Oct 30

I wrote a blog yesterday, posted it but wasn’t happy with it. It really wasn’t blogworthy. First thing this morning I deleted it. Today I’ll try again.

I got up to the alarm clock this morning. I started sleeping later and later each morning and wanted to stop the trend. I’m going to have to wake up early on Saturday anyway so this will get me ready. Setting our clocks back an hour this weekend will help me recover from the drive we are going on in time to drive back.

I just saw a story on the CBS Evening news about a program where prison inmates are used to train shelter dogs. The program provides the inmates with new life skills, responsibility, patience and yes, kindness and love. The dogs, once trained, are no longer throw-aways but are highly adoptable. What I found incredible was the emotion the inmates had for the dogs. They interviewed a woman serving a life sentence. She kept a picture book with pictures of every dog she trained. She pointed out, with tears in her eyes, her favorite. Another male inmate got too choked up to talk as he was being interviewed. Another had trained 54 dogs and was wiping his eyes as he told the reporter about the program. It is rare to see a good news story like this. It was a welcome relief from the other stories and the constant bombardment of nasty political adds we are experiencing. Coincidentally, Penny’s blog has a dog story in it today.

I finished the David Sedaris book today, “When You Are Engulfed in Flames”. You don’t understand the title of the book until the last CD. He spends the better part of 2 CDs discussing his struggles with giving up smoking. I find it interesting that this guy, who is so self-centered and insecure has easily traveled around the world and lived in the US, France and Japan. Somehow I thought it would take some sophistication and more rational thinking to do that. He just drifts along meeting strange people and making quirky and comical observations. I guess all you need is money and the rest will be provided. Now if I remember I will bring the book with me and let Karen read it. She gave it to me as a gift.

Tomorrow is Halloween. We weren’t sure we would be in town for it until yesterday so we haven’t gotten any candy yet. Last year we got a decent showing of kids. The neighborhood is going through a new generation of kids. Tomorrow is Target day so we will get our Halloween supplies just in time. That’s unusual for us. We usually get the stuff 3 or 4 weeks in advance.

When I worked one option for saving for retirement was the Government Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). The plan consists of several funds with varying degrees of risk and return. I always put my contribution into the most conservative fund, the “G” Fund. I watched as several years ago some investments made 20% while the G Fund made 4 to 6%. I also watched as the other funds fell 20% and the G Fund made 3%. I just checked the funds performances over the last year and every fund except the G Fund has lost a lot of money. The G Fund isn’t returning the 6% needed for me to continue taking out the monthly allotment I have been doing. Our plan was to pay ourselves the interest from the plan and keep the principle about the same. In that manner we could get added monthly income for life. But with the return getting close to 0 we are reducing the monthly allotment to the minimum allowed.

.........................The G Fund is the top green line

We will tighten our belts for a while and wait for better times—hopefully not too long. We traveled a lot this year and spent more freely while we could. We knew things would get bad for a while, they always do. The big question is how bad and how long?