How to Pick a President

I just had a discussion recently with a Fox-breathing republican friend of mine where I pointed out that while I did drink the O koolaid, I’ve been clean and sober for about a year now. There probably should be a 12 step group for this, but I think most of the 12 steppers probably drank the W koolaid.

Now that I’m sober, I realize I haven’t liked any of our presidents much since Reagan. So I started thinking about how we could pick a good one, since this whole voting thing isn’t working out so well.

Now I don’t want to ditch voting entirely, since that seems to lead to things like the Taliban and Kim Jung Il. I kinda like the Queen of England, but after all that shooting a couple centuries back, we really can’t ask her I guess. I thought about this for a long time then it hit me:

Bring back the draft. Continue reading

This Is Your Brain On Stupid — #1

Your Brain On StupidThe ZuZu Pet Incident

So the Honor Roll Student gets a ZuZu pet. We’re on our way to school. As we left the house Momma specifically says “Don’t put that on your head, you’ll get it stuck in your hair.”

As we get to school: “Momma I put him on my head and now he’s stuck in my hair!”

To which Mom and Dad start cracking up and grab the camera! The first moment of the redneck call “Hey y’all watch this”.

© 2010 Evil Wordsmith. Evilwordsmith.com. All Rights Reserved.

Just One Train

A Slow Train Day

Even on the days when we have time to watch the trains, sometimes they’re not very accommodating and we only see one during our visit. This was such a day.

Amtrak

Amtrak 195

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© This material is the intellectual property of Author Springwolf


© 2006-2013 Evilwordsmith.com. All Rights Reserved, Springwolf, D.D., Ph.D.

Is Nascar A Sport? Are Nascar Drivers Athletes?

The Questions That Simply Won’t Go Away
By Springwolf – Updated 11/2013

It’s a continual question from those who don’t know racing and don’t take the time to learn:

image2.jpgEvery year some ‘sports writer’ or newspaper columnist voices the question and then attempts to answer it by saying Nascar is just a southern activity attended by beer drinking rednecks. They profess to know more than the millions of fans who watch their favorite driver, team and races by claiming that Nascar isn’t a sport and the drivers aren’t athletes. “All they do is make left turns and waste gas” is their typical line.

Sadly their rhetoric is voiced by the millions of people who don’t have a clue what racing is about. Add to that the age of Twitter and Facebook which gives a platform to people to degrade and put down anyone who does see things the way they do.

After a while it does get annoying and fans of Nascar sometimes feel the need or desire to respond to these questions. We all know it falls on deaf ears and rarely makes a difference. But many of us love our sport and want to defend it against those that simply use stereotypical put-downs to degrade something they don’t understand. Continue reading

Spring’s Big News

Spring (aka Lady SpringWolf)  is an author and deeply respected teacher of Pagan Metaphysics, Spiritual Enlightenment and personal development. For over twenty-five years, she has been committed to making esoteric material comprehensible and practical for everyone. Spring’s many gifts include clairvoyance, aura interpretation, past-life analysis, dream interpretation, numerology, Tarot, Reiki healing and Spiritual Psychology. Spring has facilitated thousands of individuals in developing greater awareness, balance and wholeness in their lives through her classes, workshops and lectures. She provides classes and services at her Spring’s Haven Spiritual Center in Virginia.
 
Spring has written many articles for magazines around the world concerning Metaphysical principles and pagan practices. Now she is sharing her knowledge through the book series Pagan Metaphysics – Guides To Spiritual Enlightenment scheduled for release in the fall of 2011 from Schiffer Publishing.
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Official Site of Author & Teacher Lady SpringWolf

© 2012 Evil Wordsmith. Evilwordsmith.com. All Rights Reserved.

Making Home Affordable – Applying & Denied

Since 2007 the U.S. has been in a financial catastrophe. But for some reason, the only people who have gotten noticed are those laid off in 2008 when big business began to take a bigger hit. What happened to those thousands of people who were laid off in 2007, who’s companies closed and went out of business? Many of them have been left behind.

Long before Circuit City announced it was going into bankruptcy and closing it’s doors, it went through a major restructuring. That’s a fancy way of saying there were a series of layoffs. Early in 2007, in the summer of and later in the year soon before Christmas, over 3,000 people were laid off. Not just people in their stores, but also a large group of professionals in the companies main headquarters in Richmond, Virginia.

The capital of Virginia has seen it’s share of hardships like many other capital cities. Once a magnate for business, the “great recession” hit the city hard and it’s major businesses began closing their doors. Some for greener pastures, some to save money and focus on other regions where they have holdings. It’s not unlike other places around the U.S. or the world for that matter.

Everyone knows that without companies to work for, the American workforce suffers. Some more drastic than others. People lived off their unemployment. But those who were laid off in the first half of 2007 found themselves left out of the unemployment extensions. Those people began living off their savings, if they were lucky enough to have one. Once that was gone, they started hitting their 401k and other retirement accounts. When that was gone, they began trying to sell anything and everything they had in order to keep their home.

In steps the Government and President Obama’s Make Home Affordable program. An effort to save American homes for people caught in the financial catastrophe. The problem with the program is there’s no oversight of how banks and mortgage companies are applying the guidelines. Consequently only about 12 to 14% of people who apply are finding the help they need. There’s no appeal process, no one to go to for a second opinion. If the bank says no, it’s no and that’s the end.

But is it?

Check out the governments Making Home Affordable website (http://www.makinghomeaffordable.gov) and you’ll find a large amount of information and online tools to help you through the process.

Starting with; Don’t wait until your mortgage is past due and delinquent. If you now you won’t be able to make your payments in a month or 2, or 4; contact your mortgage company and ask them for paperwork to apply for the Making Home Affordable program.

Check out the Asked & Answered page on the governments website (http://www.makinghomeaffordable.gov/asked-and-answered.html). You’ll find a large amount of information that will fit your situation and some that wont.

Once you complete the application and submit it to your mortgage company, place a call to the Homeowner’s HOPE™ Hotline at 1-888-995-HOPE. They will help you find a financial counselor that can provide assistance and support for your application.

If you filed an application and your bank has turned down your request for aid, your best recourse is the Homeowner’s HOPE™ Hotline and a financial counselor. These counselors are approved by the Government to provide help with the Making Home Affordable program. They know how it works, what the guidelines are and how they are supposed to be applied.

The Counselor will take your financial information, what money if any you have coming into your home, what your expenses are and what assets if any you have. They run it through their system and help you determine if you qualify for a mortgage modification. Even if the bank has turned you down already. The Counselor/Company will develop an assessment report and contact the mortgage company. Their report is very detailed and they can educate the bank on how the program is to be applied to your specific case. They become your advocate.

The bank still has the option of ignoring the recommendation. But with this information in hand, you can take the process to the next step if you’ve already been denied. Contact your senators and congressperson. Don’t assume they won’t listen. They are just as interested in helping you and ensuring this program works properly as you are. Send them an email or call them. Don’t send a letter through snail mail; it takes way to long. If you send an email, make sure you follow up with their office the following day.

Keep in mind this is your house, if it’s worth fighting for you have to make the effort to fight. Keep looking for a job. Keep after your representatives. Keep calling your bank and keep in touch with them about what they’re doing. There’s nothing worse than thinking you are doing the right things only to receive a letter in snail mail notifying you that your house is now in foreclosure and sale of the property has been scheduled.

It’s your home..fight for it..you can do it.

This entry was posted on March 1, 2010, in Politics.

2009 NFL Superbowl pick

We’re a little late in posting the results of our 2009 NFL Season picks. But better late than never.

The little prince and I were very excited to see the Saints win the Superbowl. We both picked them to win and it ended our season on a high note. The prince wasn’t interested in how he did for the year, which is probably good since he didn’t pick the first several weeks. But I didn’t do so badly. A total of 173 wins out of 267 games. That’s only 94 picks lost. Woohoo. 

Super Bowl XLIV – Sun Feb 7 – CBS

New Orleans

Indianapolis

 Momma
 New Orleans
 Prince
New Orleans
W – 31 / 17  W

Totals:  Wins – 1       Losses – 0     of 1Season: W = 173/ L = 94  of 267

Totals:  Wins – 1       Losses – 0     of 1

Superbowl

Here’s the pick:

Away Home Winner Vegas Line O/U Bets
Indianapolis New Orleans 23 24 NO IND 5 57 NO Under

Well, here it is, a chance for the Ain’ts to make history and earn the name Saints by finally winning a Superbowl. Apparently, I’m going to miss it.

I’d like to bitch about Comcast, well I am going to bitch about them, but it’s not really their fault this time. On the best of days it takes them forever to get their equipment repaired. Today is Sunday. Today is the day after Mother Earth put a fresh foot plus of new snow on top of a heavy coating of sleet, and the three inches of snow left over from the fifteen inches of snow from last week. If we are lucky, we might get to see the Daytona race next weekend.

So, I will likely try to watch the football game online, probably in vain. It appears that the NFL is pretty sure that no one on dial-up would ever visit their site. I don’t have flash enabled and the site still takes nearly five minutes to come up to a usable form. I’ve never been on there long enough to find out how long the whole thing takes, it always seems to still be loading by the time I’m finished looking at the scores.

Why don’t you have broadband you ask? Well, there is only one “broadband” provider here… you guessed it, Comcast! And just to spread the rant around, I haven’t forgotten about the FIOS from Verizon that will “be installed here real soon, sometime in 2008.”

I guess I should count myself lucky since we were the last house on the power line who still had power all night. And I do mean last house, the next door neighbor and everyone else west of me were out. The only light on the far side of the lake was one coming from what sounded like a distant generator.

And I suspect that all that light out at the end of my driveway when I went to bed was a Rappahannock Electric crew working to change that. And on the topic of utility bitching, let me say that I have never had a bad experience with Rappahannock. When Isabelle came bowling-for-people here the power was out less than twelve hours. When one of the local squirrels committed suicide without completely knocking out the power, the crew went door to door warning us that they would be cutting power for a few minutes for the repair to give us time to get computers shut down safely. They even provide discounts on our prescription medicines.

E.W.

And for those of you who are thinking of me as a bitchy-little-girl, bitching is cathartic if you have faith in the Universe. I got the best laugh ever just as I finished this post. The cable came back on right as I typed the period on the last sentence. What was on? A Comcast commercial… Nice work and nice timing.

This entry was posted on February 7, 2010, in Sports - NFL.

The Old Ashland Depot

It’s Winter

Ashland is part of Hanover County Virginia. The area known as The Slashes, later became Ashland, when it was developed by the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad as a mineral springs resort in the 1840s. The  name came from the Lexington, Kentucky estate of the towns most famous native and statesman Henry Clay.

In 1860 Ashland was a quiet, charming village. Its 150 residents lived in cottages on tree lined streets. A fashionable hotel, a notable racecourse and a famous mineral springs resort made Ashland a social center and a place to visit. The train rails running through town made it a great destination place for residents from DC and Richmond. Then came the war.

Old Ashland Depot

Old Ashland Depot

Continue reading