Troubled times

These are historic times we are living in. Why? Nearly unprecedented financial troubles. A black president. War in the Middle east. War in afghanistan.

Most of the "unprecedented" or related adjectives have to do with the current financial crisis. This contagion has spread throughout the globe and I believe it threatens to drag us even further down. I had a couple of grand left from bonuses and so forth that I wanted to open an investment account with. I set up a ticker on Yahoo! with some stocks that had been beaten down that I felt might come back up, among them Bank of America and Citi. Now both of those stocks are down 40+% since the time that I added them, and that's been in the last 4 months, so you know they weren't exactly at the 52 week high.

It's troubling to me because I believe we are living in a time that my children and grandchildren will read about in their history books and I dont' know how to document it.

GCs' if you ever read this.....I'm worried about my job... I'm worried about the house, and the value of it... I'm trying to refinance, but I don't know if we can get it done, and I don't know if it's worth it to put up the money up front......I'm worried because I'd like to get closer to home (mine and your mothers) and the majority of those jobs don't pay what I make now, plus then we are stuck with this stupid house that we may be able to sell. Or maybe not....we just don't know.
I'm worried that the goddamn economy will completele collapse and I'll be sweeping the streets as part of a government program to keep people busy....I'm worried that our collection of 401ks and IRAs is now worth about half of what it was and the future doesn't look so bright....I'm worried that when I do get a chance to retire that social security and medicare won't be available. Or if it is avaialble, that we will have busted our ass to save and won't be eligible...

I don't know exactly what to do. I'm going to keep on doing what I've been doing and hope that I'm not meeting Einstein's definition of insanity.

In other, more fun news, I've been working on the Jeep and some progress is being made. I finally got tired of looking at the spaghetti of wires hanging off the firewall, so I took some electrical tape and started trying to wire up the headlight switch and dimmer. Those 2 items alone make up about a dozen wires, and provide a foundation for many of the others. After some work, I hooked up the battery charger to the battery cables to provide a low amp current and started turning things on....what do you know, I've got power to the dimmer, power to parts of the dashboard and power to the taillights. So, now I've got to correct the problems I found and get behind the dashboard to finish wiring......after that, get a correct new fuel hose from Q-tec and finish the hoses for the fuel tank.....finish drilling the body mounts and get that done.....clutch linkage.....gauges......seats......seatbelts.....steering column and linkages.....windshield wipers......2 new rear tires that aren't totally dry-rotted.....after that, I may be able to put it on the street briefly for a shakedown drive.

I'll update again later about these times. I really feel I should be talking about this to establish my/the families historical perspective.

Later.