I'VE BEEN THINKIN'

This morning I have been thinking about a lot of things---kind of nostalgic---but I am 61 years old and have worked 53 years of that. I started young because my parents owned a store and they worked me and my threee brothers so they knew where we were. I also worked for my Grandpa and he paid me well (when I was working for him he paid me the same salary he paid his men $20.00/Day).

He was a cattleman and had lots of steers in feed lots around the country. He would take me with him to the feed lots and while he was talking to the owner it was my job to follow the workers around the lot and look at the steers and listen to what they said as we walked from pen to pen. I was just a kid---right---so they would talk about a lot of things as we moved through the yard---but mostly they talked about how they were taking advantage of Grandpa. Part of the job was to get the weekly gain slips for the pen and the weekly feed bills for the pen---the other part was to report out where he was being taken advantage of.

When we got in the car to leave it was my job to tell Grandpa where they were taking advantage of him and what the weekly gain of each pen of steers was and what the cost of the gain was...both of those were simple math...take last weeks pen weight away from this weeks pen weight and you've got the gain---divide that into the weekly pen feed cost and you have the cost per pound gain. If a pound gain is costing you more that the market is bringing you are losing money if it is less then you are making money. You can do a little more simple math and figure how much you are making or losing each day for each pen.

Anyway the reason for this blog is to let you know I didn't have a very physical job working for Grandpa but he damn sure taught me how to pay attention. I still think that is one of my greatest assets.

I CREDIT MY GRANDPA WITH TEACHING ME HOW TO PAY ATTENTION

5 Mondays

I only have five Mondays left until I retire. The problem with that is these are the Mondays that I usually take off to use my leave. It is highly likely that I will be the only one in the office during this time. I haven't been a real good one to use up all my leave so I have donated a lot of it to people who are sick. This year I am going to take it all---yup all of it---in the form of a lump sum check for what is left---the plan is to have the check be for 472 hours (almost six weeks)---that should get me through until the first retirement check shows up.

It is going to be really strange to get a single pay check per month since we have been getting two a month for almost 39 years. It is going to require rethinking our spending habits because it is a huge change. We also don't really know how close it will be to what we are getting now but it should be realy close because I won't be paying into the retirement fund or into our 401K anymore.

It is starting to seem weird to me that I will be getting paid for what I did in the past and not what I am doing now---getting paid for doing nothing is a new concept to me.

HOPE IT GOES WELL

NEW QUOTE

I posted a new quotation today from an old miner---I thought it was profound---it is absolutely true---and there aren't that many absolutes in the world today.

RETIREMENT BADGES

Here are a couple of badges Twist made for me. I have said hundreds of times that I want to be the Wal Mart greeter....see the badge....when I have been telling people that I was going to get even with them I always said BE A FRED---BE VERY A FRED. So he sent these badges for my retirement.

WHERE'S IT GOIN'

I read today that the Corps of Engineers has been found liable for the flooding in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. Due to lack of maintenance of the levees. So the government is making a huge court ordered payout to a few people that sued---now what do you expect to happen? RIGHT the rest of the folks will now sue---the precedent has been set---dig deep into your pockets---there will be more and bigger payouts in the future.

I will not defend the Corps of Engineers but I will take a shot at Congress. I am not close enough to the Corps to know if they were funded to take care of the levees or not but I will bet they weren't even funded close to what it would take to maintain them properly. I am pretty sure that there is nothing that the government is responsible for that is funded to the level that it can really be taken care of to the level it needs to be.

What this says to me is that the government is into a lot of things they shouldn't be into---and they aren't funding those things properly either.

So today the Senate debates Health Care---wish it was a public forum and I was on the Hill---I would love to ask them how they propose to meet the funding for what we are already responsible for before they add on a significant new program---my bet---IF IT PASSES FUNDING WILL BE TAKEN FROM PROGRAMS THAT WE ARE ALREADY RESPONSIBLE FOR AND WHEN WE CAN NO LONGER MAINTAIN THEM THEN THE COURTS WILL AWARD PAYMENTS TO THOSE THAT SUE..

I try to stay positive about things so---I am absolutely positive that if health care passes we will be a huge step closer to bankruptcy in this country---I already know that with the national debt if we tried to pay it off we would be sunk so where does the money come from.....

T'DAY 'S A BANNER DAY

T'Day at 10:00 a.m. WE officially became the owners of our home---WE now own the sucker outright---taxes are paid for a full year and the insurance is paid up for a full year. WOW WHATTA FEELING.

I will have one month free of house payments before I retire (WOO HOO)---probably shoulda done a better job of planning that---but such is life. At least I won't have to make a house payment in retirement. It has been really hard to get this paid off in time to retire and Inklings goes into much deeper details of how we chose to do it if you want to read them but---through the choices we made on paying this sucker off early we saved ourselves over $40,000 in interest (FOURTY THOUSAND REAL DOLLARS)---my Dad was right---INTEREST NEVER SLEEPS---never it just keeps on adding on.

It took us longer to pay the last payment today and make sure everything was taken care of than it did to borrow the money for the house eight years ago in the first place---granted the guy making the loan knew we were coming in and the lady closing us out didn't but I think it is really funny to see how much happier the banking industry is when you are borrowing money than they are when you are paying it off---SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE---THEY GET PAID FROM YOUR INTEREST.

JUST SAYIN'

I just reviewed the cost estimate for putting 40,000 additional troops into Afgahnistan and they are saying it is $40 Billion - who does these estimates??? That's a million dollars a year cost for each individual troop sent over---somebody needs to sharpen their pencil on the estimate - or cut the pork out of it.

JUST SAYIN'