Oil prices and the economy are obviously two subjects on everyone's mind at the moment. Here are some observations and tips to help you stretch your dollar and not be a sucker.

First, don't buy any more new cars that run on gas! Go with a late model used car or simply restore the vehicle you already have. Sure, we are going to see some domestic layoffs in manufacturing, but the problem is what they are building. You don't even want to buy a new car in a good economy- they are generally bad investments that only depreciate. I find it highly disturbing that car manufacturers needed $5 a gallon gasoline as impetus to clean up their act. Suddenly they are changing their routines and shifting resources towards fuel efficient vehicles- nearly halting the production of SUVs in the process. Who has the better infrastructure to build a long range electric, a company like Tesla or a company like GM? So if Tesla can do it for $90,000 I wonder how cheaply a larger, established company could build one? Anyone who didn't see this day coming simply had their head shoved firmly in their posterior. It was only a matter of time before our fuel prices hit levels comparable to the rest of the world. Oh, and drilling for more on protected land or offshore does little to nothing for the long-term. We simply need to use less. Duh. Don't get me started on ethanol, which is another bad choice. We already divert an abundance of corn to animal feed (bad idea), and increasing dependence on a single crop makes us a one-trick-pony agriculturally speaking. Ethanol can come from other renewable sources.

Second, do it yourself. What do I mean? Back in the seventies when oil prices hit the roof and car manufacturers made the same limited efforts to evolve, we suffered food inflation and shortages directly linked to oil prices. My family started gardening every available space we had for food. We got some exercise, spent more time together, saved on the cost of produce and were able to barter with other neighbors! "Here's a pound of zucchini for your pound of tomatoes." Buy locally and support farmer's markets. You don't have to rely on the FDA to "protect you" when you meet the people growing your food. Speaking of protection- did they ever figure out where those tainted tomatoes came from? Your tax dollars at work. And now there's another beef recall! Not to go back to the last paragraph, but we create problems constantly. "Let's take the cows off of their natural grass diet, feed them corn we could use for food, and then when they get sick from the corn diet...let's give them antibiotics and vitamins instead." BRILLIANT!

Third, the wasteful nature of the well-off should be of concern. Take high-end properties in high-end neighborhoods as an example, where the homes are over-built to last over a hundred years. This on the surface isn't a problem. However, the buying habits of developers and the rich LOWERS PROPERTY VALUES for the rest of us, by reducing the useful life of your property from an appraisal standpoint. Apparently when appraisers look at neighborhoods, they decide on a number of years for the useful life of area homes based on the age of homes that are torn down to build new ones. My home is 84 years old. I have neighbors with slightly newer homes and neighbors with slightly older homes. Up the street, a home comparable to mine that was 95 years old was torn down to build a couple of town homes. This subsequently places the useful life of my home somewhere in the area of 95-100 years from an appraisal standpoint. In fifteen years, I should consider tearing down my house instead of fixing it! Not doing so only hurts me from a resale standpoint. So how does this make the rich wasteful? In neighborhoods on Lake Washington for instance where values are in the millions, buyers like personalization. They don't want the house you built to your liking, they want homes built to THEIR liking. So that waterfront house that was built using the best of everything gets torn down in fifteen years to build another McMansion. Anyone living in an area like this wanting to preserve their property investment is faced with obsolescence on an accelerated scale. Even though your house could last another hundred years, you aren't realizing the highest and best use of your property if your home is over fifteen years old. That's just stupid. People with the best of everything are just throwing it away, not based on need but based on status. Some of these same individuals buy a brand new car every two years.

An afternoon of Kansas related fun- this show is comprised of Seattle bands with some connection to Kansas. Each group features a member or members who are either from or have lived in Kansas at some point. Why does this matter? It doesn't. You don't have to be from Kansas to know you should come to the show. It's not like you have plans for 4pm on a Sunday afternoon anyway...

The tagline on Hardball with Chris Matthews is "Will Democratic Women Vote for McCain." I think that, despite the fact that sentence lacked a question mark in its original context, it could never be a real question. Here's a "better" way to ask the same question: will brainless, perhaps even closet-racist, self-loathing, female Clinton supporters vote for McCain instead of Obama out of spite? Anyone willing to do that isn't a Democrat. If you are a Dem and McCain seems like the next best thing to Clinton, you have serious issues and should come off of your medication before it does irreparable harm- if not already done. Come ON! I'm for Obama, but if Clinton had pulled off the nomination I would be voting for her instead. For that not to work in reverse for some of her supporters seems oddly...racist to me. There. Yep. I NEVER would have thought that an African-American would be in his position in my lifetime and I couldn't be happier the day has come. But then again, that day hasn't come. Our society is so inherently bigoted and sexist and full of all the isms you can imagine that it is incapable of recognizing this moment as a social victory and defining moment of our future. I guess, for me anyway, having either a white woman OR a black man would have been a refreshing change for a president. Maybe some people take "White House" too literally.

YES!

Things are always changing...try to keep up! After only three months, the guys at Estately figured out they really couldn't afford me. It's not a big deal and I'm pretty happy about it to tell you the truth. I was offered another gig as a consultant, so it's not like I don't have other things to do.

It's a good thing I'm a trustworthy individual. The CEO had his panties in a bunch thinking I was going to sabotage something, which is totally not my style. I would think someone with such paranoid delusions however would soon before or soon after such a lay-off, remove permissions I have to their site and records. I'm just saying. If I were a bad guy...oh man. The things I could do. Funny thing is, I almost quit on several occasions! I wish them luck, but I have little interest in being dragged down into their soon-to-be-realized pit of utter despair. They simply didn't pay me enough to care that much, but they thought they did. That part is just kind of cute...like a cheap, purple, stuffed bear that's missing an eye.

Did I mention the consultant gig is with Microsoft? Out of the frying pan and into the fire? At three times the pay I'll take that chance.

Well I guess Dick forgot about the potential "quagmire"...or this administration knew what would happen and didn't care. What's truly remarkable is that Bush has managed to maintain a 30% APPROVAL RATING despite obvious mental illness and disregard for our wellbeing.

A blood-filled, 7-foot pitcher with flailing sausage arms comes crashing into your yard offering cool refreshment on a hot Summer day. Where I grew up, our man Kool-aid would be surrounded by angry neighborhood kids wondering if he plans to fix the damn fence. What a clumsy jerk. He's like the drunk Uncle that can't seem to pee in the toilet instead of ON the toilet. We used to call people "Kool-aid" as an insult, as if to imply you couldn't afford soda. Or when someone thought of themselves as "cool" we'd ask "cool with a 'k'?" DOES ANYONE ALLOW THEIR KIDS TO DRINK THIS ANYMORE? Someone is obviously buying it...but who?!

1. IF YOU'RE CHOKING ON AN ICE CUBE, SIMPLY POUR A CUP OF BOILING WATER DOWN YOUR THROAT. PRESTO! THE BLOCKAGE WILL INSTANTLY REMOVE ITSELF.

2. AVOID CUTTING YOURSELF WHEN SLICING VEGETABLES BY GETTING SOMEONE ELSE TO HOLD THE VEGETABLES WHILE YOU CHOP.

3. AVOID ARGUMENTS WITH THE FEMALES ABOUT LIFTING THE TOILET SEAT BY USING THE SINK.

4. FOR HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE SUFFERERS ~ SIMPLY CUT YOURSELF AND BLEED FOR A FEW MINUTES, THUS REDUCING THE PRESSURE ON YOUR VEINS. REMEMBER TO USE A TIMER.

5. A MOUSE TRAP PLACED ON TOP OF YOUR ALARM CLOCK WILL PREVENT YOU FROM ROLLING OVER AND GOING BACK TO SLEEP AFTER YOU HIT THE SNOOZE BUTTON.

6. IF YOU HAVE A BAD COUGH, TAKE A LARGE DOSE OF LAXATIVES. THEN YOU'LL BE AFRAID TO COUGH.

7. YOU ONLY NEED TWO TOOLS IN LIFE - WD-40 AND DUCT TAPE. IF IT DOESN'T MOVE AND SHOULD, USE THE WD-40. IF IT SHOULDN'T MOVE AND DOES, USE THE DUCT TAPE.

8. REMEMBER - EVERYONE SEEMS NORMAL UNTIL YOU GET TO KNOW THEM.

9. IF YOU CAN'T FIX IT WITH A HAMMER, YOU'VE GOT AN ELECTRICAL PROBLEM.



DAILY THOUGHT:
SOME PEOPLE ARE LIKE SLINKIES - NOT REALLY GOOD FOR ANYTHING BUT THEY BRING A SMILE TO YOUR FACE WHEN PUSHED DOWN THE STAIRS.

Too funny.
Something I have never experienced before happened to me today. I was working from home and the weather became…aggressive. We heard a sudden barrage of hale out of nowhere and I went upstairs to check it out from our bedroom window. I looked out into the distance and started thinking of all of these roofs and the intense sound of all of this precipitate falling upon them, the overall cheapness in their construction and their inability to *sustain* intense conditions such as these in a changing environment. No sooner I realized my inability to change anything of such magnitude globally, yet alone in my own damn house, there was a flash of light. A MASSIVELY LOUD BOOM above my head and things outside the home and just above my head were flying in the distance as I gazed in shock. I soon realized that these pieces of seemingly benign detritus were chunks of siding, OSB, nails and plastic once covering my chimney. Lightning struck and discharged through my house just feet from where I was standing. It set off my smoke detector (?!), it turned on my stereo downstairs (?!), Megan said the cat and dog stood motionless for seconds, the baby stopped crying, it tripped a GFCI in my kitchen, it overloaded the circuit in the panel for my basement office and tripped a surge protector on the same. ?!?!??! My friends are telling me to buy a lottery ticket. I went outside to assess the damage. The sky was dark in the familiar Seattle way, so it was hard to tell if it was steam or smoke coming from the roof. I called 911 just to play it safe, and some really nice guys from our Seattle Fire Department came to check it out. The lightning apparently was attracted to our steel chimney caps and managed to rip off a nice chunk of siding and particle board from the chimney. There were pieces of our house in both neighbors yards and in the street. Some of the pieces of siding were so small I could barely pick them up- many are still out there. There was shrapnel 30-40 feet in every direction and I am not exaggerating…possibly underestimating. For some reason, one of my neighbors decided to call King 5 and after the firetruck left there was a guy with a camera in front of my house. He asked Megan a few questions and she asked not to be quoted- I was on the phone with our insurance company.
The story at King 5.