The Rip-Off Continues & Other Musings

So, if I heard accurately on the news last night, Paulson is going to "outsource" the "bailout" jobs to his buddies on Wall Street - the very people who created the mess to begin with. And when someone in Congress made a similar remark to him about his latest ploy, he waved his hand and pronounced there would be "oversight!" I was thinking then that if one could virtually interact with their TV screen it would have been a good time to take aim.

Of course, people are "suffering" now and feeling real uneasy because they're 401's and so forth are heading south, more layoffs have been announced (at least around here), and our realtor says the phones in the office have STOPPED ringing AND thus far, I've heard lots of people say those jackasses in government need to DO SOMETHING! Well, when an artery is severed and one tries to stop the bleeding with a bandaid, it's too little, too late. Death is imminent.

Sweetie just called the scrap yard about "short steel" as he has one more load to haul in there. The price from one week ago fell from $2.30 to $1.25. So now he says he'll just hold it. I dunno...

Our road has one less real estate sign as of yesterday. The owners were there yesterday to winterize the place and store some of their watercraft in the pole barn. They're in their mid-30's; both have good jobs, two children, three cars and THREE homes, plus all the trappings to go with EACH home. I was nosey and wondering if they had sold the place or the listing expired so I walked over to the lot line and said, "Hello neighbor." Seems the listing expired (it's been on the market for two years with two different companies) and they're now going to list it on Craigslist. Seeing as they're doing so well, I was curious if they noticed any "downturn" in the economy. We talked for about 45 minutes and basically their point of view is this: "the poor people are suffering more and those who don't manage their money well." And, "we've both got good jobs so we're not affected and I can't imagine that we ever will be." And finally, "if people would just decide to get out and work, there wouldn't be all these problems!"

Uh, huh.

In my comments yesterdays I mentioned Sweetie's mother. She's 96 and still going strong. She was the youngest sibling in her family and they all lived into their late 80's-90's. Unfortunately, I doubt that HER children will do likewise. Sweetie is the youngest as 65 and has emphazema, his 75-year-old brother has prostate cancer, his 78-year-old sister has lung cancer and his 68-year-old sister is supposedly the picture of health but no one likes her. Take from that what you will.

We loaded two woodstoves on the small trailer yesterday and have them under cover with tarps. Guess we're making one trip up north yet this month to see my family and we'll haul the trailer up then. The plan was to haul in the scrap, build sides on the flatbed trailer and load it with Sweetie's STUFF which is now stacked on pallets and covered with a rubber pond liner - we have no garage or pole barn. Sounds like our portable storage idea is on hold for awhile. Well, what are you going to do? The economy sucks and it affects EVERYONE regardless of what the people next door think. So we'll sit here and go about our daily chores and hope for a miracle or two. Prices are dropping where we want to move to but of course it's the same story here. Oh well, time for breakfast. Have a great day, Treesong