Jeremy Herndon Blog

There was an article that I read in the New York Times recently about how to save money on eye care.  I guess there are going to be a lot of articles in the papers (and television news) about how people can save money now that the economy is so bad and not getting any better any time soon! The article was educating the general public about how people really don’t need to have their eyes checked as often as they have been taught to think, and the article was talking about shopping around for deals on eyeglasses.  One of the mistakes many people make is to buy their eyeglasses straight from the little store attached to their eye doctor’s office. Those glasses are always really expensive!  And many insurance plans cover the cost of the exam, but not of the glasses!  I know that’s how MY insurance works!

As much as I hate the idea of my kid brother taking his new bride, along with their new baby boy, up north to beautiful Calgary Canada there isn’t much I can do about the situation at hand. His new father-in-law has promised him a good job up there and with our economy still in such turmoil, with no end in sight, a good job can make or break a marriage these days.

So they are busy with looking at the current Calgary listings and searching for a good reputable Calgary Realtor so that they will have a place lined up for them upon their arrival, which they are expecting to happen by the end of June. That doesn’t leave them with much time to get all the things that need to be taken care all done. Relocating is one big pain in the rear and with a new baby makes it all the more of a challenge.

It really bothers me that they will be so far away and that non of us will be around to be involved in their new sons life as much as we would like. It will be strange, indeed.

Today I got what I call a “phishing phone call” from someone that I think was trying to scam me out of giving out credit card information to them. They claimed to be from SunTrust, but the caller ID simply said that it was “Out of area.” They were calling with the pretense of lowering my credit card interest rates, but in order to take advantage of the offer they wanted my credit card numbers and I wasn’t willing to share that with them and promptly hung up. What a waste of my time.

When solar panels first hit the market, they were hailed as a great way to reduce the energy costs for heating and cooling a building, and for generating electricity as well. I’ve always been very interested in learning more about ways that I can make a difference in conservation projects, environmentally friendly projects, and lowering expenses.

So I was very excited about how solar energy was going to actually be a reality in my lifetime, and not just some fantastic imagineering project from the imagineers at the DisneyWorld complex! And I’ve been glad to hear that tax credits have been made available to help the homeowners recover some of the expenses of installing solar powered devices and equipment. However I have been discouraged over the harsh financial reality that in this economy, retrofitting existing buildings with solar panels is probably not going to be high on the priority list of most households. I’d like to see the economy improve as more and more people and companies get behind solar energy.

I’ve been told that in the next few years I am going to need to replace my roof. I’m wondering if that would be a good time to look into installing some type of solar energy system. What do you think?

I am going to have to put the car in the shop this week, it is running rough, and I don’t want to be out and about going to or from an errand and have it quit on me. Especially when there are so many “dead spots” in the cell phone service out here. It acts like it is running out of gas, but it has plenty of gas. So I put a can of dry gas in it, thinking that maybe it was just some water in the tank, and it ran fine the next day, but started acting up again the day after. So maybe it’s the fuel filter, or the fuel pump. I don’t know, but it needs to be fixed!

Another aggravation, and another thing sucking the money out of my wallet and my dwindling bank account.