INTERESTING

Obama agrees to sign $410 billion spending bill
WASHINGTON - Acknowledging it's an "imperfect" bill, President Barack Obama said Wednesday he will accept a $410 billion spending package that includes billions in earmarks like those he promised to curb in last year's campaign.

I don't remember promising that!!

Good Music and A Message

What a $.42 cent stamp will buy

Post office bought S.C. mansion so postmaster could transfer


By ADAM BEAMabeam@thestate.com
The U.S. Postal Service is helping a former Lexington postmaster sell his $1.1 million home on Lake Wateree.
Ronald Hopson was transferred from Lexington to Carollton, Texas, last year — just before the Postal Service instituted a hiring and promotion freeze.
As part of the Postal Service’s employee relocation program, a relocation company paid Hopson for the appraised value of his home, which sits on five acres on Lake Wateree near Winnsboro in Fairfield County.
That company, Cartus, will then sell the home — typically for less than the appraised value. The Postal Service will pay Cartus the difference, plus administrative and other fees.
It’s unclear what Cartus paid Hopson for the home.
The Postal Service usually ends up paying between 14 percent and 20 percent of a home’s value, according to Greg Frey, a Postal Service spokesman.
That could range from $168,000 to $240,000.
“We don’t buy houses,” Frey said “We enable our employees who qualify to serve the company to move. If that means there is some way we can help ... that’s what we do.”
The Postal Service has been hard hit by the economy, especially with the decline in direct-mail advertising, Frey said. The board of governors is considering cutting back mail delivery in an effort to save money.
All of the Postal Service’s revenue comes from postage, Frey said.
Efforts to reach Alison Sedney, Cartus’ communications director, were unsuccessful Friday.
Efforts to reach Hopson were unsuccessful.
Hopson earns $92,000 a year in his new job as a branch supervisor, Frey said. Frey said he could not say how much Hopson earned while he was working in Lexington, because the law only requires that the Postal Service release an employee’s current salary.
Hopson bought the land, which was vacant, in 2007 for $150,000, according to Fairfield County Assessor Wendell Irby.
The county has appraised the house, which has six bedrooms and an indoor pool and spa, at $1,161,940, Irby said.
While Cartus paid Hopson for the house, technically Hopson still owns it. The deed will not transfer until the house is sold to a new owner.
Frey said not all homes are eligible for the relocation program. In February, in response to lowering home values because of the mortgage crisis, the Postal Service lowered the cap for the program to $1 million.
Under the new policy, Hopson’s Lake Wateree home would no longer be eligible.
The Postal Service is an independent government agency, meaning it is run by a board of governors appointed by the president, but receives no taxpayer money.
The Postal Service has 665,000 employees and nearly 33,000 post offices across the country.

My Thoughts:
The USPS has just announced that they may be cutting deliveries on some days during the week because they are experiencing money shortages. It is also rumored that they may request a bailout from our government (that would be us), and the sad part is that they will probably get it. This is just another example of the greed and waste that is so prevalent in this country today.

"CRAZY PAPA"

Last Saturday afternoon we picked up our 4 1/2 year old grandson Joshua to stay with us while his 8 year old brother Tristan was recuperating from the flu. We had him for three nights and enjoyed every minute of his stay - well almost every minute of it. The first night he slept with both of us, and he sure is active little fellow while he is sleeping. I am not sure that I have ever been kicked that many times in one night even by Kathy.
For some reason during the three days that Joshua was with us he started calling me "Crazy Papa" -- I really don't know where he came up with that one????

$900 MILLION DOLLARS

Someone please explain this to me!

We have millions of people out of work here in the US. Health care and education along with lots of other vital services are being cut everyday due to a shortage of money, but it seems that the US can keep spending money like it grows on trees. According to our Secretary of State (Mrs. Hillary Clinton) the US is going to pledge $900 million to rebuild Gaza after Israel demolished parts of it in the last little skirmish that took place. My question is "If we didn't break it why are we fixing it?"

Our New "OBAMANOMICS" Household Budget

1. Since our employers are having severe budget problems we are going to request they decrease our pay by at least 10%.
2. We are going to increase our church tithe from 10% to 30% of our gross income.
3. We feel led to start donating at least 20% of our gross income to other charitable organizations.
4. We have been skimping on all of our utilities so our plan is to use all we can in the future.
5. We are going to add all of the premium channels to our cable for our viewing pleasure.
6. We are going to purchase a couple of new automobiles adding 2 large monthly payments.
7. We feel like we also need to start taking several vacations per year - with or without pay.
8. I guess while we are at it we might as well purchase a much larger house.

As you can imagine by doing all of the above we will be spending in excess of what we earn by a very large amount! But who cares? We have a plan to eliminate at least half of our debt over the next four years.

Life is Good!

A Weekend with Ashlyn

We were blessed this weekend to be able to keep our granddaughter Ashlyn from Saturday until Monday evening. Ashlyn's two cousins Tristan & Joshua came over Saturday afternoon and they had a great time playing together. Kathy and Ashlyn watched Lady and The Tramp Saturday night and I will have to admit that I went to bed as I had already seen that movie about 120 times. Sunday morning we all went to church - Ashlyn went to children's church while Kathy and I went to the contemporary service (or what we call the rock & roll service). Kathy took Ashlyn shopping Sunday afternoon and she got a shirt, jacket, and a couple of movies -- They watched one of the movies which was something about space dogs. We played some Yahtzee together before dinner and then Ashlyn and I watched the movie Winn Dixie - that sure is a good one. Monday morning we all went to the zoo and really enjoyed ourselves. We went to the 3D theater and watched a short film about Sponge Bob -- I stayed busy dodging things that kept coming out of the screen and trying to hit me. The highlight of the zoo trip was seeing Ashlyn riding a pony - she was smiling from ear to ear. GOOD WEEKEND!

GLAD THIS WAS NOT ME!

I have a good friend (I refuse to mention any names) that was working in Greenville, SC today at a trade type show and during his break he visited the restroom across from his booth. He could not figure out why there were no urinals in the restroom, and on his second visit he still could not figure out the absence of urinals. A little later in the day he sees a gentlemen exiting from a room down the hall and after checking it out - yes you are right he had been using the ladies room. He says that the images on the door were so small you could not tell if they had a dress or pants on. Oh well some of us are just "Lost and Clueless".

Smart Phone "Smarter than Me"

For the last 10 years or so I have carried a cell phone and a Palm T5 business organizer. The Palm is for storing contacts, appointments, excel spread sheets, word documents and etc. I have got so used to having all this information at my finger tips I would be lost without it.

Gadget technology continues to march on and they now have what they call "Smart Phones" that does everything that my my two gadgets combined did plus other interesting stuff. I am one of these "not going to be left behind type people" so I purchased a HTC model 6800 smart phone on Ebay, had the phone activated, transferred all of my information to it and put aside my old cell phone and Palm till I could get time to sell them on Ebay.

I soon discovered that I really liked some of the features of this new gadget, but some of the features of this smart phone were not very easy to use, such as dialing the phone while driving down the interstate at 80mph. However, I made the decision to put up with it's short comings due to the benefits it offered in other areas - that is until the end of last week when the phone called three people with it stored in my front pocket without me touching it or telling it to call anyone. Yesterday I reactivated my old phone, got out my palm and returned to the dark ages. If you are looking for one of these phones check out Ebay, because this one will be for sale very soon.

"FUNNY STUFF"

The following is a sample of the funny stuff that takes place in our home and I am here to tell you that this really happened.

Every year when the weather starts getting a little cold we put the electric blanket on the bed, and this winter was no exception. However, there has been some problems this year that we have never encountered before. It seems that we could not get the temperature regulated in the house of a night so we were both comfortable - Kathy was hot and I was usually cold. We tried adjusting the heat pump thermostat, putting heavier cover on the bed, removing cover from the bed and nothing seem to work.

After two months of being miserable during the night the problem was finally solved last Friday morning. I don't think I mentioned that our electric blanket has dual controls - yes we had the controls switched. Kathy would get hot and turn her side down causing me to freeze - I would get cold and turn my side up toasting Kathy. I think you get the picture.

You would think that two grown adults would have discovered this error before two months passed, but then again you need to take into consideration who the two parties involved were.

Have a good day!