Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Anyone else wondering what the frak is happening?

Seriously, folks. Just wondering if I am going to have a retirement fund or not. It's not like I have a lot of money or anything, and I wouldn't be accessing it anytime soon, but it would be nice to know if the last nearly 9 years of paying in isn't going to vanish overnight.

I've been trying to make sense of this whole mess, and to be honest, it sounds like there are some pretty stupid people running the show. Someone thought it would make sense to sell off bits of debt, to other banks, to spread around risk. Now, instead of keeping the amount of this debt to something realistic, they instead loaned out MORE THAN THE AMOUNT OF MONEY IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

Did you get that last part????

Not only did they make loans that totaled more than the amount of money in the whole WORLD, they also apparently couldn't really track any of it. Entities don't even know how much of these pieces of debt that they "own". And they loaned it to people who they KNEW would have problems paying it back! This couldn't have worked out better to screw us over if it had been planned!

Deregulation, folks. It was responsible for the Enron fiasco, and now it is responsible for the World Wide WTF that has been echoing across the earth for the last week.

Funny thing, these regulations. You see, they were put into place after the Great Depression, in order to prevent the same thing from happening in the future. Regulations are not fun. They aren't supposed to be. In the 80's, there was something called the Keating Five. Look that up. Guess who was one of the five?

So, are we surprised this happened again? After all, there were still regulations in place to prevent the mergers of banks at a certain level, so we wouldn't get massive banks/insurance/brokers/etc. Except that those got chipped away, too.

So, all of the safeguards that were put into place after our first major lesson in humility were swept away in the push to get people into homes they couldn't afford, so a few people could make a lot, and I mean, a LOT of money. The lure of easy money makes one less likely to ask the hard questions, such as, "What happens when people default?"

And who is this 700 BILLION going to help?

Well, it will help some people keep their jobs. Some of those people need to be fired for gross incompetence, but I doubt that the real culprits will take the fall. It will be the chewing gum in the dam crack, though, frankly. Shockwaves are going around the world on this, and already countries are getting nervous. And there absolutely HAS to be accountability, as well as careful consideration of all aspects of the bailout plan. We don't want to agree to something that is going to come back to haunt us. Congress has the President on their backs, trying to hurry them along, which I think is a mistake. This is a seriously ass-load of money. They have to have the details sorted out before committing.

Eight years, folks. Eight years from fiscal solvency as a government, budget surplus, to the mess we are going to wake up to every day for a terribly long time. We will never be able to pay all of this back.

What a fraking mess...

Monday, September 15, 2008

So, there's no way he got this from my son...

My nephew has Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease! It's been nearly two months since my son had it, and my God, I just realized we haven't gotten to see them since the week before he got sick. :(

Too much going on!

Anyway, the big news last Friday was that the Des Moines Renaissance Faire's final weekend was postponed due to extreme weather. Flash flood watch, lots, and lots, and lots of rain and mud. Turns out it was a good idea to postpone, as Sunday ended up being extremely cold and dangerously windy. But, things should be dried out by this weekend, when we will don our garb, and double-up on some parts to make up for key characters who cannot be there. It will all work out!

Gotta go finish the laundry. Wouldn't you know it - the first weekend I've had off in ages, and the laundry room was closed all weekend. Luckily, we had clothes for the weekend and today, but I would much rather have had all of yesterday to work on it, than trying to cram as much as I can in the evenings of this week.

Oh well.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Arg!

I was actually making decent progress tonight on the King's doublet, until I got most of the cotton drill pieces pressed.

Until the iron quit heating...

...With only part of the cotton drill pieces finished, and none of the black cotton lining ironed at all.

...Which means that I can't even get a few of the pieces basted together, as I need to baste the black cotton and the drill together, treating them as one piece and constructing the garment.

And of course on the night when I really am not sleepy at all, thanks to new medication, so I am actually not really ready to go to sleep yet, although I should be.

Well, I guess I could spend some time cleaning...

Sunday, September 07, 2008

How to tell when the GeekGirl is really exhausted...

She's having a hard time staying awake long enough to watch Mad Men.

Note: I had a "Forest of Windsor" moment earlier today. I'll explain more later, but for now, I'll simply say that someone got a bit of a crush, and I was unable to remove myself from the situation in time to avoid feeling very uncomfortable. Last weekend's enthusiastic fan was following the rules of courtly love, and only bantered with me (and at least near my age). Not so this one...

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Exhausted, but had a great opening weekend!

I am still trying to recuperate after the opening weekend of the Des Moines Renaissance Faire. The word of the weekend was, "HOT!". Temps were in the upper 80's, with yesterday hitting 90.

Lots of photo galleries are in the works. I'll post links once I get a moment. And since I have until Friday evening to finish the King's doublet, I may not get a chance for awhile.

Two great weekends left!!!!