Duncan's Blog

I found my end-stub checks over which I was obsessing yesterday. I didn't know what they were called and the check printer opted not to put a picture of them on the website. So know the check is literally in the mail.
I think my latest pet peeve are the 800-toll free numbers that are computer driven only. The ads say that your problems will be answered 24/7 by calling this number. Ya think? If I can't speak to a human being as an option then I don't want to contact an 800#. About the only thing a computer can do to satisfy me is to give me my balance.
Now the biggest pressures going on are (a) maintaining enough "steam" to get me through the semester without making a plummeting spiral into the void, (b) holding to the promise I made myself to brown-bag lunch on work days and (c) raising day-old chicks with no casualties.
As sister-in-law Mary Lee would say, "Time will tell!"

More folks than not in my so-called circles shop on line. They've joined the point-and-click circuit of people who don't go into shops, stores, warehouses, marts, or tents. They sit at their screens (some with a mouse smack dab in the keyboard between the G-B-H keys) and shop away to the hearts content. No money in the wallet? No problemo! Pull out the VISA charge plate with its magical three digit number on the back.
For the past week or so I have been on the look out for the perfect check. I'm looking for a wallet check that has a side register on each check. I had them in the 70s. Now they have vanished. Not only are they not around, but anyone I speak to has this bewildered look on his/her face or speaks with that voice of uncertainty. You know the sound. It's the sound of a salesperson who is DESPERATE for that commission, but hasn't got a clue as to what the buyer is saying.
Well I've decided to not order my next set of checks until I have found exactly what I am looking for.
These days I have no money in the wallet. I brown bag my meal to work. I buy groceries with the credit card. I pay most of the bills on line and write about a half dozen checks a month. Money transfers within the bank are done on the computer or via the branch's ATM. I've taken to only saving copper pennies and state commemorative quarters.
The only thing I've ordered lately on the computer is two dozen chicks. I'm getting a small flock from Ohio. My local vendor doesn't stock some of the more exotic varieties I want (as if a buckeye hen from Ohio would ever be considered "exotic" in Cleveland!).
I'd love to type away some more, but I've got studying to get to.

"Who We Are and What We Do" was the title of a blurb I used to pass out at a job I had in 1985. It frightens me to think of where I once was 22 years ago. The job is still there... somewhere else... and the people are MUCH older (or scattered across America doing something else).
I'm a vocational nurse in California. At 48 I just started my first job in the new career. I have to put in a year of service before I am paid to return to school. I'm looking at a masters degree. I'll be 52 by the time that happens.
There are other things that I think about lately. Good friends, love, the lack of spirituality, the need to remember that Magic always happens for a reason.
That's all I want to write about right now. I'm at a cross-roads and I need to make a plan.