Wednesday update...

Sorry I have not been able to post for several days...

...well, I could have posted, but I just have not :)  And today's post is not going to be very long.  Just a couple of quick observations.

First, tomorrow is the summer solstice, which is cool in that we're halfway through the meteorological year, with the length of daily sunlight starting to shorten as opposed to expand.  For a true-blue fan of the fall and winter, this is excellent news, even though we've still got to go through the freakingest hottest part of the summer before we get there.  Ugh. 

Going to see Prometheus on Friday!  Expectations tempered a little bit with some scattered reviews of the film, but I'm not going to let that psyche me out, as going to the movies is like eating pizza: even when pizza is bad, its still pizza :)

Sold our 13-year old second car on Monday and couldn't be happier to be back to a one-car family, which we were from the summer of 2008 to the winter of 2009 (when the first kiddo came along).  I'll likely post more on this topic in later days. 

OK, well that's all for now.  I'll get something more substantive up tomorrow.

More Tiny House stuff

All kinds of stuff regarding Tiny Houses on YouTube.  Here's a sampling:

Tiny houses

I saw this video on Yahoo's main page today and had to watch it, even though its kinda a puff piece on a wholesome family "making it work" and all that, because the Tiny House Phenomenon (no not this tiny house :)) is actually a thing and I've been interested in it for the last couple of years:

Indeed, there's something very romantic about the idea of just shedding all of but the most essentially material goods and living a simpler existence.  But enough Thoreau/Emerson/Trancendentalist jibber jabber.  Consider the economic, environmental, and health-oriented bonuses a person or family would accrue if you could, like the family in the video, live such a life.

Sure, you'd have to throw down for open land and, say, $15,000 for the structure (not including labor costs, if any, I'd assume) -- the family in the video says the house cost them $13,000.  Not to mention if you opted to go with solar panels.  And you'd probably have to spend some money on some tiny house-designed furniture and that sort of thing.

But on the flip side, aside from any payments for the land and structure...no more mortgage payments.  Drastically low utility bills (especially if you opted for solar panels).  Drastically low homeowner's insurance.  Huge savings for simply not buying things for which you have room in your Tiny House (clothing, various household items, toys if you have kids, books, big TV's, shit you currently have stacked in closets that you never use). 

Speed mile, belt loop, and Krugman

I heartily apologize for the three or four of you out there who actually read this little blog of mine for not posting in a week.  No good explanation, really, just kinda slipped my mind.  That being said, with a week having passed without a post, I have several things I'd like to write about or at least mention :)

First, I finished Paul Krugman's book End This Depression Now!, which is not a necessarily a book about psychology, although considering that it was actually about the economy, psychology obviously plays a not-to-small part.  Highly informative and written in a manner so even a macroeconomic neophyte such as myself could understand.  Sufficient to say, when it comes to the economy, we're doing it wrong.

Oh, and did you know that the European Football Championship started last Friday.  Oh my, how I love large international soccer tournaments :)  Obviously, the soccer itself is fantastic but it also reminds me of the HillcrestBlogger Honeymoon/World Cup trip to Germany in 2006 (with a side trip to Prague).  It took a total of about .3 hours after the start of the tournament to make the executive decision that the entire HillcrestBlogger family will be going to the European Championship in 2016, to be held in France.  Already I'm envisioning a 3-week sojourn, starting in London, then Chunnelling to Paris, then up to Copenhagen, before spending several days traveling around the French countryside before finishing the trip in Northern Italy.  But don't hold me to that itinerary, since it is bound to be tweaked over the next four years ;)

As for my week's worth of fitness, I signed up for the Firecracker Fast 5K, ran a mile "sprint" in 10:09, and gained (or lost?) another belt loop!  I also started Gretchen Reynolds' book The First 20 Minutes, which I heard about on Terri Gross's show on NPR and is really an eye opener.  Apparently, I need to incorporate some high intensity interval training, which I have since started to do, in order to really get this body de-flabbed.  In any event, I will recommend that book to anyone who wants to separate the wheat from the chaff regarding what they need to do to become fit. 

Last, I am also going to sell one of our cars (the 13-year old one) this week.  The HillcrestBlog family is going back to being a one-car affair, which we did to great effect prior to our first child.  It is the responsible choice from a environmental, economic, and life-style standpoint.  I'm very excited about it.  I'll be using a combination of public transportation, biking, and walking to get to and from work, which is only about 2.5 miles from my house.  And, with our kids' daycare within very easy walking distance, this is an arrangement we are approaching as a permanent change.  I'm sure I'll be posting about this in much more detail later so I'll not get into the weeds on it today.

Hillcrest home values a solid bet

...at least that is my takeaway after reading the following opinion column from last Friday's New York Times.  Indeed, one of the many reasons I love this neighborhood so is the fact that just about any amenity needed for modern survival is within a relatively easy walking (and certainly, biking) distance.  I simply cannot imagine life living out in some suburb or bedroom community where there is not a very easily reachable small business district in our neighborhood's interior, not to mention the vast number of businesses within a one- to two-mile radius of my front door.  Now, reading that these types of homes and neighborhoods are what are now in demand only solidifies my love of this place. 

Anyway, for your reading pleasure, the column in full, after the jump...

Life without cable TV, Day 4 AKA Get rid of your cable: A case in support

Well, the blog post title might be a little misleading, as we actually have not had cable TeeVee (specifically, Comcast) since 2008.  Instead, the HillcrestBlog family recently ended a four-year run of being tethered to satellite TeeVee (two years with Dish Network and then the last two years with Direct TV).  Now, we find ourselves on Day 4 of being off the subscription TeeVee grid, so-to-speak.  Instead, we have chosen to get our TeeVee over the airwaves, just like in the Olden Days before cable entered the picture in the early 1980's, which, along with the cost of $5.99 HD antennae, is free.  We plan on supplementing this with TV shows we buy and download from iTunes, movies and shows we stream from Netflix through our Roku player, and shows we stream directly from other internet sources.  Our intent with this plan is twofold: 1) to save money on entertainment costs, and, to a lesser degree 2) to free ourselves as much as possible from the corporate media, advertising, and marketing that seems to hit you nonstop through conventional TeeVee viewing.

I have not yet really put pen to paper regarding any (if any) monetary savings, so I'm going to use this blog post to do just that.  Also, I'll hopefully show you, dear reader, how this is not only monetarily advantageous, but also very "doable" in the sense that one really doesn't need cable or satellite TeeVee to still watch whatever shows you want to watch.

First things first, though.  You may ask if, after four days, I miss my satellite TeeVee.  Have I suffered any separation anxiety?  The answer is an emphatic no.  I have not missed it, not one bit.

Rememberances of a big, action-packed weekend

The weekend of which I speak, of course, is the most recently completed one.  It was alternately or concurrently huge fun, very fast, exhausting, exhilarating, a little bit frustrating, eye-opening, and delicious.  As a point of reference, all of the following occurred:

1.  My wife ran the Dino Dash 5K early Saturday morning and I completed a 2.5 mile run late Saturday morning.  We also walked approximately three miles in downtown Memphis;
2.  We left our kids with an overnight sitter to spend an evening with Just Us for the first time since Lorelei was born in December of 2009;
3.  Cleaned the house and did five loads of laundry;
4.  The kids played in the kiddie pool;
5.  My wife and I drove to and from Memphis within a twenty-two hour time span, during which time we spent a night at the Peabody, saw Wilco at Mud Island, had ribs and catfish and several drinks on Beale Street;
6.  My daughter pooped on the bathroom floor;
7.  I played a soccer game on Sunday afternoon and scored a goal in a 4-1 victory;
8.  Went to the Farmer's Market; and
9.  Dinner with the in-laws Sunday night.

And, really, there were some other little highlights that I'm probably forgetting.  My point being, it was a full enough weekend to last fill up a month's worth of weekends.  At least it seemed like it at the time.

Currently, I'm mentally preparing myself for the Big Race this Saturday morning.  I'm still very sore from my long run on Saturday and my soccer game on Sunday.  I had hoped to get in a 2.8 mile run today, but I don't think my muscles are going to allow it.  Instead, I'm going to knock it out tomorrow morning and then hopefully recover in time to do a short and sweet 1 mile run on Friday morning, just to keep my muscles and joints loose. I think that will get me close enough to be able to complete the 3.1 miles I need to knock out Saturday morning, with all the energy and people and excitement of the race artificially propping me up that last .3 miles :)

The importance of sleep

I hope I'm taking a nap when this infographic eventually posts :)  As the father of two small children, I can vouch for the absolute necessity of quality sleep.  Oh, and quantity too!

Source: http://frugaldad.com

A follow-up post to the one earlier in the evening

A follow-up post to the one earlier in the evening about the cost of law school.  I actually took pen to paper and accessed my personal account ledger to figure out, to the cent, how much I'll have paid toward my law school students loans from the first payment to the last*.

Drum roll...

My $42,000 juris doctor student loan is going to end up costing me $84,249.69.  Yep, almost double.  Ouch.  The five years I didn't pay a dime toward them while they were on forbearance from May 1998 until February 2004 sure came back to haunt me, as those loans' interest rates really did their trick.  Oh well, live and learn.  It would be easy to get angry about the costs of higher education and the cost of my loan in particular, but I did sign on the dotted line and I have no one to blame but myself for going five years without making a payment.  At least my initial loans were reasonable enough to enable me to pay them off in less than ten years (of the first payment).  That, and I was able to enter the legal profession during a period of economic growth and be fully entrenched in the legal community, with experience and connections, by the time the economy went into the toilet in 2008, so I never had to sweat being unemployed.  People nowadays will have neither and come out of law school with a much more onerous student-loan repayment future.  A bleak future, to say the least, if those loans are piggybacking them from now until the End Times.

Oh, one more thing to consider when I talk about the "cost" of my law degree.  Its what the scam-bloggers (AKA those folks who blog about the law school "scam") refer to as "opportunity cost."  Essentially, the missed salary I should compute from 1995 to 1998, when I was in school, not earning a living.  I really have no idea what my 1995 BA in English would have been worth on the open market back then and what type of job I was even qualified for, but I think it reasonable to estimate that an average 1995 college graduate in Arkansas could command $20,000 per year starting out.  Hell, that may be too low.  But its a nice round number.  So, at the risk of throwing my "true cost" accuracy out the window by using arbitrary numbers, let's say that I missed out on salary from June 1995 until October 1998 (when I got my first attorney job).  That's 40 months.  At $20,000 per year, that's a gross of $66,666.00.  Take 20% of the top for taxes and that leaves a post-tax net of $53,332.00.  So, yeah, I could have expected to have $53,000 in my pocket from June 1995 through October 1998.  And, mind you, I graduated college with ZERO debt.  No credit cards, nothing.

So, while it is true that my law degree likely over the long haul of my career will result in a higher earning potential, the sunk costs are staggering.  $53K in lost initial earnings and $84K in loan payments.  $137,000 total outlay for the privilege of calling myself a lawyer.  Staggering.


* Although I have not paid them off entirely, I was able to accurately determine how much my final bill will be.  You'll just have to trust me on the figures.  They should be fully paid off by this time next year :)

The law school scam...

...at least that's what some people on the internet call it.  And, I think they are right.  Basically, the cost of going to law school has gotten so expensive and the job market has so cratered that it literally is an unwise investment of time, energy, and -- most importantly to most people -- MONEY, to take that career route.

Which is sad, really.  My law degree, earned in 1998, has served me well, even though the degree itself likely cost me somewhere around $70,000 to earn (not to mention the three years of salary I did not earn while pursuing my degree).  Still, even with that big fat debtload, I will have paid if off within nine years (my first student loan payment was February of 2004, five and 1/2 years after graduation) and without it totally crippling my lifestyle and budget.  Not so with today's graduates.  Just take a look here to see what it costs nowadays and just imagine what the resulting student loan payments would do to your budget, dear reader.  That is, if you can even find legal work in this crappy market!

I've come to the conclusion that its just not worth the money to go to law school unless 1) you or whoever is footing the bill is independently wealthy or you get a substantial scholarship.  That's it.  That's the only reason. 

Look at the costs of UALR's law school.  You're looking at about $38,000 in tuition alone to go three years toward a JD.  You know what that equals in repayment-of-loan terms?  Well, if you knock them out in ten years, this calculator suggests that it'll run you at least $54,000, with a starting monthly payment of $455/month.  Again, this is TUITION ALONE.  That means living at home with the parents and eating their food and not needing to take out any additional loan for rent, utilities, groceries, beer money, etc.  If you need to take out another $8,000 in living expenses ($500/month rent over 12 months is $6,000 by itself, remember), you're looking at the cost of a JD at UALR rising to $94,000 to be paid out over ten years at $783/month.  That's almost $10,000/year in student loan repayments, right out of the gate and every year for ten years.

You still think its worth it?  Let's say a recent UALR grad does well for herself and gets a deputy prosecuting attorney gig here in Pulaski County, and say that she starts out at $40,000/year, which I'd guesstimate is about right for a brand-new lawyer.  Well, take 25% of the top for taxes and then the requisite $10,000 in student loan payments a year and all of a sudden she's got to spread $20,000 over the next 12 months, which is $1,666.00 a month, which is ALL she has left per month -- rent/mortgage, utilities, food, clothing, car payment, gasoline, shoes, beer money, credit card payments, whatever.  Its not exactly poverty level, but for a person with a juris doctor degree, its dangerously close, especially if you are supporting a spouse or a family.

If you are taking loans out to go to law school nowadays, you are a fool.  That is sad, but it is the truth. 

Homework

Dear readers, you might have wondered why, of all the widgets I could have put on this page, I have three gasoline-price trackers.  Well, the truth is, peak oil is one of my very favorite topics to think and/or write about (although I have not written on the subject in some time), so I like to track the price of oil on its inevitable, ruinous, and irreversible climb upward.  Now, you may be asking yourself, "why should I care about this in the least (aside from the obvious drain on my checking account)?" 

That's where the "homework" referenced in the blog post's header comes in.  Instead of me explaining it to you, why don't I let YouTube do the work for me? 

Watch these movies/clips and all will be revealed...

The foregoing is just ONE of the infinite reasons why Hillcrest is the best neighborhood in Little Rock.  Walkable, mixed-use, close to the city center, close to the Arkansas River, dense housing.  Would you rather weather the Peak Oil Storm in Hillcrest or in Maumelle?  Or Cabot?  Or Bryant?  Or West Little Rock? 

My hated student loans

I was fortunate enough to have parents who footed the bill for me to complete my undergraduate degree at the University of Arkansas.  At the time, I had no comprehension what kind of a gift that truly was, to escape with a BA degree in English with zero debt.  That was in May of 1995.  The rip-roaring 90's, when everyone was making boatloads of money and when the Most Important Happening in the World was OJ Simpson.  Why not go to law school, I told myself?

Fast forward to May of 1998.  Twenty-five years old, Juris Doctor degree in hand, pretty significant credit card debt ($10,000??)  and somewhere in the neighborhood of $42,000 in nondischargable student loan debt that, unbeknownst to me, should really be paid back sooner rather than later.  But hey, Clinton was still in office and the tech bubble hadn't burst -- things were still awesomely looking up!  I would be a full-fledged lawyer soon and lawyers made great money with terrific career!

Fast forward to today.  I still am a lawyer and in fact do have a terrific career, although the magnificent riches I imagined as a wide-eyed law school grad never quite materialized.  But I am supremely happy, with a wonderful wife and two fantastic kiddos, a nice, old house in the Greatest Neighborhood in Little Rock.  I even overcame my youthful, idiotic credit card spending frenzy as well as the poor economic and financial choices I made circa 1998-2003 (fun times to be sure, but completely irresponsible!).  My credit card balance now reaches into only the very low hundreds (currently around $250) on the worst days, and I actually have retirement savings and a Roth IRA and all that.

But man, those f*cking student loans.

Thirteen years after walking across that stage at the Walton Arts Center to grab my JD diploma from the meaty hand of Dean Strickland, I still owe just slightly more than $19,000 in student loans.  And while I'm on track to pay these off within the next twelve months due to my wife's and my decision to put everything else on the backburner to aggressively knock them out before next spring (which is only possible after previously knocking out all our other existing debt), it makes me sick to my stomach that I very likely will end up spending close to $70,000 to pay off the original $42,000 note. 

Granted, this is completely my fault given my spendthrift ways when I was a young, single man about town (again, circa 1998-2003 :)), running up consumer debt and not fully addressing -- or, really, appreciating -- the student loan debt that was piling up while I deferred payments for five years while I survived on a salary that started out at $25K/year in 1998 and was only at $43K/year in 2003.  But even while fully culpable for my own foibles, the fact that I could not discharge them in bankruptcy even if I wanted to, allowing them to follow you around well, forever...well, it just infuriates me.  And this doesn't even address what the costs of college and the rules regarding student loans are doing to this generation.  THAT is a crime. 

Overstating it a bit

It is one of the modern tenets of HillcrestBlog to refrain from politics for a variety of reasons.  This is not to say that I do not have political opinions; to the contrary, I am very opinionated.  But that's not the direction I want this blog to take.  If you want some good political bloggage, trust me, its out there, whatever your politics. That being said, I want to shortly discuss something that the current Speaker of the House of Representatives said yesterday in order to make a broader point. 

Specifically, John Boehner of Ohio said this, in relation to the possibility that Barack Obama may be reelected to the Presidency this November:

The president’s economic policies have failed. I would argue they actually have made things worse. And as a result, the president has turned to the politics of envy and division...

America can’t live for four more years with Barack Obama as president. His policies will turn America in a direction that we may never recover from...

It’s sending America down a path that will look a lot like what we see in Europe: A big social welfare state, high unemployment, slow economic growth and a government that is overly large.

If you have a government that can give you everything that you want, you have a government that can take everything that you have.

I excerpted the entire passage from this FOX News interview to give the quote some context, but the specific sentence I'm focusing on I've highlighted in bold print.

"That we may never recover from." 

Seriously?  I mean, does he really mean that? 

Not to get too bogged down in historical analysis, but this nation has recovered from some very trying times.  There's the whole dissolution of the Union thing, a couple of World Wars, a Great Depression, several Presidential assassinations, September 11, 2001 -- you know, really big freaking happenings that tore the fabric of our nation.  But after each one, the nation recovered and moved forward. 

Now, you might be of a mind that President Obama's economic policies are indeed quite destructive.  That is your opinion and you are absolutely entitled to it.  But does Speaker Boehner really believe the fallout from those economic policies would be worse than the Great Depression, where unemployment increased 607% from 1929 to 1932?  Or any worse than the United State's own death toll from World War Two -- 400,000 citizens?  Or the Civil War -- 620,000 military deaths?

I guess what bugs me the most is this use of extreme hyperbole in what should be real-world discussions about real-world issues.  Statements like Boehner's only serve to inflame and exaggerate for the benefit of one's own opinion to the point where you cannot even take it seriously.  And a Presidential Election should be taken seriously, especially when it is being commented on by the person third in the line of succession to the Presidency itself.  If Boehner had said something like "economic policies that will take us several years to recover from," well, OK.  Hell, even if he said "a generation," I would be OK with that.  Whether or not you believe that or not, at least that statement has some real-world tether, because although the United States did in fact emerge from the Great Depression, it did take several years, indeed over a decade. 

Ultimately, the United States is a strong, strong nation -- so strong that any one President's economic policies are not going to doom it, much less forever.  The nation has resisted schism and conquered foes and met challenges far greater than the ones Speaker Boehner portends would be so terrible from our current President.  I just think that, given his position in the government and the fact that he has to know that his statement is demonstrably false, that his comments should reflect that and should avoid the sky-is-falling rhetoric that seems so pervasive during the election season.

And Democrats, if one of you says something similarly over-the-top, shame on you as well.

Thoughts on the new Razorback coach

The uniquely named John Smith, new head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks.

Good hire, I guess?  Really, when push comes to shove, I suppose I really don't care about who heads the team with the same kind of gusto several of my good friends and family do (also, the chuckleheads and callers on local sports talk radio...thank you, I'll hang up and listen).  There was a time that this was decidedly not the case, where I very much cared about the Head Hog and our sports teams' records and how much respect! we were getting at the national level.  But in recent years, that interest has ceded to the more enjoyable and relaxing position of supporting the teams on game day, hoisting a cold beer when they score a touchdown or sink a three-pointer, but being able to sleep soundly after a win or a loss -- especially after a loss -- and not letting the result affect me one way or the other for the rest of the week, season, or year.

I'm not sure when the change came, whether it is the effect of simply getting older and further and further away from the relative ages of the players themselves (making college sports look in my eyes like more and more of a game that kids play -- Big Business, sure, but still a game), or whether having children just makes everything else so tangential and inconsequential, or for some other reason.  I do know that when I canceled my subscription to the Democrat-Gazette and stopped reading daily dispatches from the practice fields and (thank goodness) Wally Hall's perfectly and pointedly stupid daily Hog Yes-Man/Apologist sports-page column, my compulsive interest almost immediately waned.  Likewise, tuning out sports talk radio was a godsend for disconnecting myself from the rabidity displayed by the overwhelming majority of Hogoholics.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I was well attuned to the circumstances and almost-daily breaking news of Bob Petrino's shocking downfall, as well as the who's-it-gonna be drama surrounding the search for his successor.  I exchanged bits of news I came across with several good friends and enjoyed the speculation and internet rumor-mongering.  How could I not?!  It was an Arkansas Soap Opera of the highest order!  Even the relatively disengaged such as myself could not help but be drawn into the fray of discussion.  But now that the music's over and John L. Smith Has Signed a Ten-Month Contract Only (trademarked phrase), I have no real feelings about it one way or the other.  It could have been him or Jon Gruden or Garrick McGehee or Bud Foster or Bill Freaking Belechick.  Doesn't really matter - I just want the team to do well and play an enjoyable (from my perspective) style of football.

And Hell Yeah I'm excited about the prospects of the team this year, with Tyler Wilson! and Knile Davis! going for the Heisman! and BAMA AND LSU AT HOME! and all that, but I'm perfectly happy not worrying or thinking about it one whit until, oh, I don't know, August the 10th or something like that?  Two weeks prior to the season sounds about right.  It'll be lots of fun for those four months.  But to everything there is a (football) season, and my fan-sense is perfectly happy with enjoying those twelve Saturday afternoons in the fall and leaving it at that.

So, go Hogs and Woo Piggie!  Now, I'll redirect my attention to almost anything else.  Let me know when the first game is.

Six months

That's how long this blog has been dormant.  Almost to the day.  How do I know this?  Well, today I took my son in for his six-month checkup and my last post was the day he was born last October.  Not exactly High Math, that.

During this last six months I've often thought about posting something to the blog but, for whatever reason, just either didn't get around to doing it or got sidetracked by something else (if you have ever lived in 1,350 square feet of house with a wife, a two year old and a newborn, you know this is a very easy thing to have happen to you!).  Or maybe the post I thought about writing was interesting but just not *that interesting* to the point where I felt the urge to get the laptop, try to remember my password, and then opine on it.  The moment by then would surely have passed, I'd tell myself.  Or there are any other number of reasons...but probably just one main one: inertia.  Because the further you get from regularly blogging the harder it gets to return to the fold, exponentially.  It literally requires sitting down and just freaking *making* yourself write something.  And once you do...the blockage has been removed and you remember just how painless it is -- indeed, enjoyable even! :) -- to throw something up on your blog.  Which is what I am experiencing literally while I write this sentence.

And then you think of a hundred things to write about.  And you cannot wait to get started.

See, self?  That was easy.  Welcome back, HillcrestBlogger.

An ode to this awesome weather

Not very often are you going to hear a person get excited about 53 degrees with wind and rain, but you are going to hear exactly that from me today.

After months of humid*, oppressive heat, AUTUMN** is finally here. So, bring on the rain and let the leaves drop from the trees, just in time for Halloween season.  Here here!  THIS is truly what is known as "football" weather, as opposed to the mid- to upper-80's we've been seeing.  And, when it eventually gets here, like it did during the overnight hours last night, Arkansas does "football weather" about as good as anywhere.


*  But hardly any rain.
**  My favorite season, by far.  And, I've decided to start using the term "autumn" instead of "fall."  It sounds more...refined ;)

Multiple updates from the HillcrestBlogger

Sorry the blog has been largely content-free for the last week (aside from the abbreviated music video postings).  My wife ended up not delivering last week, but was instead put on bed rest and is scheduled to deliver next Monday.  Which means that I get to not only be excited about the prospect of my soon-to-be-newborn son for another week but I also get to shoulder double the chores- and kid-load for another week since my wife cannot physically exert herself.  Now, before you think I'm whining -- I'm not!  I understand its part of the job and know that my wife will be assuming a much greater job in giving birth and being mommy to another cute kid.  But man...It. Is.  Exhausting.

Update #2 is that, after reverting back to an all-protein diet one week ago, I finally moved off the weight-loss plateau I've been on for the last several weeks and now have a new weight-loss low since June 20, when I decided to lose the weight.  I'm now down 21.8 pounds!  Hit the twenty mark!  Now, I'd like to hit the thirty mark by Thanksgiving.  I think that's a doable goal.

Update #3 is that I continue to kick ass in my fantasy football leagues.  I'm in four of them.  In two of them I'm 5-1.  In another I'm 4-2.  The other I am only 3-3, but have won three straight.  I think it is a very real possibility that I'll be in the playoffs for all of my leagues.  Sure, that's a super-dork thing to be excited about, but I'm excited nonetheless.

Update #4 is that my soccer team finally put together a good, solid half of play yesterday.  We still lost, but we were a discombobulated mess for the first half yesterday, which was par for the course so far this season (which, it should be said, has been highlighted more for injuries sustained to top players than anything else).  However, a couple of minor halftime tweaks and we outscored our opponents in the second half yesterday, 3-2.  Like I said, we still lost the match, as we have all season long, but maybe we finally will have turned the corner.

We ALL have rights, right?

Bank of America's CEO says that it has a "right to make a profit" in defense of that bank's decision to start charging the must-discussed and vilified $5.00 debit card fee. 

Ok, then.  Don't get me started on the fact that Bank of America was given free money by taxpayers in order to save that $hitty company from its horrible investments in the subprime mortgage market.  Yes, I know that  BOA repaid the TARP funds in full, but if not for the taxpayers of the United States of America, BOA would not still exist.  So, as a thank you for rescuing BOA from the grave and for insisting that the banking industry, you know, didn't continue to engage in predatory and reckless practices, they've decided to make you pay if you use your debit card as anything more than an ATM card.  And, please note, that as I understand it, you will NOT be charged the fee if you keep a minimum balance of something like $20,000.00.  Because BOA doesn't want to piss off the rich!  How silly would that be?!?  No, its you poor saps (like yours truly) that BOA wants to hit with the fee.  Read that again:  Bank of America is targeting the not-wealthy people -- the poor people -- with the fee that is designed to make it a profit. 

So, yeah, I guess that they have that right.  This is a capitalist country, after all.

And, in that vein, we as consumers have a right to not leave our money with Bank of America. 

Everyone!  If you bank with a huge multinational banking conglomerate -- Move Your Money!  There are dozens of banks in your area (whether it be Hillcrest or Little Rock or Arkansas, or another state) that will gladly let you house your money there and not charge you for checking or the use of a debit card for purchases.  Be a capitalist!  Or pretend to be one!  Use the better and cheaper product!

This is your public service announcement for today.  I hope you consider it.

Don't feel much like blogging today

When I arrived at work this morning I discovered that a co-worker had been killed last night -- hit by a car driven by an 80-year old man who was driving shortly after dusk.  This, after another co-worker was murdered two Sundays ago.  Like two gut-shots, two very fine people are senselessly gone.  As you can imagine, my workplace today was somber and I'm just not feeling it.  I'll be back at you tomorrow night, perhaps.

Back after a long weekend

Well, as you can see from my lack of posts over the last handful of days, I've been a little busy.  It all started with my daughter running a fever on Thursday night, which segued into taking off on Friday to be home with her.  Then, Saturday presented a family baby shower for my wife in the morning, which bled into the Razorbacks/A&M game, which led to Saturday mid-afternoon (read: more football watching).  Sunday was chores and NFL, topped off by beers with my buddy Marco Sunday evening at the neighborhood pub.  And here we are.  Now that I've accounted for my whereabouts since Thursday night, here are some thoughts:

1.  The Hog game.  Wow.  Whoever is Texas A&M's offensive coordinator should first be fired, then drawn and quartered.  The Aggies could run at will all game long.  Why they didn't just run it 75 straight times is beyond me.  But they didn't and decided throw it, which led to some Hog chances and also lengthened the game.  Then, before you knew it, the Hogs D got a little better and made some timely plays while the Hog O geared it up and started scoring points.  By the time A&M went back to the run (after the Hogs took the lead), they failed to get a couple of yards when they needed it most -- on a 4th down play -- effectively ending the game. 

I've seen this phenomenon more times than I can count.  Some football coach (or, really, ANY sports coach) wants to do so many different things, "change things up", and look multi-dimensional, or whatever.  This, instead of what they REALLY should do, which is do that one thing they do best, over and over.  It was very clear very early on that A&M could run at will.  They didn't need to pass the football to win.  Sure, running the ball 75 times a game might get monotonous and bore the fanbase, but would the fanbase rather watch a somewhat-boring win or a multi-dimensional, exciting loss?  A&M fans know the answer to that*.

2.  So Bank of America is the worst company in the United States.  Well, there are others, but BOA is making the headlines with their recent announcement of the $5.00 monthly debit card fee.  The HillcrestBlog family has been transitioning out of BOA since the revelations about BOA's behavior leading up to and during the Great Recession (2008-current), but we still have a couple of random accounts there.  They are not used much and instead we retain them to sock away money into dedicated savings accounts.  At least we do now...maybe not for very much longer.  Instead, we moved our day-to-day banking to Delta Trust, a local, neighborhood bank.  So far, two years in, we're very happy**.  If anyone is listening, definitely move your money to a local bank and out of these huge Wall Street banking conglomerates.  Its better for the economy and you won't keep getting jerked around by the likes of BOA. 

3.  Ahhhh...the weather.

4.  Attention: runners.

5.  Mark your calendars, Hillcrest HarvestFest in two weekends!  Do you make a mean cheese dip? 

6.  Is this a movement?  I find it very interesting.  There's a website, but no real overriding organization.  What I do know is that Wall Street needs to be tamed.  Perhaps this is the beginning of something.  I guess we shall see.   

*  So do Nebraska fans.
**  Personal service, no phone trees, no lines at ATM machine, no lines at deposit window, no lines inside at teller window, easy and accessible on-line account and bill-pay, convenient location on Kavanaugh, etc.