Still waiting, Celtic Woman, Easter and Christianity

After the past couple of political rant blogs, I figured I'd go back to a more intimate perspective for this one. Oh, and good news- I noticed that you can open up comments for anonymous posters too, so now you can comment even if you don't have a google account. So, well, that is at least one less excuse not to comment... Anyway, We're still waiting to hear back from the one possibility that I spoke of last week- the interview process is evidently not finalized yet, so, well, here's hoping. There is also another possibility for a face-to-face that has opened up, so I'll try to keep you apprised on that possibility as well. In the meantime, we're doing good with saving money, but we did splurge on a cheap dinner Saturday night. I promised my wife that as payment for doing the data entry temp job, since that is more money that unemployment would bring in, we'd go out to dinner at the end of each week that she worked.

So on to the Celtic Woman concert (which, I might add, was paid for back in December, so it was not a recent splurge). First off, here they are...

For my male readers- Wow, right? But I digress- on to the concert. I had built up such high expectations that I was really concerned that I would come out of the concert a bit let down. Fortunately, that was not the case. The only letdown for me was that we were further away from the stage than I had hoped. I mean, we bought the most expensive tickets, and we were on the ground level, very close to center, but we were rather far back on the ground level. Hmm....
At any rate, the show was fantastic, and to my surprise, about 2/3 of the songs were from the A New Journey DVD. This was a good thing, because that meant that we already knew a lot of the songs. They even performed my favorite, At the Ceili. Of their new songs, my favorite was Isle of Hope, which is also the name of the tour. Overall, a great experience, and a nice escape from the pressures of everyday life.

Since yesterday was Easter, I figured I'd throw mention that as well. Jenny and I went to church with some of my family. We're the oft-lamented Christmas-and-Easter Christians, so that's not something we do very often. Our personal spiritualities just don't center around church-going, and we both very much question the message of many modern Christian churches that you have the choice of either accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior or spending an eternity burning in the eternal torment of Hell. That just doesn't jive with "God is Love". I mean, if "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son" to save us, then why would this loving God condemn millions of people to eternal damnation for, quite simply, missing the boat? I mean, if I happened to grew up Muslim, and never got around to question my beliefs, that could be me burning in Hell for eternity, right? Yeah, that just doesn't make much sense to me. Not to say that I don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and the Ressurection and all that; I mean, a loving God certainly would send his Son to die for the world, to create an easy path to salvation. But if Heaven is a very exclusive club, consisting only of members whose core belief is that they are the chosen ones and the vast majority of the world just didn't make the cut, that just doesn't sound much like Heaven to me. We do want our kids to attend a Christian church of some sort, but probably one that is less exclusive than the Baptist (me) and Catholic (Jenny) churches that we grew up in.

Anyway, on to other parts of the day. Jenny and I visited my Grandma right after church. She has spinal stenosis, which I gather is not much fun (as an understatement). It's essentially constant severe pain in the back. Which makes my constant not-so-severe pain in the back probably seem like a walk in the park. My Grandma will be having surgery tomorrow to hopefully significantly lessen the pain, so please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

After that, we went to another Grandma's house (my step-dad's father's second wife, to be specific), for lunch and depressing conversation. Well, the depressing conversation wasn't a given by any means, but that's certainly what the visit entailed. Between my Grandma's back, my Aunt's slew of health problems, cousins' health problems, and altogether general malaise of the world, conversation wasn't particularly bright or peppy. Less I sound like a grouch, I did enjoy the visit. I just wished that there were more positive things to talk about.

Well, this has already turned into quite a long post, so I'll bid you adieu. Just remember, you can now COMMENT anonymously!

-Douglas

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.

GMAT, cutting the cable, Dilbert

Well, the big thing on my mind right now is not actually the economy, or our place in it. Nope- it's the GMAT. The GMAT, short for Graduate Management Admission Test, is a test that business schools require you to take and get a certain score on in order to enter into the graduate school. The scoring goes between 200 and 800, with 500 being the average score that a test-taker will get. Keep in mind that the average GMAT test taker is someone who has a Bachelor's degree in Business and is interested in furthering his or her education, so average on this test ain't is not exactly the same as average on the ACT. For my business school of choice, a 500 is the minimum requirement. I've been studying now for a few months in the hopes of breezing past that 500 mark, but I've got to tell you, I don't think I have ever felt so stupid in my life as I do when studying for this thing. Complicated algebra, geometry, sentence structure, analytical reasoning, and don't even get me started on data sufficiency- it's enough to humble just about anyone. Anyway, my test is TOMORROW. So everyone, please wish me luck! I get results immediately, so I'll let you know if I passed (got at least a 500). And if I don't pass, well, if I happen to never mention the GMAT in this blog again, you'll know why.

So what's "cutting the cable" all about? I'm referring to your cable TV, or satellite TV if that is what you happen to have. As we talk about ways to save money in a bad economy, especially if your income just dropped significantly, I think everyone should consider 'cutting the cable'. Why? Well, is it just me, or do TV service providers only have 3 packages? You get your Basic package, which is barely more than what you get free over the air (OTA), and it's about $35/month. Then you get you Advanced package, which comes with a lot of bells and whistles and hundreds of channels that you're never going to watch, but the price goes up to about $70/month. And then the Premium package comes with additional channels that you actually might want to watch (HBO, Showtime, etc.), but comes in at over $100/month.

Jenny and I cut our cable a couple of months ago when our bill went up to $90 (in order to better serve us, of course), and we really haven't looked back. The vast majority of the shows that we watch are on local channels and thus available for free OTA, so long as you live within about 50 miles of the station and have a decent roof-mounted antenna. But what about the shows on channels that are not available for free (such as stuff on USA and FX)? Two options- many stations are making full shows available online, for FREE. Also, with all of that money that you're saving on not paying for TV, you can spend $10-15/month on a Netflix account and rent TV shows as part of your package. So there you go- unless you're a huge sports fan, it's actually quite easy to do without, and you save yourself a bundle of money each and every month.

Finally, I wanted to call your attention to a Dilbert strip today that I think perfectly satirizes our current economic situation. It also does a good job of summarizing my rant yesterday in just 3 frames. Check it out!


-Douglas

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