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?

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!

Not long ago a friend of mine was going to McDonald’s for lunch and asked me if I wanted anything. She told me that they sell large “sweet tea” for one dollar. So I said, sure, I’d like that, and I gave her a dollar ten (the extra ten for tax) and when she came back with my large cup of sweetened ice tea I was quite surprised exactly how yummy that was! Whenever I order sweet ice tea anywhere else it just is not as yummy. Even if I add tons of sugar, it just is not as yummy. I wish I knew exactly how they made it; I’d try to duplicate it at home! And I wish that they had it available in a sugar-substitute form so that it was zero calorie. I’m sure I could drink a lot of this stuff, but I hate to think of the weight I’ll gain if I do!

The first time it happened when I arrived to pick up the pizza I went ahead and paid for it and then they told me that it wasn’t ready yet and it would only be a few more minutes. In reality it was more than an hour before it was ready, and I was livid! So the next time that I ordered the pizza I asked the order taker on the phone if it would REALLY be ready on time, and I was assured that it would be ready on time. When I arrived and it wasn’t ready and the cashier asked me to pay for the pizza I told the cashier that I would pay for it after it was ready and I could inspect it to make sure it was done to my satisfaction, and if it wasn’t ready within ten minutes I was leaving without paying and without the pizza.

You know what? It WASN’T ready, and I left without paying and I walked across the parking lot to Wendy’s and bought my family dinner there. I refuse to be held hostage there again by paying for my food before it is ready.

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?

No one is sure exactly when the tenants vacated the home, but when authorities were notified by the landlord that they house appeared to be deserted with a large number of animals locked inside, the authorities discovered that the house was uninhabitable, had no furniture in it, and no food or water was left for the animals locked inside.

I hope that they throw the book at the perpetrators!  People like that should not be allowed to own any kind of pets.

Prior to meeting Marty and Sasha, I had never seen custom address plaques as pretty as theirs were. When we had moved in here and met them I remember asking them where they had bought their residential address plaques because I wanted to buy some just like them for my mother’s house and give them to her as a gift to replace the old plaques that had faded and rotted out over the many decades that she has lived in her house. Vandalism is such a senseless act; I don’t think I’ll ever understand how destroying someone elses property brings pleasure or fulfillment to anyone.

They ran a promotion for their grand opening that the first 100 people in line at their door at 6am on their opening day would get free Chik-Fil-A food for an entire year.

My hubby didn’t know about that promotion, and he came home from running an errand and told me that he drove past the new Chik-Fil-A and was surprised to see people camping out in tents in the parking lot!  I told him about the promotion and then he declared that he was surprised that I wasn’t one of the people camping out! I laughed at him, telling him that if I didn’t hate camping so much I would have been!

I hang out at this cool coffee shop in my neighborhood where locals always gather. I set up my computer and they have free wireless internet, so I can get a lot done while I people watch and drink coffee. I usually go there when I am bored and at home alone. It’s so nice to get out of the house sometimes and watch what other people are up to. I try not to be too nosy, but I hear some very interesting conversations. One day when I was just hanging out, the couple at the table next to me was in the process of breaking up. The girl was yelling pretty loud at the guy, and he was quiet and looked mortified. I felt bad for both of them, but it was pretty entertaining. Other days I end up at a table next to people at a business meeting, or a couple of friends who haven’t seen each other in a long time. I feel like I get a little window into their lives, and I have a good time.

I have a really hard time getting my family to eat the right foods. 

I only have one son that is interested in eating right, and he is living on his own now.  So I am here at home struggling with trying to get the rest of my family to eat right and stay healthy.  It seems to be a losing battle.

I cook healthy and tasty meals, but apparently no one wants to eat healthy tasty meals.  I get discouraged from cooking so much food and sitting down at the table by myself to eat. At least it is easy to get fresh fruits locally so I can grab some fruit to snack on without having to cook a large portion of anything. The only drawback to that is I have found that after I eat fresh fruit I feel hungrier than I did before I ate it. So then I try to have some quick protein – one of those Baby Bel cheeses. I really like them a lot, but I keep hearing from a lot of people that cheese is not a healthy food to eat. In fact I have one nephew that insists that cheese is really bad for you. I don’t understand how it can be really bad for you unless you eat a lot of it.

The first time I tasted that flavor I thought I had died and gone to heaven! It was simply the best tasting frozen yogurt OR ice cream that I have ever tasted in my life. Every time that we found out that they had that flavor on special I would order it. It was NOT available as a regular flavor on a daily basis. That is probably a good thing because I probably would have eaten way too much of it! Sadly that frozen yogurt shoppe was only in business for a couple of years before it relocated to a different town. I sure miss that place!