OK, I know that I promised to keep you guys updated and that I haven’t written anything since Thanksgiving. Well the stress level around here has been pretty high as of late because we are a month away from Wells Fargo auctioning off our house and we haven’t had many people come by to look us over. Not only is Wifeygetting scared, but I’m starting to get concerned myself. We need to sell our house because we need money to move with, and we also need some more time from the bank so that we can sell out, pay them what we owe them and still be able to pay for moving costs and storage space on the other end.
To that end we’ve re-applied for their “Hardship Program” and we need to talk to them tomorrow to see if we are under review. If we are that should push the date back and buy us some more time. Plus we’ve been advised by our agent to actually tell someone that we are thinking of selling out so that we may “pay them what we owe them – in full” to give them even more incentive to extending the date. In the meantime we are trying to pack up what we consider to be non-essential for our survival and sanity and keep praying for a wealthy buyerwho would be willing to pay us what our house was worth before the real estate crash ($215k) rather than what we have it listed for now ($157,993) for 4 bedrooms, 2 baths and 1,900 sq. ft.
In the meantime I look around me and have to shake my head at the things I read and hear pertaining to the world of employment and the politics that sometimes get intertwined with it. So I have a few random thoughts that I would just like to quickly put out since there are so many subjects and so little time. Some have to do with jobs or job hunting, others are current events…
Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh, YOU SAY IT'S YA BIRTHDAY!!!
- I turned 43 years old last Thursday (December 3rd) and it wasn’t a bad birthday. I did a little work packing the house but mostly it was a day to just be…well, you know – just be. I thawed some steaks and fired up the grill (in 30 degree whether) and finally got Wifeyto watch “Dale” with me. Hey, she gave me the choice of whatever I wanted to watch since it was my birthday, while getting me to promise to return the favor for her in March. In the end she enjoyed it more than she thought. Now if I can only get her to watch the Daytona 500 with me in February I’ll be all set…
- Speaking of Daytona in February, the rumor mill is running hot and heavy over the possibility that Danica Patrick is going to test at Daytona in December for the ARCA/ReMax race there for JR Motorsports in preparation for a possible Nationwide entry. Now she hasn’t submitted any application paperwork or a fee for entering the testing, but that doesn’t mean anything. Here’s a blurb from the Orlando Sentinel that I found over at Jayski.com:
Shouldn't you sign the contract first?
Several sources have made a big deal about the fact that Danica hasn’t filed an entry for ARCA testing at Daytona International Speedway December 18, 19 and 20, intimating that since she hasn’t registered for the test, she won’t test, and if she won’t test she can’t run the Daytona ARCA race in February, and if she doesn’t run the ARCA race, NASCAR won’t approve her to run the NASCAR Nationwide race a few days later. Don Radebaugh, longtime ARCA public relations director, says that Danica doesn’t have to file any sort of advance notice for the test. She can enter “the same day. There is no deadline.” As for what car she would drive, there are already at least seven cars entered with “TBA” under the driver’s name. Another source suggests Patrick will participate in a “secret” Daytona test before the end of the year. At the moment, Daytona has no such test on the books. If she tests at Daytona, it will likely be with ARCA. Can she race the ARCA race in February, without testing? “We do not take a position on that matter until we have an official entry,” Radebaugh says. Certainly Danica has experience on big speedways, but not in stock cars. Both NASCAR and ARCA have long made it clear that Daytona drivers need to have drafting experience on a superspeedway in stock cars before they can race. So even if Danica did have a private test, she would need to learn drafting in a pack of cars, and the ARCA test will be the only opportunity for that.
Somehow I think that Danica is going to enter the ARCA/ReMax event and then the Nationwide event and be at Daytona for the 24 Hour race as well as Speedweeks. The IRL season doesn’t start until mid-March, so we may be seeing her in a stock car this year. That and I think the “oops” picture that was posted for a few minutes on her website featuring her in a green GoDaddy firesuit with a Chevy and a Nationwide logo on it was a bit of a clue…
So what if they got it right for once? I still want a playoff!!!
- Boise State and TCU are going bowling – TOGETHER!!! Well for once the BCS got it right and did the right thing by putting TCU, Boise State andCincinnati in BCS bowls, and they even matched up TCU and Boise State to play in the Fiesta Bowl in a re-match of the Poinsettia Bowl played last year. This is going to be a good one folks, so you may want to cancel any plans you might have for the night of January 4th and tune in this game because it looks as if it is going to be a doozy.
Now I know a lot of you in Fort Worth are kind of disappointed that you are going to Glendale, Arizona instead of Pasadena, California to play Alabama in the Championship Game. Just think of this as another step towards forcing the rest of the nation to recognize the fact that the ACC, Big East, Big 10, Pac-10, Big-12 and the SEC do not have a monopoly on quality football. There is plenty of good football to be found in the Mountain West and the WAC, and the so-called “big boys” are just going to have to give the rest of us our due. The winner of the Fiesta Bowl is going to be the #2 team in the country when it is all said and done – so no matter who wins it is going to be a victory for the little guys.
However I still say that a 16-team playoff that incorporates the Bowl Games, Conference Champions and the BCS would not only work, but would be to College Football what “March Madness” is to College Basketball – a ca$h cow for the NCAA. And I can hear some of you College Presidents working it now: “we must consider the damage it would do to the student athlete.” What about the damage you are already doing to the student athlete by forcing them to live in poverty while they make shit-loads of money for your University and inflate your own bank accounts? As soon as you really start to tend to the welfare of the student athlete by seeing that they are able to feed themselves instead of forcing them to search their couches for change so that they can go to the local 7-11 for their weekly ration of Ramen noodles, then you be climb atop your pedestal and preach. Until then, shut your piehole already!!!
- I read in my local fishwrap about an employment situation that just blew my mind. Here’s what I read in a section called “News of the Weird”:
I have one word for you people - BUTTERBALL!!!!!!!!!!!
In April, Richard Huether, the manager of the HoneyBakedHam outlet in Cary, N.C., was shot in the stomach during a robbery of the store and hospitalized, with medical bills paid through worker compensation and his employee health benefits. In September when his worker compensation expired (and though still at least three months away from returning to work) HoneyBaked fired him (forcing him to begin paying 100 percent of his insurance premiums and making subsequent insurance prohibatively expensive because of his new “pre-existing condition”). However, HoneyBaked human resources executive Maggie DeCan told WRAL-TV that the firing was for Huether’s own good, in that it would clear the way for him to recieve Social Security disability payments.
So let me get this straight – dude gets shot during a robbery on your property, gets hospitalized, gets laid up and rather than do the right thing by keeping his job open for him you take away his access to health care by firing him, making it impossible for him to afford health care on his own and making him damaged goods to any employer who he might apply to in the future because he has not fully recovered from his injuries, and ensuring that he will never be able to see a doctor ever again because he will never be able to afford it, have I got that right so far?!?
Yeah, I’ll be having turkey this Christmas, how about you people?!?
