Saturday, January 22, 2011

Friday 1/21/2010

Friday

Strange dream last night, woke me up. An impossible act: a man came up behind another, opened his mouth, put it over the entire man's head, bit it off and swallowed it. The headless body plopped onto the ground. A few seconds later, this grotesque looking "head" came out of the man's neck. That dream woke me up.

Well, whatever and anyway, it's Friday. I was surprised to find a LOT of work in the truck routing system had been dumped in there overnight. About 30k worth of pipe being delivered to a contractor plus a bunch of stuff to be picked up for Monday deliveries.

Just nice to have something to do - which has been the norm to some degree lately versus nothing.

Obamacare and it's many dissidents and more pointedly, the news of all that is going on to repeal it, well I find it highly entertaining. The lastest "attack" against it is the State of Idaho claiming that they can simply nullify the bill in their state under some "archane law" or otherwise put as " Idaho's Republican-dominated Legislature now plans to use an obscure 18th century doctrine to declare President Barack Obama's signature bill null and void."

Lol. The amusement in all of this is Reid. The man is a relic. How he got voted back in, I'll never know. It still appears between polls and public opinion that more Americans want this thing repealed than not, start over and do it right - that's what I said at the beginning of this nonsense. My thoughts were that they were pushing the thing through like a runaway train. There was NO way, IMO, that they had spent anything near the time it would really take to research this thing through and come up with a good plan that wasn't going to end up throwing more public money down the toilet.

Off of that subject, another subject that always interests me are the pirates on the Somalian coast and now more of them being killed, this time by a raid initiated by South Korea to retake a ship that had been taken hostage. There is a pretty cool pic of the special forces, on the ship, crouched down by the windows, apparently about to go in and kill a bunch of them while at the same time, keeping all the civilians alive. Bravo, bravo, bravo!!! Gotta love that! You gotta figure a lot of training goes into making something like that happen in making sure no civilians are also killed in the firestorm - you can see holes in the windows where the helicopter and the naval ship were giving covering fire - pretty awesome. I wonder if they were also videoing it, I would love to see that.

Anonymous said...

Well, I guess my HAMP thing is underway. I mean, I've sort of been told on the phone that it is, I haven't really received any written confirmation of that. I will send in the first of 3 month trial payments tomorrow and then call them Monday to ensure that all paperwork has been turned in, is correct and if not, please resend and I will re do it, thank you.

This is the HAMP killer: you don't get it right the first time? You don't get a second chance, that's the FEDs saying that, not the lenders. It means before the first payment is due, you have to have i's dotted and t's crossed - perfectly - or it's a no-go. Once you start the HAMP process, it goes very quickly. It is NOT difficult to do, but I can understand now why the news reported that many of these modifications don't go through and people lose out on the opportunity. It's a hard and set rule: NO second chances.

I found the whole process a bit surprising in how fast it moves and the fact that you have to get everything done in a very short period of time. The news, as I have read it, has not reported this very well. They've only eluded to homeowners claiming that banks lost their paperwork, they did not elucidate on the subject of no second chances, short time period between when you first start the process and when the paperwork is due. It sheds a little fresh light on the subject, at least for me.

Now? I guess there are those calling for 30% down payments to get a home mortgage. Others want to revert it back to 20% - whatever the case, I am now becoming more comfortable with staying in my house seeing all of this starting to come out. How many people are going to be able to come up with even 20% down? On a $200,000 home, that's 40k. Just happen to be carrying that around in your back pocket, right?

I've trashed this subject around in my mind for months now. It has been a terribly difficult decision for me to decide whether to stay in the house and live with the fact that it's so far underwater, or short sale it and live with the fact that I will probably be a renter for the rest of my life. Seeing this 20 or 30% down stuff today in the news? Thanks, I think I'll stay and start saving to build a small guest house. It's going to be a long time, I'm guessing before my house's value is anywhere near what the mortgage is on it, I might as well start saving money, get another rental going on the property and get more income from it. I had toyed with this idea before - but that was when times were better. Now? I'm stuck at my house, I don't see any reason why not to build. Money, of course, but, I am now starting a more aggressive savings plan in my 401k, which I am now fully vested in. It might take a year or 2 to build up enough to get enough out to put up a good structure, I can live with that, not like I have any choice in the matter.

Work day is here.

G'day.

ben

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Monday

2 days of not posting anything. Well, in reality, I had almost an entire post written up on Saturday, got busy with other stuff - and just never posted it. Yesterday, I didn't feel like writing, so there.

My dad sent me a rather strange email the other day about "this email may not be working and sending mail to my home address may not work, either". Followed by another email saying he would explain later, followed by another email saying that it would now work?!!

This was a mass email sent to me and a bunch of other relatives. No clue. Is he and his wife having a spout and he was getting kicked out? Speculation galore as there has been no explanatory email stating what, exactly, he was talking about. I will be sending him an email this morning asking him what's going on.

The Pittsburgh Steelers are going to the Super Bowl!! I watched the first half of that game last night against the Jets and thought we were going to have a completely boring game. When the second half started, I hoped for a bit more of a challenge and the Jets did start picking it up - too little, too late.

Typically, the Super Bowl is on or near my birthday, this year a day after. This is how I can instantly tell anyone, any time of the year that asks when the Super Bowl is - ohh, around the beginning of February, usually near the 5th....

Ummm, well, I want to get some other stuff done before the work day starts - which there is PLENTY to do in the truck routing system this morning, best way to start a work week is to start out running. What I want to do before the day starts is get another room rental ad up on Craigslist - a week before the end of the month, this is the time to get those ads going twice a day - so, I'm offa here.

G'day.

ben

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