Are you out of your mind?

When I opened my homepage this morning I saw this article: Got $2,500? Buy A House

Seriously? I can think of many better ways to use $2,500 than as a down payment. The whole article seems like a complete joke. I have been following Dave Ramsey's lifestyle change for around a year and a half and it has changed the way I look at my money. If we stay in this town and end up buying a house, we will pay cash for it.

I had to LoL at one of the lines from the article. "it's possible to buy a $150,000 starter home for about $1,000 a month, taxes and insurance included".


I see sooo many things wrong with that one line. Only $1,000 a month. $150,000 starter home. Ha! I am sure this is not the case everywhere but here, in the town I live in, $40,000 is closer to starter home prices. We only paid $20,000 for our 1st (and still current) home, but we went cheap and temporary, not awesome and forever.

Here, $150,000 would buy 5-6 bedrooms, 2-4 bathrooms, walk-in closets, 2 stories, a garage, a deck, and landscaping in one of the nice areas.

I love living in a small town.

How about "$1,000 a month, taxes and insurance included"? Ha at that one too. My house payments would have been $350 a month (had we not paid cash), tax for a year is around $150 and insurance on our home is $64 a year.

No wonder the economy is shitty! That is NOT an awesome deal to me. It isn't even a good deal.

Or is it?

Have low prices in my small town ruined me? I know that if we ever move to a place with a population over 10,000 I will be in complete culture shock. Are $150,000 2 bedroom shoe boxes actually normal?

More on the peanut product recall

I stumbled across this article on msn.com.

This part of it REALLY pisses me off:
Last month, when the FDA traced the outbreak of salmonella illness to the Blakely plant, FDA inspectors descended on the factory and catalogued a range of unsanitary conditions, including dead roaches, mold on the ceiling and walls in the cooler where finished products were stored, and rainwater leaking from skylights into the production room. Inspectors found four strains of salmonella and noted deficiencies in the plant's design and construction that invite contamination.

Umm, really? What the hell is going on (or not going on) in that plant that things could be THAT gross? Way to do your jobs.

Sad. Very sad.

The spinach recall/contamination, I could deal with. My kids don't even like spinach.
The tomatoes, I could deal with. I grow my own.
The jalapenos, I could deal with. Honestly, I didn't even know about it until this morning.
But peanut butter, peanut butter crackers, dog treats, ice cream, and everything else that has peanut products in it that I don't realize, not so easy to deal with. We can hardly keep peanut butter in the house. Well, we used to have that problem.

Almost everything I can think of has some kind of peanut product in it. It makes me think twice about what I feed my kids.
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The conspiracy theorist in me is thinking that maybe this could be a ploy for us to throw out all of that stuff, wait a few weeks, the FDA will declare it safe again, then we would have to go out and buy new. Stimulating the economy.

BUT the rational part of my brain has squashed that theory. There has been enough proof (well, enough for me) to show that it isn't a conspiracy.

Interesting Article

about the way that the Rockband and the Guitar Hero games have affected the music industry.

Check it out HERE

I am sure I have mentioned it before but music has a very important place in my life. The only time there isn't music playing is when we are sleeping or have certain family members over. **cough**the deaf ones**cough** Otherwise the computer is blasting something, or a cd player is on, or I have my mp3 player stuck in my ears. There is music on at home, in the car, at work, sometimes in my head.

I LOVE the Rockband and Guitar Hero games. I suck at it them but I have sooooo much fun. They are one of the few games that Hubbs will actually play with me.

The music is very familiar and with the exception of a few of the genres, it is music that I either listen to now or have listened to in the past.

Plus the games suck.me.in. I start playing and before I realize it, too much time has passed.

It keeps the boys entertained too. The bright colors and the sounds really capture their attentions. Some of the songs (like The Hand That Feeds and Hit Me With Your Best Shot, ones the kids have heard thousands of times) Monk Man can (try to) sing along to. And both boys dance around the living room until they pass out, whether they know the songs or not.

That is my idea of multi-tasking, oh hell yeah.