frustration!

Well, another day, and still no call back from the one company where we thought Jenny had a really good chance at getting a job. The interviews went great, we were told a decision would take two weeks, and 2.5 weeks later, we're still waiting. And losing hope. Rapidly. Not hearing back within two weeks- not a good sign. And did I mention that there are NO other prospects whatsoever right now? Sure, she's still applying for jobs like our well-being depends on it (oh, wait, it does), but no calls are coming in. Jenny is so frustrated right now. And I think she is starting to lose faith in herself. After all, she went from being a successful manager at a company that she was with for over five years, to companies showing no interest in her whatsoever now even for jobs that she is over-qualified for. And yeah, she is required by Missouri Unemployment to apply for at least 3 jobs per day, so that comes to at least 21 jobs per week, and no calls coming in at all?

For my part, I am starting to get really angry. I am very angry at the ridiculous "too big to fail" companies whose executives, due to greed and greed alone, made bad investment after bad investment. The executives knew things would eventually crash and burn, but every last one of those clowns became millionaires many times over in the process of destroying our economy with bad investments. Those crooks are sitting pretty in their million dollar mansions, laughing as the peons scramble just to survive.

I am very angry at our government officials, who are so corrupt that it's merely a joke (A corrupt politician walks into a bar...Oh, wait, you've heard this one before?) These clowns don't have their constituents' best interests in mind, just their own. These government officials go to bed with these big corporations, taking huge payouts, but we're the ones getting screwed. And if you want something to really blow you away, take a look-see at where US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson worked before President Bush nominated him to the agency that regulates too-big-to-fail companies. But Hank Paulson didn't single-handedly blow up the economy any more than George W. Bush did- it took the concentrated greed of a lot of business executives and a lot of government officials to screw us up this badly.

So what do we do? Well, we can start by holding these greedy clowns (wow, I sound so cartoonish when I edit the words that I'm really thinking for appropriateness) accountable for their actions. We are in the mess that we are in now because big business and our own government are very corrupt. The Republican party and the Democratic party are full of corrupt politicians, and we deserve better. We can no longer afford to blindly elect our officials- we need to know who and what we are voting for, and we need to VOTE. Forget party lines, vote for the Independent candidate to can't afford a national TV campaign because he's not taking kickbacks from corporations, if that's what it takes. And these humungous corporations are full of corrupt executives, and we deserve better. You can vote them out too- support your smaller, local companies.

Well, that's all for now. Sorry for the ranting, but seeing my wife so miserable just makes me so angry at the people who put her there. And yes, I am purposely leaving her previous employer out of this, even though that requires quite possibly the biggest self-editing of all...

-Douglas

Temp jobs, Aldi's, Celtic Woman, and Check Engine Lights

I was a bit worried after Wednesday's post, where I found myself scrambling around a bit to come up with topics for the blog. Was I running out of ideas? Could i really only come up with a couple of weeks of posts on something as big as the recession? Well, I've got a few ready topics this time around, so hopefully Wednesday was just an 'off' day.

Jenny got a temp job through one of the temp agencies that she has applied at. She will be doing data entry work for a company for the next "1-2 weeks, maybe more". She is not exactly excited about doing data entry 8 hours a day, but I think she realizes that this is a great opportunity for her to prove to the temp agency and the company she will be working at for the next couple of weeks that she is a hard worker with a lot of great skills and ideas. Who knows, maybe this could lead to her next permanent job? If nothing else, the pay will be better than unemployment, and the unemployment well will dry up that much later, so I think this is definitely a positive.

I forgot to mention in Wednesday's post that, based on getting multiple suggestions to the effect, we shopped at Aldi's last Sunday. Jenny was a bit miffed the whole time we were there, being accustomed to shopping at 'ritzy' Schnucks. But the simple truth is that, as she mentioned afterward, every single item that we bought at Aldi's, milk included, came in at under $2.00. The store was also clean, much less crowded than Schnuck's, and we were able to get about 80% of our groceries from them. Overall, a positive experience, so I'm sure we'll be going back.

I am happy to report that my Check Engine light has turned off. I had tried to disconnect the battery, as suggested by quite a few people, but either I'm completely incompetent under the hood of a car (the most likely scenario), or my battery terminal screws are a size somewhere in between both 7/16" and 1/2" and 11mm and 12mm. I swear to you, 7/16" and 11mm were both too small, and 1/2" and 12mm were both too big!

In closing, I wanted to mention a concert that Jenny and I will be attending next weekend- Celtic Woman, at the Fox Theatre. I was searching for Celtic music on Amazon.com one day, happened across this DVD, which had the surprising combination of more than 300 reviews and a 5-star rating. Usually, when you get that many ratings on Amazon.com, even the good stuff tends toward 4 or 4.5. So, i took a chance, got the DVD for Christmas, and immediately fell in love. A few days after Christmas, I bought two orchestra pit seats to their show on April 11. I am REALLY excited about seeing Celtic woman live, having been so blown away by the DVD. If you're interested in checking them out, but you're not ready to commit to buying a DVD, they have plenty of videos available on Youtube.

Well, that's it for now. We have a busy weekend ahead of us, with a "Final Four" party on Saturday at our friends' house, and a dinner on Sunday. See ya! Oh, and I'd love to see some more comments here. Blogspot doesn't track views, so I have no idea how many (or few) readers I have.

Bleeding Blue, Get the door, its...oops, the Global crisis, Stimulus bonus

Here on the homefront, well, we're just waiting and hoping right now. After the two initial positive instances, we haven't gotten any calls from other interested parties. This despite a lot of applications being sent in, so that's a bit of a letdown. But, the harsh reality is that there is a lot of competition out there for jobs right now.

On a fun note, I went to the St. Louis Blues game on Saturday night. A buddy of mine got some free tickets from his employer, so it didn't cost us anything. In fact, not only were the tickets free, but they were very good ones too- just about at center ice, down on the first level, and in the "Club" section, where the chairs are leather(ette?) and the ticket price includes all you can eat and drink, beer included. And the game was really good too, going into overtime before the Blues won. So, yeah, that was pretty sweet!

Yesterday, Domino's Pizza got caught in a mistake. What was it? A customer happened upon a coupon code that was never greenlit for use- one free 1-topping medium pizza, for carryout only. That's right, one FREE medium pizza. About mid-morning yesterday, corporate pulled the plug on the coupon, but they ended up giving away 11,000 free pizzas by that time. Yours truly even got one, and boy does free taste good! Remember those deals websites I mentioned last week? I found this deal on spoofee.

Here in the US, I think we often tend not to think about what goes on in the rest of the world. But there are a lot of countries out there that are very upset with us right now, not due to the War on Terror, or the Iraq war, or Afghanistan, Guantanimo, should I go on? Nope, they're mad at us because of the global impacts of our economic crisis. Of course, not everyone blames just the US, and the US in all fairness should not, in my opinion, be held solely to blame for the worldwide problems. In any event, there's quite a bit of information out there about the G20 Summit protests going on if you're interested in the topic. Oh, and I even grabbed some pictures for ya, courtesy monstersandcritics.com

On another topic, here's a good article talking about the stimulus money that will soon be making its way into our paychecks. It has some good information about certain risk factors, so I think it's a good read.

That's all I've got for now. Sorry for the delay in updating; my long weekend threw me off a bit.

The waiting game, assigning culpability, cutting the cable, Foxy Lady now hiring!

Hello out there. So, not to get too specific, but Jenny has now successfully completed two, umm, instances. And now we wait, and hope for the best. And I'll be honest, patience is not one of my virtues :). Of course, we're still on the lookout for other opportunities, and she is actually finding stuff out there, so the market hasn't completely dried up at least. In fact, I've noticed in the past week or so that some headlines are starting to break the mold of "We're screwed guys" and leaned toward some degree of positivity.

To whit, a lot of people are looking to assign blame in this economy, and it seems a lot of blame goes toward a) the government and b) ridiculously huge corporations. I certainly think that both are culpable to the degree to which the government could have implemented better policies/incentives and large businesses could have tried for a business model that doesn't revolve around a pyramid of debt stacked on top of more debt. But then you also have the consumers who, in our efforts to live the American dream (promised to us as our birthright by both the Government and corporate product/service advertisements) have made poor financial decisions time and again. I'm not saying "let's all blame the little guy", but as consumers we are the foundation of the economy, and if we are strong enough to resist the temptation to consistently spend more than we make, then the economy will have a strong foundation.

One other item I wanted to bring up is media culpability. As I mentioned earlier, we are finally seeing the occasional headline that is positive, but otherwise, we are drowning in a sea of negativity. And when it comes to speculation, which is what the stock market and a lot of spending habits are based on, bad makes worse. In other words, if you go around telling everyone that the economy is in the toilet and the stock markets are crashing, then people are going to stop spending, and they are going to pull their money out of the stock market. And then the economy will be in the toilet and the stock market will crash. So, hey media, for the sake of the current and future welfare of not just the US economy, but the world, how's about we try not to perpetuate so much negativity? You're only making it worse, in this writer's humble opinion.

And finally, on to the lighter side... I read an article in a newsletter that I subscribe to (Bizarre News, available through GopherCentral), entitled Strip Club Plans Job Fair. Apparently, the Foxy Lady strip club in Providence, Rhode Island has decided that the current unemployment problems warrant hosting a job fair to find new talent to serve as "dancers, managers,
DJs, bouncers and bartenders". So, if you live in the area, and you need a job... Sorry I am not able to direct link to the article, but if you go to the Bizarre news link above, it's currently posted under the main headline "The Drinks Are On Utah".

Well, that's it for now. I realize that I got pretty opinionated on this one, and that I didn't go into much depth regarding our personal life, but I'm just winging it here. If you want to hear more personal stuff, let me know, and if you want to hear more opinion, let me know that too! Thanks!
-Douglas

Rays of hope, AIG benefits tax rate

Hello again. Is anybody out there? Without being able to track views, I pretty much feel like I'm talking to myself here, but oh well.

My wife has a couple of possibilities on the horizon. I don't want to mention specifics, but face-to-face interviews are good, so we're very excited about this. Let's just hope that something great comes of it! As a result, for the first time since the lay off last week, we actually have hope. It really goes a long way in brightening your day, I'll tell you that much.

Otherwise, we're still doing everything we can to save money. We found out how much she is going to get for unemployment, and we're not sure if the amount is pretax or post-tax, but it's actually not terrible at all. It's literally a fraction of what she had been earning, but it's at least a fraction where the numerator isn't too far off from the denominator. Depending on how much money we can save by simply NOT SPENDING, we may not have to dip very far into savings while she's diligently searching for a new job.

I wanted to post a link to an article that I got a good laugh out of. I guess technically it's an article about the 'misfortunes' of certain people, but the people in question are, from what I understand, very well-off, and the misfortunes involve a significant (how's 90% sound?) tax on bonus earned by executives at AIG. I am very proud of our Government at this moment- while they did not (maybe could not, I don't know) prevent AIG from giving promised bonuses of hundreds of thousands of dollars to executives (the executives who made the decisions that drove the company into the ground), they swiftly implemented a 90% tax on these bonuses. I think that is just fantastic. Here's the article. In all fairness, I also heard that some of the executives had already voluntarily given their bonuses back. To those executives- good for you!

Well, that's all for now. if you're reading, I'd love it if you'd post a comment, just so I know that I'm not talking to any empty room!

-Douglas