I don't know where you live, but all of our family pets are buried at their homes. SM

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March 14, 2007� Dozens packed the Belmont (California) city council chambers tonight for the first public airing of a new smoking ban proposal.

The law would give Belmont the toughest smoking ban in the nation � possibly in the world.

The crackdown aims to curb the harmful effects of second-hand smoke by preventing puffs not just in parks and around public buildings � but in private apartments and city streets as well. If the law passes, the only places left in Belmont to smoke would be single family homes and private cars.

Mayor Coralin Feierbach says the proposal was made to protect residents who suffer from health problems aggravated by smoke.The council didn't take action tonight. It's just the first of several meetings to discuss the proposal.

Unless you are on the verge of losing your home, I would strongly encourage you to consider another option. Bankruptcy does not just go away after a few years. It's there forever. Even if you rebuild your credit afterwards, it's still there - a haunting demon. A friend and my in-laws also filed bankruptcy in the past.

My in-laws filed over 20 years ago and have recovered financially but it's still there.

My husband is a credit card spender. I would only spend when I had the cash and did not depend on credit. It didn't matter though. Our spending habits combined nearly led to our financial demise a few years back too.

I started with a complete inventory of all of our bills, separating them into three categories.

Since the Home category is pretty consistent every month, I set up a budget for that first. I went back through our utility bill for the year prior and chose the highest month bill of the year and added that amount to our mortgage amount.

Next, I reviewed our telephone, internet, and television (satellite) bills. On average, I was paying about 230.00 per month for them all combined. Way too much in my opinion. I started shopping around and found a bundle package with Verizon. Now I pay 153.00 per month for unlimited long distance telephone, satellite TV, and DSL service. Saved $77.00 per month, just doing that.

Then I added this amount to the mortgage and utilities. This totalled amount is what I know I absolutely have to pay every month and I better make sure it's in the account.

Next, I did the Miscellaneous. I'm a paper keeper, meaning I keep EVERY receipt and then purge them about every 3-4 months. I started going over what was spent where and learned that we spent a lot more than we really needed to. I set up a weekly grocery budget and a fun budget. If there was anything extra at the end of the week, it was divided evenly between the two and added to the next week. I do this every week until the end of the month. If there is anything left over, that amount is divided in half again and half is divided again and added to the following week's budget (grocery and fun), the other half is locked away in the savings account.

The money for monthly gas was a little trickier when the gas prices skyrocketed. I first had a set limit for gas each week but did have to adjust that. I did manage to adjust it a little bit upwards and still be able to pay the cards down (see below.)

Also, every time I spend cash, no matter if the amount is $5.01 and all I need is a penny, I don't. Instead, I will give them $6.00 and get 0.99 change to put in my giant size espresso cup of change. When the cup gets full, the change is rolled and turned in to the bank as a deposit into the savings account. My cup last gave me $281.00 change to put in the savings account. That was in March. It's full again so will be adding at least that much to the savings account again very soon. Nobody touches the cup! They might lose a finger or even a hand!

That being said, and having two set amounts for each budget, I then subtracted that amount, plus the Household amount from our combined monthly income.

Lastly came the dreaded credit cards. To be honest, I was floored when I learned just how much credit card debt we had. My husband had wracked up over $40,000.00 in credit card debt alone. Since he paid his own credit card bills each month, I had no idea. Even worse than that, he is very inconsistent about paying his bills on time so he had late charges and the interest rates were way the heck up there. It was terrible.

I took each of his cards most current statements and started from the lowest to highest balance. The lowest one was about 1200.00 but the interest rate on it by that time was 22%. This is where I started.

I had him call the company and basically gave him a script to go by (my name wasn't on the cards or I would have done it myself). He requested a decrease in his APR on each and every card. Two of the five card companies agreed on the first call. The 22% card was reduced to 11% so they cut it in half. Not as low as I would like but it was a start. Another card was up to 31% and they reduced that to 20%. The other three didn't budge the first time.

This is where I made two 'necessary' purchases. The first one was MS Money software. I highly recommend it. You can set up your checking, savings accounts, print your checks, balance your checkbook in about 5 minutes, pretty much a no brainer software that really keeps you in line with your bills and spending as long as you remember to faithfully enter any debit card purchase in your check register provided with the software. It will also link to many banks to update your balances online. You can also set it up to remind you for upcoming bills. (Maybe if the husband had used this earlier, we would not have been in this situation?)

The second purchase was about $8.00. An accordion file folder for the monthly statements. Husband always threw his away and I can't even begin to tell you what a dumb idea that is. KEEP them. Organize the tabs for each bill and put your statement in when you pay each bill. I also write the date and the amount when I make a payment somewhere on the statement, then keep them in chronological order.

The actual payments came next. The smallest balance card was paid off first. All of other cards only got the minimum payment PLUS $1 more. I started doing this just for my own peace of mind I guess but I learned later that this actually helped us a bit when negotiating the lower APRs on the three more stubborn cards. It may have only been $1 extra but it was EXTRA payment and, believe it or not, they do look at that.

Excluding the card to be paid off first, I added up the minimum payments of the remaining four cards (plus the extra dollar to each of those) and decided on an amount to pay the lowest balance card to get that balance moving toward 0 as fast as I could.

In this case, I decided on 200.00. This left me with a little over 200.00 extra (I call it mad money but it really goes into savings anyway -planning ahead for birthdays, auto insurance, Christmas, and emergencies.)

I had that card paid off relatively quickly in a few months. When it was paid off, the card was cancelled and that 200.00 was added to the minimum payment (plus $1) on the next lowest balance card. After the first month of this, once again, had the husband call his credit card company and ask for a reduction in his APR. This time it was granted. Should also mention that this card was one of the three that refused the request the first time.

The first six months or so of this was a mildly painful transition. He was used to whipping out a credit card, I was used to having cash on hand for whatever I wanted. It wasn't going to happen anymore.

Finally, I was down to the last remaining card (754.00 per month payment by this time, having applied the payments for each card to the next as they were paid off.)

When I got to this point, I started shopping around for cards with rewards programs and started comparing those cards. The last card I was paying on also had a rewards program but not quite what I wanted. I wanted to know if the terms were negotiable. It was! How about that!

Now I get 3% back on purchases of most things as long as I pay the balance in full every month (which I do). Any kind of air or rail travel purchased with the card is a 6% reward.

I no longer use a debit card. The husband is not allowed to get a credit card again but instead, takes a certain amount of cash every week. Say what you want but he got us into this mess pretty much so he has to live with it now.

It's been a few years now working with this system but it has been very good for us. I find that I average about 400.00 per month AFTER the rewards bonuses kick in so essentially I am able to bank another $354.00 per month in savings. It adds up quicker than you might think.

Should also mention that we have two teens still at home and they can really be expensive. They were made a part of the plan and do their part to help out too. Their contribution is mostly the avoidance of fast food all the time. They can come home and have a meal or eat before they leave. Things like that.

Sorry for the lengthy post but hopefully I can help anyone else get out of a potentially bad financial situation like we faced.

This was on Kim Komando's Cool Site of the Day. Thought y'all would enjoy these!

with my husband and I am an IC. I have never been asked to get a letter from a service stating I would have work for a period of time. Anyone you contract with, would probably not do that. They cannot promise you anything. WE know that.

BUT what I am asked is how long I have been in the business. That seems to matter the most, as it should. And when I say *over 32 years*, then there is no problem.

If you are happy with you mortgage company and have good rates, then just explain to the loan officer how your job works and emphasize that you have been in the business for 6 years.

As an aside - the last mortgage officer knew I was self employed but when we went in with our W-2s and 1099s, he was shocked at my earnings. He said, *Most of the time, self-employed means no income and a lot of deductions." Make sure your mortgage company knows you make money at this and are not using it as a tax write off.

OAKLAND, Calif., May 31 � For Mary Kalin-Casey, it was never about her cat.

Monty the cat was visible in a photo showing a street in Oakland.

Ms. Kalin-Casey, who manages an apartment building here with her husband, John Casey, was a bit shaken when she tried a new feature in Google�s map service called Street View. She typed in her address and the screen showed a street-level view of her building. As she zoomed in, she could see Monty, her cat, sitting on a perch in the living room window of her second-floor apartment.

�The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people�s lives,� Ms. Kalin-Casey said in an interview Thursday on the front steps of the building. �The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged.�

Her husband quickly added, �It�s like peeping.�

Ms. Kalin-Casey first shared her concerns about the service in an e-mail message to the blog Boing Boing on Wednesday. Since then, the Web has been buzzing about the privacy implications of Street View � with varying degrees of seriousness. Several sites have been asking users to submit interesting images captured by the Google service, which offers panoramic views of miles of streets around San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver.

On a Wired magazine blog, for instance, readers can vote on the �Best Urban Images� that others find in Street View. On Thursday afternoon, a picture of two young women sunbathing in their bikinis on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, Calif., ranked near the top. Another showed a man scaling the front gate of an apartment building in San Francisco. The caption read, �Is he breaking in or has he just locked himself out?�

Google said in a statement that it takes privacy seriously and considered the privacy implications of its service before it was introduced on Tuesday. �Street View only features imagery taken on public property,� the company said. �This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street.�

Google said that it had consulted with public service organizations and considered their feedback in developing the service, which allows users to request that a photo be removed for privacy reasons. A Google spokeswoman said the company had received few such requests.

For instance, Google worked with the Safety Net Project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, which represents shelters for victims of domestic violence nationwide, to remove pictures of those shelters. �They reached out in advance to us so we could reach out to our network,� said Cindy Southworth, founder and director of the organization.

Not everyone believes the service raises serious privacy concerns.

�You don�t have a right to �privacy� over what can be seen while driving the speed limit past your house,� wrote a Boing Boing reader, identified as Rich Gibson, in response to Ms. Kalin-Casey�s complaint. Others dismissed her as a crazy cat lady.

Edward A. Jurkevics, a principal at Chesapeake Analytics, a consulting firm specializing in mapping and imagery, said that courts have consistently ruled that people in public spaces can be photographed. �In terms of privacy, I doubt if there is much of a problem,� Mr. Jurkevics said.

Still, the issues raised by the service, thorny or merely funny, were perfect blog fodder. The hunt was on for quirky or potentially embarrassing images that could be found by wandering the virtual streets of the service.

There was the picture of a clearly identifiable man standing in front of an establishment offering lap dances and other entertainment in San Francisco. The site LaudonTech.com showed an image of a man entering a pornographic bookstore in Oakland, but his face was not visible.

Others pointed to pictures of cars whose license plates were clearly readable. One pointed to images captured inside the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, a controversial location for photography in this high-security era. On Lombard Street in San Francisco, various tourists who had come to photograph the famously curvy street were photographed themselves.

Google said that the images had been captured by vehicles equipped with special cameras. The company took some of the photographs itself and purchased others from Immersive Media, a data provider.

�I think that this product illustrates a tension between our First Amendment right to document public spaces around us, and the privacy interests people have as they go about their day,� said Kevin Bankston, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group. Mr. Bankston said Google could have avoided privacy concerns by blurring people�s faces.

Back at her apartment, Ms. Kalin-Casey acknowledged that plenty of information about her � that she manages an apartment complex, that she was an Editor at the film site Reel.com � is already easily accessible through Google and other search engines.

�People�s jobs are pretty public,� she said. �But that doesn�t mean they want a shot of their sofa on Google.� She has asked Google to remove the image of her building, which was still online as of Thursday evening.

When a reporter first arrived to interview her, Monty the cat was visible in the window.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/01/technology/01private.html?em&ex=1180843200&en=83156047690c5c2c&ei=5087%0A

she was smart to do that....and she formerly had homes in London, then Germany, before locating to Zurich, and has had a home in S. France since the 80s, I think.....

She did not look like she had a total facelift to me last night....I thought perhaps a brow lift and definitely cheek implants - they are too big for her face and she looked like she had a very chubby face due to that, IMHO.....

If you can help or know anybody who can, please visit the below site and let people know, there are some really beautiful foals there that desperately need homes, please help. All for the animals.

I have a dilemma. I am an animal lover and have something I cannot come to a conclusion about. At a restaurant where I eat lunch every Friday with a friend of mine, I have noticed a young male kitty hanging around outside looking for food. This past week he ran up to my friend and rubbed her legs and quietly meowed. I purposely did not try to pet him because I knew I would get attached and ignored him. Well, ever since then I find myself thinking about him and wanting to rescue him. Meanwhile, I already have 4 inside cats (2 rescues, 2 Maine Coons) and hubby really does not want another cat in the house because a few years ago I promised we would never have more than 4 (had up to 5 at one point previously). I actually have a huge screened deck he could stay on indefinitely because I do not believe in letting cats run loose for their own safety. I could provide plenty of food, a warm place to sleep, and veterinary care. At some point I would even probably work him into our household, but I just cannot do it at the moment. Just not sure I would be doing right by that kitty because I am sure he would be upset and confused for a good while as to where he was and what was going on, but is that better than being hungry and cold? I know there are lots of animal lovers out there. What does everyone think??

after I found HUGE holes in the walkway between my house and barn. I thought they were just little mice stealing grain, but then I spotted one and it was a HONKIN RAT! My poor olderly cat was out there with me at the time and saw it, and he hissed at it and ran away!

I asked for advice on what to do at a local agricultural board, because I have other animals and didn't want to use poison and conventional traps weren't working. They advised putting a large pale of water out with some seeds floating in it, figuring the rats would go for the seeds and end up drowning. That was a no-go because the water just froze up solid. I wound up reluctantly going with Decon because I just can't have my house destroyed. I haven't had seen any more rats or evidence of them stealing grain, so I'm guessing they have died. The guy at the grain store promised me the rats would not die in the building and stink the joint up, rather they would crawl off and die outside. I don't know if I believe that, as it is still winter here and decomposition would be holding off until it warms up. We'll see, but at least the destruction has been halted.

Good luck and I too say have no mercy, because you just don't need them destroying hour house or causing a spark chewing wires and burnin' the place down. It is war!

My pooch will only eat the food in the center part of his bowl. I'm not quite sure why he won't eat the food around the sides.