With all the talk about banks failing, bailouts, mortgage crisis, record breaking losses in the stock market, etc.. You would think trying to get a loan or credit card might not be as easy as it once was. Before the bottom fell out, banks other financial institutes were just handing out credit / loans to anyone with a pulse.

A friend of mine recently got bought his first house before the bottom fell out and he was telling me all the hoops he had to jump through to get the loan that I didn’t have to do when I got my first loan or when I refinanced over 5 years ago. I mean when I refinanced the last time it seemed the process was pretty much: “Hey I like that rate, where do I sign?” and that was pretty much it.

Any way, imagine my surprise when I found in the mail today a credit card offer for a credit line of $30,000. This by itself most isn’t all that surprising but the bank making me the offer was WaMu. You know, the bank that was recently listed as the largest bank failure in American financial history.

I’m sure this offer will be honored by JPMorgan Chase who purchased the WaMu banking business from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for $1.9B after it was seized by the Office of Thrift Supervision (OST) on September 25, 2008 but it is still funny I think. I mean, how frozen are the credit market if I can still get a $30,000 credit line from a bank that has failed.

While on the subject of failing banks: The new the new RBC Plaza building in downtown Raleigh recently opened for business and to celebrate they hired the Red Bull Skydivers to base jump from the top of the building but later canceled the stunt basically saying that will all the troubles in the market and banking, it wasn’t the appropriate time to have people jumping from a bank building especially with the Wachoiva next door which is pretty much in the same boat as WaMu.

I’ve worked for that same company for almost 10 years and over the years I’ve accumulated a lot of vacation time that has rolled over each year. So earlier this year the company implemented a new rollover policy which will allow an employee to rollover 30 days of vacation time into 2009 and then 2 weeks each year after. Well by the end of the year I will have accumulated 72 days of vacation so that means I need to use 42 of those days before the end of the year. Yeah, I know.. Poor me.. I’m sure a lot of people would like to has this problem.

Any ways, I really hate to have to be out of the office for over half of the work days left in the year but the company is currently leaving me no other option. They are basically telling me I can use them or loose. I’m not saying I’m without fault on this either. I knew I could only carry over 30 days into next year but never got around to taking any time. Oh well. Now I need to figure out what I’m going to do with all this free time for the rest of the year. Yeah, Yeah, poor me again.. hehe

So if I was a Japanese Manga character, this is what I think I would look like. Click HERE if you want to make your own Manga portrait.

Don’t I look cute? 🙂 hehe

I was gone visiting family for Thanksgiving and did not have Internet access (gasp!). Hope everyone got stuffed with turkey.

It’s amazing, I actually got a lot done today. It actually feels good to be productive on a Saturday instead sleeping in late and plopping down in front of the boob tube the rest of the day.

First thing I did today was sort all my recyclables to get them ready for Tuesday. I then checked and inflated my car tires. They were not as low as I’ve had them get in the past so that was good news. I then rolled the car out of the garage and swept that half of the garage. Next I rolled the Kawi out and checked and inflated its tires and boy were they low, can you say mid teens. After the tires were re-inflated, I took a quick spin to limber it up. Boy I could really tell the difference in handling with properly inflated tires. Once I got back to the house from the quick spin I pulled out my hand saw and wondered around the house cutting down small trees that popped up where I didn’t want them and there were a lot of them. After being outside for awhile I headed back into the house and swept the kitchen and the family room which I’m still in the middle of working on. I need to finish paying off a few things before I start working on it again. Any ways, I took a little break to have lunch and to finish watching “The Reaping“, which I started to watch last night. Overall I thought it was a good movie. After the break I went back to the garage and decided that it was time to reclaim my workbench area which has been blocked by a lot of junk. Plus all that junk makes it a pain to get the motorcycles in and out of the garage without backing the car out. This took awhile but it was well worth the time. I can now walk right up to the workbench without having to crawl and / or trip over things. I still have to clear off the the workbench and put all my tools back on the peg board but I’ll save that job for another day. Once all that was done I rolled the Shadow out to check and inflate its tires and, like the Kawi, its tires were really low as well. I then took the Shadow for a quick spin to limber it up.

Now its off to cook up some dinner and to relax the rest of the night. I think I’m going to watch “Evan Almighty” after dinner.

Hopefully I can be just as productive tomorrow. C’yas

Woohoo!!.. I Cleaned my office at the home and can see carpet again. That is all.

Well I think I do but I have been having problem falling asleep and then staying asleep until my alarm goes off. I seem to wake up 1-2 hours before the alarm goes off. My sleep schedule has been out of whack since I got back from Alaska but its not all jet-lag. I’ve had to get up early or stay up late two days a week for the last few weeks for works related tasks. So I can’t get my back into a normal cycle since it keeps changing.

Today, in order to help keep me asleep, I bought some roman curtains for my bedroom. The idea is to keep it dark in the bedroom by keeping the morning light out thus I won’t wake up due to the sun light. Well see how it works in the morning.

Update:
Humm.. It’s hard to say if the new curtains worked or not this morning since I woke up around 5am and the sun was not out yet. It’s still taking me a while to fall asleep. In any case, if I made and progress in getting back onto a normal sleep cycle I’m going to screw it up again since I have to do morning maintenance tomorrow morning (5am) and stay up until 2am or so Wednesday morning for a conversion. Sigh 🙁

Actually I washed my car in the rain today, no singing involved, to let mother nature help me with the rinse cycle. Just trying to do my part with the water restrictions. The rain did not last all that long and did not come down that hard but some rain is better then no rain.

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