Monthly Archives: April 2010

Storage solutions

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I recently met a woman who has an “off the grid” type of house.  She’s a very nice lady, and she invited me to join her for tea at her place.  I didn’t realize when I accepted the offer the type of house she had – it was a complete surprise to me.  She lived down a rural road (naturally, but then that’s no big deal; I do too!)  At first approach it looked like I was approaching a run down storage shed, so I thought I might be lost!  But the driveway circled around back and once I got around back the place had sliding glass doors and I could see that people actually lived there.

Once inside I was surprised to find that all of her floors were bare cement.  She told me that when she cleans house she just hoses down the floors!  I don’t think she was joking, either!

She used lockers to store almost everything you could imagine!  She put my coat and boots in a really nice antique wood locker in her foyer.  As she gave me the grand tour of the house, she told me that she is always on the lookout for good lockers for sale to add to her home.  She said that they are the perfect storage solution for almost anything and everything!

It’s never a good time to break something

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Today I decided to try a new recipe in my bread machine. It included oats, wheat flour, and overripe bananas. I had three overripe bananas and I didn’t feel like making my usual (but yummy) banana bread, so I looked in my bread machine cookbook and found the recipe. I measured and poured, and started the machine. It started its mixing cycle, and I decided to take a nap. When I woke up I realized that the bread should be ready. I went into the kitchen and saw that the machine had finished it’s baking cycle. Unfortunately, the machine had decided to break down during the early stage of the mixing cycle so I did not have anything that even resembled bread! Naturally I’m displeased that the machine has broken down – I don’t want to have to buy a new one! Very disaapointing. I’m just glad that it didn’t break down right before a fancy special dinner! 

I’ve already got my eye on what machine I want to get to replace it, but I can’t afford it – I need to buy the dogs their flea & tick prevention medicine instead.  GRRRRR….

Tutoring isn’t what it used to be

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I can remember when I took Statistics in college.  The professor was very interesting and used a lot of visual aides and hands on examples.  One of the great things about him was that he had written the text that we were using, so he knew exactly what he wanted to teach.  He put everything in a simple to understand format.  Even the Statistics problems that he assigned for homework had all of the answers in the back of the book!

Since then I’ve seen other textbooks that students use to learn Statistics, and I’m very grateful that I had the professor that I had!  Most of the students that I talk to now say that they struggle with the subject and feel that they need to find a Statistics tutor to help them pass the class!  Lucky for them, the Internet has made it possible for students to get online Statistics help for free at the tutorvista.com website.  When I was taking statistics in college, this type of assistance was just a pipe dream.  Now it’s a reality!  Today’s students are so lucky to have so much help at their fingertips!

Very disappointing

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I was very disappointed when I heard that the MSMoney software that I use to keep track of my finances was going to stop producing new versions and stop supporting the current ones. They sent out notices, suggesting that people switch to Quicken. I loved my MSMoney program. It let me forecast as far in to the future as I wanted to see – to get a really good idea of how our finances are going to look several months from now.

Well, I resisted for a long time, but I finally ordered the Quicken and installed it. I find the program to be very difficult to use. I don’t think it is user friendly at all. It lacks many of the features that I loved about the MSMoney program. It does not let me “direct debit” payments. It only lets me forecast up to 30 days in the future. It doesn’t seem to let me schedule automatic payments that should just be entered into the checkbook every month.

I haven’t even tried to figure out what kind of reports I might be able to get from it. Right now I’m frustrated and disappointed. I miss my MSMoney program!

Borrow responsibly

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One of the things that really bothers me when I watch the news is when I hear stories about how so many people take out high interest personal loans for frivolous things.  Naturally my idea of “frivolous” is not going to be the same as someone else’s “frivolous.”  To me, “frivolous” would fall into the “want to buy” category instead of the “need to buy” category.  And for me, “want to buy” is anything that is not required for basic survival.  This is always a controversial subject at my house!  My hubby, for example, will tell me he “needs” a special part for his show truck.  Well, I consider that a “want” and not a “need.”  Because the show truck is a hobby, and does nothing to support the family!

We have had more than one argument over “needs” versus “wants” during our relationship, I can assure you of that!  But I digress….  I see so many commercials on television that are trying to entice people to take out so-called payday loans to go out for a special date and how quick and easy it is to get these kinds of loans that it really scares me!  In these hard economic times I really would encourage everyone to borrow responsibly and make absolutely SURE that you are going to be able to pay the loan off really fast!  And try to use some kind of service like at moneynowusa.com that will compare the different loans available so that you can get the cheapest and most reasonable loan available.