle East can understand it since they've seen a lot of Egyptian movies.
Which means that Egypt probably has its share of incredibly hot looking actors and actresses and wannabe famous people, etc. In fact, one of the dudes on there looked like he could have been a leading man on Jersey Shore.
So, I asked the prof how common this was. The women weren't wearing headscarfs and their clothes were pretty tight. They basically looked like Americans. He said that all sorts of attire is present in the middle east, including women wearing hot pants, etc. Not just in Egypt, but Lebanon, the countries around Saudi like Kuwait and UAE, etc.
Now, I know how utterly ignorant this sounds, but I'm a bit shocked. Even when I was in Korea (30 years ago, mind you), women did not wear tight clothing. Korea is a conservative society, but doesn't have nearly the reputation of the Islamic countries.
Just goes to show: you can't always go by your preconceptions. That moment, alone, was worth every penny of tuition I paid.
We reviewed for the test, and unfortunately, the only way I wouldn't get an A on this thing is if I had a stroke right after writing my name. This prof is a very cool, laid-back guy who doesn't want to flunk anybody. Honestly, the tests and quizzes are reasonable, but they're intended to allow people to get high grades.
I don't think I'll be doing it in the Spring, though. It's not the class, itself, that's the problem. It's that it puts one more thing on my plate at a time when I really have enough going on, already. I don't need 2 more appointments every week.
In the Spring, Logan's travel baseball will fire up full-tilt.
I will have a basis from which to continue learning, though. I can always get the rosetta stone for Arabic and now that I can read and write, I should be able to make some progress through self-study.
The other factor in all this is that my odds of deploying to iraq seem to be diminishing over time. I'm fenced off until I finish DAWIA Level I, and that might not happen for another 12 months. If Obama's time table holds, we'll have the bulk of our 50,000 support troops out of there by then.
This, of course, causes a bit of a domino effect, since even if our Afghanistan mission is alive and well, we have a lot of active-duty troops who used to be in Iraq who can fill those slots.
This has been such a roller coaster ride. When I joined, there was a 100% deployment rate. That was true until about a year ago.
Then, 6 months ago, it dropped to maybe 40-50%. Now, maybe 20%. I still have a bag packed, but with each passing month, the odds of deployment decrease. The American public is bored with these wars and wants to focus on a domestic agenda. Obama isn't a war president, and will want this off his plate as soon as possible.
Project e-bay is off to a good start. I already got a bid for the minimum I wanted on my one Melancon guitar. I put up my Gibson SG and it started getting bids immediately. So, I should be down 2 guitars within a few days.
I need to go whole-hog on this thing and get my debt as low as possible. Tonight, I'll probably take pictures of some of Logan's old baseball bats.
By "old baseball bats", I don't mean bats he actually used. He was at a strange point last Spring where he couldn't handle a heavy bat, but the big-barrels were too short. I bought at least half a dozen bats (at an average cost of about $150), before I found one that works for him. I'm sure I'll take it in the shorts if I e-bay them all off right now. However, they're not doing anybody any good in my basement.
Right now, I guess I feel like I'm surrounded by junk. So, I can either sell it off or give it away, but some of this clutter has got to go.
The rowing machine is on the UPS truck to be delivered today. At that point, the cardio dungeon will be 2/3 complete. I do need to get a TV down there, though. I might be able to get the treadmill down there this week, which would pretty much finish it up.
Apparently, Egypt is the middle east's version of Bollywood (which is India's version of Hollywood... why I didn't just say Egypt is the middle east's version of Hollywood is beyond me... but I digress...)
So, learning Egyptian dialect is a good bet because most people in the Middle East can understand it since they've seen a lot of Egyptian movies.
Which means that Egypt probably has its share of incredibly hot looking actors and actresses and wannabe famous people, etc. In fact, one of the dudes on there looked like he could have been a leading man on Jersey Shore.
So, I asked the prof how common this was. The women weren't wearing headscarfs and their clothes were pretty tight. They basically looked like Americans. He said that all sorts of attire is present in the middle east, including women wearing hot pants, etc. Not just in Egypt, but Lebanon, the countries around Saudi like Kuwait and UAE, etc.
Now, I know how utterly ignorant this sounds, but I'm a bit shocked. Even when I was in Korea (30 years ago, mind you), women did not wear tight clothing. Korea is a conservative society, but doesn't have nearly the reputation of the Islamic countries.
Just goes to show: you can't always go by your preconceptions. That moment, alone, was worth every penny of tuition I paid.
We reviewed for the test, and unfortunately, the only way I wouldn't get an A on this thing is if I had a stroke right after writing my name. This prof is a very cool, laid-back guy who doesn't want to flunk anybody. Honestly, the tests and quizzes are reasonable, but they're intended to allow people to get high grades.
I don't think I'll be doing it in the Spring, though. It's not the class, itself, that's the problem. It's that it puts one more thing on my plate at a time when I really have enough going on, already. I don't need 2 more appointments every week.
In the Spring, Logan's travel baseball will fire up full-tilt.
I will have a basis from which to continue learning, though. I can always get the rosetta stone for Arabic and now that I can read and write, I should be able to make some progress through self-study.
The other factor in all this is that my odds of deploying to iraq seem to be diminishing over time. I'm fenced off until I finish DAWIA Level I, and that might not happen for another 12 months. If Obama's time table holds, we'll have the bulk of our 50,000 support troops out of there by then.
This, of course, causes a bit of a domino effect, since even if our Afghanistan mission is alive and well, we have a lot of active-duty troops who used to be in Iraq who can fill those slots.
This has been such a roller coaster ride. When I joined, there was a 100% deployment rate. That was true until about a year ago.
Then, 6 months ago, it dropped to maybe 40-50%. Now, maybe 20%. I still have a bag packed, but with each passing month, the odds of deployment decrease. The American public is bored with these wars and wants to focus on a domestic agenda. Obama isn't a war president, and will want this off his plate as soon as possible.
Project e-bay is off to a good start. I already got a bid for the minimum I wanted on my one Melancon guitar. I put up my Gibson SG and it started getting bids immediately. So, I should be down 2 guitars within a few days.
I need to go whole-hog on this thing and get my debt as low as possible. Tonight, I'll probably take pictures of some of Logan's old baseball bats.
By "old baseball bats", I don't mean bats he actually used. He was at a strange point last Spring where he couldn't handle a heavy bat, but the big-barrels were too short. I bought at least half a dozen bats (at an average cost of about $150), before I found one that works for him. I'm sure I'll take it in the shorts if I e-bay them all off right now. However, they're not doing anybody any good in my basement.
Right now, I guess I feel like I'm surrounded by junk. So, I can either sell it off or give it away, but some of this clutter has got to go.
The rowing machine is on the UPS truck to be delivered today. At that point, the cardio dungeon will be 2/3 complete. I do need to get a TV down there, though. I might be able to get the treadmill down there this week, which would pretty much finish it up.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
A whole lot of little stuff...
Arabic quiz today. Didn't study. Clearly not-studying, now. Will need to hit it once I get to the office. Woke up at 3-something and couldn't get back to sleep. Yuck.
I am glad I'm taking this Arabic class because it reaffirms what I have long suspected: that I was lucky to graduate from the schooling I've done already; that I'm not a person who enjoys being in school; and that it's not a good idea for me to go back or to entertain ideas of a career change that involve going back to school.
My rowing machine should arrive tomorrow. I'm pumped. Need to jumble up the workout schedule a bit. For the sake of my knees, it's probably best that I cut back on running a little bit and change up the routine. Rowing seems to have no downsides that I can tell. I'm pumped.
My guitar on e-bay has only been there a couple of days, but it's doing really well. I was hoping to get maybe $850 for it. With 6 days to go in the auction, it's already at $900. So, I may even be able to get what I have into it if it gets a last minute bidding surge.
Pity. I was hoping the auction would be a disaster. Then, I'd have an excuse to discontinue project e-bay and keep all my stuff. However, it looks like I'll be auctioning off stuff on a relatively continuous basis.
I checked out my house to see the problem my guys found yesterday. I think I know what's causing it. Basically, they built the second story, but part of the main 2nd story exterior walls don't sit on load-bearing walls. Long story short: part of my 2nd story is sagging a little bit. It can be fixed. Might have to jack it up a little bit and put a steel beam under there.
On top of that, I have moles in my front yard. Double whammy. The moles are a problem, themselves. The second problem is that moles almost always mean grubs that are destroying my lawn. Great. I put down grub-x in the spring, but apparently that wasn't enough.
So, it's just nonstop joy these days.
Today, I need to call my dentist to get a crown put on my root canal. Another "yay" situation.
My Dad is coming to visit this weekend. I need to run out and buy another bed for the cabin. There's next to no furniture in there right now. I've got couches in the living room and 2 single beds upstairs. One for Logan and one for me. I'll go out and get one more inexpensive single bed. That way, when Logan has a sleepover, they can actually sleep on beds.
He should be able to catch Logan's football game. They're supposed to be on Saturdays from here on out. That'll make it easier for him on the Sunday scrimmages. He was pretty worn out last Sunday having to do 2 sports on the same day.
I woke up way too early today, got breakfast at Waffle House (it's the only place open). Now, though, I'm tired and I'm going to lay down until the house starts moving and grooving.
I am glad I'm taking this Arabic class because it reaffirms what I have long suspected: that I was lucky to graduate from the schooling I've done already; that I'm not a person who enjoys being in school; and that it's not a good idea for me to go back or to entertain ideas of a career change that involve going back to school.
My rowing machine should arrive tomorrow. I'm pumped. Need to jumble up the workout schedule a bit. For the sake of my knees, it's probably best that I cut back on running a little bit and change up the routine. Rowing seems to have no downsides that I can tell. I'm pumped.
My guitar on e-bay has only been there a couple of days, but it's doing really well. I was hoping to get maybe $850 for it. With 6 days to go in the auction, it's already at $900. So, I may even be able to get what I have into it if it gets a last minute bidding surge.
Pity. I was hoping the auction would be a disaster. Then, I'd have an excuse to discontinue project e-bay and keep all my stuff. However, it looks like I'll be auctioning off stuff on a relatively continuous basis.
I checked out my house to see the problem my guys found yesterday. I think I know what's causing it. Basically, they built the second story, but part of the main 2nd story exterior walls don't sit on load-bearing walls. Long story short: part of my 2nd story is sagging a little bit. It can be fixed. Might have to jack it up a little bit and put a steel beam under there.
On top of that, I have moles in my front yard. Double whammy. The moles are a problem, themselves. The second problem is that moles almost always mean grubs that are destroying my lawn. Great. I put down grub-x in the spring, but apparently that wasn't enough.
So, it's just nonstop joy these days.
Today, I need to call my dentist to get a crown put on my root canal. Another "yay" situation.
My Dad is coming to visit this weekend. I need to run out and buy another bed for the cabin. There's next to no furniture in there right now. I've got couches in the living room and 2 single beds upstairs. One for Logan and one for me. I'll go out and get one more inexpensive single bed. That way, when Logan has a sleepover, they can actually sleep on beds.
He should be able to catch Logan's football game. They're supposed to be on Saturdays from here on out. That'll make it easier for him on the Sunday scrimmages. He was pretty worn out last Sunday having to do 2 sports on the same day.
I woke up way too early today, got breakfast at Waffle House (it's the only place open). Now, though, I'm tired and I'm going to lay down until the house starts moving and grooving.
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