A day away from work....

Yesterday Jodie and I stayed home from work. We had a guy from Sears come to fix the dryer, a crew come out to put new gutters on the house (the back gutter had fallen off), and I took Jet White in for a oil change.

Our rig needs a oil change every 10,000 miles. I had gone a bit over, and a red light was coming on...it worried me. The guys at Timberline Dodge treated me wonderful yesterday. One of my biggest frustrations with my disability is that people don't always take me to be an intelligent person by the way I carry myself.

Yesterday I was treated so well. They offered to get my scooter out of the van. I said that I didn't need it, but thanks. One of the guys walked me to the waiting room and asked if I needed anything. He even came back later to check on me.

I felt very respected.

Sitting in the waiting room, the tv was playing the 700 Club. The had a story about John McCain and his feverish last week pitch for the presidency. The lady I was sitting by broke the ice by saying we don't need 4 more years of what we had the last 8. She has a daughter in college who is studying psychology and wants to work with kids.

After she left, an older lady with white hair came into the waiting room. She pulled out a folded paper with the rectangle squares...her mail-in ballot. A guy from the shop came in and offered to turn the channel. I was so thankful to see that lame infomercial about buying foreclosed homes be turned off. The lady commented that she was not a fan of daytime tv. The guy asked me "What channel?" I said "2"...until I saw Martha...then I said "No, how about 8?" Regis & Kelly...much better.

I came home and the crew came to put up our new gutters. Jodie and I watched the season finale of "Madmen"...we are hooked on that show.

The new gutters look great with our new vinyl siding that we got a year ago. The dryer got fixed.

I spent the evening researching the differences between the three major stock indices - Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq, and the S&P 500. I learned that the S&P is really a better indicator of how things are going because it is calculated on a percent basis, whereas the Dow is figured on a dollar basis. I am still learning. Wikinvest and Google Finance are two sites where I am learning a lot. I want to learn more aboout mutual funds.

I will never be a financial wizard. This stuff is more complicated than my brain can handle. It's just nice to learn as much as I can.