Guest post from: Constance Rodgers

It’s hard being the youngest in a room and at my job, that’s always the case. I work for a restaurant marketer and there’s always some kind of fire to put out but I feel like being in such a professional, fast paced environment makes sure I learn something new each and every day. If only I hadn’t waited so long to graduate and had been doing this for two extra years! My bosses seem to really see something in me and they’re always giving me some kind of cool assignment like looking up card services or talking to a vendor about price and it’s only a matter of time before I think I get promoted. I already make more than a lot of my friends who have jobs right out of school so I’m doing pretty well for myself and don’t think I’ve got too far to go! I love this place and I feel like I’m lucky to have fallen into a job I really see myself staying at for the long term.

For all of the television commercials that I see on television about how great Verizon Wireless is, and for all of our neighbors insisting that Verizon is the company with the best cell phone reception is around here, I have to say that I’m quite disappointed in the dead zone problems that I have with my Verizon cell phone.  I cannot use my Verizon cell phone in my house at all – the entire house is a dead zone.  And whenever I drive from the house to “town” to run errands, the vast majority of the trip to “town” is a dead zone – even if I pull off the road and stand on top of my car.  So, I have to say that I am quite disappointed in the Verizon cell phone service.

I’ve been hearing and reading more cases of families giving up their hard-wired landline in their homes in favor of simply using cell phones.  I can understand the logic, the cell phones are small and they carry them with them at all times, the landline phone is usually larger and more cumbersome.  Yet I question the wisdom of this strategy.  I like having a landline phone, one that is completely hardwired, and corded.  Yes, we have cordless phones, but if and when the electricity goes out (and it DOES go out!) and the cell phones are useless because our house is a dead zone, we depend on the hardwired, corded landline to call the electric company to report the power outage!  And we use it to keep in touch with friends and family during the power outage!  In 1998 we had a huge ice storm that knocked the electricity out for nineteen days, but we had the telephone service every minute!  We could not have maintained cell phones in that case because we could not have kept them charged!

So, in OUR house, anyway, I expect the landline is here to stay.  What about you?

My best friend wants to buy a van.  She wants to use it to take crafts she makes to local craft fairs, hoping to make some money off of her favorite hobby.  She wants me to join her in her “weekend” business by helping her load the van at her house and going to the fairs with her, unloading the van at the fair and setting up her display and then help her man her table at the fair.  She’s offered to pay me a percentage of the money that she takes in.  I’m not sure that she will really make any money doing this, but I told her I’d help her for one season.

I’m really concerned that the cost of gas is going so high that she’s not going to be able to drive it out of her driveway!  But, she is pretty insistent, and she is telling me that right now the prices of vans are getting lower because of the gas crisis.  I’ve told her that if she is so insistent on buying a van I will help her try to find the best insurance by doing some Internet research on the coverage and prices that are available from the many different insurance providers.

I don’t know how I stumbled across this particular CNN website yesterday, but the headlines were disheartening: Fed sees more tough times ahead. The article goes on to say that the Federal Reserve sees both unemployment and inflation rising in the year ahead. That news does not surprise me, but it does discourage me. It is getting harder and harder to make ends meet. I’m working two jobs, putting in twelve hours a day and am looking for a third job and still not making enough to pay the bills. These are tough times, for sure.