i am not sure why i do this to myself. i sit here watching fox news every morning, knowing full well that i will eventually get more than irritated by the stories. i already heard about a possible $500 cut in medicare or medicaid (i only got the end of the story). now there is a story coming about mail service...raising the price of stamps and cutting one day of service. the post office is very much in the red. and these are the people that want to run the health care system? but, speaking of mail service, i don't have much anyway. my town isn't really big, but we do have a post office, but the service there makes me yearn for the pony express days. take yesterday, for example. we have the locking mail boxes on our road, so my son checks the mail and he brings home the key that opens the package mailbox. obviously, we have a package in there, but he can't get the key to work. so i go down..and ditto, the key won't turn. i mean, it fits into the keyhole, but it just won't turn. so i go home and call the post office and tell them of this dilemma. the guy says to just drop the key into the slot and they will leave a note for the mailman and "we will try to get it to you tomorrow". TRY??? whatever happened to "through rain and snow..."? i only live 100 yds up from the road. and unless something freaky happened with the weather while i wasn't looking, there was no snow or sleet or hail going on. i probably should stop there, but i won't. i must mention the service at the actual post office. it sucks...big time. no matter what time of day i go in there i have to wait a ridiculously long time in a very short line. why? because it seems every clerk in there is on a "first name, hey how are y'all, how's the littl'uns, you try that recipe for hog jowls i gave you" basis with every customer ahead of me. they used to have a vending machine in the lobby to buy stamps, and i used it when i needed them, but to my dismay, they removed it a few months ago, (probably was cutting into the clerks social life). i guess i resent the "workers" there partly because they make more money than i do at 2 jobs and i actually have to work hard for my money. and when i do go in there i always think of the pony express guys. do you know a letter of a half ounce cost $1.00 to send and it went 2000 miles in 8 or 9 days...on a horse..through hostile indian territory? and at the end of the line it wasn't locked up in a box that a person couldn't get open? gee's service has come a long way in 150 years!
i also have this week off!!! from my main job anyway. we have a new president as of a week ago (the old one was fired after 20 years). it seems kind of shitty to me to fire the president of a company in these economic times. we make "gourmet desserts" and candy and some really expensive things. how can the board or stock holders make a president of a company responsible for a lack of business? do they think he can convince people to buy a $40 cheesecake instead of some groceries? but, such is life for the upper crust. he walked away (was pushed out?) with around $5 million in compensation. i get $255 this week for unemployment...kind of hard to feel any pity for him. but, again, i digress. i have 4 full days off before i have to winco again. i already spent the first one just cleaning the mobil home. today i did 15 minutes on my elliptical (and lived to tell the tale), then i walked the dogs, read my kindle for a while...and now here i sit with FREE time. what do you do with free time? i just don't know. there is so much to do outside, but it's a raining now. good thing the anal neighbors mowed their lawn for the 5th time already...it's only march, for gods sake. i have a steadfast rule..no mowing until the first of april (unless there is a really, really big break in the weather in march) and absolutely no mowing after october. if lawns had hairstyles mine would be this:



and the neighbors would be this:
i also seem to have to much time to watch the news. do you know what a reporter said on fox this morning? he was in chile ( i always thought it was pronounced chili, like what you eat..but they all keep pronouncing it chilay). anyway, he was discussing rescue efforts and he actually said " they are looking for survivors who are still alive." DUH!! there was no one here with me, so i just looked at the 3 dogs to see if they caught it. they didn't. reminds me of that old riddle, if a plane crashes on the border between the u.s. and canada, where do they bury the survivors? well, obviously, they bury them in chilay.