Dear United States Government

While you are working so hard over the weekend, I would like to propose a rider, or amendment, or whatever the hell it's called (I guess I didn't pay attention in ninth grade government class... sorry Mr. Topp) to the 700 BILLION dollar bailout of all these greedy banks and insurance companies. I would like you to add an extra .00000214% to that and give me like 150,000 dollars.

The money would be spent to pay off the $105,000 remaining on my mortgage which we can pretend is sub-prime and is destroying the economy.

The remaining $45,000 will be used to pay off credit card debt, student loans, and my car loans which we can pretend were predatory in nature and are destroying the economy.

The result will be an extra $2150 I can pump into the economy every month. So in less than 6 years you'll have all that money circulating back into the economy. Won't that be awesome.

Gee you guys and galls are swell.

So I'll just wait for that check, and remember it's Lawryde with a y not an i. We wouldn't want to have any difficulty at the bank would we?

Kitchen Remodel: Budget and Labor Overview

All right, I get to sit down in my comfortable work chair and reflect for a few minutes. The kitchen is well on it’s way to being finished. All that remains is grouting the back splash, a final coat of sealant on the floor grout, the trim, and touching up some paint.

My original cost estimate was $4450, right now without having bought the back splash grout, and some of the trim, I’ve spent $4368.58. That’s not bad.

To date, I estimate that we’ve put in a total of 187 man-hours of labor in 9 days. That’s an average of 10.4 hours per day per person. I don’t know exactly how much a contractor would charge per man-hour of labor, or if it would be more or less time than we’ve spent, but I’ve got to guess it would be between $60-$80 per hour, some of that time was spent doing specialty work an electrician or plumber would do which would be even higher. That means we’ve saved an estimated $11,220 to $14,960 in labor. Two years ago I bought the house for $104,500. I’m hoping that now with the new roof, new plumbing, new kitchen, and various other small upgrades and improvement we’ve done, I’m hoping I’ve moved it into the $130,000-$140,000 range which is what some of the nicer houses on my street are going for.