Life’s not the French Riviera, believe me,
Life’s not, a charity ball. 

It isn’t, all a great, big, bed of roses, 

It’s not like showbiz, but the main thing I suppose is,

We’re not the people you envy
Believe me, We know we’re doing okay,

We may be less than wealthy,
But better yet, We’re young and healthy,
And anyone who’s young and healthy knows,
That that’s the way the traffic flows,
We’ve no misgivings,

it’s a living.

OK.  I only remember the first stanza. I hear that the reason a song gets stuck in your head is because you don’t know how it ends and your brain keeps trying to finish it.  (Maybe now it will go away!)

The song is the theme to a TV show called It’s A Living that was on in 1985 and starred Crystal Bernard (who later was on Wings) and Ann Jillian.

The show was set in a restaurant at the top of a tall building and featured the waitresses, the piano player and the no-nonsense manager.  I may have been the only one who watched it.

I try to understand what my government does and why they do it. I want to believe that they have my best interests at heart. But sometimes I am perplexed and I need someone to explain it to me. (Feel free to explain it to me in a comment, but use little words, cause I am simple and just a girl!)

When we call in oil executives to speak to congress about their record breaking profits, they aren’t sworn in. We wouldn’t want them to have to tell the truth. And we wouldn’t want to have to prosecute them for perjury.

But the baseball players, boy howdy, they had better tell us the truth about what they shot in their ass!

I know steroids are illegal. But, Jesus Harold Christ on rubber crutches, does Congress have NOTHING BETTER to do?

So I have now become known as the person who will put bacon in anything.

I found this recipe for bacon flavored vodka and I am hard pressed to think what one would use as mixer, but feel free to give it a try and let me know!

(Recipe via Selflaugh)

Thanks to Steve who directed me to the original creator of this recipe, Brownie Points.

Bacon Vodka

Makes up one pint

• Fry up three strips of bacon
• Add cooked bacon to a clean pint sized mason jar. Trim the ends of the bacon if they are too tall to fit in the jar. Or you could go hog wild and just pile in a bunch of fried up bacon scraps.
• Optional: add crushed black peppercorns.
• Fill the jar up with vodka. Cap and place in a dark cupboard for at least three weeks. (No need to refrigerate)
• At the end of the three week resting period, place the bacon vodka in the freezer to solidify the fats. Strain out the fats through a coffee filter to yield a clear filtered pale yellow bacon vodka.
• Decant into decorative bottles and enjoy.

One of the blogs at the Trib that I subscribed to is “In Your Neighborhood.”  As luck would have it, there is an entry about us today!  Oh, please click over and read, won’t you?

Monday, March 3, 2008

Tacoma Talk Beauty and Fun: Azarra Salon

I haven’t had a “regular” hairstylist in years; my low maintenance long hair doesn’t go to the hair salon that often and I haven’t found the right person or salon that I wanted to stick with for the long haul. Well, I have now.

I would like you to read this whole article if you have (or are thinking of having) booth rental in your salon.

If there is one thing you don’t want, it’s to piss off the IRS!

Here’s an excerpt:

A sticky issue for many small employers revolves around who is an employee versus who is an independent contractor.

Many smaller companies use independent contractors to keep employee expenses lower. Independent contractors are engaged for specific projects, so there are only costs to the company hiring them when there is specific work to be performed. In addition, independent contractors do not have to be covered under workers’ compensation insurance or other employee benefits, and the company does not have to pay the employer portion of Social Security and Medicare taxes.

However, the Internal Revenue Service and the courts have established strict guidelines on who can be considered a true independent contractor in recent years. This has come in large part because of employers who used the status of independent contractor on people who were really employees simply to reduce their costs by saving on benefit costs and the expense associated with the employer Social Security match. The status of independent contractor versus employee is not guided by a specific law, but by a series of court cases. There is no simple checklist, but rather a growing list of criteria that help determine independent contractor status. Therefore, a certified public accountant or an attorney should be consulted to help assure that a business is in compliance with the current interpretation of this area of tax law.

Because of my must-learn-everything-the-hard-way son, I have had the opportunity to watch the Pierce County justice system crawl along at an unbelievably slow pace.

It seems now that I am not the only one who thinks things take longer than they should.  From the Tribune:

Pierce County Superior Court judges to target case backlog

Proposal offers solutions after audit shows delays in Superior Court system

ADAM LYNN; adam.lynn@thenewstribune.com

Published: February 28th, 2008 01:00 AM | Updated: February 28th, 2008 06:26 AM

Stung by an audit that said they move too slowly, Pierce County’s Superior Court judges are implementing changes they hope will reduce a backlog of cases clogging the county’s criminal justice system.

Click here to read the whole story.

Upside of suspects staying in county while they await trial: much of their sentence time is already served by the time they are found guilty.

Downside: over-crowded facilities and overtime for the corrections staff.

I thought you would be interested to see the time-line of my kid’s case as an example.  (Remember, we have suspects waive their right to a speedy trial because no one (prosecution or defense) is ready to deal with the case.)

For clarification, CONTINUED means that what ever was supposed to happen didn’t because someone (prosecution or defense) wasn’t ready or wasn’t available.  After 16 months, I am sure the prosecution and the defense were glad to see the end of this case!

When I was in college a million years ago (when dinosaurs roamed the earth), I wrote for the college paper.  As an editor, I wrote a weekly editorial.  As I was 18 at the time, the law raising the drinking age to 21 was a topic near to my heart.  At the time, I thought my writing was brilliant.  (A recent attic clean-out brought me face to face with these old articles and the painful realization that I was not nearly as brilliant as I thought I was at the time. This realization is giving me some perspective and assistance with my parenting since these teenagers of mine are convinced they are brilliant and I am convinced they are idiots.)

But more to the point:

When the drinking age was raised to 21, my most poignant comment was “Raising the drinking age will not stop teens from drinking, it just makes criminals of those who do.”

So now, twenty years down the road, some states are re-thinking the legal age. They have various reasons; from wanting to allow soldiers who risk their lives for us to lift a beer afterward to wanting to stop “underground” drinking.

Underground drinking is what they call it when kids drink outside bars and clubs (where when they become intoxicated, they are no longer served alcohol).  Some people believe that because it is unmonitored, kids drink more in private than they would if they were in public.

There are some challenges I have with the age issue. If we are doing it because of brain development, then the drinking age should be 25 (the age at which the frontal lobe is most developed.) If we are doing it to save lives from drunk driving, I am really confused as is already illegal to drive drunk at any age.

Here in the US, we seem to favor a staggered tier system of allowable behaviors. The thought behind that being that as one matures, one can handle more responsibility.

You can drive at 16, you can vote at 18, you can drink at 21.

It is a fine theory. However, knowing teenagers as I do, I know that they will find access to alcohol no matter the age the state says you must be to buy it.  In fact, I know lots of people who never after 21 did they drink as much as they did when they were under-age.

I had a strange conversation with my 18 year old (collect, from prison…) wherein he told me he would usually buy bottom-shelf liquor.  I asked why he would do that since it tasted like crap.  He said he wasn’t drinking it because it tasted good, he was drinking to get drunk.  I asked him how that had worked out for him, seeing as he is in prison and I am not.  He didn’t think that was funny.

For the record, I have strongly encouraged my children NOT to drink (or experiment with drugs for that matter) because of their birth family’s addiction issues.  But, as we all know by now, I am an idiot who should be ignored.

Any thoughts?

Our venerable local paper, The News Tribune, has a number of blogs specific to our region.  There is one about neighborhoods, one on music, one for dining….

I just subscribed to some, so I will share with you any time something pops up that I think would be of interest.  But, if you would rather gather your own news than rely on me (probably a wise choice!) click on over here for the list.