The trigger for today’s Jackson 5 song “ABC” was due to hearing it as segment music on Fox Business last week. It triggered a memory of the choreographed “five-some” dancing and singing back on 1970’s TV, although I don’t recall watching them very much.
Who hasn’t needed to repair, or re-repair, a broken piece of furniture? In today’s world, most furniture, as well as other items, are throw-away after they break, but there are still a few of us who enjoy getting the last few useable years out of a well worn piece of furniture.
My like-minded son-in-law showed me the once repaired and broken again coffee table leg used in a basement play area while we were up visiting our granddaughters last weekend. I was reminded by Brenda that this was the table that fell out of the back of her RAV4 years ago while she was moving it. In other words, it has seen some serious abuse.
The broken leg was glue repaired once before, but without the strength of the wood, broke again. This time I brought it home to add three dowels and then clamped and glued again with a favorite waterproof glue – Titebond III … not that it needs to be waterproof. Hopefully adding the three dowel pins will give it nearly original strength and take the abuse of a basement play area? We shall see?
Having initially enjoyed the weekly meal offering from Hello Fresh, the menu started to get a little stale as new items began to resemble previous meals. With inflation at the grocery store (and the fuel and time cost), the price was somewhat less of a gripe, but both of us started to notice fewer and a cheapening of the included ingredients; also less freshness of the produce. I am hoping that this is just a shipping issue or summer heat related???
After several enticements to come back after we canceled in August, we accepted a recent subscription discount to rejoin again. Unfortunately the last couple of meals were still repetitive. Top that off with last nights wilted cilantro used to garnish the top the “One-Pan Sweet & Spicy Cashew Pork Tacos” … and Icontinued to be a bit disappointed (but the meal was still tasty).
We will give the subscription a little longer, but they need to show some improvement if we are continue in the face of tightening our budget in the face of a recession. BTW, send me a message if you want a discount code for a free meal.
Besides noticing that a new school bus driver has decided to use our driveway as a turn around spot (should not be “the norm”) … I took apart the old 2017 pool pump motor. Last week I replaced the old motor with a new one(again) suspecting the shortened life (in my opinion) is due to a leaking pump. But before rebuilding the pump with new gaskets, etc, I was curious if I could save the $250 electric motor rebuild cost by tackling myself.
First was trying to figure out how to get the Century Centurian Chinese version of the AO Smith motor properly disassembled; I still do not know the face bearing setup? The corrosion is substantial on the failed bearing and so I’ll probably need a few of the washer and parts to fit/pack the bearing into the housing. Thankfully the electric motor parts (rotor and stator) looks ok.
The 2007-2008 Financial Crisis was the most serious since the Great Depression in 1929 … and was due to a perfect storm of lending to low-income Americans, zero down loans, excessive overall risk-taking by banks, poorly valued mortgage back securities and derivatives and finally the predictable bursting of the United States housing bubble. In hindsight, we could all see it coming, yet just as with cryptocurrency and the current excessive government spending, along with the ballooning debt and deficits these days, we still do little to fix our personal or national financial health.
Who really wants this kind of Throwback Thursday #TBT post or to acknowledge that politicians, and those of us who elect them, continue to run our nation down such self-destructive paths?
Still some of us make a game of trying to land the A and B groupings without paying the premium ticket price (yes, that would be me). Recently though, I had a conversation with a Rapid Rewards customer service representative suggesting that I try to use the Chase Business Rapid Rewards credit card to upgrade my position at the gate. She suggested that the credit card should reimburse me the EarlyBird fee “IF” there is a better seat available even when at the gate. The documentation doesn’t state this … nor could I get confirmation from the author or a couple of the quoted travel experts if this works.
The only thing the documentation says (below) is that RR Business members will be reimbursed for two EarlyBird upgrades per year (Personal Priority credit card holders are permitted 4 per year) and that Chase will reimburse those fees. I suspected the reimbursement was “only for booking online” and requesting preferred boarding positions ”before the 24-hour check-in?” The Customer Service person seemed convinced that it could also be done in person at the gate … so as long as there were positions available (and most of the time there are A1-15 slots vacant). Since I’m usually at the gate early, it might be a way to kill time and see if it works? Stay tuned.
Back to the article, another tip was to have only one member of a party pay the EarlyBird fee and “save seats” … if you really like doing that kind of thing … I don’t.
If you believe the number 13 makes for an unlucky day, you’ll probably point to that as an omen … but the deep, nearly 1300 points, drop in the Dow came as investors and economists were expecting an easing pace of inflation … not continued high inflation.
The CPI report indicated a 8.3% rate compared with July’s 8.5% and June’s 9.1% rates … which means we are still at four-decade inflation high. It is reminiscent of living with inflation in my early 20’s. Thankfully back then I new little about how the economy worked and owned very little, except my junkyard car and the clothes on my back. We did buy a first house, but own very little of it and assumed a 12% mortgage … which was better than the going 18% rate. It is hard to imagine financing anything at those rates?
We did another one of our “now regular”dinner and classic movie nights … which shockingly we are both enjoying. This one was another Cary Grant movie from 1939 called “Gunga Din,” to which I had to look up the Rudyard Kipling poem, partially read (remembering 40+ years ago in school) and emailed to Brenda.
The trigger for today’s Jackson 5 song “ABC” was due to hearing it as segment music on Fox Business last week. It triggered a memory of the choreographed “five-some” dancing and singing back on 1970’s TV, although I don’t recall watching them very much.
