Good morning on this cool, windy and wet Friday.  We did get some sunshine yesterday and, after we got back from picking up Mom's new glasses, I got the blueberries put into their winter home.  I will sneak out between the rain drops today and put my milk jug cloches over them for the next couple of nights.  I also got the last of the peppers and tomatoes.  Now I need to clear out the spent stalks.  The wind howled all night and I was afraid I would have to chase down the plastic pots I have on the shelves of the mini-greenhouse.  But they stayed in place.  That is something else I have to do over the weekend--move all of them into the shed for the winter.

The mainstream media have featured the new debit card fees Bank Of America plans to start collecting prominently on their news shows.  For more information you can read about it here.  A few months ago Ariana Huffington pushed a movement urging pissed-off customers to move their money to more friendly local banks who might actually appreciated them.  What pisses me off (I already patronize a small local bank) is that we bailed out those bastards.

This is a possibility I sincerely hope doesn't come to pass.  And on the other end of the North American continent comes this story.

Wouldn't you love to land a job where you get a multi-million dollar sign on bonus, where you preside over a multi-million dollar loss for the company, and where you are fired after 11 months and leave with a multi-million dollar severance package?  Well, Leo Apotheker, lately of HP, got exactly that.  And he isn't alone.  Once, more years ago than I care to remember, I tutored a chemistry major who was having difficulty.  He complained, thankfully with good humor, that he worked harder in the history class than he did in any chemistry and simply couldn't get the material.  I remember thinking, but didn't say since the kid really was trying, that our old mantra that hard work leads to success should be amended to read that hard work that yields good results leads to success.  Now I have to throw the whole concept out.  Success is just a crap shoot: some of us have good luck but most of us would have no luck at all if it weren't for our bad luck.