I hear you, Teppy -- I only count mortgages in with regular consumer debt for completeness's sake. And consumers are finding out the hard way that houses don't always work as investments, alas.

Jesse - I won;t buy anything, I promise, just find/recycle. you know how I am.

nominations Feb. 1

ok that is BANANAS.

I expect you'd have mentioned if during the intervening three weeks he kept calling to alert you that you had failed to charge him, no? Yeah, didn't think so.

It's a sucky situation to put someone in, and why if I cash a check more than a week or so after someone gave it to me I'll try to ping them with a heads-up. But end of the day, it's his business to stay on top of.

wow - I have a lot of reimbursables to submit.

Our debt is about $600 in medical bills, so I call that a win. Hubby's old student loans got wiped out with the disability, and we paid off the credit cards when we got the lump sum settlement. It's nice not to fear the mailbox anymore.

OK- you guys agree with me-- I think I am going to have to ask boss-- his MOM just emailed me about it.

The funny thing is part of his complaint is that he didn't know he wasn't already charged because he didn't receive a receipt until he was charged late. Um... Wouldn't not receiving a receipt indicate that you had not yet been charged.

A good look at whether the Nobel was given too prematurely:

The Nobel Committee gave South African Bishop Desmond Tutu the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his leadership of efforts to abolish apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid wasn't fully abolished in South Africa until 1994. The committee could have waited until after apartheid was abolished to say, "Well done!" But the point of the award was to help bring down apartheid by strengthening Bishop Tutu's efforts. In particular, everyone knew that it was going to be much harder for the apartheid regime to crack down on Tutu after the Nobel Committee wrapped him in its protective cloak of world praise.

That's what the Nobel Committee is trying to do for Obama now. It's giving an award to encourage the change in world relations that Obama has promised, and to try to help shield Obama against his domestic adversaries...

Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told the AP, "Some people say, and I understand it, 'Isn't it premature? Too early?' Well, I'd say then that it could be too late to respond three years from now. It is now that we have the opportunity to respond -- all of us."

Rick Rolls

Warning - no music or video will play when you click on this. Because it's a pun.

That Nobel committee really upped their HSQ. It does feel somehow like there's several lines of subtext in the award. One is "Thank you for not being Bush." But I think there's also a little of "Yay America! you elected a black dude." and some, "Take that, you crazy whack-a-doodle conservatives."

Especially when you consider that Obama had been president for less than two weeks when the nominations were made. [link]

Of course, I was still full of high hopes for Guantanamo and the Obama Presidency in general at that point.

(oops, got delayed in posting. Waves at Kathy A.)

Um....

Hunger striker's £7m Big Mac: Tamil who cost London a fortune in policing was sneaking in fast-food