Over the past few months, I’ve been hearing a few people talking about “clean coal.” From time to time I hear something about new technologies being developed to make coal a “clean” energy source. I’ve watched a lot of television news stories about how coal is removed from the earth, how dangerous coal mining is, and how the economies of states like West Virginia and Pennsylvania depend largely on coal, but I am not convinced that coal is the direction we should be going. I think that we still need to be looking at solar energy, wind energy, and bio-diesel fuels made from algae.
Eating out tonight
Tonight we’re going to eat out – one of my favorite chain restaurants – Applebee’s. A lot of people look down their noses at Applebee’s , but I really like their barbeque riblets a lot. In fact, when I go to Applebee’s, if they tell me they are sold out of their riblets, I don’t order something else, I leave the restaurant and go eat somewhere else! So, I look forward to the chance to eat there when I can! We’re going to try to get there as close to 5pm as possible, to beat the big dinner crowd.
Dancing boots
I’ve been thinking about taking up square dancing. Before I do that, I need some nice looking boots. A friend of mine told me to go to the Town & Country Leather Store. He told me that “they make a real fancy pair that you polish up and your feet won’t get sore and you won’t make a fool out of yourself on the stage.” He was just kidding of course. Well I went there and tried on five or six pairs. I was fussy what they looked like, but in the end I went back to the first pair that I picked out.
Jeannie wandered off down another aisle and all of a sudden she found something that she liked, so whammo – it was a double sale for this guy. I didn’t mind – she looked hot in them. But then again, she looks hot in anything!
The employees there were extremely nice. They work with you and provided very friendly service. They told me that if I wasn’t happy with those boots that I could bring them back within the first two weeks of purchase.
They even called me to ask how I liked them and I told them that I liked them just fine even though I hadn’t been out dancing yet. I was looking for something that I could dance in for two or three hours and feel like I hadn’t danced at all, and I think that these will do it!
Paperless receipts?
I was just reading on a great website called livescience.com that there may be paperless receipts in our future! When I first started reading it, I was thinking that I am a receipt freak and I don’t know how this would work, and if I would like it or not.
According to the article, the merchants will be able to email your receipts to you instead of handing you a paper one. The good part of this is that you would then not worry about losing your receipts, or having shoe boxes full of them. You could store them on a thumb drive or memory card! This would free up a lot of space. The downside of this, though, would be that I often like to look at my receipt before I leave the store to find out for sure that I was not overcharged for something. I frequently find that I AM overcharged for something and then I want to fix it before I leave the store. It is a real pain to discover an error like that after I get home and then have to drive all the way back to the store to resolve the issue!
So, I am not convinced that paperless receipts would be a good thing for me.
Direct deposit
I love direct deposit paychecks! I never thought I would, but I really do! I’ve always wanted to be able to take my paycheck down to the bank and cash it, Made me feel like I really accomplished something, having that cash in my hand! But lately it has become more difficult to get in and out of the bank on payday quickly, and my company announced a few months ago that direct deposit was no longer going to be an option; it was going to be mandatory. I wasn’t happy about it then, but I have to admit that it is a real time saver – now I don’t have to go to the bank at all!