BeezleBub put in two days at the farm this weekend, leaving Monday as his off day. Deb had Saturday and Sunday off, helping me put the interior of The Manse to rights (lots of late-Spring cleaning), but has to work on the holiday Monday.
All in all it was a pretty normal weekend for us.
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One side effect of the miserable housing market I hadn't thought about until recently: jobs.I'm not talking about jobs within the housing market, but outside, in this case affecting the ability of a homeowner to take a new job someplace else.
One of the problems my employer has come across in hiring engineers to expand our R&D efforts has not been the lack of applicants. We had all kinds of applicants, many well qualified. But almost all of them turned down a job offer because they couldn't afford to relocate. They had no expectation of being able to sell their homes any time soon. Paying for two homes while trying to sell one of them wasn't going to happen (most banks would be reluctant to give them a mortgage or a bridge loan to cover them until they sell their old home), meaning they are pretty much stuck where they are until the housing market recovers. At least those renting a place to live aren't limited by that problem, but it seems that most of the applicants we interviewed owned a home.
How much of the problem with lackluster job growth is related directly to the inability to sell a home in order to relocate?
What did my employer do to alleviate the problem?
They opened a new R&D center in the People's Republic of Massachusetts to get closer to those looking for jobs.
What does that mean for me and my fellow engineers in our New Hampshire operation? Simply this: We'll lose our jobs because we can't afford to relocate either and the commute is too damn far. It won't happen today, or tomorrow, or the day after that, but it will happen, assurances to the contrary not withstanding. (It doesn't help matters that we couldn't afford to buy anything in Massachusetts in any case because the cost disparity in housing costs, even with the price collapse of the housing market figured in.)
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It's time to do a couple of updates to the blogroll, so here goes:Cubachi and Kathleen McKinley move to Regular Reads.
I also have two New Finds, Scary Yankee Chick (courtesy of Bogie) and Atomic Nerds.
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One of Deb's friends is making a trip up the eastern seaboard on a 70' Hatteras yacht. The friend's brother purchased it down in Aventura, Florida and they're helping him bring it back to the seacoast of New Hampshire. One of the crew is blogging regularly and includes photos, links to real-time position tracking, and a host of other interesting stuff.One of the scariest posts dealt with the yacht's electrical system, which the previous owner had patched together with speaker wire and outlet strips, probably with a drink in one hand!
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This might explain one of the mysteries of life that has plagued the male of the human species for untold generations:And here it is we've been doing it wrong all these thousands of years!
Women find happy guys significantly less sexually attractive than swaggering or brooding men, according to a new University of British Columbia study that helps to explain the enduring allure of “bad boys” and other iconic gender types.
One of the things I've had trouble explaining to BeezleBub as he's navigated the minefield of relationships with the opposite sex is why girls/women always seem to gravitate towards bad boys, even if those bad boys treat them like crap. I've always thought it might be some subconscious female urge to “reform” the bad boy, even though the track record of success for such efforts is abysmal at best.
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Gee, I didn't know you could use food stamps to buy lobster! If I'd known that we would have applied for them long ago.Hmm, I wonder if they can be used to buy some nice Grillmaster steak tips at our local butcher shop? They're cheaper than lobster!
(H/T Maggie's Farm)
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Will Sarah Palin run for the 2012 nomination? Jay Tea talks about the potential and how it's making Democrats' and RINOs' heads explode.As one commenter wrote, Dennis Miller likes her because all the right people hate her.
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Could it be that crime rates over the years have been declining due to lead levels in our blood dropping 80% compared to 40 years ago rather than socioeconomic conditions?It sounds plausible to me, considering that our socioeconomic conditions really suck right now but we haven't seen the 'expected' rise in crime rates that usually go along with tough economic times. This might require further study.
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Why doesn't this surprise me?Every rape committed in Oslo, Norway over the past 5 years have been committed by Third World Muslims.
This is the kind of evil crap we can expect from these bastards when the multi-culti feelgood liberals have their way.
(H/T Pirate's Cove)
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It's about time someone told the ACLU to “shove it” in regards to their overweening concern about the separation of church and state.These asshats take themselves far too seriously and should be spending more of their time dealing with actual constitutional dilemmas rather than a less-than-honest complaint about where a particular high school graduation takes place.
Let's face it, ACLU, there are far more pressing problems for you to deal with than this silly crap.
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We missed our deadline for getting the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout, aka The Boat, into the water this year. Eleven days of rain and cold weather delayed a lot of the work we otherwise would have accomplished. Hopefully we'll get caught up on quite a bit of it tomorrow and will have it ready to launch by next weekend.While Deb is bothered by our putting The Boat into the water this year, mainly due to fuel costs (gas is expected to be around $5 per gallon on the lake), neither BeezleBub or I are concerned. Our time out on the lake is one of the few enjoyments we have left, considering the state of the economy. All of us have cut back on most of our activities, leaving our time boating on the lake as the last one. Deb's suggestion to not bother with the boat this year stirred up a mutiny, with BeezleBub voicing the loudest objection.
While we may not go out to some of the farther reaches of the lake this year, we still plan a number of go-slow trips to some of our favorite nearby places to anchor, swim, eat, and just hang out. While the amount of time we spend out there will be close to what we've spent in past summers, we'll be going slower and using a lot less fuel in the process. I believe we can keep the costs under control as long as we don't overdo it in regards to where we go.