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!

I recently discovered a free anti virus download is available from the cyberdefender.com website.  They have a lot of very good software programs designed to protect computers from hackers and viruses. They also have software for identity protection, register cleaners; I’m impressed that they have received good reviews from USA Today and ComputerWorld for their products.

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 got a quick lesson on vessel sinks over the weekend. One of the topics of conversation over Easter dinner was home remodeling and my niece is all excited about the new vessel sink that she just found and ordered online. I’m sorry but I had never seen or heard of vessel sinks before, so after dinner was done and over with I was brought over to one of the laptops that was brought along (funny how people don’t leave home without their computer, even at holiday family functions) and shown a website that has some of the most amazing looking vessel sinks. The same website that my niece ordered from.

I have to say that I agree that these are some good looking sink options and I’m not surprised that they are becoming popular. They come in stone, glass and copper, the stone ones are my favorite. Check out the one that I really felt was a good looking specimen, it’s called Eden Bath Natural Stone Sink – Jurassic Onyx.

Last summer I was disheartened to find Japanese beetles on our crape myrtle shrubs that we had just planted the year before.  I knew Japanese beetles were problematic with roses, but I did not know that they liked crape myrtles too! There were only a few beetles on the shrubs, so I left them alone but I am thinking that might have been a mistake.  Leave a few alone now, and you are likely to have hundreds the next year!