Serving Bread

This week, I am publishing two Finance Friday posts. If you are a (recent) homeowner and live in California and you have seen a significant drop in the value of your home, there is help. Prop 8 (passed years ago) is a bit less controversial than the one that voters just passed and stipulates that [...]

Today officially begins the Christmas shopping season in the United States. Beginning today, Americans will spend around $900 for Christmas gifts, adding anywhere contributing anywhere between $300-$500 billion to the nation’s retailers. While many Christian leaders will remind us this month that Jesus is the reason for the season, the challenge will be no more [...]

Three months ago, we celebrated Layla’s 3rd birthday with yet another party with lots of little friends, balloons, and food. In lieu of gifts for Layla, we invited our guests to consider giving toward one of our sponsored children who shares the same birthday as Layla. Though we have never met him, we (and Layla) [...]

This might just save Bush’s legacy.

I have a confession to make: I need a bailout. The financial industry has asked and received and the auto industry is doing everything it can to get one. I figure I could ask for one as well and mine will be fairly modest compared to the $25 Billion that the auto industry seeks. There [...]

A mentor has recently challenged me to put more focus in nurturing pleasure in my life. I’ve always enjoyed cooking (and it seems my family enjoys that I cook as well), so I’ve been putting more effort at creating some foods from scratch. I recently found a recipe to make bagels (which was fairly easy [...]

On Friday night, we began smelling smoke outside and we quickly learned that a wildfire had broken out in Sylmar (about 10 miles away). On Saturday, the dry (Santa Ana) winds continued to blast through the Valley, filling the atmosphere with smoke and ash. Though we were never in danger of the fires, the air [...]

When campaigning among Spanish speakers, Obama translated his campaign slogan “Yes we can” to “Sí se puede.” During the campaign, there were allegations against Obama for having lifted some phrases from other orators. This Spanish phrase is unfortunately one of those lifted phrases. He stole this one from… none other than… “Dora the Explorer!” That’s [...]

In case you forgot, today is the International Day for Tolerance (an annual observance declared by UNESCO in 1995 to generate public awareness of the dangers of intolerance). For those of you who need a little help getting started: Make a list of everyone you hate, dislike, and are irritated by. Observe if there is [...]

Here’s a response from the governor to my Open Letter. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. — Thank you for writing to share your thoughts with me about the proposed tax increase to balance our budget deficit.  Your input is important to me in these challenging economic times. I signed the 2008-09 budget on [...]