Margret Sloan

The banks, savings & loans and credit unions are a huge modern business that are getting way too big for their britches. They have strayed so far from their mission of offering a safe place for people to put their money and a resource for the average person to buy a house.

Everything they do is about generating fees for themselves and customer service has gone out the window. I’ve had banks refuse to take my U. S. currency as a deposit to my account. I’ve had banks tell me that it is too close to their closing time (15 minutes before the doors were to close) for them to help me and to come back the next day. Now the bank where I take our company’s weekly deposit – two checks and a deposit slip – tells me that I will no longer be able to make my commercial deposit at their drive through windows. I must find a parking spot in the crowded lot and walk into the bank and stand in line with all those people who have no I.D., have accounts at other banks, and all those other time consuming banking issues, to make a deposit that takes all of 2 minutes at the drive through.

On Monday I’ll be calling their other branches to see if this is a new policy with all the locations or just the branch close to my house. If this is their policy for all locations, I’ll have to find another way to do my banking business each week.

Ever since I was a teenager I’ve loved New York City. We went on several trips to New York while in school. I’ll never forget the 8th grade trip to Manhattan. We boards large commercial buses at 3:00 in the morning and slept during most of the drive up, spent the entire day doing tourist things and drove back the same night. IT was exhausting but thrilling and I jumped at every chance after that to go to New York for another visit.

Most of my friends that left the medspa company have accepted positions with a new franchise that is based in New York. Sadly, that means most of them have had to pack up and move from here to New York. So now I don’t have the chance for the occasional lunch or cocktails to stay in touch with most of my friends. It’s down to a few emails and occasional phone calls.

Alexa is the last of the old crew to take a job with the new company. We had lunch today at our favorite Sushi place to say goodbye. She is excited about the move and I’m thrilled for her! She’s going to stay with one of our friends already there, sleeping on the futon while she looks for place of her own. To help with that I put her in touch with one of the best real estate agents in Manhattan, Dottie Herman.

Dottie is a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, the largest real estate company in New York. I had met Dottie years ago at a real estate function in Las Vegas and kept her business card just in case I would have the opportunity to move to New York. Alas, it is Alexa who is getting that opportunity and I’m happy to share the contact information with her.

I don’t know who the others used to help them find a new home, but if I was looking for Manhattan New York real estate I would call Dottie first. As soon as Alexa finds her new condo and gets settled in, I’ll be flying to New York for a visit with my old buddies.

There is such a flurry of excitement among the women here about the hottest new movie of the summer, Sex in the City. There are at least three parties based on the SITC theme this weekend and I can’t possibly attend them all but they do sound like fun.

One of the parties is being held at the new luxury condo high rise downtown as a fund raiser, and that one has peaked my interest. They are having a menu based on the movie, with chinese take out, bottomless cosmopolitans, and cheesecake. There will be a fashion show and a surprise guest appearance – so now I REALLY have an interest in going. It would be fun to have a girls night out and celebrate a fun new movie – I think I’m talking myself into it!

My step daughter got a Cricket phone when we refused to add her to our home account. We had to take a hard stand with her and stop helping her financially – she just took advantage of us over and over and I finally put my foot down and said no more money. So she has a Cricket phone that works three weeks out of the month – the last week of the month it always seems to get shut off for non-payment and we won’t give her the money to turn it back on. Aren’t we the big meanies?

So the days when she does have cell phone service, she has a ringtone that she downloaded and it plays in the ear of the person calling until she answers the phone of it goes to voicemail. I knew the ringtone had to be a rap song – she loves that stuff – but I’ve heard the song maybe 100 times and I can’t understand the words. Then it occurred to me that I can look up the lyrics for any rap song and also listen to free ringtone samples by going to the web site called rapartists.com.

I found the song she is using for her ringtone by Kanye West called “Touch the Sky” and sure enough the full Rap Lyrics are there on the web site!

OK – I’m willing to admit that we cheated a little on the tomato plants this year. We bought two plants at the Publix grocery store when they had some seasonal plants out front of the store. Each plant was only $12 and they both looked very healthy, so we brought them home and had a nice head start on tomatoes this year.

My goal has always been to have fresh homegrown tomatoes on the vine ready to pick by the Fourth of July each summer. Well, believe it or not, we’ve been picking ripe tomatoes for two weeks already! They are not really big tomatoes, but they are sweet and meaty and we are very pleased with ourselves!

Maybe this abundance of fresh tomatoes will encourage hubby to eat more fresh garden salads this summer. He eats them in restaurants when salad comes with the meal – no cucumbers, no fancy lettuce – just iceburg – ranch dressing is the only dressing choice – but salads at home are always disdained. If I was a completely confident cook I’d be offended, but it’s not me – it’s him.