Category: Politics

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Another Day Of No School

School has been closed a lot lately what between all the snow days and now today is President’s day, the kids have been stuck at home a whole lot lately and I am praying that tomorrow they will go back to school and life can become normal again.  Hubby is back on his feet and I’m feeling much better (after being able to catch up on some sleep) and I’m somewhat ready for the week a head.

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I usually do love it when school is closed – when it is closed here and there, but day after day after day and especially being since the Christmas holidays just ended a month or so a go.  My kids are great and I treasure any time that I have with them, just wish money wasn’t so tight and the weather so crazy, and schedules so screwy, so that we could take them more places.  My teenager can be a challenge to get to participate in anything family oriented and I usually regret even trying to include her, but we do manage once and a while to keep everyone somewhat satisfied.  There is so much out there to explore and I want my kids to see all that they can see with us to explore it with them.

One day maybe I’ll go sign up for some college courses that I am interested in, I think I would enjoy learning now that I will have to pay for the education out of my own pocket.  Too bad that youth is wasted on the young!

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Keeping Up With Kids

Even though a lot of people don’t like rap music, the reality is that this is the music that kids everywhere are listening to. If you want to know what’s going on inside the heads of your kids, you need to be in tune with what they are seeing and hearing.

There are a lot of different kinds of rap music, including hip hop and gangsta rap. As a parent, I feel it is important to at least give rap music a listen and to keep myself informed of the top rap artists. You can keep up the latest in rap by going to this website: www.rapartists.com

This site has info on all the popular rappers, with information on their albums, their biography, pictures and a link to the artist’s homepage.

The site also has a rap forum, where people ask questions and make comments. If you have a question, you can post it there and you might be surprised at the support and help you can get from the other forum participants.

I try and listen to a variety of music, exposing my kids to a variety of music along the way. I don’t like a lot of the rap that is so popular but I don’t give my kids a hard time about listening to it. I remember my parents giving me a hard time about the music that I listened to and that made me want to listening to it more as well as turning up the volume!

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Walmart

When The Eagles released their CD, Long Road Out of Eden, they did a special deal with Wal-Mart so that only Wal-Mart carried the CD. At first I thought it was clever of Wal-Mart to grab onto something practically guaranteed to be a big hit and use it to drive traffic to their stores. But later on I was reading web articles and realized that The Eagles were the ones who benefited from the exclusive distribution arrangement. What really happened is that the traditional record studios charge a ton of money for publishing, advertising and distributing music. That’s how they make their money and they make a lot. In the end, whatever other people make off your music is money that you, the artist, do not make. So by using Wal-Mart to handle the advertising and distribution, The Eagles could basically self-publish their music and keep a whole lot of the money for themselves. Sounds like a win-win situation for both of them.

You hear stories about how Wal-Mart comes to town and run the little companies out of business. Well, it looks like the mighty Wal-Mart has decided to grab even more of their money away from banks and record companies. Even though the Government told them that they cannot be a bank, they are doing everything a bank does inside of their stores – from cashing checks to credit cards and debit cards, and sending wire transfers of money out of the country and down to Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and everywhere else the immigrants came from and want to send money back to their families.

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Language Issues

I was looking at a web site about a company called Executive Language Training that sounds like it would be a useful tool to many companies out there that are struggling with communication issues.  They have Swedish, Hindu, Dutch, Arabic, along with Cantonese language training classes and many more to choose from also, to help people learn all kinds of languages.  The list was amazingly long.

It sounds pretty cool that they customize their courses to fit your goals, your style, your time line, and your budget. Not only do they teach the languages, but they provide translation services also, like the company that I applied for here in the good old Shenandoah Valley.

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Memorial Day Salute

memorial day

Today I watched a special show on the cable’s Military Channel while cooking dinner. It described the World War II battles in the Pacific Theater. That is where my grandfather was stationed while in the Navy. He did not fight at Iwa Jima, but he was on a nearby island. Every time I see the Iwa Jima stature, I think of my grandfather and what it must have been like to be fighting that war in the Pacific.

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Real Estate Still Suffering

My oldest sister has been in the real estate business for several years now and really enjoys it and can’t wait, like the rest of us, for the economy to start easing up so that homes will start selling again so that she can start making good money once again, like she did when she first started in this highly competitive industry.

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Today’s Inauguration

I’m glad that I got the opportunity to watch a good amount of today’s historical Inauguration on the television. They provided us with a TV at work, so that we would and could watch the events that were being televised, instead of on our computers that have Internet access, which I figured was a pretty smart move on their part. We continued to be productive at our desks while being given the chance to see history in the making during normal working hours.

Kudos to management for today’s effort, something that I generally don’t’ get a chance to say about most of them.

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Inauguration Is In Full Swing

It seems that today’s kickoff concert today in Washington D.C. was a success and the start of the much talked about Inauguration is in full swing. After watching the games we settled in and watched the news, waiting for new on how our nation’s capitol was handling this event and it appears all is well and we have only just begun, this is going to go on for days.

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Wal Mart

It is sad news to hear that so many large established retail companies are going out of business, filing for bankruptcy, and closing their doors. Big companies like Circuit City and Linens & Things, sad and scary news.

The big story is that Wal Mart is the only store that is making money at this point. Retail sales are way down this holiday season, but good old Wal Mart is fairing better than the rest and making the all might dollars like crazy. That just doesn’t sit well with me for some reason, what a mess we have gotten into.