Pure rambling randomness....

I really don't have the time to be doing this right now.  Got a big day ahead and I need to get moving.
But, I'm still drinking the second cup of coffee and not completely motivated yet.
So while I'm preparing to motivate I'm uploading pictures.

How our animals spend cold winter nights....











That's Jethro

On the corner of the couch.  It's been cold the past few days, with snow and ice.  Footing in the yard has been rather slippery.  I envy the 4 footed on days like these.  They recover from slips much better than I ever have.
The birds have been out and about the past couple of days, but they stick close to the barn and the pasture.
Unfortunately, our duckies seem to have disappeared.  Not sure what happened with them, but all 4 are gone, and I already miss them.  I was looking forward to getting them a pool come summer...
I know it's bad, but I'm already thinking about duckie replacements.  Luckily, they didn't have ducks at Rural King yesterday.

I've been busy with things the last few days.  Made Jiffy style cornbread, without the box, the other day.  Recipe needs some refinement but it was pretty good.  Made beefy onion soup the other night for dinner.  Again, the recipe needs some refinement, but the experiment is well worth repeating.  I've been working on the living room carpet, but that's an ongoing process.
And, the big thing...
I cleaned and organized my desk.
It's awesome, if I do say so myself.

MY desk has never been this neat and tidy before.  I've got the filing system to a place where I can find things and stuff has a place to go.  Things are where I need them to be.  I found all sorts of stuff
It's exciting!
And, yes, I know that's pathetic.
What can I say?  I'm easy to please.
Isn't that a good thing?






What I see sitting at the computer....

My window on the world.

More of the little crap I've collected over time...

I'm hopeful the the unprecedented order and tidiness will spread through the rest of the house.
I can hope, can't I?


The impulse to clean the desk is also exciting news.
I'm getting a rat!!

Yes, I said rat. 

Rats are great pets.  Much better than Hamsters and Gerbils.  They are more intelligent and less prone to bite.
I've had rats before, can ya tell?




Steve, my Deary Departed had rats when he was living in Chicago, and always spoke very highly of them.
My first rat, Basil the long-tailed Hamster, named for the rat from 'Fawlty Towers'....


If yer not familiar with 'Fawlty Towers' you should check it out.

Was a surprise acquisition.  I was in a pet store getting crickets for our Anoles, when a guy came in with a litter of baby rats.  He had to get rid of them, but didn't want them to be snake bait.  The clerk told him that there was no way he could guarantee that the little ones wouldn't be sold as food.  Sucker that I am, I bought what was need to outfit a ten gallon tank, and took home a free rat along with the crickets.

And Basil...

Was one of the best pets I've ever had.  He was litter trained and enjoyed his cap of beer every now and then.
Basil, aka Basil Ratbone, was joined by Vincent Mice.  When they passed we got Edgar and Allen Frog.
Unfortunately our line of rats ended when Edgar passed, not long after Steve.
I've always wanted to get another rat.  But, my life the past 12 years has been unsettled and buying a rat was not high on the list.
Well, today I'm going to rescue another rat, cuz whoever I don't pick is going to become snake bait.
I'm going to go see them in a bit and pick out a new little friend.
I'm excited, that's why it's a big day for me...

And that was yesterday.
I had to interrupt typing to run to Granite and bring home my new little buddy.
For weeks I've been pondering names.  Should I try to stay with our line of naming rats after old horror movie actors?  Maybe Bela or Lon?  I considered Giles, from my recent run of naming animals after 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' characters.  But with today's news, I've decided to call him Leonard, in honer of the now late and always great Leonard Nimoy.

So, say hello to Leonard!!

Let's hope he lives long and prospers.

Well, that's the big news for now.

Except for Riley not wanting to give my chair back...

FBEs sighted....

Hey, it's a post, right?

I really do write almost everyday.  A lot of it ends up on FaceBook....

"It's time to wean the world off oil and big money, and get a grip on reality.
Natural resources are not infinite. The earth is a closed system. We can't just pack up and move no more. There is no planet B. We can't maintain the grand life style of rabid capitalism, we're running out of planet.
Instead to going to ever desperate measures to pull every last drop and crumb from the ground, we should be looking at new ways to harvest what comes from the air and water.
Hell, we could be wiring up gyms to collect kinetic energy by now.
Right now, the modern western world is working almost half their time on this earth to prop up and perpetuate a destructive and dying system for a few shiny toys and a false sense of security.'

2-21-2015 comment on the Keystone pipe line.
It really is time to stop ripping the world apart to support our capitalist habit...


'And yes, the disparities in income between the top and the bottom do fall under the line of misconduct. Everybody in a corporation puts in the same amount of time and contributes something of value. Yes, some people are more valuable to the business than others, and do deserve a little more in the paycheck. But no one is worth 300% more than anyone else. Everyone working for that corporation should be able to make a good living.
Ya all need to think about working without a janitorial staff for a week or so.....'

2-20-2015 comment on a quote from Theodore Roosevelt.

 'Bigger is not always better.
Factory farming must be stopped. We were much better off 50-100 years ago when food was produced closer to home. Small farmers made this country great. We need to scale back and diversify.'

2-20-2015  An opinion on factory farming.  Again we need to stop messing up the environment.  We need to carefully pick and choose between old and new to lesson our impact on the planet.
Still ain't no planet B anywhere in the near future.

The birds 2-2-2015

 Only counts as writing if I actually thought about it and spell checked it and all....

Yes, I went AWOL, again....

But with me, it happens.  For a verity of reasons, chief among them, lately, is that it takes Max so long to do stuff, I haven't been in the mood to mess with the Blog.  I sit down with the intent of writing something, wait for Max to chew through opening things, and then....
I'm onto researching how to kill Mulberry bushes.  So I sit and wait for Max to catch up and then....
I want to check email....
I spend a lot of time waiting for Max.
Trying to do anything with video is likely to freeze him up.  He takes forever to open files...
Max is ancient for a computer.  I really should let him retire.
But, ain't no money in his retirement fund.
I'm also addicted to Pet Rescue right now and it takes a while for the game to load, and it freezes frequently, so I've been wasting a lot of time there.  I like to play Treasure Madness too.  I've been loading that before I go make coffee and take the dogs out.  Sometimes it's loaded by the time I get back to the computer....
And time keeps on slipping....
It's slipping right now and there are things I want, and need, to do.
So, I'm really not saying anything now.
I've been working on a 2014 roundup post, but, see above.  I'm also having to sort through ALL the photos from last year, cuz I didn't keep track of the ones I used.  Anybody who plays with pictures knows, frequently, you take 3 or 4 shots to get the really good one.  I quite often crop and modify shots.  I didn't do good at keeping track of the ones I posted last year.  So I'm going through and redoing a lot of stuff.
I took a lot of picture's last year.
This year I got wise and all the photos I edit or post are going into the 2015 folder and staying there.
Lately I've been vacuuming, running the carpet cleaner, cleaning here and there, clearing off the book cases and the desk, doing laundry, working, doing dishes, cooking, etc...
And if you walked into the house right this second, you wouldn't be able to tell....
So it's life as usual.
We've got a good amount of snow on the ground right now.  It's been cold.
Haven't had any fires lately.  I need to clean the fire box, and the dog chewed the cord off the shop vac.  Really not motivated to deal with it right this minute.  Can't even think about getting a new cord on the shop vac till I have the money for it.
I did achieve something lasting this week.

The button collection has been resurrected from the ashes!  Literally, hasn't been together for at least 10 years....
The button collection started on a mall crawl back in high school with 'What's a place like this doing to a nice kid like me?'  I was sporting a black Fedora back then, pinned that button right in front.  It grew from there with gifts like 'I'll think of you every time I see something scuzzy under the sink.' and 'Drain Bramaged'.  By the end of college the hat was too heavy to wear.  But the collection made it through all the moves, mostly intact.  The hat sat out somewhere in most every place I lived through the years.  Till the hat gave up the ghost.  Sometime round about the mid 90's, don't remember exactly when, I transferred the buttons to this remnant of cloth.
And the button collection hung in everyplace after that.  Till the fire at Mary's.  It was dismantled, mostly cleaned and packed in the aftermath of the fire.  I know I have the rest of the buttons, somewhere.  They're in a couple of big baggies, packed somewhere.
So this isn't the whole thing.  These are additions made in the last 10 years or so.
But this, got the cloth off the bookcase and the buttons off my desk.
And when I find the rest of them they can go home.
For right now....

These are my favorites.

















And I played with the camera....



Got an oil burner on a whim.

Noticed this when I fired it up for the first time...

So....

Noticed this after I dusted the bookcases the other day...

And got an interesting pic of the Happydale Sun...

Yes, I admit it....

I spent .69 cents on a song,,,


 
Not that version of it.  The original, which is what I blew .69 cents on, didn't have any good video.
And I do like this version of it....
I confess, I spent .69 cents on a song.
But I have a good rationalization for it....
I need a rationalization, cuz I'm poor and I shouldn't be blowing money on stuff that's not vital to my existence.  But, if you don't get something fun every once in a while, what's the point?
And the FaceBook quiz said this was my 60's song, and I didn't have a good copy of it.  Admittedly I only have 3 CDs by Simon and Garfunkel.  Well, I have 2 by Simon and Garfunkel, and 1 by Simon, but out of the 3 you'd think there would be a good version of the song.
I don't like the Central Park version.  It just doesn't sound right.
After listening to the original on YouTube and determining that it was, indeed, a song for me, I looked it up on Amazon.
And there I caved to selfish desire and spent .69 cents.
I admit that out of my recent little windfall I've spent a bit on stuff I don't absolutely need.  I have fed vices.  I spent money on stuff to make a good dinner, instead of eating Ramon noodles, which I already had..  I bought another pair of thermal underwear  Not something vitally necessary.  But it's only a minor luxury, the 2 pair I have now are wearing out.  Believe me, out here the thermal underwear are a vital thing.  Now I have 3 pairs.  I could have done without, but for $7 bucks, I lived a little.
I also took care of some major things.  I got The Cash Store off my ass.  That was a major, major thing.
Back in December I needed $500.  I already had a payday loan at my bank, which is a normal thing for me.  They charge a reasonable rate and I get part of the fees back when I pay the loan off.  But, I can only do 1 payday loan at a time.  So I had to fall back and punt.  I needed $500 quick and I'm poor, I don't have a lot of choices.  I went to The Cash Store.
And I should have made them buy me dinner first....
Freaking 430% interest rate on the damn thing.  I paid it off early and still ended up paying $260 more than I borrowed.  All because they have money and I don't.  Flipping $4.80 a day just to use a little bit of their money for a short time.
Usury is truly a sin.
And people wonder how anybody falls into this spiral.  I'll tell you how people fall into this spiral, they don't have any flipping choice.
Consider how my spiral started....
Cuz, I am in a spiral,  I almost always have a payday loan I'm paying on.  As I mentioned up above, I get mine at my credit union.  The rate is somewhere around 10% and I get the fees back when I pay the loan off, so it's not too damaging.  I got the first one to do work on the car, which I need for my job.  The next was to pay bills and get the plates for the car.  The last went for propane and other bills.  Then I needed $500 more.
We've all been there.  Yer tapped out, and then something major goes to hell in a hand basket.  If you make enough for savings this is not so bad.  If you have the money to have liquid assets, then yer really not loosing anything.  If you have money, you can get a low interest rate and yer good to go.  If yer poor, yer screwed.  You face going out into the world of truly predatory lending where yer either swimming with the sharks or the bottom feeders.  I just went swimming with the bottom feeders.
Payback terms, which made me nauseous at the time I took the loan out, were $99.87 dollars every 2 weeks, with a 430% interest rate.  That's 199.74 out of the $800.00 I make every month.  That's my payment for a phone, which I don't have right now, cuz I was giving that money to The Cash Store, and insurance, which I was late on paying.  That's food money and gas money.  Last month my income took a turn upward to about $1300 a month, and that's still a painful chunk out of monthly living expenses.
And the car needs a lot more work.
And we just had to get propane again.
And the electric bill is past due.
And it's coming up on time to pay insurance again.
And so it goes forever and forever, amen....
And I feel bad about blowing .69 cents on a song.
But The Cash Store doesn't even flinch at gouging a huge lump out of my pitiful income.  Doesn't even acknowledge that I work 15.5 hours every month to pay them for the privilege of doing business with them.  The people at the top have to realize that once you start paying extra money just to get by every month it means that you'll keep paying extra money just to get by every month.  That's where their profits come from.
They count on their clients returning month after month.  When I payed off that loan I was told that I had to wait to get my contract in the mail before I could get another loan.  They'd be happy to see me!!
And, of course, they expected to see me again.  Cuz they see so many of their clients month after month.  It's a self perpetuating spiral.
The payday loan is a fact of the low income world.  Many need that little boost in desperate circumstances and the payday loan world does all it can to extend those desperate circumstances.  Cuz when yer paying $200 a month extra there's little left to save for the next rainy day.
And when yer poor it don't rain, it pours.  When you have barely enough to cover monthly living and working expenses, every accident, every unforeseen occurrence is a trial.
When I said 'never again' the girl taking my money was surprised.  She told me that I could get $100 if I referred a friend.  Looked at me like I'd sprouted a second head when I said that 430% was highway robbery.
I like my friends and hope they don't have to go to the bottom feeders....
So, I'll tell you now, if the time comes and you desperately need money, check with your bank first.  Many have payday loans and the rates, even at 20% or 50%, are better than The Cash Store.
Bank at a credit union and get an even better deal.
Well, I've got more to say, but I'm taking time away from other stuff so....
That's all for now folks!