Blather

I'm at work and I'm blogging. Seriously, Saturdays here are SO boring. The business has never been open on Saturdays and my boss wants me to try opening on Saturdays for a few months to see if our customers have a need for that. Sadly, they do not, which means lots of busy work and, frankly, some blogging and crossword puzzle doing. At least by now I know pretty much what I'm doing so its not too stressful, although I do get stressed when I have to go to the bathroom cause that means I have to lock up and put a sign on the door saying I'll be back in five minutes but A) I can't go when I know I have a time limit and B) invariably my only customer of the day will start knocking on the door during the 5 minutes out of the entire day that I'm not at my desk.

Its not a bad job though, reasonable hours (although diametrically opposite from Paul's so we see very little of each other), reasonable pay and a reasonable co-worker. I miss my babies at the preschool a whole lot though.

Our new house is going to be pretty good I think. We had been smitten with a rental house on the other side of town but the woman who owned it never returned our calls or emails after she told us she would run our credit so eventually we gave up and I emailed her telling her we had found something else. THEN she emailed me back saying 'oh, shoot, sorry, I guess I should have called you to tell you that you were approved'. NO SHIT, Sherlock! Really, what is wrong with people?! In the meantime we found another townhouse 3 buildings down from our current townhouse. Its very much the same, almost exactly, except for that there is no basement (which we really didn't use anyway). Its also an end unit so we only have one 'touching' neighbor and its $75 cheaper per month than what we pay now so we're hopeful that it will be a good move for us.

I'm SHOCKED by how much it costs to transfer our utilities though. Normally, and I've done this a lot, its like a $25 transfer fee on your next bill or something, but Comcast (HATEHATEHATE) is charging us just under $100 and the utility company almost as much! On the plus side the new place has no natural gas so we can cancel that and get our stinkin' $200 deposit back ( in four weeks ).

Basically, we had been doing a bit better financially since my job is stable and steady now and I don't have to spend all the gas money that I did getting to the preschool (plus gas is down from an all time high of $4.99 per gallon to $1.99 per gallon. I don't get it but I sure like it). Plus our expenses should go down in the new place; lower rent, smaller heat and air bills due to less square footage. However right now is an awfully scary time financially - Christmas is around the corner, meaning gifts, a trip, boarding the dogs and all the other things that cost bucks around the holidays. Also moving is always a huge expense even when you plan ahead and try to do things right. Oh, and Paul's stupid health benefits - they are raising the weekly deduction on his paycheck, raising the co-pays and reducing the benefits. *sigh* There are a bunch of other unexpected expenses these days too that are making Paul and I tense and fight-y, but in general we should be better come January 1st - assuming we both still have jobs. I cannot believe how many people I know have lost their jobs in the past 3 months or so, its really frightening.

On another note, I'm so very happy that Barack Obama is going to be our next president and so frightened of what could happen because you would not BELIEVE the kind of things that my Southern neighbors here are saying. In the two days following the election Paul and I heard, honest to God, the following comments:
'he's a Muslim and he's going to force us all to become Muslim'
'he's going to sell America'
'he's going to make all the white people into slaves'
'he's the anti-Christ'

And these people were absolutely and totally serious. Very scary. I did learn something from all of this though. I found myself telling people that whether they like President Elect Obama or not they still have to give him respect. Oops, that's easy for me to say because I have such high hopes for Obama...but I have been guilty of NOT doing that for the current administration so I'm going to try to work on that.

And, lastly, I'm so, so sad that California has banned same-sex marriage and even sadder that Arkansas has enacted something that will make it impossible for same-sex couples to adopt children. So, I wonder what voters have against gay people? If you think being gay is wrong, or immoral that's fine, but why is it your business if homosexuals want to get married or adopt? I'm really curious here because it seems to me that the only reason people are opposed to homosexuality is based on their religious views and we have (cough) a separation of church and state here in America so what basis is there for taking away their rights? I'm really curious if any of you can explain this to me or have opinions on this because perhaps I'm not seeing all sides of the story.

Whew, I guess I should get some work done!