Various and sundry on a Friday afternoon...

Yikes. It's been a month again since I've posted.

After that spate of posts in the middle of July, I thought I was back to writing on a regular basis (or at least on as regular a basis as I've ever posted here). But not so much, apparently.

And, it isn't as if I haven't had the time to post something. I was without transportation except for my feet and the bus for the entire month of July, and then a couple of weeks ago, my work hours were cut back drastically. This is not good news, considering that fact that the unemployment rate in my area is over 16 percent. So, I've been trying to figure out how to get some new revenue streams going, with not much success so far. At least, with school starting, I can get out there in the next couple of weeks and try to drum up some tutoring business.

I think that might be part of why I haven't been posting much. My paying gig involves writing news on the finance markets...stocks, oil, and metals, mostly...and it's just all so depressing that I just haven't felt like doing much of anything much of the time. I don't care what the politicians have been trying to sell, the economy is not getting any better, nor is it likely to for the forseeable future.

I did see, in relation to this, that Michelle Bachmann is out on the campaign trail claiming that if she is elected president, she'll make sure that the price of gasoline goes back down to $2 per gallon. Yeah, right. Anyone who believes that she - or any president - has the power to do that, deserveds her as president. And Rick Perry called Ben Bernanke (he's the head of the Federal Reserve) a traitor for his monetary policy.

Come on, kids. It's over a year until the general election. Can we at least save the character assassination and pie-in-the-sky promises until after Christmas?

This is probably another reason I haven't been writing here much. I tend to get snarky at the least provocation these days. Maybe it's the weather, although we've actually had a milder-than-normal summer here in Central California. It hasn't been cool by any means, but we also haven't had nearly as many as 100-degree plus days as we usually do (something I hope continues for the rest of the summer). So, you know, if this is climate change, it's at least changing for the slightly better around here.

At least I've been doing something productive this summer, hatching plans for some writing ventures that I think might have potential and knitting some things for donation to a local shelter once the weather gets cooler. It might not get as cold here as it does in some parts for the country and the world during the winter, but there are people who will need scarves and stuff to keep them warm. And, when a good friend's yarn shop closed last year (has it been that long?), I took home a lot of the donation yarn people had given her to make things for a local charity. I'd been wondering what to do with it all until I decided one day that scarves are quick and easy to knit, and giving them away would uphold the purpose the people who had donated the yarn had in mind for it.

So. That's my summer so far. Snark and knitting (and you don't know just how well those two things get along until you've spend some time on Ravelry - go Google it if you don't know what it is) and trying not to get to depressed by work and the things I write about there. How's yours been so far?