I went to a seminar and dinner last weekend that was put on by my company last weekend.  They hyped it all up as educational for planning retirement strategies, and that it was at a fancy restaurant and we were going to have a gourmet meal.  Well, the fancy restaurant stuck us in the basement which wasn’t fancy at all, and the “gourmet meal” was a piece of chicken cordon bleu that is exactly the same as the Barber brand frozen chicken cordon bleu that I buy for $2.00 at the grocery store.  I swear it was the exact same thing!  I was quite annoyed that they tried to pass that off as a special “gourmet meal.”   Not to say it didn’t taste good, it was terrific - the Barber chicken cordon bleu is one of my favorite “whip up fast and cheap and easy meals” at home.  But that is the point - I know how fast and cheap and easy it is and was annoyed that they tried to convince us that it was a big fancy deal.

I have been helping a friend of mine look for a new job over the past couple of weeks.  It seems that for all of the “hype” that job search companies “put out” that for the area in which she lives, there really is no great job search engine.  She apparently lives in a “black hole” because whenever you type in the name of the nearest “town” where she lives, all of the results that come back are at least thirty miles away from where that town is.  That’s really a shame because the town is a faily large one, with a lot of businesses in it.  I would not have thought that those local businesses would not be participating in the large search engines that are available on the Internet, but the proof is in the pudding.  If she wants a job in that area she needs to KNOW what businesses are there and go to them directly, which is a pain in the neck to have to do!

Geez I hate going to the doctor’s office. I call ahead of time to find out if the doctor is “running on time” or “running late” so I won’t go in “on time” and end up waiting for over an hour in the outer office before being called into the “inner sanctum” to wait for another hour! So I called the office right before leaving my office to find out how the appointments were running and they said he was “on time.” So I went to the doctor’s office and ended up waiting for an hour in the outer office before being brought into the inner waiting room. I went to the desk and asked if I should reschedule my appointment because I couldn’t wait much longer and they said “oh no, he’ll be seeing you any minute now.” Well, I ended up waiting another twenty minutes before being ushered into the inner waiting room, and I ended up waiting THERE for another forty five minutes before being seen by the nurse, then another thirty minutes before being seen by the doctor! I was MOST UNHAPPY with that wait time, and I let the doctor know how much I would appreciate it if his staff would not lie to me when I call ahead to ask if they are running on time. If he is running an hour late, they should tell me and then I’d come an hour late or they should let me reschedule my appointment. This is NOT good customer service at all!

I was reading on the time.com website that gray wolves in the Northern Rockies have had their endangered species protection status restored by a federal judge. This ruling has upset the plans of the three states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho which were planning to hold public wolf hunts this coming autumn.
The wolves were under protection previously, but that protection expired last March. Many farmers are upset over the decision to reinstate the protection, as wolves have been killing their livestock, which cuts into their profits. I don’t know exactly how I would feel about that situation if I lived in the area; seems to me that there are breed of dogs whose specialties are to protect herds against wolves, maybe the farmers should buy some of them!

Well the talk this evening at work was about today’s Supreme Court ruling that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment in convictions of child rape. This was a case brought to them from a state where a man was convicted of raping a young child repeatedly and was convicted and sentenced to death.

I have mixed emotions about the death penalty, I really do. If I had a loved one in the system who was convicted of a crime that was punishable by death I would be against the death penalty for sure. But in some cases, where torture occurred (and I believe that child rape IS a form of torture) and in the cases of pedophilia, where the experts agree that pedophilia is NOT curable that perhaps the death penalty would be appropriate. I think perhaps the Supreme Court should have left that up to the individual states to decide.

I was reading an article on the Reuters website earlier today; a friend sent me the link and told me to read it. The article was talking about how solar energy will be cost competitive with fossil fuels by the year 2013. Well, if that is true, I think that the US government should just stop even talking about drilling for oil off the coast of Florida and in Alaska. I understand that even getting that oil drilled and refined will take at least five to ten years to reach the gas pumps, so what’s the point of spoiling the environment when we will have perfectly good alternative fuels ready by then? Now I understand that solar energy will not be able to run everything that needs gasoline, but there ARE other sources of fuel out there that could be used to replace fossil fuels that will be ready to be on the market by then and will be cost completive too.

I don’t know what got the most talk at work today, Tim Russert dying or the prison break in Afghanistan! Both news items are totally shocking! I liked to watch Tim Russert’s Meet the Press show on Sunday mornings when I had Sunday off of work, he asked some great questions. He will be sorely missed by many people. Quite a few of our customers today were talking about him, and how he died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest. I think that has scared quite a few of them; a lot of them look like they could keel over any day themselves!

And the prison break in Afghanistan, all of those Taliban prisoners set free! How very scary is that? We don’t need any more terrorists running around blowing themselves up and taking lots of people with them! I hope that the authorities can track them down and recapture them!

My word, I can’t believe it is the first of June already! I had to work today, so I’m on the tired side. Had a big crowed at the hotel this weekend with a lot of requests, questions, errands, so I’m sure glad that the day is over! I really don’t like working weekends because we are so very busy, but that is when I get the best tips, so it is a mixed bag there. I’m glad there is a deli on the way home so I could just duck into the deli and grab up a decent supper to bring home to eat. I was way too tired to deal with fixing anything, even a microwave TV dinner! Living in the city is great that way; it is so easy to duck into a deli on the way home and grab a decent meal.

Much to my surprise, I have today off of work!  My friends who live in the suburbs have invited me to come out to their place for a noon time Memorial Day Barbeque, so I’ll be leaving in a short while to head out to the ‘burbs.  I asked them if I could bring anything and they said no, just to come.  They’ll be meeting me at the train station so all I have to do is call them and let them know when to meet me and we’ll be all set to go.  I do want to get back before dark because I really don’t like walking the streets alone after dark, so I’ll probably be leaving their place around 3 to come back home.

I’m looking forward to grilled steaks, potato salad, devilled eggs and corn on the cob!  Yummy!

I’ve found that even though employers warn their employees not to talk about politics or religion, a lot of people do that anyway.  In my job, dealing with the customers that I deal with all the time I try to steer away from both subjects, or simply smile and nod and agree with them.  I get much bigger tips that way!

But the big news in politics today really wasn’t about politics so much as about a famous politician - Ted Kennedy.  This evening everyone was talking about how Ted Kennedy has been diagnosed with a really bad brain tumor and that the type of cancer that he has is not usually survived for very long.  So that has been today’s scuttlebutt, everyone talking about Ted Kennedy, what a great politician he is, how sad it is that his family has gone through so much and how they all hope the best for him.  Some of my customers have even said that they’ve met Ted Kennedy in the past and how nice they thought he is.