When we decided that it was time to go ahead and buy another family car, we agreed that we would take a look at the used cars available for sale to see if we could get a decent used car for a reasonable price. We really did not want to have to take out a loan to buy a new car if we could avoid it. So we were really pleased when we found this used Lumina for sale at a local used car dealer at a reasonable price. The car looked like it was in really great shape and had really low mileage. When we asked how a car over ten years old could have such low mileage on it the sales man said that the first owner of the car was a little old lady (yeah, how many times have we heard that before?) who gave her car to her grandson because he needed a car. The ungrateful brat used a car title loans Michigan service to borrow money against the car and then never made any payments on the car at all. So the car got repossessed and we ended up with a decent low-mileage car at a decent price to boot! Their loss, our gain!
Energy audit
by Mary AnneThere is a networking meeting that I go to every week where a lot of businesses send a representative to the meeting to try to drum up business for their company. One thing that I’ve noticed is that a lot of the people that go to the meetings really don’t seem to be interested in helping each other out at all, which is a little bit disappointing because the entire concept of a networking meeting is to help each other, right?
What’s even more disappointing is the fact that some of the people that go to the meetings seem to claim that they will give you a free offer of some kind, in order to drum up business for themselves, but when you contact them and ask them to do it, they don’t even call you back! For example, there is a guy there that is a home insulation contractor that goes every week and will stand up and tell people that his company will perform a free energy audit and he hands out business cards with the web page address of his company, saying that they have a list of energy saving solutions on their web site, but when I tell him that I want to schedule an audit for my house he never gets back to me! I have even gone to his web page and filled out the request form and they don’t get back to me! Is that any way to run a business?
Outer Banks homes for sale
by Mary AnneI have been interested to hear that the real estate market is starting to make a come-back for the seller. For my neighbors George and Marcia, who just listed their house for sale and got it under contract within the week, that is a good thing (although I will miss them like crazy!) For a lot of communities, that will be a good thing, an indication that the economy is starting to improve. But since the market has just started to improve, George and Marcia will have a their pick of the best possible obx homes for sale while the prices are still low!
Tired of junk mail
by Mary AnneI don’t know about you, but I get so tired of all of the junk mail that I get almost every day. What irritates me even more is all of the resources that are wasted producing and delivering the junk mail! When I get junk mail, sometimes I shred it, sometimes I just toss it in the trash. Sometimes, if it has a postage-paid return envelope in it I will tear up everything except the postage-paid return envelope, put it all inside the postage-paid return envelope and mail it back to the company that sent it to me.
I think that the US Post Office continues to raise the rates of stamps because they are not getting enough work (competing with Email, UPS, FedEx, etc) so this is a relatively painless way to give them more work at the expense of some other company! So, it is creating a little bit of job security for the Post Office workers, and some job security for the people who end up opening the envelope at the company it is going to! And, hopefully, their company recycles (most big companies do) so maybe the papers will get recycled there instead of filling up the junk yards in the local municipalities!
Working the room
by Mary AnneAs we walked through the building, Tim introduced me to some of his business associates, and we wandered over to the tables full of food and beverages. I recognized the serving ware from the last social networking event we had gone to and I mentioned to Tim that it was the same stuff as before. He said that the organization supplied that kind of items to the events, that they could get them wholesale through a Hotel Product Supplies & Catering Supplies company’s website.
Well, ever since I worked for a Hotel Bathroom Supplies & Restaurant Supply Company myself back in 1972 and 1973 I have had an interest in where people can go to get those types of supplies at a wholesale price. The place that I worked at did not advertise that they would sell their products to walk-in customers, but people walked in just the same and bought things from the company.
I decided to try to look up the company I used to work for on the Internet, and I couldn’t find them online. I wonder if they’ve gone out of business! I did, however find the website of the PeachSuite Wholesale Hotel Supply & Restaurant Equipment Company and found myself spending quite a long time looking at the different flatware and stemware and thinking about how even after all of these years I am still using the same flatware that I bought back in 1972 from the company that I worked for. I’d say that was a good investment, wouldn’t you agree?