Tag: Finance

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Heating For Our Outdoor Patio

Hubby has been working real hard the past few years in order for us to have a quality outdoor patio.  We really do enjoy being outside as much as possible in the warm weather months.  Our garden keeps getting bigger and bigger each year which requires a lot of work, so it is nice to be able to kick back when the sun starts going down.  Sometimes it does get a bit chilly so I have been contemplating on purchasing an outdoor patio heater, but I want one that looks nice along with our other things that Hubby has put together.

I have been seeing a few Bistro Table Patio Heaters that I think would suit us just fine, seems they run on either propane or LP, and I love the ones with the hammered bronze effect.  The idea of being able to use the table top is an awesome feature.  Guess I’ll have to run it all by Hubby before ordering it, just in case…….. hey he has been talking about checking out some gas garage heaters also.

table heater for patio
bistro table patio heater with hammered bronze effect
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South African Hunting Adventures Anyone

How about we pack up and head out for a really cool once in a lifetime adventure and try our hand in hunting big game in Africa.  My brother and his buddies went a few years back and he highly recommends using T. Jeffrey Safari Company, LLC a full time, full service, hunting and sport fishing consultancy.

I went online and see that they have a great website that offers big game hunting safari trips to Africa.  They can help arrange a hunt here in North America but if you are going to do it, might as well do it right and they offer such bargains for several traditional African Hunting safaris as well as numerous Namibia safari hunting trip packages that are all-inclusive, in the Southern part of Africa.

The variety of programs that they have to offer is amazing, everything you ever need is there in order to get your trip up and going.  I am amazed that there are so many women into this type of hunting such big game as leopard, cape buffalo, lion, elephant and rhinoceros.  So I guess if they can do it there is no reason that I can’t give it try, but I don’t want to go by myself that is for sure.

 

 

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No Lobster For Me Tonight, Bummer

Hubby had to work later than he expected and came home tired and a bit under the weather, looks like I will have to wait another week for my much anticipated lobster dinner.  I hope he isn’t coming down with something and if so I hope it isn’t contagious, I don’t think this house/family can stand another bout of illness just yet.  We all get our flu shots each and every year, so we haven’t come down with the flu since getting these wonderful and affordable flu shots, but we have had our share of other nasty junk to nurse.

I was looking through my downstairs deep freezer and found a turkey from last year’s holiday season that never get cooked.  I’m letting it thaw out and I think we will have a nice turkey dinner on Sunday with all the trimmings, just like Thanksgiving and/or Christmas. It looks like it will be very cold on Sunday, so we will have the fireplace going and everything!  I love the way it makes the house smell so good.

Turkey Dinner
Turkey Dinner, Just Like On Christmas and Thanksgiving

 

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What happens in Las Vegas…well you know the rest

We still receive phone calls now and then from people that we knew from way back.  I love hearing from them, you never know what to expect from these phone calls.

Laurie and I go back 25 years or so, she was a bartender at the bar Hubby and I used to go to back in day.  She is now living and working as a card dealer in Las Vegas, while still going to college, and still has her son living with her.  She seems to have done pretty well and is in the process of looking into buying a condo and wanted us to look at the one Web site hone-lasvegas.com  and check it out.

These Las Vegas condos include five towers, each one is 18 to 20 stories high, with loads of spacious grounds which is guard gated, it looks like they offer all of the goodies that one would expect at such a beautifully landscaped residential community, such as spas, pool, boutiques, exercise and fitness rooms, I mean the whole kit and caboodle.

If she decides to purchase one I can’t wait to visit her and check it out my self. I have only been to Vegas once in my life and we were broke, not the best place to be when you are broke!

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Gas Prices Hinder Visits With My Sister

Just hung up from talking with my sister that lives a little over an hour away, she sounds so miserable that I have decided that I am going to drive down for a visit on Sunday.  I don’t work that day and Hubby will have the youngest with him at the flea market, so I see no reason to jump in my car and spend some time with her and her family. The cost of gas is the only concern, it will take over $20 to drive there and back and gas is getting really close to the $4 a gallon mark. It hasn’t been this high in a good long while, this is really scary folks, I’m tired of this roller coaster ride that we have been riding year after year after year – a carnival ride from hell is what it is, with no opportunity in sight to get off of that ride.

Good thing that I have a gas charge card that I can use if needed, it seems as if it is needed now more often then before, which sucks.  I am trying not to use my charge cards at all. This was the first year that I didn’t use a single charge card for anything the whole Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season. I just now paid one credit card off last week and hopefully next month I will pay another off as well, that will help when paying bills time comes around again the first of the month.

 

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Groceries

Depending upon where you live in the U.S., the store where you buy groceries can be very different from the grocery stores in other parts of the country. In some states you can buy liquor in the grocery store. In Virginia, you can buy beer and wine, but not liquor. I hear that in Tennessee you can’t even buy wine in the grocery, but you can buy beer except on Sunday mornings.

Close to my house, the best grocery store is Food Lion. We are lucky that it is one of their larger stores. The produce section is especially nice – a huge variety and all the vegetables and fruits are fresh and bruise-free. We have a large selection of meats and several aisles of frozen foods. I try to limit my shopping to once a week, but it is so convenient that I can run by there any time.

When I was growing up, the two main grocery stores were Giant and Grand Union, and if you were willing to drive all the way into Rosslyn you could shop at a Safeway store. I don’t think there are any Grand Unions anymore – they disappeared, Food Lions sprang up and now we have Wal-Marts, too.

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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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Fundraising Is A Fact Of Life

Gone are the days in most cities and towns across America when kids were sent knocking on people’s doors trying to sell folks items for a fundraiser.  Let’s face it, schools, churches, sports and all the other non-profit groups, they all desperately need money and fundraising can be a lucrative way to get it.

Unfortunately in today’s world it isn’t necessarily safe for our children to go around the neighborhoods anymore.  Most fundraisers specifically request that the kids do not go door to door anymore, they tell you to have family, co-workers and close family friends help in supporting the organization.

With having two kids I have done my fair share of fundraising and I certainly will still participate when I can.  It was a lot easier when members of my immediate family were all living pretty close to each other, now a days everyone is spread out all over the darn country so that puts a damper on using them as a resource, for the most part.

I ran across a really cool fundraising program on the Web called Schoolpop.com and I am going to contact our elementary school and see if they would be interested in participating in this non-traditional school fundraiser opportunity.

By using Schoolpop, you can pay down your tuition and any extracurricular activity costs, it can assist in paying back student loans for college and help your school earn monies, all year round by shopping at the several hundred listed of name -brand merchants and service providers whether it be online, in stores, catalogs purchases, even with gift cards or with the Schoolpop Visa credit card.

You can apply for the Schoolpop Visa credit card right on line!  Every purchase that you make for your groceries, gas, clothing, movies, restaurants  – it contributes 1% to the student’s school.

It sounds like Schoolpop may be a way to raise money that would/should be embraced by our school and the families, we shall see when I call them this week.  I’ll also call my sister who has a son in a very nice private school and see if she would be interested in learning a cool and easy way to raise money for private schools along with us in the public school system.

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Nationwide Better Be On My Side

After experiencing a fender bender in the bank parking lot, we now get to deal with insurance adjusters and body shops right before the holiday season. Since this happened in a parking lot the police couldn’t do anything but write a report for us both to submit to each person’s insurance company. She backed into me, there is no way of getting around this one. I took pictures with my cell phone and made sure she did the same thing.

After waiting around all day for the insurance rep to arrive, we finally got a call telling us that the adjuster was running behind schedule and won’t be able to get to us until tomorrow.  Of course that ran Hubby into a tissy, he still isn’t feeling well and is mighty grumpy.

Hubby has been sick in the bed for a few days now and his back is hurting, wish we could afford a new bed that would be gentle on his back, the older he gets the worse it seems to bother him.

We will see what tomorrow brings us.

 moonie

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I.D. & Credit Theft Is a Reality

Watching the news now a days, there is a huge amount of focus on credit and identity theft which is really becoming a major issue.  Identity theft is indeed very scary and I hope it is something that I don’t ever have to experience.

Mail offerings of things like “no annual fee credit cards” are received almost daily, it’s now a fact of life in this day and there are good and bad companies out there, you really need  educate yourself on the subject or you could get burnt.  “Read the fine print”

I’m glad that there are companies out there that can help when you find things starting to  get out of your control.  And I have found and book marked a web site for our use, in the near future, when our teenager will be entering the adult world of credit.  The site that I’ve found is CreditNet.com it features reviews popular credit cards, credit card offers, bad credit repair services, credit alerts, company reviews and that is just the beginning of all of their services.