May 21st

WHY CALIFORNIA IS GOING BROKE

The doomsayers (AKA the governor and the legislature) are crying poverty, and telling us that if we don't agree to pay more taxes they will cut services. But, here's a little example of what might be the REAL problem in California. According to their website, 76,000 Californians were potentially eligible to receive the latest federal unemployment benefits extension. Now, while the feds are paying the benefits, I'm pretty sure that the state is paying the postage, printing, paper, and for the employees at the EDD. So, they sent out notices to all 76,000 people with a claim form. Let's pretend that 90% of those people are still unemployed and filled out the form and sent it back. The state sent out checks, but WITHOUT the continuing claim form for the next two weeks. So, they had to send out the forms separately. If they had to send this to 68,400 people, at 44¢ postage each, the postage alone was $30,094! Not to mention the paper, the man hours (I'll bet that at least half of those people called to find out why they had no new form-because they couldn't take 5 minutes to post an announcement on the website), ETC! Yeah, I'll be thrilled to pay more taxes to continue to fund government incompetence.

May 15th

MORON OF THE WEEK

I wonder why I find so many of my winners (or, should I say losers?) at Costco. This week's stand out:

A society type, with those ridiculous striped highlights in her hair and a designer purse, talking on the phone and wandering back and forth in the aisles. Completely ignoring people who were trying to actually shop. Just so, so self absorbed and getting in everyone's way. If I were the slapping type, she would have had a good palm print on the perfectly made up face.

MORE RESCUE ADVENTURES

Today I picked up a new dog from the vet and took him to the boarding kennel. I did the usual, hooked a leash to his collar and tethered the leash to something in the back of the car. I have this cool leash with a bunch of rings and hooks on both ends so it can be used in different ways.

Suddenly Silver (the dog) was in the front seat. Collar on, no leash. Somehow he unhooked it! Then he proceeded to climb in my lap, nearly crash the car, turn off the radio and roll down a window. I had to stop, get a slip lead on him, and put him in the crate for the rest of the ride.

Just a side note: For some reason the photo for this entry loaded in like two seconds. It usually takes a very long time. I wonder what the difference is. I know I didn't suddenly get high speed internet, unless the computer elves did it.

May 6th

WHY DID I DO THAT?

Sign up for Twitter. I'm sure that nobody cares what I'm "doing right now". Okay, I signed up so I could follow Jen Lancaster, because she cracks me up. But, don't expect me to do a lot of tweeting. I also used my full, real name to sign up. Which means that I'll need to be very nice, polite and completely PC when I do tweet-especially since I'm still job hunting. I can just imagine a potential employer googling my name and finding me twittering on about picking my nose or calling a lying asshole a lying asshole.

THE PHOTO

Up at the top. It's a painted cow. I joined a MeetUp.com group for photography. They go places and take pictures. The first meet-up I went to was to take pictures of painted cows. I have mixed feelings about photographing works of art. If doing documentary photos then that's fine. Otherwise, all you have is a photo of someone else's artwork, and there's no real creativity there. So I try to create my own thing in the photograph, if that makes any sense.

May 2nd

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST!

Another mortgage company. Not really interesting in and of itself since it's just one of hundreds of large companies, and probably thousands of small ones, that have vanished since 2006. What makes it interesting to me is that I applied for a job there and actually had an interview a few months ago.

The phone interviewer was very impressed with my resume, and had almost signed me up for training starting that week. When I got there for the face-to-face interview I was first kept waiting in the lobby for an hour past my appointment time. Then the person I was supposed to meet was "busy", so I was interviewed by someone else. Suddenly it appeared that they had hired all the necessary people for their first ramp-up. Maybe it was because I uttered a comment that the future of any mortgage business wasn't all that secure, and that it would perhaps depend on whether or not the various government stimuli worked, among other things.

"Oh no! We have built in leads from the loans we service. We have plenty of business, we will be growing."

Optimism in defiance of reality. This company used to be a big sub-prime lender. According to the interviewer they no longer did sub-prime, and all the new business that was going to be so big was refinancing their current borrowers. Uh-HELLO? You think that you can refinance your sub-prime crap into prime mortgages?

Yeah, right. You'll be going, not growing. And, in all honesty I probably didn't get the job because I'm not 20 something and my mammaries are no longer perky.

If employers want experienced and intelligent they may have to get over the mammary fetish. But, if I had gotten that job I'd once again be unemployed and no better off than I was before.

RIP-Jack Kemp

I just read that Jack Kemp has died. I was a big fan of his when he was the quarterback for the Chargers when I was little. In 1972 I lived for a summer in Bethesda MD (I was a government intern, but not in the White House) and the Kemps lived right across the street. Mrs. Kemp baked us a cake (apple spice) to welcome us to the neighborhood. I never actually met him, but I did get to watch him toss a football to his son out in the street. My father called me to the window. "Look at that! He's out there in the street doing for free what we used to pay good money to see in San Diego."

Maybe he can toss around a few footballs with my father now. Or, talk politics since they would have agreed completely with each other.