Our vacation to CA was quite nice, we got to see a lot of people, but not everyone unfortunately.  That’s the result of not having enough time & too many people to see. But because there was so much to do, we don’t feel very relaxed. That coupled with jet lag & I’m one pooped camper.

Probably the most important person we saw was the Dragon’s grandmother.  She did look older from the last time we saw her, but she still looked good.  She knew us immediately & carried on a good conversation.  She repeated herself a few times but that’s to be expected when your 89.  She’s in a new house much further than she used to be, but it was well worth the trip.

Grant looks good, but I’m worried that he’s drinking again. Even a little bit is too much.  He’s got to realize that alcohol is poision to him.

Heidi & the baby are doing well too.  He’s a good baby & hardly cried while we were there.  She’s lucky.

I really wish we could have spent more time there & visited more people, but we had barely enough time as it was & had to go back to work the day after we came home.

Oh well, tomorrow’s Saturday & I can catch up on some sleep then.

I’m not entirely convinced that we need a $700 billion dollar bailout of the banks with no questions asked, no changes to be made.

Credit has gotten easier & easier to get just in my short credit history lifetime.  I couldn’t even get a gas card when I first applied for one.  I was young, but I was working & had been for almost a year.  Seriously, how much damage could I do with a Shell Card when gas was $0.97 a gallon?  Finally I got a JC Penny’s card with a $200 limit.  Then it got easy.  Every department store including the one I worked at, The Broadway, was handing out credit cards to almost everyone with a pulse.  As sales associates we were required to get a certain number of instant credit applications every week & we got a whole dollar for each one.  Seriously.  They carried a 19.8% APR & we got a whole buck.  I’m embarrassed to say those credit card app dollars paid for my lunch too many times.

Before I was out of college, major credit card companies had tables set up daily on campus to get students their first credit card.  Most of the students didn’t have jobs & certainly didn’t need credit card debt to start our adult lives with.  But there they were, every day.  Handing them out like a drug dealer giving you your first hit ‘free’.

I’m not opposed to high credit risk people being able to buy their own house. But some sanity has to reign.  Common sense tells you that there’s a balance between the number of high risk loans to low risk loans that any lending institution can carry.  But for some reason, logic was thrown out the window & everyone got punch drunk on variable APR, low (or no) money down, balloon loans.  The consumers who bought the houses under those conditions are just as much to blame, but the banks held out mighty temping fruit to them.  Even when the Dragon & I bought our first house, we were steered multiple times in to a variable APR loan.  We didn’t take it.  It was more important for us to know what our payment was going to be every month than to have a cheaper (at the time) payment.  We didn’t have a lot of money to put down & because of that we had to pay PMI on our house as well.  But it was worth it and when the rates dropped, we refied & we were able to drop the PMI.

But we’re not blameless in this whole thing either.  When we sold our house in CA, (for more than twice what we paid for it 4 years earlier), our buyer had 3 loans.  3!!!!! loans & no money down.  I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night with that kind of funding.

And the banks did more than just fuck up the credit market.  In CA, many of the foreclosed houses (purchased with no money down, no job verification!!!!, false social security numbers!!??) have turned out to be meth & pot grow houses.  The buyers never intended to pay the mortgage.  So now the drug officers are going out with all of the foreclosure officers to clean up the drug mess.

The banking leaders had to have known that it wouldn’t last forever.  Has ANYBODY ever won the ‘Rob Peter to pay Paul’ syndrome?  These are multi-millionaires running multi-billion dollar, national companies.  And they couldn’t figure out that huge Duh?  And the bigger Duh is WE ARE NOW GIVING THIS MENTAL MIDGETS 700 BILLION DOLLARS AS A REWARD!!!

This isn’t market capitalism, this is reverse communism.  Marx must be rolling in his grave.

I am sick of rewarding idiots for fucking up.  Why is there suddenly no possibility of failure for risk?  If I take all of our money & bet it on red & loose, will we get a bailout???!!!!!  But to be true to the bailout bill, I need to take the bailout money & go bet it again & this time if I win, I keep all the profits!  WTF?  I loose, I win; I win, I win?  Failure needs to be possible for there to be proper risk. Otherwise it’s just staking the deck & that’s cheating.

Credit is out there.  Just no one that has the money to loan wants to be the first one to blink.  Good credit risk people are still going to be a good credit risk tomorrow.  Bad credit risk people will still be questionable tomorrow.  Here’s a novel idea, why don’t you take the money you have, loan it to the good credit risk people & then take the little bit of it & loan it to the bad credit risk people.  You wanted to help them get into a house they can’t afford so much, now’s your chance to prove it.  Help them.

Wall Street thinks that the tail wags the dog & is mucking everything up even more than the banks could do on their own.  Investors used to invest in companies they believed in, that they wanted to support.  Now it’s just where they think they can turn a quick buck.  There’s no difference between day traders & gambling junkies in Vegas.  And every time someone farts, the market takes a dive.  I know every one’s retirement is wrapped up in the market.  Mine is too.  But maybe we need to go back to the way things are supposed to be.  You shouldn’t invest in a company if you can’t name 1 of their products.

Maybe it’s apocryphal, but I heard a contrast once of American vs Japanese business practices.  American companies concentrate on making the stock holder happy.  Even if they don’t need to they lay off people just to make their stock prices go up. AT&T Then they try to make their customers happy.  Then if they have any energy left, they try to make their employees happy.  Japanese business on the other hand spend their time & energy into making their employees happy.  That’s it.  That’s all they have to do.  If their employees are happy, then they will make their customers happy & if their customers are happy the naturally by product is that they will make their stockholders happy.  Simple.  It makes sense.  No wonder we don’t try it here more often.  Thanks Google.  It’s nice to know that someone gets it.  How about this, every stock report has to clearly state how much the highest paid employee makes (bonuses, stock profits, everything), how much their lowest paid employee makes, the number of people they laid off during the entire year & the percentage of oversees employees.  Let’s put all of the dirty little secrets out in the open for everyone to see.  It’ll be a cathartic confession.

Personally, I think that every company that is in the situation should have everyone from upper management on up canned tomorrow with no severance, no golden parachute.  They can apply from the Federal Government for their job back as we should at least own the companies for $700 billion dollars!!!  If they had anything to do with any of the above, they should be counseled into taking a job flipping burgers or busing tables because that’s all their brains can handle.  No, that’s not fair, that’s demeaning to burger flippers & table busers.  Maybe we should create a new class of untouchables & just call them the dumb-fucks.

Yes, I’m bitter and no it isn’t all to do with this particular mess.  I worked for The Broadway department store for 7 years & for most of the time it was a great job.  Until it went bankrupt.  The stock was flooded to prevent a hostile takeover a few years before I even got there & before it could fully recover the economy started to falter.  All of us in the profit sharing plan, (there was no 401k) saw our money disintegrate before our eyes.  Just like today, that was all that some people had for a retirement.  Because of the way the plan bought employee stock we were actually paying 3 times the amount it was worth at the time we were buying it.  Isn’t that special.  It got down to less than $2.  That really sucked for everyone who had bought at $60+.  At least I was just paid $6-$20 for it.  So, what does our intrepid CEO do in a times like this?  He takes a 180,000 raise & an $80,000 bonus….the year we went bankrupt.  He’s the one who’s decision, right or wrong, got us into this mess & he gets a bonus?!  Something tells me that if I had done anything to cost the company millions of dollars, I would not have gotten so rewarded.  I’m not opposed to paying CEOs & upper management well…when they do their job well…but why do we have to pay them well when the fuck up??  Everyone I know would get fired…why doesn’t upper management & above ever get fired?  What happened to personal responsibility?? What’s happened to the captain going down with the ship??

The ship is sinking & the captain & crew are safely aboard life rafts.  And were left on the deck of the Titanic.

Bon Voyage America.  I have a feeling that the middle class tax payers are going to be fucked no matter what happens.

Fall has come.

Ok, technically it was fall last week, but today is the first day that it has really felt like fall.  We’ve had a couple of cool snaps before, but this one seems more final.  Of course, it may still warm up a little, but it’s colder & dryer than it’s been in months.  Although it means that the storm season is pretty much kaput, but I still enjoy the warmer days than the cooler ones.

Let us go home from this week not fretting over all that needs to be done,

Let us go back home, determined to do what we can realistically do.

You and I can, and must, help make America, America again.

The country it has never been, but yet can be.

A truly new and different kind of nation.

A non-racialized, non-homophobic culture that respects the feminine and the masculine in all of us, that makes room for the physically challenged and cares for the mentally ill, that is generous with all her people whether they have a government issued ID or not. Let it truly be a reflection of all of us.

For too long our mirror has been obscured by –isms and schisms and false patriotisms, but we live in the time of the lifting of the veils.

We live in a time when we must remember what the name Jerusalem stands for, so we can stand up and create Jerusalem wherever we are.

A time when we must remember what America stands for, so that we can stand up and help make America, America again.

It’s not enough to stand up for the pledge of allegiance

It’s not enough to stand up for the national anthem.

That means nothing if we don’t also stand up for what’s right.

Rosa Parks, sat down to stand up for her rights.

Soldiers, freedom fighters and activists are laying down their lives to stand up for people’s rights.

I must remember what I stand for, and you must remember what you stand for.

Because the place where heaven and earth meet is the place where your feet are touching the ground.

My darling husband is on his 2nd day at his new job.  It was so nice to see him excited yesterday about work again.  Yea!  We went out & celebrated with standard Jacksonville Mexican food.  About the only difference between where we went & Taco Bell was that I could get a margarita.

And in other great news, I passed my last IAAO class & will be getting my CFE certification.  Yea!  Bonus!  Of course my last class was easy since it was mapping, but I was still surprised that I got a 100% on the test.  I was sure I missed at least one.  Yippie!

It’s official.  Ventura Volvo no longer exists as of last Friday.  My father-in-law owed one dealership or another for a number of years & when he moved to the new location in Ventura 9 years ago, he had quite a few employees follow him from Whittier.  Unfortunately Volvo thought there were too many dealerships within the area & his got the boot.  So he, 3 other members of the family as well as all of their employees are out of a job.

Mom got a call from my cousin in San Diego who was planning on coming out for a visit in October.  She’s not coming now since her husband took a separation package from his employer & is now out of a job too.  It was that or he’d probably loose his job anyway.  He’s worked for the main newspaper in San Diego for 22 years.  And he’s just not needed any longer.

No, there’s nothing wrong with the economy.  *roll eyes*

Without much dammage.  Since we don’t have many pine trees in our yard any more, we don’t really have too much to clean up.  We have some leaves, but no 7′ pine braches & we don’t have hundreds of pine cones. 

Our street did flood, but it wasn’t the first time.  In fact, it’s flooded twice since they ‘fixed’ Hood Rd.  But it didn’t flood before.  Even in Tropical Storms Frances & Jeane…our streets were bone dry.  We got some pictures of the flooding, but thankfully it didn’t get too high for us.  It was much higher in the front of the subdivision & was still flooded when we went to pick up the munchkin on Saturday morning.

I did get 2 hurricane days as our office was closed.  Which was good…Thursday was bad, but because the storm didn’t turn when they thought it would, Friday was much worse.  With the wind & rain we had on Friday, I wouldn’t have been able to get into work.  They closed a lot of the bridges on Friday so a lot of other people wouldn’t have been able to get to work either.

pretty much no one works at TBM any longer.  It’s quite sad actually.  I got a call from my good friend from there last night & he let me know that he got laid off last week.  I asked him if anyone still worked there & he said there were 4 people in production, 2 in QA & 1 in Research.  I’m very saddened by it but am happy to know that I did make the right decision in leaving when I did.  When I was working there, there were 6 production teams.  Now the little bit of production that is not being done in India is handled by 4 people.  He also mentioned that the sales have been slow.  But even with brisk sales the slow down in production began years ago.  That coupled with some poor business decisisons Thomas Bros Maps has become a thing of the past.

I knew that after my depressing experience last year I didn’t want to go back into the office on our vacation home.  I thought I’d just meet some people for lunch & leave it at that.  Now, I can’t even do that.  I guess Scott & I’ll get together for lunch & call it a day.

for they will be in a world of hurt.

I didn’t sleep well again last night…no reason other than I was tired & needed to sleep…*roll eyes*…so on top of being 2 days without sleep & the short fuse that brings with it, it’s pouring.  Or to be correct it was pouring when I had to make it from my car to the building.  You know, umbrellas don’t help much with rain pouring sideways.  It’s been almost an hour & I’m still soaked.  I should have worn my Crocs instead of my leather sandals, at least they would have been dry by now.  Pretty much everything from my waist down got soaked.  Nice.

To top it off, Muttley will probably escape the kitchen today & run amok in the house.  And of course the cleaning ladies are coming to day so he has all afternoon to bring mud into the clean floor.  He’s either completely loosing his mind or control over his bladder.  Last night he peed all over the dinette floor.  We were home, it wasn’t raining or thundering.  Just decided that he couldn’t be bothered to go out side.  *sigh*  He is getting old.

I should have stayed home.

I’m having a heck of a time concentrating on work today.  I am pooped & just want to go home & go back to bed.

Went out last night with my friends & mom had left a phone message for me when I got home.  Usually I don’t call her that late because she has no concept of time & has no problem keeping me up long past when I need to be in bed.  Well, last night she demanded that I call her back that night.  *sigh*  So I call her back & her phone is busy.  I did this for almost 2 hours.  Then I decided that she couldn’t be talking to anyone that long & called the operator to break in.  She came back & said there was no conversation on the line.  At this point I’m concerned that she’s had an accident so at 11:15 I decide that I’m not going to be able to sleep anyway so I go check on her.  She’s fine, watching the Olympics at extreme volume.  When I asked her if she heard the beeps from her phone being off the hook, she mentioned she heard something but wasn’t sure what.  Then she began with the normal day to day conversation.  No reason as to why I HAD to call her that night. No concern about me being tired.  She did thank me for checking on her but that was it.

I’m going home after work & taking a nap.