Reflections on the Gulf Coast from my very happy children in the form of unsolicited handwritten poetry...priceless
It is nice and warm in Florida
We went to the pool because it is so warm.
Florida is an extremely nice place to be
The warm weather invites you in
While the delicious seafood captivates your taste buds.
Through the eyes of babes, that is where we will reap the most joy from our decisions; showing up just when we forget to look. They are happy and so am I. My husband still needs another day to overcome the expense. Ah, nothing is perfect.
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane
It is true, my vacation is a reality; we're leaving tomorrow for the Florida gulf coast where it will be a little warmer than here and there will be some history to discover. I am still apologizing for the expense since I'm making a decision against the grain; and certainly not conserving enough or the money could be gladly appropriated to debt service. Anyway, I'm not sure if I will write since I won't want to stay up so late to write especially if I want to get the most of out of each day including a good night's sleep. Unfortunately, unlike the song, I will be back again to pick up my world; and attack my world with renewed vigor. I am looking forward to that part, I'll have plenty of gratitude to show myself for taking this trip and I want to be deserving of my own largesse.
Its Groundhog day but the shadows disagreed; this weather has been too crazy to predict anyway, the bad economic news showers us like naked rain and you need the power to go on. How did it get this bad so quickly and is any of us really behaving rationally? My job search has dried up completely; it has taken me by surprise. How swiftly most of the job prospects have vanished. I have always found a job when I needed a job and I am willing to work hard. I enjoy doing a good job and I'm not afraid of work so I'll shift my paradigm and move on - I will find something, I am certain. 85% of Americans are working if you double the unemployment statistics which is probably closer to the true number and I'm sure I have enough skills to make it through with the majority.
February has raced in all too quickly; the last of the winter is upon us and there is more bad weather to come. The last three winters have been fairly mild out here in Suffolk County, our lake did not freeze. It froze the first year we were here and now in year five. I went out on my almost new skates, the ones I bought in year 2 never for the lake to freeze again, and took a few rounds, it was very nice. I am trying to embrace winter sports but I don't really like being cold so that doesn't help. I generally try not to complain when it is hot outside, this is the side I have picked and what sends me running down South for some warmer weather. According to the weather forcast, my first few days will be unseasonably cool then the temp goes back into the high 70s the day I leave, oh well. My luck will come around.
Its Groundhog day but the shadows disagreed; this weather has been too crazy to predict anyway, the bad economic news showers us like naked rain and you need the power to go on. How did it get this bad so quickly and is any of us really behaving rationally? My job search has dried up completely; it has taken me by surprise. How swiftly most of the job prospects have vanished. I have always found a job when I needed a job and I am willing to work hard. I enjoy doing a good job and I'm not afraid of work so I'll shift my paradigm and move on - I will find something, I am certain. 85% of Americans are working if you double the unemployment statistics which is probably closer to the true number and I'm sure I have enough skills to make it through with the majority.
February has raced in all too quickly; the last of the winter is upon us and there is more bad weather to come. The last three winters have been fairly mild out here in Suffolk County, our lake did not freeze. It froze the first year we were here and now in year five. I went out on my almost new skates, the ones I bought in year 2 never for the lake to freeze again, and took a few rounds, it was very nice. I am trying to embrace winter sports but I don't really like being cold so that doesn't help. I generally try not to complain when it is hot outside, this is the side I have picked and what sends me running down South for some warmer weather. According to the weather forcast, my first few days will be unseasonably cool then the temp goes back into the high 70s the day I leave, oh well. My luck will come around.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Today, while the market was tanking and nothing but more bad news hit the airwaves, I searched travel sites online until my eyes rolled up into my head. Come hell or high water, we are going on vacation; modest, of course, but vacation nonetheless. It seems that my school district has a Thursday and Friday off during the first weeks of February before the February President's week vacation. Why do school districts still have this much vacation time off when most parents have to go to work? It seems it is a ploy just to drag out those 180 actual school days so it appears that the children are in school for more time than they really are.
After speaking to some other mothers, it turns out that I am not the only one eyeing those 2 days as a convenient 4 day 3 night time period to have a shorter and therefore much cheaper vacation and also avoid the crowds and hassle of going away during the over-hyped, over-inflated February break with the entire school-aged American population to boot. As usual, "just about everybody is going to Florida," this I hear from my children every year around this time, "why can't we go on vacation?" Poor children, they were not put here to understand the greater cause of sacrifice at such a young age.
We always had hope that we would go away some time but every time we found an airfare and multiplied it by 4, we changed our mind; saving for the greater good or paying down more on a debt was always a better use of those funds. However, despite the perilous financial condition of the country and ourselves, we are going to go, finally. We are simply fed up with our austerity budget and still stinging from the fact that while everyone was living large over the last few years, we never got to take that ride. And now, when we hoped to see an improvement in our particular condition, we are now seriously challenged by the financial viability of the corporations we work for.
We were so glad to return to the corporate world and get off the small business merry-go-round of long hard hours for little pay, if any, we swore we would never complain about our jobs again and we didn't. Now my job is gone and my husband's hangs on a thread; his company riddled by so much debt, large though they may be, that they still have not made a profit this entire decade. Ridiculous.
Of course, we emphasize deeply with our fellow small-business owners and we treat them with the utmost respect because we truly know how it is. You have to struggle for 2 years on your own before most lending institutions and creditors will even loan you any money and then they all, including the SBA, still tie all of that debt to your personal name when they do finally say yes. That was the surprising thing about the SBA, in particular, it is set up to loan money to small business, guaranteed by the government, but the loan is still tied to the individual borrower and not the business entity. There is no easy way of getting out of this debt, the government will repay the bank if you default but then the government will come after you to recover those funds by any means necessary - complete federal rights to garnish your paycheck, hijack your tax refund or simply sue you. So much for a government guarantee.
The media keeps reporting that small businesses are the engine of the economy but so far I haven't heard of any plans to help relieve small business owners, most of whom have extended themselves on home equity loans and credit cards to survive. We did it and it is not very pretty. Nevertheless, we acted responsibly, we were resolute and vowed not to let our new extreme debt condition bring us down; we acknowledged that it would take years to pay off the business debt and that would have a futher consequence of setting our financial lives back so far that we are still hesitant to sum up the damage.
However, witnessing all of this bailing out of the profligate - homeowners who had overextended themselves in dwellings that they couldn't afford and businesses who simply had no common sense to save for a rainy day - it is difficult for us to champion the bailouts when we strived so hard to be responsible and it seems our counterparts did not. And so we will go on vacation, short but sweet, somewhere close and not too expensive, before my severance runs out and before our patience runs out. People who work hard are supposed to take a break and yet so far we have not.
We realize it will never be a good time to go away but we should take the opportunity now while we are both still receiving a paycheck. Now if I can just get past the prices which are still, in my opinion, way too high...
After speaking to some other mothers, it turns out that I am not the only one eyeing those 2 days as a convenient 4 day 3 night time period to have a shorter and therefore much cheaper vacation and also avoid the crowds and hassle of going away during the over-hyped, over-inflated February break with the entire school-aged American population to boot. As usual, "just about everybody is going to Florida," this I hear from my children every year around this time, "why can't we go on vacation?" Poor children, they were not put here to understand the greater cause of sacrifice at such a young age.
We always had hope that we would go away some time but every time we found an airfare and multiplied it by 4, we changed our mind; saving for the greater good or paying down more on a debt was always a better use of those funds. However, despite the perilous financial condition of the country and ourselves, we are going to go, finally. We are simply fed up with our austerity budget and still stinging from the fact that while everyone was living large over the last few years, we never got to take that ride. And now, when we hoped to see an improvement in our particular condition, we are now seriously challenged by the financial viability of the corporations we work for.
We were so glad to return to the corporate world and get off the small business merry-go-round of long hard hours for little pay, if any, we swore we would never complain about our jobs again and we didn't. Now my job is gone and my husband's hangs on a thread; his company riddled by so much debt, large though they may be, that they still have not made a profit this entire decade. Ridiculous.
Of course, we emphasize deeply with our fellow small-business owners and we treat them with the utmost respect because we truly know how it is. You have to struggle for 2 years on your own before most lending institutions and creditors will even loan you any money and then they all, including the SBA, still tie all of that debt to your personal name when they do finally say yes. That was the surprising thing about the SBA, in particular, it is set up to loan money to small business, guaranteed by the government, but the loan is still tied to the individual borrower and not the business entity. There is no easy way of getting out of this debt, the government will repay the bank if you default but then the government will come after you to recover those funds by any means necessary - complete federal rights to garnish your paycheck, hijack your tax refund or simply sue you. So much for a government guarantee.
The media keeps reporting that small businesses are the engine of the economy but so far I haven't heard of any plans to help relieve small business owners, most of whom have extended themselves on home equity loans and credit cards to survive. We did it and it is not very pretty. Nevertheless, we acted responsibly, we were resolute and vowed not to let our new extreme debt condition bring us down; we acknowledged that it would take years to pay off the business debt and that would have a futher consequence of setting our financial lives back so far that we are still hesitant to sum up the damage.
However, witnessing all of this bailing out of the profligate - homeowners who had overextended themselves in dwellings that they couldn't afford and businesses who simply had no common sense to save for a rainy day - it is difficult for us to champion the bailouts when we strived so hard to be responsible and it seems our counterparts did not. And so we will go on vacation, short but sweet, somewhere close and not too expensive, before my severance runs out and before our patience runs out. People who work hard are supposed to take a break and yet so far we have not.
We realize it will never be a good time to go away but we should take the opportunity now while we are both still receiving a paycheck. Now if I can just get past the prices which are still, in my opinion, way too high...
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