Spent half the morning compiling a round-up, interrupted about every thirty minutes by one or the other…interruption. Hit “publish” and…FOOP! Disappeared the damn thing.
Apparently I hit “Move to Trash.” And there’s no “Trash” link anywhere to be found in the dashboard. Jesse the Wonder-Guru is going to try to resurrect the thing. Later.
All of which makes me exceptionally crabby.
In brief, the one thing I really need to get online today: Many thanks to Miss Thrifty for hosting this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance and kindly including Funny’s squib on the art and business of panhandling. Love the Dr. Faustus theme!
Meanwhile…If you’d asked me I would’ve told you:
• The new J. Jill collection is weirdly reminiscent of the Sears clothing I knew and loathed during my misspent childhood: everything looks like your mother made it from Simplicity or Vogue patterns.
• We’re a day late and a dollar short in figuring out that the pending demand for long-term care is about to take this country on a skateboard ride to Hell.
• I love our cops. But I sure do hate cop helicopters buzzing our houses and being routed back and forth over residential neighborhoods all the time.
• Man is the noisiest animal.
• Being lured into buying stuff from some retailer is not the same as loyalty.
• Our brave new world gets creepier and creepier by the day. Make that “by the minute.”
• News about movie actors and rock stars bores me witless.
• Every time I hear another story about the Great Desert University I’m sooooo glad I don’t work there anymore!
• People who let their dogs run loose in public parks — especially when the dogs are chihuahuas and the parks are home to coyotes and rattlesnakes — are dumber than posts.
• There’s a special place in Hell for parents who give their kids weird names. Demons will torment them by forcing them, into eternity, to spell their children’s bizarrely mispronounced monikers.
• Styrofoam is the world’s most annoying substance with which to make cups and plates. I’m pretty suspicious of it as insulation, too.
• Houses covered with stucco look like they’re deliberately engineered to look shabby in 10 or 12 years.
• The word “multiple” makes users sound like they’re speaking with their mouths full. And using the word to mean “two” or “a few” is just plain affected.
• Elected leaders who think it’s their government’s place to tell citizens how much soda pop they can drink lead me to wonder who on earth elected them in the first place.
• Chocolate is good for your health.
• Wine is good for your health.
• Working is bad for your health.
I’m with you on the news about movie actors and rock stars! I really don’t care about who they’re dating or not, or where they’ve appeared.
I purchased LTC insurance a couple years ago and I’m hoping I can afford to keep up the payments until the day I (likely will or may) need it.
Yes. I also have LTC coverage, but the problem is, every two years, they give you a chance to elect an increase to cover inflation. You get a limited number of chances to agree to this, after which they won’t offer it again. I was in the habit of waiting until the last minute to get that, because it meant an increase in premiums. Well, of course, an inflation increase came up the minute I was laid off the job. I told them I couldn’t afford it but wanted it; they said they’d give me some time to get back on my feet, but they just let it drop. Now I can’t get an inflation increase, which means that by the time I need the coverage it won’t cover my needs.
Also, they’ve continued to increase premiums. They’re already as high as I can afford, and pretty soon they’ll be out of reach. This is exactly what Metlife has in mind: shucking off customers by slowly making premiums unaffordable. They know, I’m sure, that the regulators would whack them if they just canceled us all, so they’re having to use a slower but ultimately effectively strategy.
Metlife and several other LTC carriers have openly stated that they want to get out of that line of business, because they realize the costs of keeping us old baby boomers in nursing homes while we rot away will bankrupt them.
Oh boy, I intensely dislike MetLife! They messed around with my reimbursements for periodontal work a couple years ago and totally stressed out one of my employees who was getting short term disability coverage while being treated for cancer. They also denied me LTD coverage because I had been treated for panic attacks….10 years ago. I got my LTC through Northwestern Mutual instead.
Yah, I suspected as much. Got roped in to Metlife. The Great Desert University’s long-term-care coverage originally came from TIAA-CREF. Long before the layoff frenzy, TIAA-CREF thought better of the LTC business and announced it was shifting all its customers to Metlife. I kinda didn’t want to do that, but didn’t see any other option — by then I was too old to drop the policy and get a new one with premiums I could afford, and of course that was the only option available thru GDU.
What I didn’t understand, because it wasn’t explained clearly, was that I could have declined to move to Metlife and TIAA-CREF would have had to keep the policy in its precincts. Wish I’d known!
Sorry you had a bad day….glad you wrote this piece. I will chuckle most of the day with your remark “….is about to take this country on a skateboard ride to Hell” in my head. A true, concise and very sad statement of fact. AND….I too am amazed at the very thought of legislation even being considered that would limit the size of a dispensed beverage….what’s next candy….mints….gum….comic books? It would seem civil liberties and common sense would come in to play at some point. Thanks once again for an interesting post.
{Grump} to the power of two! In the civil liberties department, I’d rather have habeas corpus back than a Big Gulp.
Left hand turn lanes. In my city there are hundreds of lame drivers who can’t understand the concept of the left hand turn lane.
This is how it is supposed to work – when you want to turn left you put your ENTIRE car in to the left hand turn lane thus freeing up the lane for the people continuing on the road.
This is how it works in my town – during rush hour on the main roads when turning left you put the front end of your car in the left hand turn lane but leave the giant back end of the car blocking the lane for everyone continuing on down the road.
LOLOLOL! It sounds like the Road Morons have the same radar for you as they do for me. They know every time I get on the road and they all jump in their cars and get in front of me.
“Being lured into buying stuff from some retailer is not the same as loyalty.” No freaking kidding! Man, I could go on about this!
By the way, you should hit “save draft” as you do your posts, that way if you accidently hit the “trash” button from hell, you’ll have the last saved draft waiting for you. I figured that out after a similar thing happened. 🙂
Well, the thing is, I thought I had. But in my senility, it’s entirely possible that I skipped that step… 🙄
LOL, thanks for the smiles even though you are grumpy. I agree with almost all of your points, especially the benefits of chocolate and wine and how much I dislike stucco.