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surfnburn

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Posts posted by surfnburn


  1. LOL Amylou...

    I don't know what the story is with this guy, but some alcoholics screw up their stomachs and have a hard time drinking -- getting the alcohol they need to prevent withdrawals. This sounds like something addict would do.


  2. 1. What's your personal hell?

    Just trying to deal with everyone else's personal hell.... People like to share theirs with me.

    2. Do you prefer brightly lit rooms or dim spaces?

    Depends on my mood and if I'm working

    3. What's the weather like today?

    It's dark out...I don't know

    4. Is it easy to be you?

    No... It's not easy to everything I do. My work is very challenging; being a single mom is very challenging; trying to have a personal life is practically impossible.

    5. Friday fill-in: My heaven is ____.

    When everything works out really well -- school, work, finances, my daughter's issues.......


  3. This is funny too..

    holycrap6.jpg

    'Holy crap:' Deputy C. Neely of Kings County, Wash., peers into the bowl of the toilet facsimilie that she recovered from the side of a roadway. When the deputy removed a protective tarp and realized what she found, she blurted out, "Holy crap, its a giant toilet!" The toilet facsimile was built by five friends in Colorado Springs, Colo., and was brought to Seattle late last month for a race, where it was stolen.


  4. ^LOL!!!

    Kira has some great advice. You can't give up; a job isn't going to find you. You have to work at it. I don't know about where you live, but California is a lawsuit happy state. People have taken former employers to court because of what they said about a former employee. So a lot of HR departments won't say much -- just the time you worked there and your duties. Maybe that will work for you.


  5. I'm scared....lol I think most of us here are at the bottom of the boom...

    1st Boomer signs up for Social Security

    ANALYSIS: Fixes needed as big age group starts to collect benefits

    Dana Milbank, Washington Post

    Tuesday, October 16, 2007

    (10-16) 04:00 PDT Washington -- When it comes to the nation's finances, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling is Public Enemy No. 1.

    Her offense: being born.

    Specifically, being born on Jan. 1, 1946, just a few ticks after midnight. That makes her, at 61, the first member of the 80 million-strong Baby Boom generation, which, starting next year, will begin to bankrupt the nation by crashing the Medicare and Social Security systems.

    To tout this happy milestone, the Social Security Administration called a news conference Monday and invited cameras to film Casey-Kirschling signing up for benefits.

    "I think I'm just lucky to be at the top of the boom," said the retired schoolteacher. "I'm blessed to be able to take my Social Security now."

    No kidding. As the Boomers retire, Social Security will go into the red in 2017 and become insolvent 24 years later, according to the system's Board of Trustees. Medicare, meanwhile, starts bleeding in 2013 and goes under in 2019.

    Fixing the two would require Medicare and Social Security benefits to be cut immediately by 51 percent and 13 percent, respectively, perhaps by raising retirement ages. And that's a nonstarter for Casey-Kirschling's generation.

    "Why should Boomers who have earned it and who may need that extra support in their retirement - for medicine, for food, for whatever - why should they wait if they really don't have to?" she asked.

    "That's exactly right," concurred Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue, standing at Casey-Kirschling's side. "And I think we ought to cut Kathy a little bit of a break here."

    Yes, let's. It's not her fault that, ever since Money magazine found her on the eve of her 40th birthday in 1985, she has been a symbol of her generation. If anything, the ones to blame for the entitlement problems are the Boomer presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and all the Boomers in Congress who have put off the painful changes everybody knows will be needed.

    Astrue, also a Boomer, spent much of the news conference whistling past the graveyard of entitlement insolvency.

    "There's no reason to have any immediate panic," he said. "This president, everybody running for president, pretty much everybody in Congress, all accept that there's an issue."

    Astrue said he expects Social Security to be fixed before his term as commissioner ends in 2013. And even if not, he added: "It's not catastrophic. ... Some of the nuclear-winter scenarios that you hear people talking about, really there isn't a factual basis for that."

    "What makes you confident?" asked Bloomberg News' Brian Faler.

    "I spent a fair amount of time talking to senior people in the White House, talking to people in Congress," Astrue said. "There is an acknowledgment that they have to step up and do it."

    Oh? "We're not seeing that," WJLA-TV's Rebecca Cooper advised the commissioner. "What did they tell you?"

    "When you're behind closed doors," the commissioner said, "there's a real expectation that it's going to happen."

    Cooper tried again. "You as the leader on this - what are you backing?"

    "Well, uh, I - I'm flattered by the assumption of your question," the commissioner said, but "Secretary Paulson has the lead." (That would be Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.)

    "What do you recommend?"

    "Well, I'm recommending what Secretary Paulson knows I'm recommending to him, but I'm not going to share that now."

    So the Social Security commissioner has secret ideas for fixing the system, and lawmakers secretly want to take action? No wonder the members of Generation X - born after 1964 - are more likely to believe in UFOs than in receiving their Social Security checks.

    Casey-Kirschling, speaking for the Boomers, counseled confidence. "I have great hope," she said, that Social Security will be repaired for "my children's generation and certainly my grandchildren's."

    Cooper, a Gen X-er, asked Casey-Kirschling about that famous UFO poll. "Why do you have so much confidence?"

    "I always like to have my glass half full," she said.

    The first Boomer, who lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore, opened her eyes wide with surprise as she entered Monday's event at the National Press Club and saw all the TV cameras. She put on her reading glasses, then pointed and clicked her way through the online application while television recorded her every mouse movement.

    "A fun experience," she pronounced when she finished, then went on to explain why she was applying for early Social Security benefits.

    "I'm going to take it now because I can take it now," Casey-Kirschling reasoned. "I'm thrilled to think that after all these years, I'm getting paid back the money I put in."

    This article appeared on page A - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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