Lot of time has passed since my last post, I know. I’ve either been busy or just plain haven’t felt like posting.
Tried an experiment: Set up an e-mail account and joined one of those "Take Survey’s And Make Money At Home" places ($7) a couple of weeks ago. Almost 5000 spam e-mails later I have yet to take ONE survey. Initially, the site I joined (MakeMoneyAtHome.Com?) led me to a couple of pages with links to other places you could join to take the surveys. Talk about a round-robin of crap. Each link had me join to take survey’s that linked to other places to join to take surveys etc etc etc but never did get to take a survey. Now that mailbox if FULL of "Your Gift Card Is Waiting (with participation)" or "Get A Free TV (with participation)" offers ad nauseum. The "With Participation" part means that if you complete 3 silver offers, 2 gold offers & 2 platinum offers you get a "free" tv. But after spending a LOT of money fulfilling these offers you could have gone to COSTCO and bought the tv for half the price and a lot less hassle. Anyway, about to kill that e-mail address and write this up for Reader’s Digest or someone. What a joke. Except it really isn’t funny.
Weather’s been crappy mostly. Too cool for me. Been getting out to the property and running my digger around but I really don’t have a lot to do out there until we start to build. Our plans got through the engineer and should be on their way back to the architect. Gotta call the Contractor and see where he stands on his guesstimate.
Been helping friends move everything out of their moble home into their new garage so they can tear down his old moble home to put a new one in. I thought SWMBO and I were "pack rats" but these folks put us to shame! Most of their house was down to asiles between the junk they have stuffed in their house. I mean every "spare" inch of space was filled with something from floor to ceiling. I believe they are psychologically unable to throw anything away. I’ve found everything BUT a 15 year old stack of old phone books. (The oldest I found was 8 years old.) Don’t get me wrong: I like these folks. They’re great people. But they definitely have problems getting rid of stuff.
Been looking for a part-time job to take me through the winter. Not much out there for an old guy. I’m glad SWMBO has a great job but am starting to feel bad about not working. Oh, I do most of the housework and cooking (I make a great wife!) but I’m "the Man" and should be bringing in the bucks so SWMBO can be doing all that. Gads! We are the product of the time of our upbringing, aren’t we!?
Damned OPEC! The economy is going down the drain in most of the world and (it seems) especially the United States. Oil has dropped to $64 a barrel. Unemployment is on the rise and everybody has tightened their belts and OPEC is cutting back production to raise prices. Nothing else shows just how damned greedy these people can be! I’d love to invent something that would supply our energy needs enough to put the oil companies out of business overnight! All the oil companies but especially the ’ragheads’. Sorry, but ’ragheads’ are the feelings they promote with their insatiable demand for money at the expense of the rest of us. I did Desert Shield & Desert Storm, spent 7 months in Saudi and drove all over the place out there and didn’t see anything worth saving. If the Saudi’s were smart though they’d convert a lot of that empty sand and year round sunshine into vast solar farms and sell that electricity to the rest of the world.
Smallville has been pretty cool. I still watch it on "The CW" and still hate the commercials on Thursday nights and still download it Friday morning and watch it with said commercials. The sounds are fantastic when I listen to the show with earphones on! Wish I could do stuff like that. My attempts at making music for my time-lapse video’s (usually of clouds) have hit a ’sameness’ lately. I don’t know if it’s because of the limited amount of sound bytes I have to work with or if those are the only melodies running through my head. Probably a mixture of both. Anyway, I really like the way Smallville is heading. I really enjoyed Clark leaping to the top of a tall building in this last episode! Maybe he’s getting over his fear of heights…
Oh, SWMBO bought me a new telescope this week! It is so cool! A Celestron 144mm reflector, Before it got too cloudy I managed to see the bands of Jupiters atmosphere. Cool!
And I had an appointment with MY Doc to talk about the Degenerative Disc Disease and other things. He ordered a bunch of blood tests and the lab tech drew 5 tubes of blood. Got the results yesterday and all my results are midline except for the good and bad cholesterol. Bad cholesterol is way up. Good cholesterol is way down. Looks like I’m gonna have to try eating oatmeal for breakfast and do some other things to reverse that. But at least the screening for rectal cancer came out negative! (There’s always a bright spot!)
Wow. Making time-lapse videos of clouds and constructing music for them. Playing with Terragen. Ripping my dvd’s to avi files. Scanning my old pictures. Housework and cooking. Helping friends move. Moving dirt and making sure my drainage is working this year. Fixing up computers for friends. Doctor’s appointments. Laundry. Downloading Smallville, Supernatural, Sanctuary, Fringe and the new Knight Rider. Keeping the fire going in the woodstove and who knows what I,ve done and forgotten seems to keep me pretty busy. Life is good!
In regard to gas prices I actually saw $2.51 this morning here in Sebastian, FL. We filled up at Wal-Mart for $2.52/gal with the 3 cent discount on the gift card. I took the wife to Orlando airport to take trip to Houston via Dallas. It is the Houston International Quilt show, and she will be with our daughter-in-law and her parents who have a booth (quilt shop). She will be helping run the booth when she isn’t drooling at the cool quilts of all shapes and venues from traditional to the fiber art ones she loves soo much. (I degress) Seems the oil prices are allowed to rise to line the pockets of the “shareholders” and to heck with the economy. If we could freeze the price on the barrel and the price at the pump during this “worldwide” meltdown of the economy, perhaps it would put more $$ back into our economy and at least produce a soft landing for the working and retired class. Putting $ billions into the banks and Wall street does nothing for me. Put it in my paycheck. I guess I am a socialist, I receive my retirement from the federal government (OPM). I guess that makes everyone who is retired city, state, and federal x-employees socialists. GEE!
About your back problems, every ten pounds extra of belly produces something in the area of an extra 2000 lbs/sq in on the spine. My personal “dunlap” is at least 15 pounds and my lower back complains too. It is just so damn hard to lose weight around the middle and keep it off. I managed to lose 20 lbs about a year ago, but it snuck back on when I wasn’t looking. I am approaching 65 in March and it is getting more difficult with the years. Less input, more output.
lol
Are there any security jobs around there?? Hospitals, gated communities, large wharehouses? Preferably ones that do not require a license or a gun. I actually make more to start than Wackenhut a big security firm on the east coast. We work 24/7, 365, the eve shift is great, midnight shift can really take a toll. It takes three days to recover from working two mids in a row. lol Good thing I only work part time as a relief. Even so I managed to work nearly 1000 hours last year that is half time. I even got a free Turkey for Thanksgiving. cool!
Good luck with your back.