As of midnight tomorrow night, smoking will be banned in all bars in the state of Maryland.
Yippie!
Now why can’t Pennsylvania get on board?
I know it’s not a popular decision among the smoking crowd, and many bar owners probably fear they will lose business if lighting up a cancer stick was banned.
Susan Reimer at the Baltimore Sun wrote a column today about how the average middle-aged person is feeling the effects of the economic recession. She talked about how people aren’t spending as much money because they feel poor, even if they may not actually be poor.
But I think that feeling of being poor is more universal, not just confined to the middle-aged.
Meat is bad for the environment, according to the New York Times today. Now that's one bit of consumption I'd have a hard time living without, and it did sound a bit silly at first to think cow farts are contributing to global warming.
Then it began to make sense.
I hope you all caught the story in this morning’s business section about the class action lawsuit filed against Pure Weight Loss (formerly known as L.A. Weight Loss).
I feel terrible for the people who lost hundreds or thousands of dollars when the diet center closed abruptly in December.
Have you or any of your friends been members of Pure Weight Loss? Did you lose a lot of money?
Or do you belong to other weight-loss programs? What have your experiences been with them?
Have you ever had the experience of meeting someone, and the story they tell you just pulls on your heartstrings?
That was my situation yesterday as I talked to Cynthia Hudler, a young woman who struggled with alcohol, entered rehab and successfully turned her life back around.
She had some help from this great organization called Dress for Success. Its mission is to provide women with the clothes and the confidence they need to tackle a job interview or their first day on the job.
In order to help woman like Cynthia, the organization relies on donations from people in the community. They take all gently used suits and appropriate work attire.
It’s going to be time for spring cleaning soon enough. So when you are cleaning out your closet this year, maybe you’ll notice some work clothes you don’t really wear anymore. Consider donating them to Dress for Success. They will make a huge impact in the life of a woman working to take control of her life.
Donations can be dropped off at any DeVono’s dry cleaners. You can call them at 244-4571. You can also drop donations directly at the Dress for Success boutique at Pennsylvania Careerlink, 841 Vogelson Rd. For more info you can call 764-3330.
If you want to get more involved there are plenty of ways. Volunteers are always needed, and if you don’t have clothes to give, the organization accepts monetary donations. Their Web site details all the ways you can get involved, and I encourage you to take a minute to check it out.
I’m sure many of you may have noticed grocery stores offering sanitary wipes for customers to use to wipe down shopping carts. And starting in February, the Rutter’s stores will have Purell dispensers by the doors.
For my story that will run in tomorrow’s paper, I went out to grocery stores and gas stations and scoped out the number of people who used the various antibacterial products that each store offered.
Let me tell you, after watching people cough, sneeze and practically spit all over their hands before touching their shopping carts, I will never not use the wipes. I mean that’s just nasty. Think of all those germs getting passed from one person to the next. No wonder we all have colds that seem to last forever in the winter.
But no one does it better than the cruise ships. I can only speak to Royal Caribbean because that’s the line I’ve been on, but they knew what they were doing. Every time I walked into the buffet-style eatery on board an attendant was standing there to offer me a hand wipe.
It wasn’t a suggestion, like, “Hey, you’re about to eat, you should probably take a wipe.” It was mandatory. You weren’t allowed in unless you wiped down your hands.
I attempted to stroll by the attendant once because I wasn’t planning to eat. I was just looking to see if my friends had sat down for breakfast yet, but I couldn’t even enter the restaurant without taking a wipe.
Kudos to you Royal Caribbean for forcing everyone to use them.
When I stood at the grocery stores and gas stations, I watched tons and tons of people pass by without giving the antibacterial products a second glance. I don’t get it. If it’s there, why wouldn’t you use it?
Another year, another tax season.
Have the W2’s started cluttering your counter space yet? I know they’ve started to filter into my mail.
I panicked for a little because I’ve never done my own taxes before. My dad’s bailing me out this year and has offered to do them for me one last time.
But I can’t imagine I’m the only one who gets a little nervous at the prospect of having to do their taxes for the first time.
That leads me to our newest challenge to Daily Record readers. We are looking for someone who is planning on doing their own taxes for the first time this year. You can be someone who is sick of paying lots of money for an accountant or you can be a real first timer, who has never had to deal with your taxes at all before this year.
We want to be there from the get go, chronicling everything from purchasing and installing the software to the very last time you hit print to get your forms to mail. We want to learn how easy or hard it is for a first-timer to master the software and learn the answer to the eternal question, which is better, a person or a box?
If you are interested, e-mail me at jmilcetich@ydr.com. Include your name, age, municipality, why you are doing your taxes for the first time and why you think a software program is the better option.
I think this Q&A from the Wall Street Journal will tell you the basics of what to expect if we are in a recession. It's a scary word, although the definition kind of takes the fangs off it.
Interestingly enough, even if we are in a recession, no one would be able to tell us yet. The people who push the button on that call look back on recessions instead of predict them or call them in the air.
So are you going to wait until someone says we are in a recession, and all that involves, to curb spending or are you going to do that regardless of what description bankers give the economy?
Read this, then tell us whether your company breaks overtime rules. (We don't need to know what company.) A lot of these seem to be under the radar screen for many employees — or maybe even their employers.
The basic trend is that if you are having trouble making ends meet, and you don't have the power to fire anybody below you, you are entitled to overtime.
Don’t I wish I lived in Jersey.
Ok well no, not really. But I do wish I lived close enough that I could drive across the state line to get my gas. Not only is gas currently about 20 cents cheaper per gallon, but it’s pumped for you, which is extra beneficial in the dead of winter.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported today the national average fell two cents over the weekend to $3.01.
But really are people supposed to be out in the streets celebrating? Gas is still on average over $3 per gallon.
When I started driving five years ago, I could fill my mom’s mini-van for $20.
Five years later, I own my own car — a fuel-efficient sedan — and it costs close to $40 to fill the tank. I can’t imagine what people driving bigger cars are spending.
There is something seriously wrong with that picture.
Gas prices around here are ranging from $3.09 to $3.13 per gallon from what I’ve seen being out and about.
What are you doing to deal with the insane price of gas? Driving less? Car-pooling? Just sucking it up?
I’m interested in hearing.
A lot of talk is had on how people are moving into York County and destroying its rural feel. A recent report in the Wall Street Journal says it is a trend all over the country. But interestingly enough, most of Pennsylvania, including York County, is not on the list of places nationwide that are getting hit hard by what the paper refers to as rapid "gentrification."
See the Journal's story and map here.
Maybe York County is absent because our rural feel is already gone, our gentrification already coming to pass. If I were looking for a rural place to settle down, I sure wouldn't pick here. It's already not rural enough to have enough charm in that regard.
I look at the only county in Pennsylvania that is both on the Journal's list and with which I am familiar — Sullivan County, north of Williamsport, the home of my deer-hunting camp — and I see a really rural county. Glen Rock is a metropolis by comparison to little Hillsgrove and Forksville.
Most of that county is state forest land, state game land and rocky soils that couldn't easily be pocketed as badly with the on-the-cheap, haphazard developments that currently scar most of Pennsylvania. Until now, I guess.
For me, York County is a place where posted and safety zone signs fill the woodlots and where the cornfields are silhouetted by this year's mega housing development. The little of what remains feels more like Central Park than a national park or forest.
At the same time, it's not exactly a hub for young urban professionals, a demographic that is becoming increasingly environmentally minded, while still living in cities or suburbia and wanting to shop at Starbucks and Wegmans. And a demographic we crave for its tax base.
I tried the other day, for example, to find a store selling high-quality, 100 percent recycled paper around York. I failed.
So is it time we start thinking of York County from an outsider's perspective, as a quick-growing bedroom community instead of a bucolic getaway, and make our decisions accordingly?
As I mentioned in my first post on Monday, I’m a huge soccer fan. So it should come as no surprise that I’m pretty pumped about today’s MLS SuperDraft being held in Baltimore. (SuperDraft is just the fancy term they use for draft.)
Like any good fan would do, I spent part of my morning reading scouting reports on the top recruits and hoping that Stephen King and Spencer Allen, two players from my alma mater, the University of Maryland, will both get chosen. (King’s being projected as a mid-draft pick; Allen is expected to be a very late choice if selected.)
Now I’m the business blogger, not a sports blogger,so of course this story has a money angle to it.
I’ll be honest. I have an unhealthy relationship with Facebook. I spend way too much of my free time checking to see who’s put up new pictures or videos or which of my friends have updated their profiles most recently.
Just the other day Facebook told me my formerly blond friends dyed her hair brown.
But one thing I don’t have are Facebook applications, programs users can download to add extras to their profile. There are tons of applications that let you do things like rank your friends or play games back and forth each time you log on.
One of those games is called Scrabulous, a spin off of the popular board game Scrabble, that lets users play the game online for no cost.
Now Facebook and the two men from India who developed the Scrabulous application are being sued by Mattel and Hasbro for violating copyright laws, the Baltimore Sun reported today. The toymakers said they want users to play Scrabble on a “legal” (to be read: You probably have to pay for it) Web site.
Let’s be honest here for a minute toymakers. While Scrabulous is letting Facebook users play for free, do you really think you’re losing that much money? I will concede because there are ads on the site, you deserve a kick from that. But how many teens or young 20 year olds do you know who are clamoring to go out and buy the board game or pay to play online? If they had to pay, chances are the majority wouldn’t be playing at all.
But maybe it’s not about the money. Maybe it’s the principle of having your product re-marketed without your permission. I wouldn’t want that either. So maybe there’s some happy medium everyone can agree on so that Scrabulous doesn’t get destroyed forever.
To Hasbro’s credit, the company said it is reviewing several options with all parties involved to solve the problem “amicably.”
"This man" refers to Jeffrey Evans of Jackson, Ohio. See him here, take a good look. Keep looking. Now look again, especially at his eyes, his stare.
OK, how many of us have seen him before? I have, unfortunately. More times than I can count.
He's our father, or uncle, or family friend who works harder than anyone we know. His hands are always chapped and twice the size of ours. The whites of his fingernails are always caked with dirt - no matter how much soap he applies.
And most importantly, he's the reason for the work ethic many young people learned growing up. He believed a dream during our formative years, living the mantra of an honest day's pay deserved an honest day's work. He made us want to work that hard, too.
But after 30 years of living that life, Evans' situation is what these men - and women - get. A wobbly rocking chair in mom's living room. The company he worked so hard for threw him into the gutter.
So then why are companies so surprised when young people today don't have the work ethic that their parents' generation had? It's not that we didn't pay attention to how hard they worked. It's because we did pay attention to their labor - and how little they were rewarded for it.
We're not lazy, we have just learned from our loved ones' mistakes, and refuse to invest emotionally in a mode of living that considers us as disposable as tin cans or hamburger wrappers.
We can't build an economy to compete against the world when our young workers are too scared of becoming Jeffrey Evans to put their hearts and souls into their labor. It's up to business to make us not afraid. And the clock is ticking.
I was as bummed as the next person when I realized my precious TV shows were all destined to become reruns when networks ran out of new episodes to air as a result of the Writers Guild of America strike. But somewhere deep down I was holding on to a small bit of hope that the writers and the producers would come to an agreement soon enough to salvage what was left of this season.
Turns out that won’t be in the case. In fact, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that four of the major studios have nixed writers’ contracts. On the surface that news is probably sad for me and you, regular TV viewers, who will now be stuck watching hideous attempts at reality TV -- Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann, anyone?
But the real tragedy here is the hundreds of writers and production people who are now out of jobs.
I was browsing through Consumer Reports Money Adviser this morning and came across this interesting tidbit: Using the self-checkout lanes in stores can save impulse buyers money.
Consumer Reports cited an industry study stating only 12 percent of customers who use the self checkout bought anything in checkout displays (gum, candy, magazines, etc.)
I've been staring at the monitor for the past 15 minutes trying to decide how I wanted to start this entry. We all know first impressions are important, and I wanted to be sure I made a good one.
Because you don't get to meet me face to face (at least not yet), introductions are a little challenging. So I guess I should just start with the basics.
Hi, it's Joan from Only in York County, dropping by for a guest-post...
And I'm hesitant to even point this one out, for fear that the vending machine company that supplies our office will somehow pick up on it and ruin things for me!
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We have both canned (12-ounce) and bottled (20-ounce) sodas available in our office vending machine. Used to be that the 20-ouncers were $1 each; in the last few months, the vending company upped that to $1.25. Fine, it's still cheaper than the convenience store nearby, so I'm OK with that.
However. Cans have stayed the same at 60 cents each.
Now, your only canned choices are Sunkist Orange, ginger ale, and caffeine free Diet Pepsi. It happens I like the ginger ale and the caffeine free diet, so I'm in good shape when I'm a little short on change, like today, when I brought a buck twenty five, hoping to get one 20-ounce bottle of caffeinated Diet Pepsi to last me all night.
Suddenly, the lightbulb goes on! That's $1.25 for 20 ounces... but if I'm willing to sacrifice the caffeine, I can get a whopping 24 ounces (in the form of two cans) for a nickel less! Now, I was a math major in college, so the fact that it's taken me three months or so to catch on to this is a little off-putting.
But, now that I've discovered this great "trick," I'm just so proud of myself that I had to share. And a bit confused, too. Ever seen any weird vending machine math? Share, so I don't feel so alone.
Before Monica-gate, Bill Clinton got a lot of support back in the day when he "reformed" the welfare system. Still broken, as no one can magically figure out whether someone really needs the help or is milking our tax system for his or her own benefit, but those reforms were a help.
Too bad Clinton doesn't deserve the credit. Welfare is very much a state issue, and in the 1990s, many states were trying their own thing, like 50 little experiments in 50 labs, big and little, to see if someone could get it right.
Clinton's plan was modeled after what Wisconsin figured out. That's the brilliance of states' rights; out of many, one good plan can emerge. And it's a principle generally expounded by conservatives. It's like a free market within government.
Until recently, when the Bush Administration said states don't have the right to figure out their own solutions to air pollution problems. Nearly 20 states decided to set higher fuel-efficiency standards than the federal government, and that's not allowed, according to the EPA.
The official reason? Because federal rules trump state rules on financial issues that happen within a specific state. Excuse me while my head finishes exploding.
I'm sorry, but the last time I checked, there is a law against that logic called the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution! If a financial transaction doesn't cross state lines, and the state wants to make the issue its issue, then it's up to the state.
And there is no reason for a resident of Texas to buy his or her car registration from California. In fact, it's illegal. A California resident registers a car, and pays accordingly, in California. California gets to make its own rules about what cars it allows and what cars it doesn't.
I guess the principle of taking money from the big car companies trumps states rights. Money talks more than logic, and what might help, in politics OK, now it makes sense.
So why does this matter in York County?
Well, if you have a business here, you have employees. And most likely, all of you are paying an arm, leg, ear and a few toes for health care.
But I bet it would be a lot cheaper in the long run to get a better miles per gallon rate (which saves you money, too) than to pay into some big HMO because Susan over in accounts payable gets an asthma attack once a week because of poor air quality caused, in part, by inefficient cars.
That is why, as of 2008, our state is joining others in suing the federal government. At least that is still a state's right.
I've seen Care Bears: Big Wish Movie about 400 times.
For the most part I tune it out while my 2-year-old daughter lies in her crib, totally entranced by the squeaky voices and bright colors.
But one day I realized that the Care Bears were in a steering committee meeting. And they were following Robert's Rules of Order.
And there was old business and new business, and...wait, what?
Gas prices are up.
As is the cost of just about everything else -- taxes, food, you name it.
It's all anyone talks about these days.
So why did I still see a sea of SUVs while I was traveling this weekend?
