Hi,
I would like to thank you folks that expressed distress at what happened in my home town last week. No Mr. Commander in Tweet, we do not need armed guards outside and inside our schools, churches, temples and synagogues. We need less guns in our society. I agree, most deaths by guns is by a hand gun, but most mass murders are done with military style assault rifles. You don’t need an ak 47 to go hunting and kill a deer, rabbit or squirrel. We need government leaders that are willing to step up and defend our citizens by enacting sensible gun control laws.
Speaking of gun control, tomorrow is election day. GO OUT AND VOTE! I don’t care who you vote for (actually I do, but it’s like winning a thousand dollar lottery versus a hundred dollar lottery-I have a preference, but I’m happy either way-I don’t play the lottery by the way, it was just an example). 🙂 Thank god those annoying campaign commercials will be over by Wednesday. How can you vote for someone that gets elected by lying about his/her opponent or lying about their accomplishments and positions on issues. If they lie in their campaign, I’d say that pretty much sums up their honesty. Some of the candidates have been caught in outright lies and then deny it. Worse yet is the advertisements paid for by special interests and PACs and their negativity. Connor Lamb is not running in my district and he has run a very positive campaign discussing the issues and not being all negative. But the democratic machine has run some pretty negative ads in his name. Besides liking Mr. Lamb’s position on many items, I want him to win to hopefully set a new campaign standard. Keith Rufthus has been pretty negative in his personal campaign. Add to this the republican machine’s negative ads and its a smear campaign (and he has never endorsed these smears). I like Governor Wolf and he has had some negative ads, but not over the top like his opponent who threatened to stomp Governor’s face in with golf spikes. To give Scott Wagner some credit, he is now running a campaign ad pushing acceptance of all citizens. We need a new law that before a political ad is aired, it needs a seal of approval by an independent agency like Fact Checker, that gives a rating like the movies get.
I hate OTA’s, On line Travel Agencies like Expedia, Travelocity, etc. They charge a fee for rooms booked through their websites, which I would be OK with. But (you knew a but was coming up) 🙂 . They initially tried charging bed and breakfasts an outrageous 25% fee for bookings, none of us signed up with them. Eventually, they dropped the fee to a less outrageous 15% booking fee. (They charge the big box hotels a 10% fee, which sticks in my craw). I refused to sign up with an OTA for years and then Google came out with a new requirement that bed and breakfasts need to be signed up with an OTA to prove that they are legitimate. So I signed up with Booking.com because they supposedly are the largest OTA covering Europe. I’ve complained to my Booking.com agent about their fee and was told it wasn’t excessive that it was justified with all they spend on advertising and website security. I told her they don’t spend more than Visa does on advertising and security that charges me less than 3%.
My battle with the pigeons continues, I’m making progress though. I was making progress, but not enough so I decided to up the anti again and went back to Dick’s and was looking at BB gun rifles. They would be more accurate than the hand gun and luckily an employee came up and asked if I needed help. I explained I didn’t want to kill the pigeons, just hurt them and make them go away. He said the power in a rifle would send the BB through the pigeon and thus kill them. He suggested doing what he does and use a sling shot. I have that oak tree in my yard and so lots of acorns. When I use them as ammunition, they biodegrade in my yard instead of leaving plastic pellets or metal BB’s littering my yard for ever. It’s been pretty successful, frequently I don’t have any pigeons and just a few other times.
Been busy working on my holiday cards, Roy was over this weekend and took the picture and I’ve been working on the mailing list. Going through 6,000 addresses takes some time. I just finished. 🙂 Most of the deletions are bad addresses, probably past guests that have moved since visiting. Some are mail carriers that send the card back as un-deliverable for whatever reason and that guest ends up with a “bad address” note in my data base. I also delete foreign countries (other than Canada). There’s also a fair amount of incorrect addresses I need to fix zip codes, cities, etc. The final category is those I don’t want back like the ones that smoked in their guest room.
Have a great evening and remember to VOTE tomorrow,
ed
