I Have to Praise Wal*Mart on this one....

Depending on your point of view, Wal*Mart is either this evil corporate multi-headed firebreathing monster exploiting the toiling masses of the lower classes or they are the greatest discount retailer that's ever been on the face of the earth.  I'm not either pro-Walmart or anti-Walmart.  I don't personally like it when they open up a store in Benson (population 4600) or wanted to open up an outlet off the freeway exit in Portland where Ken & Gillian live (the locals were able to stop them), but I'm not going to waste mental energy hating them either.

Every now and then, a situation emerges where I will be in one.  One such situation emerged yesterday, when I needed to purchase an item from them that I could have gotten at Target.  I don't know about your area, but the Target closest to my house has exceptionally bad service, and I just won't go there.  I'll drive the extra few miles to Walmart in order to get certain items.

I was in there, and not only found my item, but they also saved me several shillings with the annual obligatory purchase of Halloween candy.  In years past I have made those purchases at Safeway while there for other food items, but I happened to notice that Walmart had better prices and so I ended up getting the candy too.  The express lane was open (which doesn't happen at Target) and so I was out of there quickly.  For me any visit to a store is a military mission.  Get in, get it done, and then get out.  Walmart lets me do that.

As I was walking back to my truck in the parking lot, something suddenly hit me.

The cashier at Walmart didn't hassle me about whether or not I had a "rewards" card or wanted one.  Think about it for a minute.  Most other places you go, they want you to sign up for a rewards card, provide your email address so that they can flood you with spam about their rewards card deals, and in some cases they insist that you sign up for a Rewards Card Credit Card Rewards Cash Back Card, with points redeemable for frequent flyer miles valid for places like Rawalpindi or Blagoveshchensk exclusive of holidays and days that end in "y".

Walmart didn't do that to me.  They don't bother with these rewards cards.  They pass along a low price to you in the first place, and you're out of there quickly most of the time (days like Black Friday excluded, of course).

I have to give them praise on that one.

I've Got Some Catching Up to do......

Well now, I know it's been a while since I've last posted.  One of my goals for my blog this year was to be a more prolific writer than I was last year.  We can pretty much throw that one out the window, though maybe with the cooler weather about to set in I might make some more time for this.

As you might have guessed, I have pretty much remained a busy guy these past few months.  Things at work are on the intense side as we try to meet aggressive schedules with limited manpower, and I've had to stay late on some nights and go in on weekends.  This is my first full weekend off since......crud, I can't remember when, and when I was having full weekends off before things got busy the weather was either really nice and/or I was busy doing yardwork as that the condition of the yard was irritating me.  My yard still irritates me, but not as much as it was before, although I still have three diseased prickly pear cacti to dig out as well as that damnedable desert verbena which is growing around my palm tree in the front.  Fortunately I have one healthy prickly pear and I can harvest some pads off that one and get some new prickly going where the older ones were removed.

I haven't forgotten about that "money" series of posts that I had started, and the next two articles will need some further research on my part before I post them.  I do hope that you find them interesting reading when I post them.  There will be at least two more articles after that that will be money-related.  Meantime, let's move on to the odds and ends.

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I never thought I would ever hear myself (read myself?) saying this here, but I'm going to announce my formal endorsement of Mitt Romney for President.  Yes, I have had serious misgivings about him in the past, but as I have watched him and his campaign, I'm going to admit that he's won me over.

I was all prepared to vote for one of the third party candidates, but Mitt captured my attention when he named Paul Ryan as his running mate.  I would have been tempted to bet half my coin collection that he would have picked someone like Rob Portman, but he didn't.  When the speculation was building, Mr. Ryan's name came up, and I was thinking, that's the guy he should pick.  Paul Ryan knows more about the budget process than most folks on the Hill, and plus, I think the biggest national security issue right now is government spending.  We are fast approaching a point where the interest on the national debt will overcome defense and entitlement spending.  At that point it doesn't matter squat if you have government-provided health care as that when your debt goes past the $20 trillion limit the government's going to have a hard time financing the debt as that the credit ratings are well down the commode.

But there have been a few other considerations coming into play here.  Mitt Romney is coming across to me as a class act.  I read an article in the American Rifleman some time ago which examined Governor Romney's stance on the Second Amendment.  Massachusetts firearm laws are draconian when compared to most of the other states, and I read details of some needed reforms to those laws that he was able to get into place while Governor.

Mitt Romney's also has several years experience in the private sector.  I personally don't have a problem with him being in charge of Bain Capital.  I see that as an asset.  I also see his experience with the Winter Olympics as being an asset.  Now there are some out there who might have an issue with him being a Mormon, but personally I would rather have a Mormon in the big chair as opposed to someone else who worships himself as his own God.

But what's really driving my endorsement of Mitt Romney is this:  we can't afford four more years of Obama.   He ran on a promise of cutting the deficit in half and he failed miserably in this.  Sixteen trillion dollars of debt greatly concerns me.  We have to do something about it.  Step number one is getting people back to work, and increasing tax collections by adding taxpayers as opposed to adding taxes.

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One pursuit that I have enjoyed years past has been songwriting.  After I got married in 1991 I stopped writing lyrics and upon moving to Arizona in 1999 after my marital breakup, I found that I had writer's block and couldn't write lyrics anymore, and my ability at musical composition had gotten away from me too.

I think that's about to change.  I have spent the past few months on and off working on a new song, inspired of course by life, which will be called "Get Me Out of Here".  As is the case with some songs as well as this one, I have found myself going back over and over again trying to get the lyrics where I want them.  When it comes to writing lyrics and music, you either have something put together in ten minutes or you find yourself putting a year into it.

Last Sunday I finally got the lyrics polished and refined, and just maybe tomorrow I might pick up the guitar and start working on a chord structure.  I see this one as being a rocker.

I also want to write a waltz sometime, and I've already got the title of that song picked out and I've thrown down some lyrics.  I'm not going to give away what that song will be about, but it will be a funny song.

* * * * * * *

That's going to be it for now.  Don't forget to pet a dog or a cat.  This will do you more good than you think.

Very Busy These Days

I'm taking a short break from the "money" series here to provide an update as to what I have been up to.  I hope to resume that series with the next entry.  I need to do a little more research on the next two topics that I have in mind for this.   I was originally going to combine them but have since decided that both merit an individual entry.

I have been seeing some overtime at work.  This has been my first full weekend off in about a month or so.  I was involved in supporting an upgrade to an electronics package that we provide to several customers, some of them overseas, and also helping to resolve some issues with another package of electronics that was upgraded a few years back.  On that one I was turned loose to start an investigation on that unit and fortunately, I've come to enjoy that task.

* * * * * * *

I had really wanted to get away for a road trip to southern California but the cards weren't dealing me a good hand as far as that one goes.  I had a campground near San Bernardino picked out but they're full up.  Another one in San Diego County was being considered but weather forecasts for the area I wanted to visit were not amenable.....high wind gusts, not conducive to BBQing.  Now that I'm not going there the weather has improved.

So, no road trip for this summer, but I'm not bitter about it in any way.   I'll get away when the time is right.

* * * * * * *

No deer hunting trip this year either as that Todd will not be available.  Last time I talked to him he is back in the workforce and doesn't have vacation time accrued for such a venture, and as it is, family obligations come ahead of that.  When the monsoon season is passed we might get out for some fishing.  I haven't gone fishing yet here in Arizona and the thought of going out to score some trout sounds very good!

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I have a renewed interest in buying silver coins.  Some ten years ago I was buying pre-1965 U.S. silver coins back when you could get them for 3.5 times face.  Spot silver prices now have these at twenty times face and then some as that these coins are now commanding a premium.  I'd like to add to my collection of silver dollars, but as it is I've been buying the silver Eagles instead.  They're beautiful coins, and although those are commanding premiums over spot I'm buying these to hold on until retirement. 

* * * * * * *

What can I say about the Supreme Court upholding Obamacare?  I find the reasoning behind Justice Robert's ruling bizarre, for lack of a better term.  Now Congress has the "right" to force you into buying anything at their whim, Constitution be damned. 

The establishment Republicans of course, had their hand in this.  The Republican National Committee went out of their way to ensure that my district elected a Democrat, even though there are more Republicans in my district than there are Democrats.  The state of Arizona is pretty much the same way.  I can't help but wonder how many Congressional districts were flipped by the RNC because the Establishment simply didn't like the candidates that the voters chose in the primaries.

The RNC is hellbent on making sure that the next Senator elected will be a RINO.  (Google that term if you want to know what the abbreviation stands for.)  I'm so disgusted at them that I find it tempting to vote Libertarian this time around.  No, I am not a member of the Libertarian Party, but I agree with some (but not all) of their positions. 

Regardless, I'll be voting my conscience, even if the person I vote for has no chance of winning. 

* * * * * * *

One thing that the RNC didn't count on was the possibility that Mitt Romney might actually win the election.  Oh, they won't have a problem with his going to the White House, but they really wanted Obama to win, and I'll tell you why.

If the Republicans were to win the White House and the Congress, then they'll be expected to do something.  They don't like that.  They're much more comfortable being the minority party, sniping at the Democrats when politically expedient because that's so much more easier than being in a position of having to make tough decisions.

I do believe that the Mittster honestly wants to win, as that he's running a better campaign than the Senator who won the nomination four years ago.  If Mr. Romney does for some reason end up sitting in the big chair, he'll make some changes here and there but I don't believe he'll rein in the exploding deficits and out of control national debt. 

What we'll get is a national debt that will be only a few trillion dollars less than it otherwise would have been.

* * * * * * *

And that my friends, will be it for this evening.

Don't forget to pet a dog or a cat.

The Invention of Money

When The Man With the Money made his appearance, we not only did not know his name, we also did not know where the money came from.  We didn't at that time care where the money was coming from, as that it was being handed out to us free of charge.  I think even in the realm of the conscious we don't care where the money we get comes from, as long as it comes out of someone else's pocket and finds its way into ours.

Have you ever stopped to consider where money comes from?  Well, some of you will tell me that it comes from the mint, and/or the Bureau of Engraving and Printing if you're resident stateside.  Others are aware that it is issued by banks, and others will say that you get it by working.  There are all sorts of answers to the question "Where does money come from?" and I think that you will also get several answers if you ask the question "Just exactly what is money, anyway?".  I think in order to get a grasp on how to answer these two questions, we need to examine just how it was that money came to be invented.

It is commonly accepted that as of this writing, we have had 5000 years of civilization.....maybe 6000.  Well, let's split the difference and say that civilization itself was invented 5500 years ago, OK?  I think it's safe to say that 5500 years ago the human species were speaking languages, organized into families and tribes, and that the prime function of your average human being was day to day survival.  Survival would have come from learning how to harvest food, learning how to hunt for it, and also in the domestication of livestock in order to get food and clothing.  Somewhere along the way some trades emerged, as that people were figuring out how to make bricks and cut wood.  They were figuring out how to dig ore out of the ground and to convert it into metal.  Various occupations were beginning to emerge.

The thing of it is about specializing in an occupation, is that if you're a builder, what you build isn't something that you can eat.  So what you do is you build a house for somebody, and that somebody gives you some food, or maybe some livestock with which to turn into food.  What you have now is trade.  In this simple example, trade is done by the barter system.  There isn't any money involved since no one commodity has yet emerged as a common commodity to trade or to use as a reference in fixing a value onto something or some other commodity.

About 3000 BC or thereabouts, the Egyptians were aware of gold.  It was first used as a form of adornment but it also emerged as a measure of wealth.  It wasn't the only measure of wealth.  In the Book of Genesis, Chapter 13, Old Testament patriarch Abram, as he was then know, is described as being very wealthy in livestock, silver, and gold.  What this is telling us is that wealth, at that time, was viewed in terms of two precious metals and livestock.  Any one of these commodities could be traded for any of the other two commodities, as well as for any other commodity.  Thus, we already have a system of economics in place, and although it was still based on barter, gold and silver start to emerge as a convenient medium of exchange. I guess that you could call this "money" in a somewhat loose sense, but if you're defining money as "coins" of a uniform standard or of a common currency (cigarettes and whiskey have been known to function as money) we're not quite there yet as far as money being invented.

Around 600 BC, that began to change.  The historian Heredotus credits the Lydians of Asia Minor as being the world's first producer of coins.  They were made out of electrum, a gold-silver alloy that flowed to them out of a nearby alluvial plain.  They found that these were convenient units of exchange, and they also found that those they traded with to obtain their goods also liked these units of exchange.  Coins quickly spread to being used by the Greeks, and later on, the Romans, as well as other kingdoms.

With the invention of coins, some other things were invented too.

That will be the subject of my next entry.

The Man With the Money

Way back when I was in the fifth grade, the 1968-1969 timeframe, I had a dream one night that I remember well to this very day.  There are a few others from my childhood that I could reminisce about, but this particular one seems to stand out from the rest, and also seems to have a relevance to our current events that no other dream from that time period has.  It might have inspired an episode for the Twilight Zone, or a short story, but it did neither of those.  As that I have been thinking on and off about that dream a lot lately, it is inspiring a blog post.  I'm even going to give this dream a title.  The title of this dream is "The Man With the Money".

In this dream, The Man With the Money came to our fifth grade class.  He was wearing a short sleeve blue shirt, red bow tie, white pants, a straw hat, and he wore a smile that would have caused the CrackerJack Man some intense jealousy.  He was in his mid 50s or something like that, cleanshaven, white/gray short hair, with radiant blue eyes to match his smile.  The Man With the Money didn't tell us his name.  We never knew what it was nor did any of us ask.  It didn't seem to matter.  He was The Man With the Money.  The Man With the Money seemed to have an unlimited supply of money, and he was giving it to us.

The Man With the Money gave me a fifty dollar bill.  He also gave me a few twenties, tens, fives, and ones.  He handed me a half dollar, which was also neat because when I was a kid you just couldn't get a Kennedy half dollar.  The Man With the Money not only gave me a shiny new half dollar with Kennedy on, he also gave me some quarters and some other change.

The Man With the Money also gave away money to the other kids.  He had a lot of it.  It seemed that once you got done looking at the money that he gave you, that you could go back to him and he would give you even more money.  It wasn't like anything I had ever seen before.  The Man With the Money had this endless supply of the dough and he was willing to give it away!  And more importantly, he wasn't going to run out of it either. 

Needless to say, The Man With the Money was very popular with us.  We loved him.  We were glad that he came to us!  I mean, this guy was better than Santa Claus.  Forget about the toys or our other wants.  Forget about what we needed.  The Man With the Money was visiting our school, and he was going to make sure that we had all the money that we wanted!

As what happens with all dreams of this nature, it came to an abrupt end.  I found myself in my bed.  I was so sure that I had some money that I looked under the covers for it.  I asked, "where did my money go?"  It was gone!  It had disappeared!

I remember feeling cheated.  I had had, in my possession, a whole lot of money that had been freely given to me, and all of a sudden, it was gone.

OK.  So why did I post this?  Where am I going with this?

Stay tuned.

A Flurry of Activity

On Wednesday evening the 18th, longtime friend Franz came to visit.  He arrived at the airport around 9:00 PM.  The next day we went out for breakfast, and then spent a few hours at the Pima Air & Space Museum.  After that we made a run down to Tombstone.

The next day, after breakfast, we headed for Phoenix metro where we spent some time with my cousin Todd.  We were up there for two nights, with the second night having Todd's neighbor come over with his brother-in-law and Annette's nephew Bob.

We didn't spend time solving the world's problems, as most adult males are prone to do whenever gathered around barbecuing chicken and adult beverages.  Instead we were listening to some tunes.  On Sunday we left and returned to Tucson, enjoying an evening meal at a favorite Thai place of mine called Bai Thong, which is on Speedway.

Franz returned home the next morning.  I took that Monday off from work.  I relaxed some, but did do some painting on the outside.

* * * * * * *

At work we are having a salsa contest.  Teams of three each have been formed.  Each of the three on my team is bringing in a recipe.  The one nice thing about salsa is that you can do that a zillion different ways, and most of them are good.

Here's my recipe:

1 1/2 fresh tomatos
1 small can of tomato sauce
1 squeezed lime
fresh cilantro to taste
~ 3 teaspoons of salt? (to taste)
1/2 yellow onion
1 tablespoon of crushed red pepper
1 fresh jalapeno
1 fresh serrano
1 large clove of garlic, or two small cloves

Chuck all of this into a blender and hit the on switch.  When what you have in there looks like salsa, then turn the on switch off.

This will have some zing to it, and if you want it milder then substitute some green pepper for the jalapeno.  If you want rocket fuel and/or want nightmares that night, substitute habanero for the serrano.

* * * * * * *

I've spent some time this afternoon doing some more painting.  Today it was the wood trim around the garage door, after which I finished the trim on the east side of the house.

I originally wasn't going to do the garage door.  I did touch up a couple of spots when I was off last Monday, and when it dried I noticed that the patched areas looked fresher.  So, I decided to do the whole trim.

I'm rather pleased with the results.  I mean, it looks new!  The house faces north so it's not like I've got the sun wearing down my paint in that area, but now that I've done it I'm going to make the argument that the trim needed painting.

* * * * * * *

That's all I have for today.

Don't forget to pet a dog or a cat.

Bachman & Turner play Arizona!

Yesterday four of us from Tucson went up to La Encanterra Golf & Country Club in San Tan Valley  to attend the Good Life Festival.  The main reason for going was that Bachman & Turner were making their first appearance in Arizona since re-uniting in 2009, and I wasn't going to miss this!  I also wanted to spend some more time visiting with Fred Turner, which I was able to do since we arrived some six hours before their concert so that we could sit in on their sound check.

I knew beforehand for several weeks about this, but didn't publicize it.  I was working with band member Mick Dalla-Vee (whom I owe a great debt of thanks to!) to arrange for a private audience with them, which after the show happened in the form of a brief backstage visit where I got to meet Randy Bachman.  It was only the second time I've gotten to meet him; it was for about ten minutes at the most.  He was tired from fighting the flu for the past few weeks and he may have been heading back to Vancouver that evening, after flying in that very same day.  He was very nice and it was neat getting to thank him for the many years of entertainment that they've provided me.

Fred is doing very well!  He's lost quite a bit of weight since the last time I saw him.  He told me that he's been spending the past three months wintering at his place in Florida, though he is returning to Winnipeg to take care of some things there.  He's been busy doing some songwriting and he told me that he wants to continue doing that for a while.  I meant to ask him about his Corvette restoration projects and that new six-string bass guitar he was playing (that looked like one prime piece of hardware).  Maybe I'll email him later today about that.

I told Fred that I want to see another show later this year, and that if I end up attending one of their gigs back east somewhere or in the midwest that I'd let him know beforehand.  I'd let Mick know too, as well as my forum buddies.  I am looking at a show this summer in Washington state, and St. Louis is tempting too, but I'm thinking that I should make a little vacation out of this and go see them somewhere in Canada....a part of Canada I've never been to.

Anyway, here's a photo of Fred and myself.....I'm the one with the Cardinals baseball cap.