About the biggest thing we've dealt with so far is a trip to Alton to fix a friend's computer and some grocery shopping. There are a few small chores that BeezleBub and I will be tackling during the day today, but nothing that requires a large truck or power tools.
A weekend like this doesn't happen all that often. I'm enjoying it to the max!
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One of my pet peeves, a minor one, is when going to one of the local restaurants for breakfast we find ourselves being served by a nice but totally disorganized member of the wait staff.
The other morning Deb, BeezleBub, and I went to one of our favorite diners and sat down in one of the booths. The waitress quickly came over and took our drink order, and delivered it a few moments later. That's the last we saw of her at our booth for well over fifteen minutes. It wasn't that she wasn't out doing her job. Rather she seemed a bit scatterbrained and would suddenly halt in mid-stride, change direction and go off in another direction to do something else while ignoring her primary function. She'd take an order and, rather than taking it to the order window at the kitchen, go off and do something else. The order she'd just written up would stay in her hand for 5 or 10 minutes before she'd remember to drop it off. In the mean time she'd stop by one booth or another, set the patrons up with their beverages, and go off to who knows where.
I watched her for a good 15 minutes, waiting for her to return to our booth to take our order. I said to Deb, “If she's not here by 5 past, we're outta here.”
She finally took our order, walked towards the order window, stopped at the cash register and started tallying some of the paid order slips. Of course she was still holding our order slip in her hand even though she was all of 5 steps away from the order window.
Normally we wouldn't have been in a 'hurry' (I'm using that term loosely), but we did have somewhere else we needed to be. We'd figured that an hour was plenty of time to get some breakfast and then be on our way. But not this particular morning.
To continue, after seeing our waitress continuing her tally work for another 5 minutes without dropping off our slip to the kitchen, I realized there was no way we would be getting our breakfasts in a timely manner. So I got up from the booth, went over to the waitress, and canceled our order. At this point almost 30 minutes had passed since we'd sat down at our booth. (No, it wasn't busy that morning. If anything there were quite a few empty tables and booths, so it wasn't that they were dealing with a morning crush of customers.)
I realize that this waitress wasn't one of the regular members of the wait staff, but that doesn't excuse the total disorganization she displayed. It was almost as if she was suffering from ADD.
Maybe she was.
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When I saw this over at Not Exactly Rocket Science I suffered from a severe flashback. What was it?
A 1977 JC Penney catalog.
Head on over and check it out and follow the link Caltechgirl has provided.
I haven't seen that much polyester in one place in a very very long time.
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I am not supporting MADD on this one.
I have no problem with members of the US Armed Forces between the ages of 18 and 21 being allowed to drink on base.
Some of those commenting to the post linked above seem to forget the drinking laws are on a state-by-state basis and not at the federal level. Also, military law applies on base.
If they're old enough to vote, old enough to fight and die for our country, I feel they should have the right to tip back a cold one now and then.
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Raven has started moderating the comments on her blog, and for a good reason: there are some seriously deranged leftists out there that have the impression free speech is only for them.
Her latest post about moderated comments was inspired by a post by San Francisco conservative Cinnamon Stillwell about the hate mail and hate-filled comments she receives from the supposedly tolerant Left.
After reading the particular Lefty rant left on her blog, all I can say is “How Orwellian!”
We've been fortunate enough here at Weekend Pundit to have avoided the kind of comments or e-mails experienced by Raven and Cinnamon. But I figure that it's just a matter of time.
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The lack of affordable housing is making itself felt on the Seacoast area of New Hampshire.
It seems funny to be talking about the lack of housing at a time when the number of foreclosures is increasing nationwide, but it is a problem. The Seacoast area of New Hampshire is one of the most expensive places in the continental US when it comes to the cost of housing. The high prices make it difficult, if not impossible for the average wage earner working on the Seacoast to afford a place to live anywhere near where they're employed. They usually have to live quite some distance from their place of employment because of the high cost of housing, which in turn causes problems for businesses on the Seacoast:
Good customer service seems like a thing of the past in many Seacoast establishments, because commercial operations cannot find quality employees because the employees cannot afford to live on the Seacoast.
Local companies may choose to open new facilities in other areas, rather than expand in the Seacoast area, because of a lack of workers with affordable housing.
New college graduates are finding jobs in other parts of New Hampshire, or out-of-state, even though there are many opportunities in Greater Portsmouth, because the cost of housing is lower elsewhere.
There is a shortage of teachers, nurses, aides, and technicians of all kinds in schools, hospitals and businesses in the area, because people cannot afford to buy a home.
The problem isn't limited just to New Hampshire, but elsewhere in the nation, too. What good are jobs in an area where potential workers can't find housing they can afford? This is something both industry and local governments are going to have to work on to solve the problem. (In many cases local government is the cause of the problem, as described in the article linked above.)
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It's not just high housing prices causing problems for the wage earner, it's also being able to afford to heat the homes they've been lucky enough to find.
Heating oil and propane prices have climbed above $3 per gallon in southern Maine and will do likewise in New Hampshire soon enough, if it hasn't already. If a family uses 800 to 1000 gallons of oil or propane to heat their home over the winter, that's $2400 to $3000 they'll have to shell out just to stay warm over the next 5 to 6 months. That may not be a strain for some folks, but they're the exception.
Thank goodness we heat with wood.
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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where winter-like temps have descended, heating oil prices have ascended, and where we've got enough firewood to keep us going through the winter.
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