I was a bit grossed out by this cartoon video…

Obama Administration to announce Katrina housing transition plans….

The Obama administration will announce plans today to virtually give away roughly 1,800 mobile homes to 3,400 families displaced by Hurricane Katrina who are living in government-provided housing along the Gulf Coast, officials said.

Read the full story from the Washington Post HERE.

I do not know all the particulars, but weren’t the Greensburg FEMA trailer occupants forced to pay rent when they were trying to phase out FEMAville…something like $600 a month?  This just doesn’t seem right!

Concern over tornadoes is just a way of life in our area. I found this online article about a unprecedented upcoming Tornado chasing effort in Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Nebraska and the Texas panhandle. $10mil is the expected budget for such a huge endeavor.

The chase will run between May 10 and June 13th of this year….and we have a huge week long camping trip planned at Meade State Park right in the middle of it. The way my luck has been runnin’ maybe we ought to take out some extra insurance.

 BIGGEST TORNADO CHASING EFFORT EVER PLANNED

Though I was not directly affected by the Greensburg tornado, I realize that my family will never be the same since that weekend. I never returned to work (well except for one day) after that night. Our flooded basement was nothing in comparison with the devastation seen by those in Greensburg that night.  I remember sitting in front of the television and the internet while listening to the radio…worried about my daughter who traveled on her way to a State Forensics Meet, through Greensburg,  less than 45 minutes prior to the tornado swallowing the town. All night we visited on the cell phone, worried about the other storms in their path. Upon her return two days later, the little van carrying a frightened team dodged tornadoes and large hail off an on for 4 hours.

When I lived in Texas, I loved thunderstorms. I enjoyed the thunder and lightening. Don’t get me wrong, Texas has its share of tornadoes…but it seems that here in Kansas EVERY thunderstorm brings a tornado somewhere. An exaggeration? Yes…but it does feel as though I cannot enjoy thunder without worrying about tornadoes.

So $10 million does sound like a lot of money…but if I were on the voting committee to approve the funds…..I would ask to vote YES….TWICE!

Okay, so here I was cutting articles from the newspaper for Hais’ senior scrapbook and what did I find? A API story written by Jeff Karoub titled Discouraged words: One sees red over “green”! The title caught my attention, then I perused to find an inset titled ENOUGH ALREADY! with this:

Lake Superior State University’s 2009 list of bannished words: 

• green
• carbon footprint or carbon offsetting
• maverick
• first dude bailout
• Wall Street/Main Street
• monkey
• 3 (Emoticon for “heart” used in text messages and email.) 
• icon or iconic
• game changer
• staycation
• desperate search
• not so much
• winner of five nominations
• It’s that time of year again

    –The Associated Press

Looking for the actual story online (so I could link to it) only provided me with LSSU’s actual release on their website. LSSU issues 34th annual List of Words to be Bannished  was released online on December 31 under the university’s Campus News.  Though I consider this a parody of sorts, I am disappointed at some of the environment/ecological choices added.

{snip}

“Environmental buzzwords are getting the axe this year.
“Green” and “going green” received the most nominations.

GREEN – The ubiquitous ‘Green’ and all of its variables, such as ‘going green,’ ‘building green,’ ‘greening,’ ‘green technology,’ ‘green solutions’ and more, drew the most attention from those who sent in nominations this year.

“This phrase makes me go green every time I hear it.” Danielle Brunin, Lawrence, Kansas.

“I’m all for being environmentally responsible, but this ‘green’ needs to be nipped in the bud.” Valerie Gilson, Gales Ferry, Conn.

“Companies are less ‘green’ than ever, advertising the fact they are ‘green.’ Is anyone buying this nonsense?” Mark Etchason, Denver, Colo.

“If something is good for the environment, just say so. As Kermit would say, ‘It isn’t easy being green.’” Kevin Sherlock, Hiawatha, Iowa.

“If I see one more corporation declare itself ‘green,’ I’m going to start burning tires in my backyard.” Ed Hardiman, Bristow, Va.

“This spawned ‘green solutions,’ ‘green technology,’ and the horrible use of the word as a verb, as in, ‘We really need to think about greening our office.’” Mike McDermott, Philadelphia, Penn.

CARBON FOOTPRINT or CARBON OFFSETTING – “It is now considered fashionable for everyone, tree hugger or lumberjack alike, to pay money to questionable companies to ‘offset’ their own ‘carbon footprint.’ What a scam! Get rid of it immediately!” Ginger Hunt, London, England.

Mike of Chicago says that when he hears the phrase ‘carbon footprint,’ “I envision microscopic impressions on the surface of the earth where an atom of carbon forgot to wear its shoes.”

Christy Loop of Woodbridge, Va., says that ‘leaving a carbon footprint’ has become the new ‘politically incorrect.’ “How can we not, in one way or another, affect our natural environment?”

Presidential election years are always ripe for language abuse. This year, the electorate grew weary of ‘mavericks’ and ’super delegates.’ As Michael W. Casby of Haslett, Mich. said, when he suggested banning all of the candidates’ names, “Come on, it’s been another too-long campaign season.”"

{snip}

“STAYCATION – “Occurrences of this word are going up with gas prices.’Vacation’ does not mean ‘travel,’ nor does travel always involve vacation. Let’s send this word on a slow boat to nowhere.” Dan Muldoon, Omaha, Neb.

“The cost of petrol forces many families to curtail their summer voyages and a new word has sprung, idiotic and rootless…” Michele Mooney, Los Angeles, Calif.”

Can you say “Bozo”?

ENOUGH SAID!

Maybe this isn’t the place to present this, but I just had a pretty significant scare in regardings to one of my eBay selling accounts. I must preface this with I consider myself somewhat savvy in the ways of criminals and that I have been accused of being too suspicious on more than one occasion. That said, this morning I almost made a huge error. In fact, if it had not been for my computer telling me to not trust this site, I would not have given it much further thought.

I have a few items for sell on eBay. This morning as I was checking the email account associated with my eBay account, I found a question about an SAT book I have listed in my auctions. Now, I must add here that I just recently sold a another prep book on eBay for which the (Canadian)purchaser filed a dispute for not receiving the book within 5 days of payment. This new question on the second book at first, and second, glance appeared to have come from eBay, but I could not find the info in my eBay account.  Based on the other sale, I thought that eBay was experiencing some kind of tech difficulties. Somewhat annoyed, I decided to go ahead and respond to the question through the regular email. When I clicked on the respond now button, (thank goodness) my computer told me that the destination was a phishing site.

After going back to look at the official looking email again, I realized that there was one tiny, tiny difference…the return address was “ebey.com” rather than “ebay.com”. If my computer had not caught the attempted fraud, I would have gone to a site and typed in my password so that I could access my account.

I know some of you sell on eBay, so I thought it best to get this particular scam out there. It is so much different than any of the many that I have received in the past.