Work

I haven’t worked in days! I had to burn up my vacation before the end of the year (or lose it) so I haven’t worked for the last 12 days. I’ve gained about 8 pounds but managed to finish the year off with several good workouts (after laying on the couch and eating for days). Work is going to be a shock to my system after all this time off! I hope the year starts easy.

Happy New Year!

This has been a very good year for me and my family so I want to close it out with a list of some things I am thankful for:

• Family
• Great Friends
• Health
• The boys survived being 5 & 4 yrs old (wasn’t sure they would)
• I have a great job
• We have a wonderful, and safe house to live in

Odds are if you are reading this blog you are either family or friend. Thank you for helping make 2007 a great year for us!

I hope you also had a great year and wish you the best for 2008.

Happy New Year!

Debt Negotiation

I recently heard about a scheme to deal with debt called Debt Negotiation. It is not debt consolidation. Debt consolidation is when you take out a loan and pay off all of your existing debt with this loan. Then the only debt you have is this one loan which has a lower interest rate to help you pay down the debt faster.

Debt negotiation is very different. This site has a diagram of how it works. Basically, the debt negotiation company takes over your bills and you send them an agreed upon amount of money each month. They ignore your bills and wait for the creditors to write off the debt and send it to a collection agency. Meanwhile, the company is saving your payment in an account. The collection agencies are willing to settle the debt for less than the original creditor so the debt negotiation may offer them 40% of the original value to clear the debt. The collector is happy because they collected something. You are happy because your debt is paid off. The debt negotiation company is happy because they collected a fee for doing very little work. The downside is that your credit is wrecked after using debt negotiation because they don’t pay your creditors and instead wait for them to write it off and send it to a collection agency.

Crazy world we live in!

Free Rice

I read about this site today where you can work on your vocabulary and give to charity at the same time called Free Rice.

http://www.freerice.com/

Holiday Party Loot

This week the kids both had their holiday parties at school. Our house is full of kids stuff – rulers, pencils, candy, erasers, etc because each kid same home with a bag full of goodies. Now they must have a hundred pencils and 25 erasers each! Each holiday comes with these goodies because parents want to give kids these things instead of candy – which I do appreciate. Still, it is a lot of pencils. Aren’t there kids in the world that actually NEED pencils? I should try to find a charity to donate to

Urologist

So today I went down to the Cleveland Clinic complex in downtown Cleveland. It was a bit of a project getting there from my home on the lower east suburbs. Parking isn’t free downtown but luckily I had money with me. It took about 45 minutes to get down there. This Urologist is a prostatitis specialist which is the reason I went to see him. What kind of a guy wants to specialize in prostatitis? He didn’t do any real interesting tests except to see if my bladder emptied after going (it did). He said he might want to do a prostate fluid culture next time when I have been off antibiotics for a couple weeks (you don’t want to know how this test is done). The good news is that he told me to stop taking my cipro because I had been on it too long he thought. Now I’m off the cipro and I’m sure my stomach should start feeling better soon.

Lakers @ Sixers

Tonight the Lakers beat the Sixers in Philadelphia. Andrew Bynum had a career high 24 points and played awesome. I’m noticing lately that the Lakers are relying on Bynum more and more. If Bynum can stay healthy with Kobe and keep working hard at the center position, then maybe the Lakers will make the playoffs and make a run of it. Lamar Odom is playing pretty well lately too which has something to do with the Lakers wins. Go Lakers!

Writers Strike

I just want the writers strike to be settled (favorably for both parties). The lack of new TV content (other than sports or reality) is getting bad. Last night D watched the reality show about choirs! I watched most the Survivor finale the other night (I’m not a survivor watcher).

Yesterday, they reported on the news that Letterman and Leno would return to work. I wish they wouldn’t. I think for the strike to work, TV has to continue to stink until it hurts ratings and costs the networks some profits. So far the strike has only hurt workers and TV watchers. Once it hurts corporate profits things will likely start to happen.

Amost Ready For Christmas

I still have a few small things to get for Christmas but I’m mostly done. This week I’ll make a quick run to Walmart or Target and get the remaining items and call it a year.

Wrapping all the presents starts tonight and should be a big task. D and I usually wait until the kids go to bed to wrap gifts.

Old Friends – Chris and Sean

I got a 10000 million word email the other day from an old friend of mine, Chris Obrock. She is doing well and still living with another old friend of mine, Sean Donnelly. They now live together in El Paso, TX. They have been together for roughly a decade I think. Chris is working as a physical therapist assistant and doing home health care work. Sean (as far as I know) is still working for the Dept. Of Homeland Security (I think that is what he does). I tried to add Chris to my LinkedIn network (I love LinkedIn) and it resulted in us trading a few emails back and forth. It was nice to hear from her and about her life.

If you are reading this – Happy Holidays Chris & Sean! (I’m pretty sure we sent your Chrismas card to the wrong address)