soapbox

I dropped a check reorder form off at the bank on Thursday at lunch and the checks were in my mailbox today. That’s like 1.5 business day turnaround.

I listened to a lot of NPR this morning and I was really amazed to hear that Ford is going to be cutting 25% of its workforce over the next couple of years. I suppose that the UAW worker earning $27/hr and not paying for health care is sort of an outdated concept in the current economy. Just fewer and fewer places where you can have a career with only a high-school diploma.

Frankly though, I think that the UAW brought it on themselves by not adjusting to the times. I know a person who was in management at a Saturn plant, and their hands were completely tied by union regulations. They couldn’t fire people who weren’t showing up or were endangering other people, couldn’t make changes to production that would result in more efficiency, all sorts of crap.

The first step that I took was to get some great facial scratches yesterday. Scars on your face totally add street cred if you’re gothic.

Really, the lesson of the scratches is that you should always pay your “escort” the full amount even if she doesn’t do everything she agreed to.

So, I think that Vermont actually made a choice this winter not to plow… it wasn’t just specifically bad weather last week.

I woke up this morning, had a little “Fuck!” moment when I realized it was snowing, loaded up the car, and headed out. From Hartford to Northampton, the drive was pretty uneventful since it was warm enough that most of the precipitation was just coming down as rain. The slush started building up after that point though, and it was really slow going until about Putney. There it was cold enough that the snow on the road was mostly just blowing around.

The great thing though is that my drive should only take about 2.5 hours and today it took 4. Golly gee, it’s so much fun to white-knuckle drive in miserable conditions.