Yesterday I was in a bit of a bind. I knew that Kathy and I were going to be out on a weekend together (starting tonight) and that we planned to go cross country skiing. The problem was that my ski boots had come apart from their soles. Kathy had been gently reminding me that they needed fixed for the last two weeks and of course I planned to get it done. I had just never actually done it. I called the shoe repair place that I had found on the web and asked if they could get them fixed in a day and they nearly laughed at me. I made some more inquiries and a few phone calls later I found Tony’s Quality Shoe Repair down in South Bend. Tony is a little Italian guy from the old country whom you can tell by looking at his knotted muscles that make up his hands, he knows what he is doing. Tony took a look at my boots and told me that he could not reattach them the way they had been made (with a rivet through the toe) but that he could do it in a better way. When I got them back less than a day later they were wonderful. Done fast and good for a mere $20. I then noticed some really nice dress shoes in his shop and he gave me a catalog for some REALLY nice custom made shoes. I drooled all the way home. I really like everything on page 11 and the classico loafer on page 13. Now, keep in mind that these shoes start at about $250 and go up to about $350, but oh boy if I had the money, I would have some of those. The white saddle shoes on 18 would definately catch Ash’s eye. If I were a rich man…..

Tonight I was driving, as usual, but in a very nice rental car and it had something that I absolutely and completely enjoyed. Sirius XM satellite radio. I tuned it in to the 80’s station (channel 8 if you want to know) and I was instantly rewarded with the removal of two decades of bad music from my life (at least while it was on). My mind was transported to a better time. Now some would say ‘The 80’s? that was the time of Blondie with “Mickey” (of course your remember it even if you pretend not to. Come on, and sing along “Oh mickey you’re so fine. You’re so fine you blow my mind. Hey Mickey!”) The time of Cindy Lauper with “Girls just wanna have fun” and Billy Idol’s cover of “White Wedding”‘. And I say YES it was in fact all of those (and they were great no matter what we won’t admit to in public 25 years later) but it was also the time of U2 with “Where the streets have no name” and Robert Palmer’s “Simply irresistible”. Just some absolutely fantastic music! Now unfortunately it was also the time of Tone Loc and “Wild Thing” (which, for some nostalgic reason I couldn’t bring myself to turn off) but no decade is perfect. If you have the means, I highly recommend that you get yourself an XM Satellite Radio and get some Siriusly good music (that would be channel 8). By the way, this isn’t an advertisement post and I am not getting compensated for saying these things. I just really loved it.

Yesterday was the first time I had opportunity to use our Dodge Durango we bought last spring, in 4WD for winter driving. We had about 2-3inches of slushy snow on the road (the plows took a while to wake up) and so on my way to pick up the vehicle for job #3 I put ‘er in 4WD and found that I liked it very much. Very, very much in fact. I was really enjoying the non-sliding around factor. Then I got in the wheelchair accessible mini-van and was taking my client home when we almost slid off the road at 40 mph into a ditch that was about 8 feet deep. I got a little excited (not for the least of which reasons was the 300 pound woman in the 300 pound power chair sitting behind me with two little straps and a seatbelt holding her in place) I found myself wishing ALL vehicles had 4WD. If you live North of the Mason/Dixon and you don’t have one, I recommend it.

I just did a review of a website for an attorney in Toronto and I really liked the site. It was clean, professional and easy to use and understand. As I am very interested in visiting the city at some time in the not so distant future I would definitely like to be able to contact a good attorney if the need should arise and I think that this one would be it. Tanner Guiney seems to be a smaller, recently established firm so it would not likely be too highly priced, but one which has been around enough to know their business (established in 1996). As always I would advise people to meet someone before hiring but their site seems well put together and easy to understand. I give them a thumbs up!

Michigan is losing people at a rate never seen before anywhere in the US. I just read an article that talks about how Michigan has lost 109,000 people in the last year alone. That is not just the amount that left, that is the amount that left minus the amount who moved in. In case you were wondering, that is about one and one half percent of the population, but that is just in the last year. It has been going on for 8 years (although the rate has varied). Think about that though. This means that the state has shrunk nearly 10%! This means there are less incomes to provide a tax base for government programs. The problem here is that instead of reducing the amount of things the state pays for, the answer is a constant drum beat of raising taxes (in fairness their have been some cuts but those are grossly outweighed by the amount of tax increases). Now I ask you: What do you think happens to people who are increasingly living in a state that has fewer and fewer jobs and higher and higher taxes? That’s right, a lot of them decide that it is time to move elsewhere, which causes the exodus to get larger and larger. To make the problem worse, the people who are leaving are overwhelmingly the higher educated, higher skilled people who get the better jobs, not unemployed laborers with low education. This leaves us with a lower educated, less employed, higher taxed population with few prospects for improving their lives. And the answer from Lansing continues to be “raise taxes”.
I have, what I believe to be a much better idea: Cut taxes- drastically. This will make the state more attractive for employers and workers alike and will help stem the tide of people leaving the state. But what about all the things that need to be paid for which we don’t have as many people to pay into anymore? Easy. Cut services to the bone. Now, when most governments (be they township all the way up to Federal) have to cut things they always threaten to cut the things everyone needs the most- Police and fire and other services. Don’t touch those- it’s just a scare tactic anyway to get people to quit complaining about the tax inxcreases. Instead make absolutely drastic cuts in welfare related services. Quit making the state atttractive to those who are drinking the water and start making it attractive to those who are carrying the water. Also cut all the ridiculous programs that are nothing but window dressing. Our downtown area did a multi-million dollar “facelift” over the past couple years and really improved the look of the downtown. That’s great, the downtown looks wonderful. But in the end, we didn’t get any more downtown businesses and it cost the state millions of dollars in grant money. Have every single department in the state, from the Governor on down, get reviewed for wasteful spending by an outside party and then hack the budgets with an axe until you get things under control.

So Mike and I went to see Clint Eastwood in “Gran Torino” the other night, and I have to say that, for the most part I liked the movie. It had a surprise ending that I would not have seen coming but I won’t say anything more about that. The down side was that this movie was absolutely rampant with foul language and it didn’t need to be. He could have been a mean grumpy tough old man without being that vulgar. Because of this I have to give the movie two thumbs 5/8 of the way down. Sorry Clint.