October 2011

Urban Hallowe’en Tales: The Burglar Who Is Still Running

October 31, 2011

God, but we were stupid when we were young. It was late when my still-youngish husband and an even younger me arrived home from a night on the town. We were both very tired. Our aged German shepherd, Greta, had been cooped up inside all night long and half the day. Her plumbing didn’t work [...]

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Fainting Dead Away in the Grocery Store

October 30, 2011

Was that a hallucination? Did anyone else see it? The other day at the Safeway I went to buy a couple of yellow onions. Bounced off the onion bin like it had a forcefield around it. They wanted 99 cents apiece! A dollar for an onion? One ordinary yellow onion? Really? Really???? So I walked [...]

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Grumpy Old Lady’s Jaundiced View of Fools

October 29, 2011

Here’s something remarkably stupid: The L.A. Times’s staff is caught on the horns of a dilemma—what on earth to do with the candy the kids collect in their annual door-to-door solicitation. Dear me. If it matters to you that much, why let the kids go trick-or-treating at all? You’re not mom enough or dad enough [...]

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w00t! Am I gonna get a RAISE?

October 28, 2011

So despite our getting a slight cost-of-living increase in Social Security, we’re told that Medicare premiums will go up much less than expected. Most of the news reports natter on about how the new premiums will rise to $99.90. That of course causes me to go “huh?” because my premiums are already $111 a month. [...]

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Stress-Free Finances: Cultivate Minimalism

October 27, 2011

As we’ll see in this series, the key to stress-free finances is to live not within your means but under your means. Your goal is to live comfortably on less than you earn. Preferably, on lots less. If you’re bringing home, say, $3,000 a month, you would like to live on $2,000 or, at most, [...]

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Urban Hallowe’en Tales: The Night of the Screaming

October 26, 2011

Okay, so Stephen says he’ll kick in the price of a cup of coffee if I’ll tell the stories of the Night of the Screaming and the Burglar Who Is Still Running. You know, Stephen, the price of one fancy Starbucks concoction will keep the old lady in premium espresso coffee beans for almost a [...]

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