Blocks

Thanks Pat; for your comments week before last, I forgot to mention them in last weeks post. I don't know what is going on with this blog site, I know I couldn't post pictures for a couple of weeks and now it seems it won't take comments on the posts.

Building Progress

The place where I get sand had some blocks delivered the other day - so I checked with the folks where I get blocks and sure enough they had some blocks too. Even though these guys all say they have different suppliers it all comes from the same distributor.

They tell me the order has been in since November sometime and they got 300 blocks out of a 1200 block order, I guess this is the spring shipment. I may get this foundation done yet. I carry 24 blocks at a time out to the building site - that's roughly 800 pounds and it fits well between the wheel wells of the truck. Even though I carry a ton of sand when I get it - I lose the price break on less than a ton - but I don't like to press my luck too much with a 12 year old 1/2 ton truck. I can carry an easy 100 blocks a week and still get the sand, rebar and portland cement I need without making any special trips back and forth. By the way, I saved $240 by waiting for the blocks as opposed to blowing the foundation budget and then some, besides it was too cold and muddy to lay blocks anyway. I am like Obama - I have some pretty lame excuses for not getting things done.

Political Stuff

We're into the budget talks again and over the next couple of weeks it will start to dominate the media again - after the intial round of immigration amnesty gets pushed down the road. You know ofcourse that the president is required by law to submit a budget this Monday, ofcourse he will be late as he has been for the last 3 years. Congress is also required to submit budgets but the Senate hasn't passed a budget in 4 years, the House of Representative has passed a budget every year only to be tabled by the Senate every year. Our country has not had a budget for the last 4 years, is it any wonder our deficit is out of control.

I saw a neat trick the other day concerning the U.S. budget. These are the real numbers.

          Revenue - $2,170,000,000,000.00  from taxes

          Budget -   $3,820,000,000,000.00  this is imaginary because of no budget but they spend it.

       New Debt - $1,650,000,000,000.00  in addition to the above.

    Budget Cuts - $     38,000,000,000.00  these are the only budget cuts passed by congress.

Now take those numbers and remove 8 zeros to make it a regular looking household budget.

          Income from work - $21,700.00

          Household Budget - $38,200.00  I know, who would budget twice their income - the gov't does.

                       New debt - $16,500.00  Pull out the credit cards and have at it.

                    Budget Cuts - $     380.00  You can't buy bullets for your gun anyway.

How long could you last on something like this?, who would get into a mess like this? I think you know the answer but we allow it to happen year after year. I wonder what the weather is like in that alternative universe?