The Hungarian hot pepper had turned red, so took it in this morning. The tomato is from the Roma plant I bought in a 4 inch pot. The Brandywine tomato is to the top of its 6 foot stake now, but only has one green tomato about an inch across so far. With the tomato harvest this year looks like it will be a race against blight as much as frost.
There are some green bell peppers about ready too, but left them on the plant for now. I made a pork loin stir fry with peppers, onion, and mushrooms for supper with the parents the day before last. I forgot to bring sesame oil, but my dad said that he wouldn’t fire me for that this time! He also questioned not putting in some of their hot peppers. Think that calls for another stir fry soon.
The parents are replacing their furnace so I went there Monday to stay with mother while my dad worked in the basement in the afternoon then mowed grass in the evening. Before that though, they showed me letters they got for two credit card accounts announcing increased fees for everything. Yep, after the taxpayers paid all that money to bail out banks. I heard that it now costs small business people a lot more to process credit and debit card payments too. As my mentor Neil T. often said, “No good deed shall go unpunished.” They had tried to cancel the accounts before but ended up being talked into keeping them.
There is anecdotal evidence that senior citizens do not fare well with credit card (should really be called debt card) companies. In addition, when I cancelled a MasterCard account before I left Milwaukee, prompted by a sizable lost payment fee, it was an interesting experience. I had to talk to three different people, one of which was a purported credit counselor. The final person attempted to scare me with not having MasterCard to pay for medical care! Now I wonder how might the finance industry be connected with the problems in our health care system? In addition to what I thought was nasty tactics, after talking to them I was able to formulate an SQL query that would generate such bogus charges while minimizing the probability of the customer catching it. (Oracle and MySQL DBA experience as well as database design background)
When I was prepared for a fight, like telling them that my parent’s religion prohibited usury and dealing with anyone who promoted it, was rather disappointed that they had cleaned up their act. As a warning to people who care for elderly and disabled relatives or friends though, even if you have power of attorney (POW) for them, you have to give the credit card company a copy of the papers before they will deal with you. If only they were so careful about approving large purchases and cash advances as with canceling accounts. Fortunately we had two phones available and my mom was feeling better than usual. Got two accounts closed and verified that a third was already closed. Whew!
The ground was wet when I returned to Ford City Monday night, and we had a couple showers mixed with sunny skies yesterday. It is still overcast now (almost lunch time) so guess we are back into the damp weather pattern. It is probably preferable to the two air quality alert days on Sunday and Monday though.
