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Hearing the name-calling between Politicians.

Hearing that people on social security disability or welfare are lazy deadbeats.

Being called racist because you don’t agree with everything President Obama says.

I think it’s past time for our elected officials to get on with the business we the voters hired them to do. I’m truly tired of hearing you guys call each other “partisan” because you believe government should be run a certain way. Jeez — that’s why we elected you — because you thought the way the majority of the voters did that our government should work along a certain plan. So now lets get on with the business at hand, lose the antagonistic attitudes and WORK TOGETHER people! Compromise with each other! I think we all know that whatever is cobbled together for health care reform isn’t going to be the end-all-be-all of this legislation. We the people KNOW you’re going to get it somewhat right and somewhat wrong. We’ll allow you that. You’ll get it closer to what we all can live with if you can compromise on all the points of it. BOTH SIDES HAVE TO DO THIS.

There are some people on welfare and social security disability who shouldn’t be there. Like every other system in the world run by PEOPLE, it’s not 100%. But not everyone who is enrolled in these programs is lazy or a dead beat. The programs are there to help people who need them and they do that. Let’s not paint everyone with the same brush because of a few who game the system.

I’m increasingly disturbed by the racist label that’s getting plastered on anyone who doesn’t agree with President Obama. My disagreement with some of his proposals has nothing whatsoever to do with the color of his skin. I believe this to be the case for the vast majority of those who disagree.Racism will never go away until we take our focus off trying to see it as a motivation in every action by every person.

The report I heard this morning from the head of ACORN, claiming that the call for investigations into their practices and Congress’ revocation of their funding for housing and their being fired by the Department of Commerce is all a “witch hunt by conservative white racists” is inflammatory and racist in and of itself. I say if your organization is corrupt then there isn’t anything racist about these actions at all — that they are a direct result of your allowing people into your organization who flaunt the laws of this country.

Ok so now you have my .02 for the day.

I know times are not good — I can’t really say they are bad because for me they aren’t. I’ve had worse and know from what I read in the news that there is MUCH worse out there.

There was a time when this economic downturn would have had a more significant impact on us that it has.

Yes, my power bill is higher and it costs me more to get to work. Some weeks are pretty tight money-wise, but we have survived the worst of it so far.I’m just superstitious enough to worry that my saying this is going to jinx it for us.

Ken was able to trim a significant part of our budget by getting a competitive auto insurance quote and while we hated leaving the company we had been with for 15 years, it was just too big a gap to ignore. Other tweaks here and there on things made a big difference.

While it may not have been the smartest move according to the financial experts, we borrowed money from our 401K’s to pay off some credit card debt. And then cut up the cards that were paid off. I know my credit score has gone up over 20 points since then — oh not all at once — it’s taken it a good 6 months to do that, but having paid off the high interest rate cards, now I have more money available to pay the other, lower interest cards and making those higher monthly payments has contributed to that credit score improvement.

Neither of us have had a pay raise. And his overtime hours were cut back drastically there for several months.

We did scale back on dog shows this year. But managed to finish two despite that cut-back. We still have 3 that we’re working on titles for and it’s highly likely we won’t finish them this year, but they are young so it’s OK.

So it’s not like we haven’t made sacrifices.

But, things are looking up. Ken’s overtime is gradually coming back and since he scaled back to “regular time” income, he’s using that extra to pay down things like the house and cars. My new boss mentioned that he’s looking into pay raises for those of us in IT — it’s only been 3 years since my last one — but until that’s a reality, I’m not counting those chickens. It’s just nice to contemplate.

And my work is wide open. The recession has actually helped my company gain business. We’ve hired nearly 20 new technicians as our customer base has expanded and as we gain even more, we continue to look for qualified personnel.

I personally have more projects on my plate than I can handle right now.

It’s nice to say I have light at the end of the tunnel.