Cigarette prices went up today and this past week people were stocking up. They were flying off the shelves as fast as they got them in. I tried quiting last year and actually stopped for a month, but circumstances made me turn back to them. I did cut down drastically and decided never to smoke inside again as punishment for being so weak. So regardless how cold it is outside or how hot and humid if I’m that desperate to smoke I force myself to go out.
When they enforced the no smoking law many bars and restaurants lost a lot of business. The restaurant I use to work for is one in particular so they recently built on an addition outside just for smokers and the inside is strictly non smoking, business has started picking up again for them and everyone seems happy. I agree with a man that was on the news that they ought to tax liquor more because of all the deaths that occur because of drunk drivers.
It’s my choice if I want to smoke and I never smoke around people that don’t. Yes, I agree that smokers stink especially to non smokers, but I try to steer clear of those that don’t or at least keep a respectable distance from them so they don’t have to suffer maybe that’s why I don’t do much visiting and I’m always washing my hands. I wish I’d never started, but I always followed my Sister’s lead and we stole cigarettes from our Daddy when we were very young and it mushroomed from there.
When I started buying my own cigarettes instead of bumming from my Brother back in 68 they were around 30 cents a pack and cigarette machines were on every corner even little kids could buy them. You could even walk around in every store with a cigarette dangling from your mouth or fingers. Thinking about back then that was kind of stupid with the smoke making new clothes smell like crap and cigarette ashes and butts everywhere.
Smokers have no rights anymore and I’m sure most people agree that they shouldn’t, but since I’m in this minority because health conscious people kicked the habit I think it sucks. I’m sure they will try to ban me from smoking in my own car and even create the special smoke police task force to give me a fine if they catch me outside next. I like to make my own choices and hopefully I’ll make the right one someday, but I’m not ready yet to decide what that might be.
I hate to shop so it’s a good thing Bill does it. He always makes a list and uses coupons when he remembers to give them to the cashier, usually he forgets unless I’m there to remind him. He has his favorite store which everyone calls the ghetto Giant because he’s always shopped there and knows his way around. They built a brand new one about 2 miles from our house, but he hates it even though they have a better deli and better selection of meat and seafood and salad bar plus everything the other one doesn’t.
Most of us are creatures of habit and don’t really like change, he’s been working the same job for over forty years, but it’s really stressing him out the past few years and he’s really looking forward to retirement. Last week he told me he was definitely going to retire when he turns 62 in December and I said great, but now he’s afraid we can’t survive on Social Security and his company doesn’t have a retirement package. He makes more in one week than he will draw for the whole month when he retires.
I personally would rather see him unstressed without much money than stressed and sick with money to spend when he feels like it. Which brings me back to shopping, every Sunday he makes his trip to the store and always spends at least 80 dollars and sometimes more which amazes me because there’s not much there when he brings it home plus the bonus card always knocks the prices down and they always have the buy one get one free on certain items plus for every 100 you spend you get money off their gas prices.
Usually we end up getting 50 cents off a gallon and since gas prices have gone back up over two dollars that’s a big savings. Most people are on a budget and so are we, but when he retires it will be even more strict. Bill’s favorite food is a pot of beans, potatoes and greens with corn bread and since we both grew up in the south that was more or less a staple for us poor folks. We were talking about what we would want for our last meal and of course he said beans for myself I will have a 2 inch steak cooked Pittsburgh rare, burnt on the outside and rare in the center.
I usually cook him a pot of pinto beans every week or every other and today is his bean day and he will eat them till he feels miserable. My brother is strange because without me telling him which week or day I’m cooking beans he always shows up on that day because he loves beans just like Bill and I think he must smell them from 10 blocks away it’s uncanny. This morning he called to ask when I’d cut his hair and I told him Thursday so he then asked me what I was doing and I said cooking and of course he wanted to know what, needless to say he’ll be here at 4 to eat.
Since the big talk these days is all about red meat killing you if I’m gonna die anyways then I’ll go after I eat my red meat. Of course when retirement gets here I can see that we will be eating a lot of beans and potatoes which is fine and I’ll probably make a garden and learn to can food. I seldom ever buy new clothes I prefer thrift stores and consignment shops because I’m frugal and besides you can find good clothes for half the price, big deal I’m not too proud I just make sure I wash them good. I’m not that fond of beans, but I’ll survive on anything if Bill is happier. I guess I better start stocking up on Beano.
I use the teaser plug-in on this blog because I like to show the word count and how long it takes to read the post. Most people use it to cut down their bounce rate, they use a catchy title then show a paragraph or two then you have to click over if you want to read the rest of the post. Bounce rate really isn’t something that concerns me though so I don’t bother trying to tease anyone. I’ve been looking for some new wordpress plug-ins.
There might be something wrong with me because I love Rick Astley and the video so it never bothered me to get RickRoll’d. Well, I never said I was right in the head for those of you that detest him and the video. I just happened to run across it on SU and of course I gave it a thumbs up and watched it twice before I reluctantly moved on to something else. I really don’t use SU very much, but you can find some cool new sites
I’m trying to manage my time better otherwise I would have goofed off more and watched more of his video’s. I have really been mismanaging my time lately by checking stats repeatedly so now I check once in the morning and once at night instead of every 30 minutes. I don’t know if everyone has the same fascination or not, but I really need to get over it with getclicky, sitemeter, and my c-panel stats. I really need to start a list, but they stress me.
I find myself doing the same things over and over and wasting time, what I really need to do is get off this computer and quit pretending I’m working and get started on preparing my taxes. I tend to avoid unpleastness until the last minute because I seem to work better under pressure, but April 15th will be here before I know it since time seems to slip away from me the older I get. It’s still not nice enough to work outside yet so that gets me down and I waste even more time on the computer.
I joined Blog Explosion last week and it took a week to be approved, but I tried it today and saw that a lot of Entrecard blogs were already using it which is cool because I can kill 2 birds with one stone. I always hated that expression because I would never want to kill any birds, but it does get the point across about accomplishing 2 things at the same time.
I don’t know how effective this traffic exchange is, but I noticed a lot of Today blogs on there as well so many are also using them to help their visitor count. They have options to block mature content amongst a few others. It has a timer of 30 seconds then you click on the correct number shown to view another blog. I found a lot of new blogs which were very interesting.
I did notice that if you have 2 tabs open in the same browser and you switch to the other tab the timer stops till you open it back up. That’s good because at least you know people have to view your blog for at least that long. Of course I’m sure some people have already found a way to get around that because some people like nothing better than thinking up ways to scam a system. You can also win mystery credits.
I had planned on writing about what makes us as people decide to buy things and to show the trigger that make us reach into our pocket an actually pull out the credit card and commit and to show some of the triggers that make us want to buy a product or service. Believe me ad people really know the trigger points to push and they are: Greed/Desire For Personal Gain, Love/Affection, Self-Indulgence, Self-Preservation/ Survival, Pride, and Sense of Duty/Honor.
As you can see I didn’t get around to it because Bill came home at 10:30 AM. He decided to take half the day off because he is so disgusted with his job and it was suppose to be up in the 60″s so it was a pleasant surprise. He went and washed the Harley and saw it was leaking from the right fork so we rode over to Laugerman’s Harley Davidson to see what should be done. Apparently it’s not serious and we can still ride. Dave told him what to do to alleviate the drip and when we knew it was safe we rode some.
I can’t wait for nice weather so we can ride and I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do with the Suzuki. Do I want to learn to shift the gears or just go with the automatic? I did shift up to 3 gears last year before my Son got sick and I lost interest and didn’t even try any more. We stopped and got hotwings, but I got sick after eating them last night and felt like crap all day today so I haven’t left the house and I feel bad because it’s time I could have spent doing something with Bill.
I’ll try and pick up this trigger thread next week, but I wont swear to anything. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and we’ll type at each other on Monday. One more thing, I really hate to see the Today blogs leaving Entrecard because half of my drops come from them and the majority are great blogs and I’m sure they hate the departure as well given the fact that the traffic is great for their overall pay rate. I certainly hope they can find the traffic to help them, what a pity for everyone.
