Did I lose all my readers or is it feedburner?

Humm, seems that I lot over half my readership? Is it me or is it feedburner? Or both?

Chickening Out For Right Now

One goal I had post BK was to qualify for credit again. Why many of you may ask when you filed Bankruptcy?  Well, for a couple reasons.  The big one is if I can get credit at reasonable rates and not have issues again, it's one of my ways that I will have bounced back.  I was able to get a car loan, albeit at a slightly higher (well much higher) rate than I would have liked and I do now have a credit card. 

I've been waffling in my decision to go forth with the application for the FHA rehab loan.  I have all my paperwork that I know they will need, but I have not yet made that final leap.  Why, well I'm not 100% sure. The lender is either going to say yes or say no.  I guess it's because I'm going through one of my I- doubt -myself- phases.   I'm feeling a bit down about life, work, both full and part time~ things just feel so stagnant and not like all is good and smooth, but all is sludgy. Is sludgy a word?  And when I feel this way, I don't take rejection well at all.  Right now I don't want to get "rejected" even though I know it is a possibility with the FHA loan.

Sooo what is Betty to do?  Well I'm going to allow myself a few more days of self pity and then I am going to take out that extensive to do list of home repairs and remind myself that I simply can not do them by my lonesome or even do many of them with a friend or helper bee.  These are home repairs that really can't be put aside much longer. I'm hoping this will motivate me to put in the application, cross my fingers, light a candle and hope for the best!

I Joined the 1990's

And got cable. Yup, not just cable, but internet and phone as well.  What drove me to this, well, it was a $42 basic home phone bill (I use a calling card at 2c per minute for Long Distance) and a one year offer for a triple package for $55, no install fee, and unlimited local and long distance phone.

I ported over my phone number, I like the one I have and I have had cable TV for just over a week.  And I'm really wondering if it's worth it.  I've gotten so used to NOT watching a lot of TV. I read, watch DVDs, etc.  Before the switch to all digital TV I got about 10 stations (some digital, some not) after the switch only 2, I even lost some of the digitial stations I had. My house is located in a bit of a dead zone, I can't even get mobile phone reception  where I am, I have to go about 1/4 mile away to get any bars.  I guess I should consider myself lucky that I even had two TV stations.

Even though this is not my TV watching season, I thought I'd try it out.  Except that I spent a lot of time channel surfing 70 some odd channels going Crud, nothing on TV.  I did watch about 30 minutes of an Undateable  Marathon and wondered why I did (BECAUSE IT WAS ON).

Oh well, I've already made a note for my 2011 things to do list to review the cable package and maybe get rid of it or reduce it when it comes up for renewal. 

Dropped the Phone Bill by Half

A few weeks ago I complained that I had an outrageous phone bill, partly due to the increased amount of text messages. I stuck to my promise and only texted when neccessary and my phone bill dropped by half. Sweet!

New Home for Poochie

Last week I took Poochie for her placement evaluation. The tester was very nice and we went over a boat load of paperwork for her eventual placement. I know from past experience that whomever will be adopting her will also do a boat load of paperwork as well.


Poochie goes to a temporary home on Friday then gets delivered to her new owners on Saturday. She will get another pre-placement physical and hopefully she will settle into her new home just fine.

Despite the issues between Poochie and my own older dog, I will miss her, but I know that she will be someones puppy princess, which is what she deserves. I think my elderly freind would be happy knowing Poochie was in a home where she could have all that love.

The End of The Local Market

I've posted before about the local market in the small town where I work. It was the store that charged $7.99 for a jar of mayo you could buy for $3.00 at the larger grocery store. It was the type of place that did a booming lunch business at the deli counter and stocked the items that you would would need to fill some gaps and save yourself a trip to "town" for things like a jar of mayo or TP.   The sad part of the story was the slow demise of the store.  The owners of the store used to stock name brand items and over the past few months they moved to generic brands.  The deli counter slowly dropped it's choices of sides, salads, etc.  The shelves got emptier and emptier and finally, they had a going out of business sign posted and closed their doors last week.

It now gives the small town I work in one less place to get lunch, we now have 3 instead of 4, and for the locals who would need that gallon of milk, jar of $7.99 mayo, it means a 14 mile round trip to the nearest grocery store.  Try as I might to support a local market, it was hard for me to even buy the breakroom snacks at the local market.  We pretty much only keep coffee and tea supplies and some snacks for the office, but at the end the market was not even stocking drinkable tea bags.  It was cheaper for me to stop by the grocery store and get a bag of breakroom supplies and snacks for the same price as a can of one step above generic coffee. A sign of the times I guess...

Don't People Ever CALL anymore?

I got my mobile phone bill and almost choked.  It was $100.  Like I have not had a bill that high since last year when I had to call into work from the UK (and work reimbursed me for all the calls).  Granted part of this bill was an outgoing call I made to a friend in Italy, but most of the overage charges have been to text messages.  Last fall I upgraded my calling plan and it worked fine for me. I was keeping within my minutes and life was good.

UNTIL-most of my friends became text addicts.  I mean they text all the flipping time, even when they don't even need to.  I'd get two or three texts for something that a 10 second phone call could cover.  I've fallen into the habit of responding to these texts, sometimes with those silly emoticons and abbreviations.  you know,  :)  :(   ;)  C U L8r.

I know I'm showing my age, but do we really need to document every movement with a text?  I've made a promise to myself to really restrict my texting to the absolute minimum and then it will only be a response if need be.  I'm going back to phone calls.....and yes, I still hand write letters too!