Jasper Jones

Alex’s dad is an engineer and when the bridge collapsed up in Minneapolis several months ago, he was called in by the Feds to do some consulting work on the bridge repair. He’s an environmental engineer, and to be honest I don’t really know what he does or what it has to do with the environment. Neither does Alex. LOL!

Anyway, his Dad really like Minnesota and has been calling here encouraging Alex to come up to Minneapolis on our next break and spend some time with him up north. He’s even told us about the local newspaper, the Star Tribune, and how it has lots of listings for Minneapolis jobs.

He says there are a lot of companies hiring in Minnesota and that Alex can write his own ticket after he graduates. Of course, Alex should go on up north and check out the area before he takes any career advice and moves up there. Plus, graduation is still eight months away. But we are getting a lot of mail from recruiters and it’s never too early to make your plans for after graduation. Hell, maybe I should check out the job listings and go up north for a visit with Alex - we might both find something.

Maybe I’ve been living under a rock these past couple of days - what with school and working at the hospital. But I had no idea that we were having a gas shortage around here. I went to get gas after class and pick up a 24 pack of Pepsi. But when I pulled up to the pump there were plastic grocery bags over all the handles. So I went into the store and asked what’s up, and the clerk tells me that because of Hurricane Ike that all the gas stations are out of gas. All the BPS are out of gas, some of the Shells are out and a couple of the Exxons have mid grade and premium gas - but they are sold out of regular.

I hadn’t even noticed but station that have taken out the numbers from their signs that post the price per gallon are signaling that they are out of gas. If there’s no numbers on the sign - drive on by.

Well, it’s going to be pretty tough to get to the hospital from here if I can’t find some gas.

College kids are constantly bombarded with offers of credit and loans. Let’s face it, these are the people most likely to need a little boost with money. If taking a heavy course load, most student can only deal with a part time job at minimum wage to keep some spending money coming in. It’s a time of great sacrifice and limitation for a lot of people, but unfortunately, life happens and sometimes we need to raise cash quick to take care of unplanned expenses.

One solution to covering small emergencies is to take out a short term personal loan. An easy way to apply for Personal Loans is to use the internet to apply for the loan. But kids need to use this resource sparingly and responsibly. There’s no sense getting off to a bad start with a lot of debt right out of college, but if you need help to get through this difficult time, its good to know what resources are available to you and sometimes a short term personal loan is really the best solution to the problem.

According to Consumer Reports Magazine, if you are thinking about buying a new car this year you should factor in a number of costs above and beyond the sticker price of the car, such as

• the loan interest rate,
• depreciation,
• fuel economy and
• typical maintenance and repair expenses.

The average car’s maintenance and repairs should run about 4 per cent of the total cost of the car over a five year. Using this method, the magazine released their picks for the top 10 most expensive cars for maintenance and the 10 least expensive cars to maintain. Interesting list and even more interesting is that my car is not on either list.

My mom is a big fan of shopping on “Black Friday.” Although she kicks off her Christmas shopping as early as October, the big month for her to shop around and find the bargains is usually November, and the day after Thanksgiving is the mother of all shopping bargain days.

A lot of stores have special prices on high dollar items to get your Christmas shopping money as early in the day as possible on Black Friday. For example, my mom got word that Best Buy was opening their doors at 4:00 am on Black Friday last year, so she was up and out of the house by 3:15 am for a full day of bargain hunting. At Best Buy she scored big on a digital video camera under $100 and a portable DVD player for under $50. All the big stores will have special deals this year - and if you know about them ahead of time you can plan your whole day around which stores you want to get to early and which can wait until later in the day.

Some of the same stores are now bleeding over into the next week with special deals on “Cyber Monday.” These are deals you can only get online, and the best part of that is there’s no crowds, no parking issues, and they can ship everything to either your house for the gift giving in person or they can ship it to the person’s home or business address for the relatives and friends out of town or who won’t be able to be with you on Christmas for the gift exchange. I’m a big fan of cyber monday and will probably take advantage of the online deals this year and have everything shipped to my parents house so it will all be there when I get home on the Christmas break.