Another day.. Another rambling.
Good Thought for the Day
A pleasant scent is a reminder of good things long ago. (Today's incense is Airs' Ocean)
Random Thoughts for Today
When one puts their foot in their mouth, it's wise to have a salt shaker handy.
More often than not, we let our own secrets slip out rather than others doing it for us.
Cool Sites for Today
The Literature Page
The Literature Page is your place to read classic books, plays, stories, poems, essays, and speeches online, brought to you by the creators of The Quotations Page.
For the Sims 2 fans: SimPe
Mike's Mix Oldies in Wav
Quotes for Today
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!
-- Benjamin Franklin.
Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
-- Oliver Goldsmith.
Lyrics of the Day
I've got your memory, or has it got me?
I really don't know, but I know it won't let me be
---Patsy Cline, She's Got You
If you treat her right, show her you care
When you need her, she'll be there
Like an island in the storm, a beacon in the night
If you love her treat her right
---Sawyer Brown - Treat Her Right
Word of the Day
The word of the day comes from www.dictionary.com
Flibbertigibbet - A silly, scatterbrained, or garrulous person.
Bitch-o-gram of the Day
When little things begin to drive you bonkers.... does it mean you should reexamine your priorities because nothing big is going wrong?
We now return you to the regularly scheduled rambling LJ entry for the day......
I have learned that James Joyce stories just don't work for me at least not those I have tried so far. I do, however, love the works of Rosamund Pilcher. My first exposure to her work was the film, The Shell Seekers starring Angela Lansbury. The most rest ones are Wild Mountain Thyme and Snow in April
Last night my computer locked up. Lesson learned... Save scan groups more often as holding many things in the buffer is not wise when running several pieces of software that are memory hogs.
I am working on the next group of things from my craft shelf. It's notebook of magazines with mostly Christmas projects. The database will come in handy as once it's completed I won't have to dig in a ton of magazines or books to find what I want.
This is what's in there:
Crafts: Victorian Christmas 1991(has full sized pattern sheets, great idea, but most are hard to scan, so... that one was not scanned)
Better Homes and Gardens Creative Ideas, Christmas Ornaments 1990
Crafts 'n' Things May/June 1990
Crafts 'n' Things January 1990 (The Busy Woman's Last Minute Christmas Idea Book)
My game plan is clean everything out, and once the tax man is paid start going through the "needs to be repaired" list and get those things done. The wood outside on the house is needing replacement in some places. Mostly, it's little things though. When we refinanced the house, it cut not only the interest rate, but the amount of time left to pay on the house. Our original loan was 30 years, but the refinancing was done at 13 and the new loan is for 15, so, as I said it cuts off two years. Once the house is paid, we can go to a monthly homeowners insurance payment and have to put money aside for property tax.
Looking toward the more immediate future though, the last payment on the Buick should be in September. The last on the Mustang should be next January. That will free up around 500 to divide between banking it and paying off credit card debt. We have two accounts that we closed and are paying off and one that is active. I wrote the CC company when they did one of those automatically approved increases and told them to not increase the limit unless they had permission in writing from us. The card has like a 1200 limit on it, but it's enough that we can get emergency repairs done or things in a pinch. Our current debt on those is around 11000. This is good, considering when Kevin got back from Germany in 2000, we had 3 open accounts and had like 30000 in CC debt. In less than five years, we closed the three active accounts we had, paid off one in full and cut our total CC debt to around 1/3 of what it had been.
We had a lot of people calling at one time wanting to consolidate our debt. Well, we tried one and quite honestly the only thing they did for us that was at all useful was to eliminate late fees for the term of the contract. Their so called monthly fee was better spend to pay toward the principle balances on our debts since 30 bucks a month was adding up 12x30=360. 360 per year translated into one monthly car payment or a months payments on the cards themselves.
The really stupid offer that one we got? Someone called telling us that they could decrease our debt to 1/4 or 1/3 of what it had been. The catch? They wanted us to put the money we normally would put on credits into a Schwabb account while they negotiated a deal for us.. The catch? When you don't pay your CCs for three months or so, it leaves really nasty notes on your credit report. I mean.. what's the point of doing something to ease your credit load that will fry your credit rating if you don't want your credit rating fried? If we had wanted to do that, we would have filed for bankruptcy.
I'm also figuring that once Tom graduates, he's going to need transportation to get back and forth to school and/or work. Unlike his sister, he's looking at what they call a hooptymobile around here. Translation... jalopy... cheap car that runs. He's also slowly grasping the concept that when I say only one trip to the store a week because money is tight that I MEAN it. He got 12 Propel Fitness waters and a four pack of that Mountain Dew Energy drink... in my book, that's roughly 2 Propels per day, leaving 2 over, and one can of MD for four days. Plenty to drink for a five days school week, right? He was whining today that we needed to go to the store tonight because he didn't have enough drinks left.. he has 4. I said.. 2 a day for school is plenty and we TOLD you to get what you needed on that trip because we weren't going again until next week. Crestfallen, he went off. Hey, I told him what the score was. He's 17 and needs to plan a bit better. Shit happens and, yes, sometimes things aren't controllable, but sheesh, we are talking about school lunches here not the national debt.
It's 7:17PM and my scanner said.. nope.. lock up. Thankfully, I had just saved. Anyway.... time to go toss a tape in the VCR or a movie into the DVD while I fold and put up laundry.
Later people!