Personal finance is 80 percent behavior and 20 percent head knowledge.

I love Dave Ramsey. Listen to him almost every day. I don't work his plan all the time, but I have enough variant on it that I pay cash for everything, and we don't carry any debt as a family, either, except for the mortgage. I've got to reconfigure and renew working it again, though - been backsliding and not paying attention, and it's cost me bit of my savings to be as undisciplined as I've been this month. Actually, more like six weeks. And my lil truck needs tires, so my wastefulness is a bit painful right now.

I like having one (or several) less thing to worry about. Lord knows I can find SO MUCH to fret about, without adding car payments or credit card balances into the mix!

Thanks, Dave, I'm back on the path.

I got nuthin'

It's Thursday after the book study I attend and I'm pretty tired, but I have a request. If you read one of my posts, would you please attempt a comment? I got word it was impossible for some people to add a comment, and though I do write mostly for me, I'd LOVE some feedback. I reconfigured the comment thingy, it's now a pop-up instead of embedded, so I need you to add a little note to see if it's working. If the durn thing still won't work, shoot me an email so I know, ok? Thanks for your consideration and your continued reading!

One other thing - if you post anonymously because you can't or don't want to sign in to whatever your choices may be, please sign your comment so I can tell who you are. Not as quick at deciphering as I used to be, y'know.

Pressing business?

I'd like a new ironing board. A GOOD (read: expensive) one, with a preference for the old wooden one my mum has. I like the fact that the one I own now hangs on the back of the office door, as it dispenses with the annoying chore of getting it out and setting it up, not to mention a PLACE to store the damn thing. But it needs a new cover and pad VERY badly. So, I'm doing a bit of shopping and waffling...

THIS, however, is NOT what I'm planning to do with it, so even a cheap one would do!

(Thanks to Margo's Maid at The Shadowlands for the link to a fun site!)

UPDATE! In the black small spot in my heart where Revenge lives, I enjoy THIS ONE!

"Free, cheap abortion is a policy of social defense."

Do you think Planned Parenthood is a program to help educate and inform women and girls about making babies, not making babies, the functions of their bodies, and other realities girls should learn from their doctors and parents but just can't for some reason?

Do you think Roe v Wade was about "women's rights" about what happens to their own bodies?

For many years, I thought exactly that way. My 'thoughts,' such as they were, were based on a complete lack of honest information about these topics. I believed what I heard in The Media, mostly without question. As I matured, as I learned more, the truth became clear to me. I have moved from being an uninformed 'women's rights' advocate, to being a fairly well-informed Constitution-centered pro-life advocate.

Jonah Goldberg gives us the REAL deal, as he writes about one of the Supremes, a WOMAN who gets to make these decisions for all the rest of us...

Non-government changes

I began this "stage" of my life at the young age of 45. The symptoms began to manifest the summer before we transferred to Hawai'i, but didn't arrive full-blown till September - I remember the FIRST DAY of extreme discomfort...and put it off to moving stress and "climate change" from SoCal hot and dry to tropical balmy and damp. After about 7 weeks of mood swings and lack of sleep, I went to see a doc at Kaneohe. She did the blood test, but gave me Prempro anyway...and within 20 minutes of taking the first dose, I could tell the difference. What would have been a severe hot flash became a THREAT of a hot flash (I was having flashes every 41 minutes, like clockwork - day AND night), and 12 hours later, I wasn't having even those. So I slept for the first time in weeks. I didn't spend hours crying about nothing.

They will pry my HRT from my fingers if they want it back. I ain't givin' it up.

But Celia Rivenbark has a much funnier take than mine!

Thomas Tuesday is here!

Oh, c'mon, you surely knew this was coming, didn't you? Thomas Sowell is a Hero of mine, not because of his accomplishments, but because of his humility and his quiet dignity. His writing makes me think he's quite "comfortable in his own skin," as I've heard it stated. He thinks his basketball skills left much to be desired, but he should've seen 4'2" me play in a tournament in high school (because there were only 5 regulars that showed up...and my 'best friend' fouled out). Don't believe I ever played again, unless forced to in P.E.

From Mr. Sowell's column at JewishWorldReview.com:

When I was in school, I was so awful in basketball that the class coach wouldn't even let me try out for softball, at which I was actually pretty good.
...
Most discussions of "disparities" and "inequities" are a prelude to coming up with some "solution" that the government can impose, winning politicians some votes in the process. How could the disparity between Michael Jordan and me be solved?

We could change the rules of basketball, in order to try to equalize the outcomes.
...
But, conceivably at least, we might change the rules some more to make the results come out less lopsided, in order to create "social justice."

The problem with trying to equalize is that you can usually only equalize downward.

...

If you are going to have these lower physical requirements be the same for both women and men, that means that you are not only going to have women who are not capable of carrying someone out of a burning building, you are also going to have men who are likewise incapable of carrying someone to safety.

Most activities do not exist for the sake of equality. They exist to serve their own purposes — and those purposes are undermined, sometimes fatally, when equality becomes the goal.

Just pics

Not inspired, not creative. So check out my Pixie a few days back,
when it was VERY hot outside...

Mark Martin is still nifty at FIFTY!

My Favorite Old Guy does it AGAIN! Hot damn and congratulations, Mark, thanks for cheering up my Saturday!

From Fanhouse.com -

"I'm going to feel like hell tomorrow because I ain't going to sleep much tonight,'' Martin said on Saturday night. "When I'm pumped up driving fast race cars, I certainly don't feel 50.''

He's far from the sunset of his career and proved it under the lights on the 1.5-mile track.

From Chicago Tribune online -

The close-cropped stubble on his head contains as much salt as pepper, and the wrinkles run across Mark Martin's face like long-ago dried-up riverbeds. And for a while, twilight racing had a far less poetic meaning, semi-retirement leaving him with a loose grip on the track.

So it was with unmistakable giddiness that a man a half-century old took to the radio early in the LifeLock.com 400 on Saturday, his Chevrolet efficiently chopping through traffic and turning the Chicagoland Speedway's 1.5-mile tri-oval into a veritable senior circuit.

"This is easy, bud," Martin told crew chief Alan Gustafson.

He spoke far, far too soon, as double-file restart dueling extinguished his well-earned lead and then returned it to him, all in the final 50 laps.

"Rick Hendrick, he wouldn't quit," Martin said of the team owner who coaxed him back to full-time driving this year. "I was persuaded to do it. And I can't believe what an idiot I would have been. I had no idea it could be this much fun. The whole thing has been beyond my dreams."

• "He's been in his prime for 30 years now."
- Tony Stewart on Mark Martin