What's everybody doing today?

[MoBookworm1957]

Have you all heard the news?
We now have a new Ocean!
It's called Missouri.
The Missouri National Guard has been activated to help with sandbagging.
We now have prisoners helping with sandbagging.
The road signs that are normally dry and in ditches in some areas the water is at the bottom of those road signs.
It used to be Big Mo River flooded like this every 50 years.
But unfortunately it's now every 26 years and they predict next year the flooding will be worse. DUH!
Big Mo. River is trying to cut new channel, unfortunately Corp of Engineers doesn't want it too.
Guess who's going to win.
I am still safe and semi dry at the moment.
My hometown is built on top of old coal mines, so those will fill up first.
Unfortunately small towns around me are not so lucky.
Missouri has be declared a Natural Disaster.
I think there are four interstates across Missouri still open, but not 100% sure on that this morning.
Our 100 year floods are getting closer.
Suppose to start raining again today.
We'll see...….
Stay safe and dry if you can.
Mo

 

[MoBookworm1957]

Missourians have a warped sense of humor.
Older farmer gentleman told me yesterday, his grandsons wanted him to branch out with different crops.
He's considering doing just that this as his house, farm sits under 6 foot of water.
He's thinking rice would be a good crop to think about.
I don't think that is exactly what his grandsons meant.
But he drew a lot of laughs in the coffee tent yesterday morning.
I told Frank, that might be a good idea for the time being.
He said it beats Medical Pot all to heck, which is still illegal until the federal government changes it's status.
You got to love old salty farmers who through it all still have a sense of humor.

 

[Caribou]

@Tank-Girl I don't think I have ever seen canning jars here on gumtree or in garage sales they seem to be extinct here to buy secondhand.

@LadyLocust canning jars are almost impossible to find secondhand here as I don't think many people can here in Australia. I am glad you can find them in the United States though. Tank-Girl is in Australia.

Around the turn of the century the Brits, Auzie's, and Kiwi's I ran into while traveling said that they couldn't hardly find canning jars and equipment. If that's true, and you can now buy mason jars readily, it will be a generation before they start showing up second hand.

 

[Meerkat]

@Tank-Girl I don't think I have ever seen canning jars here on gumtree or in garage sales they seem to be extinct here to buy secondhand.

@LadyLocust canning jars are almost impossible to find secondhand here as I don't think many people can here in Australia. I am glad you can find them in the United States though. Tank-Girl is in Australia.

I never see any either but then we don't go to many yard sales. :lil guy:

We are canning now and today I'l be mopping floors I put off yesterday. And whatever else I need to do like cooking.

 

[Sewingcreations15]

Stay safe @MoBookworm1957 and praying for those around you and that you don't get any more rain.

 

[Sewingcreations15]

Fantastic late news last night was that our mortgage interest rate will go down by .25% as of the 14th of this month. From our estimates that will take down our monthly mortgage interest down by about $30 + dollars a month. We pay both the regular fortnightly mortgage payments and the monthly interest also at the end of the month so our fortnightly payments come directly off our principal of the mortgage and we will not slack off and will still pay the same until we get the mortgage + monthly interest on the mortgage to $500 a fortnight and will keep it at that for the duration of the home loan until we pay it off.

 

[timmie]

that's great sewing. i just want ours paid off asap.

Fantastic late news last night was that our mortgage interest rate will go down by .25% as of the 14th of this month. From our estimates that will take down our monthly mortgage interest down by about $30 + dollars a month. We pay both the regular fortnightly mortgage payments and the monthly interest also at the end of the month so our fortnightly payments come directly off our principal of the mortgage and we will not slack off and will still pay the same until we get the mortgage + monthly interest on the mortgage to $500 a fortnight and will keep it at that for the duration of the home loan until we pay it off.

 

[Meerkat]

Fantastic late news last night was that our mortgage interest rate will go down by .25% as of the 14th of this month. From our estimates that will take down our monthly mortgage interest down by about $30 + dollars a month. We pay both the regular fortnightly mortgage payments and the monthly interest also at the end of the month so our fortnightly payments come directly off our principal of the mortgage and we will not slack off and will still pay the same until we get the mortgage + monthly interest on the mortgage to $500 a fortnight and will keep it at that for the duration of the home loan until we pay it off.

Well thats good its always nice to get some of it back.

 

[Sewingcreations15]

Thank you @timmie we want to get it paid off as soon as possible too. Thank you @Meerkat it is nice to get a reduction and pay less bank interest in the long term and we hear they may bring the mortgage interest rates down again by .25% in August. It is rare the banks here pass on the full cash interest rate cut but this time they did, well at least ours did along with 1 other of the big 4 banks.

 

[LadyLocust]

@MoBookworm1957 please stay safe. You did crack me up with your latest news. Sorry it's not actually funny.
@Sewingcreations15 That is great news. Just gets you there that much sooner.

Today I headed up the mountain to work on the house. Got the rest of the painting done except for a touch up in the living room. Also began cleaning the floors after all the sanding and painting and shuffling of things. First went over it with a damp dust mop thing - rinsing every couple swipes, then good old fashioned hands and knees. My knees don't like me tonight. I don't have bad knees but it was a lot of washing. At least it's beginning to look better rather than worse. Hoping to list it by the weekend.

 

[Hooch]

I need to find my password to here so I can post some pics...Been having a lot of fun on vacation the last few days. Picking mushrooms and 4x4 ing up in the mountains. I went to a lake not far from my home, worked in the garden, cleaned the garage/shop and got a awesome sunburn that pretty much kept me out of direct sun today and probably the next few days. So at almost sunset I get busy on projects for a few hours until I cant see and now Im catching up...
Thinking of all of you …

 

[Sewingcreations15]

Sounds like a lot of work @LadyLocust but well worth it to freshen up the house for sale. I hope you are able to sell it quickly .

 

[Sewingcreations15]

We both intended to do the rest of the insulation today but we both felt not well and tired and rather stuffed up so we went and had an hours sleep. By the time we got up there wasn't enough time to finish the insulation but we both feel better now. This morning I went out into the garden and saw our trench composted vegetables all dug up and I wondered who or what was the culprit and dug them back into the soil.

However we did shred all the branches we cut off the trees at the side of the property a couple of weeks ago and temporarily put them around the base of 1 large mulberry tree in the paddock. Later we will move some of it around all the fruit and berry trees in the paddock after we whipper snip the grass to keep the grass growing to the base of them. We also cut up the larger branches that wouldn't fit in the branch shredder and put them in the bin. The paddock looks much better without branches lying everywhere.

This afternoon we were on the patio and saw an adult swamp wallaby sitting in the same garden bed eating the couple of lemon peels on the top of the soil so we have found the culprit . Going to have to take my camera with me when I go outside to get some good photos. We will have to put some wire under the front gates we put up as the wallabies just duck right underneath one of the gates that is a bit higher off the ground.

Tonight's dinner is going to be bacon, silverbeet, cheese and mushroom quiche which we will have for two days.

 

[WVDragonlady]

I had to water my garden early this morning since we haven't had any measurable rain for almost a week now. I did have a short shower yesterday but all it did was enough to make things wet and then it was done.
I made a run into the local grocery store and picked a few things that were on sale
Made hubby brunch
Have a load of laundry going
Plan on vacuum sealing some pastas in half gallon jars after lunch
Hubby and I will be heading into town to fill a 40lb propane tank and stop at the pharmacy to pick some scripts
Thinking of making cheese steaks and oven fries for supper today

 

[The Innkeeper]

Fantastic late news last night was that our mortgage interest rate will go down by .25% as of the 14th of this month. From our estimates that will take down our monthly mortgage interest down by about $30 + dollars a month. We pay both the regular fortnightly mortgage payments and the monthly interest also at the end of the month so our fortnightly payments come directly off our principal of the mortgage and we will not slack off and will still pay the same until we get the mortgage + monthly interest on the mortgage to $500 a fortnight and will keep it at that for the duration of the home loan until we pay it off.

We just had a 15000 investment mature, we considered the rate of return vs the mortgage and rather than reinvest it we slapped it on the mortgage as a principle payment. Our monthly payments remain unchanged but with less principle will reduce faster. Not much more to go.

On a not so positive note the local lumber mill announced a permanent closure killing nearly 200 direct jobs plus who knows how many indirect. In a community of just over 2,000 that’s a big hit

Hard times ... reminds me of a song

 

[viking]

Which kind of plant was it, @MoBookworm1957 ? That sounds like she was doing very poorly.
I'm sorry to hear she's struggling so bad, good you know what did it. How old is Strawberry? I hope her whole body recovers quickly.

When we got our two toy rat terriers and put them out in the dog pen they ate small lawn daisies and were crying in stomach pain, we called poison control and they said that the plants were not poisonous but they would cause discomfort until they were past out of the dogs' systems, poor Mini whined in pain while my wife held her but after they vomited and had some diarrhea they got back to their normal happy state.

 

[viking]

Thank you @Patchouli I didn't know they did that. I think I'll pass, shredding publicly seams to defeat the point, my weird logic.

I checked the internet, the office supply store down the road has a close out model for $75, reg price $110, only 2 left in stock. A very nice shredder.

I do a major shred every 4 or 5 years... It's amazing how much paper can pile up it 5 years. I do on line banking but insist on paper bills from everyone. I like a paper bill stored in a file folder. I guess I'm old fashioned.

I bought the shredder I have about 5 years ago and did a major shred that covered the previous 8 years. I finally got my elderly dad to use the shredder a couple of years ago. He had bank statements and utility bills stored in boxes going back 40 years. It took him 2 weeks to shred all that crap! It freed up about 80sqft of shelving in the storage room.

So, I've gotten my money out of this shredder, time for a new one.

A couple of times a year, generally in cooler weather, those things get burned in our wood stove, nice on a cool morning to take the chill off without starting a major all day burn.

 

[Sewingcreations15]

That is the way to do it @The Innkeeper and like us it won't change the fortnightly mortgage payment amount but will make a big difference on the amount of time to pay off the mortgage and the interest you pay.

We rode the variable rate as we saw property prices plunging when we purchased this property and knew the interest rates would go down rather than up and if we went fixed we could only pay a small amount off the loan in extra repayments too which for us defeated the purpose. Also if you go fixed then you don't get a reduction in interest rates if the cash rate goes down and you also have to pay a fee to change to a variable rate loan and also a huge exit fee if you pay off more than their fixed 5% extra in repayments they allow you under fixed term rates. I imagine those who are riding on fixed rate loans are now crying in their breakfast cereal. When we got our loan fixed mortgages were 1.5% or more higher in interest rates.

Upon getting our loan we did our research and all the financial experts say to ride the variable rate as it is cheaper in the long run and offers you more choices of repayments. Many of our friends who recently purchased a property went fixed which surprised me but I suppose they wanted a fixed repayment each month. Now they will probably see why we chose the variable rate as they thought our choice was unwise. They will be paying around 5.3% or more interest rate while we are paying 3.59% that is a huge difference in interest and repayments over the course of a mortgage loan term of usually 30 years where we took ours over 20 years.

Thank you @LadyLocust we could do with a bit of a break in paying more bills or interest on our loan as could many.

The current rate of 90 day mortgage defaults here in Australia is just over 33% even on the historically low interest rates which is pretty high and that shocked me. When we took out our loan we knew we were well able to pay it and lots extra with the income we had and still live well and save too. I think many loaned up to their eyeballs not allowing for interest rate rises or job losses and it is really sad.

 

[Sewingcreations15]

@viking our personal papers also get to be fire starters in winter for our slow combustion fireplace. That is when we clean out our bills and other documents that are no longer needed.

 

[hiwall]

Nice day here so the wife and I took our paddle boat to the little lake about 4 miles from our house. Had a great time and got some exercise.

 

[timmie]

took hubby for his eye injection and went to the dollar tree. bought 20 cartons of milk. and daughter bought 2 jars of flavored creamer.

 

[LadyLocust]

We just had a 15000 investment mature, we considered the rate of return vs the mortgage and rather than reinvest it we slapped it on the mortgage as a principle payment. Our monthly payments remain unchanged but with less principle will reduce faster. Not much more to go.

On a not so positive note the local lumber mill announced a permanent closure killing nearly 200 direct jobs plus who knows how many indirect. In a community of just over 2,000 that’s a big hit

Hard times ... reminds me of a song

We are Chris fans here too, but I'd not heard that one - kinda sad.

@Sewingcreations15 I think it's now illegal over here to charge a penalty for early pay-off on a loan. I know it is for auto loans - I only borrowed about 2/3 of the price, pay extra each month, and make an extra payment every so often. The mortgage on the mountain house is paid about 3 years ahead (will obviously pay in full upon sale of house.) Other than the mortgage, I don't like payment plans. Actually, I don't even like it then but can at least rationalize it.

 

[The Innkeeper]

We are Chris fans here too, but I'd not heard that one - kinda sad.

@Sewingcreations15 I think it's now illegal over here to charge a penalty for early pay-off on a loan. I know it is for auto loans - I only borrowed about 2/3 of the price, pay extra each month, and make an extra payment every so often. The mortgage on the mountain house is paid about 3 years ahead (will obviously pay in full upon sale of house.) Other than the mortgage, I don't like payment plans. Actually, I don't even like it then but can at least rationalize it.

The song is sad because it’s way too true.

The only thing I have with regular payments is the mortgage. We use credit cards for the cash back but always pay the bill in full.

Spent too many years with debt ....too soon old, too long stupid. Like many we bought into the lied easy payments. We made payments on money we didn’t have to buy things we didn’t need to impress people we didn’t like. It was a deep painful hole to crawl out of.

 

[The Innkeeper]

It has been an irritating 24 hours. Out to dinner, my charge card declined ... apparently a bunch of cards may have been compromised. Fortunately I always carry some cash. New keys cut for padlocks for outbuildings ... none of them work, all has to be redone. Took tires in for a retorque after a changeover ... two studs broke, they will replace the studs but parts won’t be in until tomorrow. Bunch more similar stuff, none of it earth shattering, none of it will put me out of pocket, but spent most of the day getting things redone or fixed and nothing on my to do list done.

Some days are just like that. I figure the good Lord knows I need to grow in patience, and in grace when frustrated.

 

[Peanut]

I finally figured something out that has bugged me for a while. My favorite local weather radar on their website...

Without zooming in there is a tiny spec on their background map that doesn't exists near my home.

Tonight I realized that the storm cloud data is current. The background map isn't! The background map is a satellite image from 3 or 4 years ago. 4 miles up the road there was a large track of timber clear cut... 3 to 4 hundred acres...

That's what that tiny light colored spec on their website weather radar map is.

Now I no longer have to zoom in to see the weather near me...

 

[Sewingcreations15]

Totally relate @The Innkeeper and I think the good Lord tries to teach me patience too as he knows I need a lot more of it. We rode the debt trail for a while too with my family running up bills in my name ($70 000), damage to my home and including registering a total of 7 cats and dogs in my name at their address . It took us 6 years to crawl out of that debt hole that neither of us put ourselves in and many phone calls to various places to have registrations and the like cancelled out of my name.

Yes I thought too that exit fees were illegal @LadyLocust but apparently not here on fixed rate mortgages. They don't apply it to variable rate mortgages. We would rather not be in debt either in any way but the mortgage was one thing we had to do it on and like you we pay way more on it to get rid of it sooner.

 

[Sewingcreations15]

Today I started off the morning with putting on a load of washing in the washing machine and hanging it on the clothes line to dry. I then filled all of the hand washing water buckets and bottles up with saved shower water and watered the potted herbs and fruit trees with saved rainwater from the tank stand roof and watered the spider, calla and canna lilies and some shrubs around the sides of the house with grey water from the washing machine.

While I was doing all that DH was cutting the remainder of the insulation batts into strips to fill the rest of the small holes left in the ceiling. After he did that we headed to the ceiling cavity and put the remainder of them in and now it is all done thank goodness. That is one job we won't be sorry is done for good. I then gave all the rooms an interim sweep to get rid of all the fluffy insulation floating around the floors.

Headed to the RSL club for our weekly date, had a few soft drinks and played a few games of pool and won one game each and the winner versed our other friend down there. Yet to fold up 3 loads of clean laundry and put it away.

Tonight's dinner was the other half of our homemade quiche.

 

[WVDragonlady]

Hubby is putting the new siding up on the last wall of the front porch. Its where the front door is. There was a window on either side of the door and he's taken those out and filled in the holes with plywood.
What he finished yesterday came out real nice

This will be all the remodeling he does until probably Nov when its cooler
I've done another load of washing in between cleaning up any mess hubby makes and I made him brunch so he's back at it.
I have to fold the laundry and put it away
I also have to wash my hair so I don't have to do it tomorrow when we go out for breakfast
Since it friday it'll be soup and sandwiches for supper

 

[Terri9630]

Yes I thought too that exit fees were illegal @LadyLocust but apparently not here on fixed rate mortgages. They don't apply it to variable rate mortgages. We would rather not be in debt either in any way but the mortgage was one thing we had to do it on and like you we pay way more on it to get rid of it sooner.

It depends. First mortgage, type of bank that financed the home, the state your in....
https://www.thinkglink.com/2009/02/23/prepayment-penalty-laws-depend-on-state/

 

[Meerkat]

We just had a 15000 investment mature, we considered the rate of return vs the mortgage and rather than reinvest it we slapped it on the mortgage as a principle payment. Our monthly payments remain unchanged but with less principle will reduce faster. Not much more to go.

On a not so positive note the local lumber mill announced a permanent closure killing nearly 200 direct jobs plus who knows how many indirect. In a community of just over 2,000 that’s a big hit

Hard times ... reminds me of a song

Nice song InnK, don't think I ever heard that one.