They can vote, sort of.

The Democratic Rules committee met on Saturday and decided that all delegates from Florida and Michigan can be seated at the convention, but they will only have the right to count one half vote each as a penalty for not following the rules.

You can read about what the AP reported about it here.

The Epic Battle of the SNL Alumni Summer Movies

I have not started to count the endless stream of movies ads on billboards I'm bombarded with on my 72 mile drive to work and back along the 5 freeway. But I have noticed something curious, or maybe even ironic. Traveling north right before you enter the City of Commerce, there is a billboard for a Mike Myers movie called "The Love Guru".



While traveling south and again entering the City of Commerce, there is a billboard for Adam Sandler's summer farce "You Don't Mess with the Zohan".



Umm, wake up fellas... I have no desire to watch either of you in these movies. I don't want to see an undercover hairstylist blowing anything but hair nor any kind of therpist being remotely funny.

Try, try again.

Oh wow!

Tibetian Salt Lick

This morning was the second time this week that I went and picked up something that resembled breakfast at McDonald's. The first time, it was the chicken & biscuit and then today I got a bacon, egg & cheese McGriddle. I was feeling guilty about consuming all those calories, so I looked up each sandwiches nutrient value on this chart to see what I was really consuming.

It seemed to me that eating a McGriddle would be significantly worse for you than the chicken & biscuit because it just tastes so much sweeter with it yummy syrup chunks baked into it, but that's just not the case. The McGriddle has 420 calories and the chicken & biscuit is 410 calories.

But most shocking of all was the amount of sodium in those dang things. Now I understand why I feel like I have to drink so much after eating fast food. Each have more than 1100 mg of sodium in them. I might as well have a salt lick for breakfast. Ewww.

Thursday Musings

I'm feeling kind of lethargic today. I did not want to get out of bed this morning and actually left the house late - 6:15AM. It allowed me to roll into the parking lot right at 8AM this morning. It's not like I have to punch a time clock like the people that work under me, but I'd like to be on time in order to put the fear of 'Judi' into them and hurl a stink eye over their way when they so happen to walk into work late. To be brutally honest with you, I don't care if they're late to work in the AM only because there is not much or possibly nothing to do before 11AM anyways if all of the filing was completed the night before. We read a lot and do random checks to make sure the loans are in order on the shelf before the newly prepared and delivered loans start to roll into our area.

I think the general malaise is because I did not get the B12 shot yesterday like I should have. I'll need to do that tonight and then I'll feel like gangbusters on Friday. Watch out world!

In the meantime, knowing that my contract is up at the end of September because I was notified yesterday in a telephone call from my recruiter, I re-worked my resume and posted it again onto Monster.com. I also have been scanning the want ads for jobs that I not only can do but what to do and are hopefully much, much closer to home.

The way people write their want ads sometimes is weird. I remember when I wanted to hire someone for a specific position I needed to fill at my last place of employment and for some reason unbenounced to me, someone in human resources got a hold of the job description I wrote and recreated it into this flowery piece of shit that made me feel like I would not be able to find a candidate that I could get along with. I'm thinking that maybe some of the time for the jobs that have great titles but odd descriptions, that what's happened to them. This general practice makes it harder to find something you'd really want to apply for. Why do people have to do that anyways?

I'm supposed to go to the movies with my girlfriend Patricia this weekend. The "Sex and The City" opens on Friday. We'll see if she bails on me again. She's kind of flaky that way sometimes beause she has one son who's much younger than mine, but since I know this of her in advance, I excuse her for her behavior. I txt msg her today, but have not heard anything back. Maybe I'll call her later this evening.

Count Every Vote

You should read about who thought it was important enough to get involved with the organization "People for the American Way" HERE in order to protect your right to vote and make your voice be heard on election day.

...and it wasn't Obama or McCane either.

She Could Go All The Way

I walked by a car in the parking lot on the way into work which had a bumper sticker which read, "Gobama". That inspired me to write this blog.

The Democratic Party's Rules and Bylaws Committee meets this weekend to decide the fate of the delegates up for grabs in Michigan and Florida, the two states that moved their primary elections beyond the date allowed and thus disqualified themselves in participating in the 2008 presidential electoral process.

Or did they? I fear shades of the Bush recount and Florida's hanging chad fiasco once more at least in that state. What shenanigans the Michigan constituency can get itself into remains to be seen.

Hillary has got majority of the blue collar workers and elderly on her side, I feel, in both states which could provide her the tipping point she needs before counting in her super delegates at the convention.

I mailed in my ballot today with double postage, dang it.

Grocery Shopping

Ralphs on May 26, 2008

247.67 total balance with tax
-86.73 minus coupons, Ralph's Club, & double coupons
-------
160.94

That's a 28.5% savings

Sunday With The Tudors: May 25, 2008

This Weeks Episode: The King gets the autopsy report that that Queen Anne's latest miscarriage was a deformed boy. Henry has moved the Seymour's in next door to his chambers, gives Jane's brother a job as Henry's private butler and then gives Jane a locket with his picture on it; Anne finds the locket and rips it from her neck. Madge gives it back to Jane. Henry instructs Cromwell to move Anne's father away from court; Anne gets mad at Cromwell. The Imperial Ambassador to Spain speaks to Cromwell and Cromwell discusses Anne's hatred of him. Janet Parker complains to his husbands sister Anne and she loudly speaks against the king's lack of virility at court. Anne's father is freaking out about loosing the Boleyn's place in society and demands Anne entertain the Imperial Ambassador. Henry is insulted by the same Ambassador because he's pushing for his eldest daughter Mary to be the next in line for succession; we all know Henry wants a son. Charles suggests Anne entertains men while Henry is away and others have committed treason. Henry orders an investigation. Henry also orders Jane to go back to her family home temporarily. Cromwell begins the questioning with Anne's ladies in waiting. Madge spills the beans. Janet Parker suggests Anne has slept with her brother (probably to get out of her bad marriage). Mark Smeatin is arrested and tortured with a head vice while being questioned by Cromwell about sleeping with the queen, then strung him up on the rack and questions him again, and is jailed. A bunch of people are arrested and coerced into confessing. Anne is arrested for adultery and immediately taken to the tower. Cromwell hands the divorce papers to the churchy guy. OH WOW- two expletives at 6:45PM PDT. "f*%#ing bitch" If this were network television, I'd smell FCC fines coming on. Heads are rolling of the one's accused of treason.


What I Think: Anne and her father get the axe in the last episode and Henry will marry Jane. Oh, another good show with lots of details packed in. Next episode is the season finale. Oh I can't wait. I hope they don't delay that finale like they did last year. And, OH!, another two expletives during the commercials-new series previews after the show was over.

Fannie, Freddie Presence Growing - FOXBusiness.com

While Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae keep posting massive quarterly losses, there is one bright side to their earnings reports, analysts said - the companies are getting the lion’s share of the mortgage business.

read more | digg story

I found the above article while looking for the stories about Countrywide which I frequently scan for by using topix.com.

What has got me going about this story is that my career is eerily tied to it. Between 1992 and 1999 or so, Countrywide was Banker's Trust custody client and I worked on their collateral before they began sending all their loans to BONY because a couple of their execs got married and cut a deal between those two companies. Before 2003, Thornburg Mortgage was my client while I was at Deutsche Bank as their custody account manager. I switched jobs in 2003 to go to work for ResMAE, a subprime mortgage lender founded by the same team that started Long Beach Mortgage and AmeriQuest. Greenwich was upset at me (I read on their website they are the #1 in ABS and #2 in MBS) and I think switched to LaSalle down the street from where I worked (I interviewed there once, but they passed. Oh well, their loss.) and JP Morgan in Houston. And now that it's 2008 and ResMAE is defunct majorly due to a margin call by Merrill Lynch that threw them into BK. Now, I'm working indirectly on a contract for Fannie Mae at Countrywide and it's their largest direct purchasing contract. Hrmmm.

Once this contract run is over, I'm wondering if there will be anything for me to go to (I'd really like to go back to doing MERS but all of those jobs I have found have been in snow country and I won't live there.) or will I have to go back to square one and think about getting a new career in a different industry because the mortgage business is basically dead in OC.

Brilliant!

I've been thinking about this on and off for a long time now, so bear with me because it may or may not come out as a complete thought.

I want to shake the hand of the person who invented the tissue paper toilet seat cover for creating the most utterly useless sanitary device ever known to man. I'm sure this person is probably somewhere laughing hysterically all the way to the bank. If you think about it, when has tissue paper been truly effective at anything other than being filler for gift boxes of hideous clothes your family gives without any consideration as to your sense of style and you probably don't want anyway? I mean, it can't repel wetness of any kind, half of the time it falls into the toilet before you can get your arse properly and comfortably positioned on the seat, and tissue paper is not even on my list of choices for the prevention of any toilet seat transmittable germ. Soap and water? Sure. A hot shower? You bet. Disinfectant? #1 But tissue paper? What in the hell are you thinking, man? It's a big joke upon humanity. Like anti-bacterial soap or sun block. Oh, don't get me started...