Things That Make Luaphacim Cringe: Car Title Loans

There I am, working on my Sunday School lesson for tomorrow, when I hear the following on the TV in the background: "You can turn the equity in your car into cash! Checksmart will help!"

Very little annoys me more than making payments on things. I buy everything with cash if I can swing it, and if I can't swing it, I don't buy it unless it is, like, food, fuel, or utility bills. Paying cash gives me a feeling of security and keeps me from sliding toward that miry pit of slow-crushing minimum payments from which escape is so difficult. I dread arriving at the place where I am forced to live month-to-month, with little or no hope of ever getting ahead financially.

So the very idea of taking a paid-for automobile and signing a note for every cent it's worth (or, in the case of most car-title loans, more), seems like a recipe for disaster to this particular Luaphacim. I know it's probably just a personality quirk of mine, and I know there are probably people who genuinely need the services provided by title-loan places, but it just rubs me the wrong way all over. (Especially when the title-loan place has abusively high interest rates for past-due payments.)

What do YOU think, dear reader(s)? Is Luaphacim just a cranky (prematurely) old man, or is there something to his crankiness?

Home "Improvement" Tip

Are you tired of the same old look? Need to put a little pizazz into your home's decor? Feel like laying down a fresh coat of paint, but first you want to do a skim coat to hide the irregularities in your wall?

I have spent several hours "improving" my home this weekend, and I would like to offer some simple advice to those of you who are contemplating such projects: "Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have." (Heb. 13:5)

That is all for now. I may give a more detail-laden account later, but don't count on it, as I am very, very tired. :-)

On the Run

Ouch.

I ran this morning, and I made my first mistake before I even left the house: I decided to leave my cell phone behind. My reasons for doing so were two-fold. Firstly, I liked the idea of getting out of the house, completely unencumbered by any connections with the outside world. Secondly, and more importantly, there was no room for the phone in the pocket of my shorts. OK, I guess that technically there was room, but not much room, and I would rather have the phone left at home for a few minutes than have it bounce out onto the street and be crushed by a Mack truck because of insufficient pocket-space.

Why, you may ask, was it a mistake to leave my cell phone at home? Because, I respond, I have the time sense of an especially slow-witted jungle sloth. Which is to say a very bad time sense indeed. Consequently, I have need of some time-keeping device for my workouts, and my cell phone is the best choice, because I am a chronic loser of watches. (But I need my cell phone, so I manage to find it each time it becomes lost.) Thus, deciding to leave my cell phone at home threw me upon the tender mercies of yet another stunted faculty in my possession: my sense of distance. This, my dear reader(s), was my second mistake.

If possible, my sense of distance is even worse than my time sense. Really, it reminds me of the passage in one of Peter's epistles where he talks about how a day is as a thousand years to the Lord -- to me, a hundred meters is like a 5K, and a 5K is like a hundred meters. It should be no surprise, then, that I got it into my head that a certain main intersection not too far from my house was about a mile off, when actually the distance was a lot more like two miles. I had intended to give myself a fairly easy run (two miles, round-trip) since I haven't been running much lately, but instead, I ended up giving myself a run that was very nearly four miles. I arrived home about 35-40 minutes later (I didn't know exactly because I seemed to have forgotten my cell phone), panting with exhaustion and vague imprecations directed at my belly in specific and the universe in general.

My knees are killing me at the moment -- I'm used to running three miles on a treadmill, not four miles over terrain -- and I'm worn out. So that's the reason for the "Ouch" at the beginning of this post. I can only hope that my pain has brought you some small amusement at my expense. If, perchance, it has, I shall count it well worth the anguish I have borne this morning.

Happy Thursday! :-)

Yet Another Reason to Love Mrs. Luaphacim

Excerpted from a conversation we had this evening:

Me: ...as you are aware, my love, past performance is not an indicator of future results.

Mrs. L: Yeah, but how else would people decide how to invest in the market? Seriously, you have to rely on past performance.

Me: That's true -- I suppose it's just an elegant fiction created to ensure that investors won't be able to say, "Wait, wait, I totally didn't know this wouldn't make money."

Mrs. L: Which reminds me... I've been seeing a lot of commercials on TV lately where companies are telling people how they've been around for years, and they're still doing things the way they've always done... so we should trust them.

Me: Yeah?

Mrs. L: I don't think I'd trust them - "Come buy from us! We've been around since the 1890's!" I'm not sure it's very profitable to barter goods and services for cows.

Me: *snorting with laughter, I try to prevent the nachos I'm eating from being forcibly ejected through my nose*

Peter the Great

I'm at a coffee shop right now, and there is a free computer with internet access. On it is someone's project on Peter the Great. I thought you might enjoy learning some more about this most fearsome of Russian czars... enjoy. :-)

Peter the Great was born in 1672 and died in 1725.
Peter was Tsar of Russia from 1682 until 1725 when he died. His self given title was Peter the Great even though he was officially Peter the I.
Peter Centeralised government, Modernised the army, created a navy and increased the sublugation of the peasants.
His domestic policy allowed him to excute an agressive foriegn policy.
Peter the great was massivley powerful, "loud-mouthed, violent,ruthless, and impetus."
Peter always wanted to learn how to learn,and was very actice.
Peter learned to be a carpenter,talked to mathmetisians and learned how best to train soliders, including how to torture people.
Peter formed a small army out of his servants and used them to play war games.
Peter personality has been the cause of much debate and discussion in the 300 years since his death.
Its been said the peter is a very cruel unliked man.