Well, let’s face it, life is just one kick in the pants after the next. I have noticed, however, that life is better with a dog (or three). Dogs are optimal companions, vigilant guardians, perpetual playmates, and even extemporaneous vacuum cleaners. Studies have demonstrated that these generators of joy actually reduce stress levels in their human companions.
The Petsitters Compendium
I hope you will check out the rest of this great post here! And if you like it, let him know!
This is not the type of post I typically put up on my blog, but I feel I need to share this with any of my readers in the Cary/Raleigh, NC area. If you need to get your vehicle serviced, Atlantic Tire and Service is the place to get your auto service done.
I get my vehicles serviced and repaired there, and have done so since moving to Cary about three years ago. First it was my Ford Escape and now my Nissan Xterra. I have recommended Atlantic Tire & Service to several others friends and they have all thanked me for doing so.
Examples of great Auto Service
Here is an example of what I mean. My 2011 Ford Escape had an ongoing problem with the air conditioning. It was most inconvenient! I had it checked at three different auto service centers beginning on Hilton Head Island where it first quit working while on a vacation and sitting in a traffic jam on a very hot day. It was not a happy experience! Later, a service center in Knoxville checked it several times, and finally a Ford Dealership checked it when I moved to Cary.
Each time it cost several hundred dollars and would work great for six to eight weeks. Then it quit cooling again. I knew it was leaking coolant! Each shop recharged the system. Each shop said they put dye in the system but could not find a leak. I later learned that this probably meant the leak was in some kind of condenser under the dash and they just did not want to fool with it. The Ford dealer charged me $500 and changed a lot of parts under the hood, but eight weeks later … no AC!
Enter Atlantic Tire & Service
After the Ford Dealership flop, I tried Atlantic Tire & Service. They found the leak right away. It wasn’t a condenser under the dashboard. It was the lower connection on the compressor unit under the hood. Parts and labor turned out to be about $400 … but it worked great thereafter!
During the oil change Atlantic Tire and Service did for me just yesterday, I asked them to check an annoying rattle I had been hearing lately to get an estimate to have it fixed. I was pretty sure it was the heat shield over the exhaust. They looked and found it was just loose. The mechanic tightened it up free of charge. No more rattle.
On a last note. On several occasions I witnessed service technicians sitting down with women customers in the waiting room and explaining their repairs in detail, showing them the needed parts or the old parts, and giving priorities or options when budgeting was necessary. Atlantic Tire & Service really treats their customers right! As long as I am in the Cary area, I will use nobody else.
Shameless plug …
Also, check out my military action thriller, Serpents Underfoot, and my entertaining collection of true tales about encounters with black bears, Adirondack Bear Tales! Read other great blog posts here!
Well, we learned how Obama is going to fund his jobs (and I use the term loosely) act! Higher taxes!! Half a trillion dollars worth! Of course, in his jobs speech it was going to be fully funded by cutting spending … who would have thunk! And, his taxes are on single earners making over $200,000, and couple and small business owners making $250,000 per year. Like this is wealthy? Maybe it is in East Tennessee, but it is middle-income in Los Angeles, New York City, and Connecticut! And the extra taxing of small private-sector business owners who create 70% of the real job growth, and funneling that money through the federal bureaucracy (making sure their pensions and benefits are safe) and sending the rest out the back door to give temporary jobs to union (NEA) workers who support Obama’s political agenda is corrupt Chicago political machine politics at its best!!
But … hey … for three and one half years, Obama has been tirelessly working; doing what needs to be done to fundamentally transform this great county into a shadow of its former self … a giant, centrally mismanaged, self-loathing, apologetic, socialist nanny state that Michele Obama can be proud of.
Truthfully, if Obama had worked tirelessly at what he has been “actually” doing … we would be in deeper shit than we are now! Fortunately, he and Michele have mostly been living it up like royalty; jet setting around in separate jets, taking extravagant tax payer funded vacations, playing endless rounds of golf, redistributing tax payer money to their cronies, and attending lavish fund-raisers.
So why do we need to fund still more “shovel ready” construction jobs on roads, bridges, and schools? Isn’t that what the last “porkulus” package was supposed to do? Oh yeah … I forgot … that $1 trillion went to …. ummm …. ummm … can anybody tell me?
Oh yeah! To fund green energy projects like Solyndra.
(OBAMA MAY 26, 2010: It’s here that companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future).
Well, the owners of Solyndra have a “brighter and more prosperous future.” That is for sure. Somebody got the $535 million Obama gave them just before they closed their doors! Anybody hear anything about that from the liberal, drive-by media?
Yep! Simply another reason we don’t need the federal government handling American job growth. We need to take the handcuffs like excessive regulation, the Obamacare abomination, and ever soaring taxes off the backs of small business owners and let them expand their businesses and hire people! Small businesses create jobs that do not need the federal government to steal money from medicare, social security, and tax payers to fund! I know … it’s so hard to grasp the concept; especially when your real agenda is simply increasing government power or if you are a useful idiot who can’t think past the progressive-liberal brainwashing that our public school system has forced down our kids throats for the past 30 years or more!
Sorry folks, it is not the federal government’s job to give your kid a musical instrument so he can play in the school band … that is the parents job! It is not the federal government’s job to remodel schools in local communities, that is the local government’s job. It is not the federal government’s job to tell you what to eat, think, read, listen to, play, watch, say, drive, ride, or otherwise do! That is your job! Be a man (or a woman … don’t want to be sexist here!). Make your choices … succeed or fail … but accept the responsibility for your choices … good or bad! You can always try again. That is freedom! That is liberty! And … that, my friends, is what America was once all about!
Finally, many American’s are waking up and catching on to the progressive-liberal elites that are tirelessly working to turn America into a nation of mindless morons (sheeple) that they can control and thus reap the benefits as the “benevolent American aristocracy.” And, as more Americans awaken … Obama’s poll numbers continue to drop. Perhaps that is why he recently blocked the deportation of 300,000 illegal aliens … he may need them as voters in November 2012!
D.C. Gilbert 