My neighbors are about on my last nerve with letting their dogs run free. We do have a leash law in this county and even if we didn’t have the law it is common sense to protect your dog from getting run over and to protect your neighbors kids from a dog bite. There are three houses on my street alone that routines let their dogs roam freely. I’m not sure how to handle this, but I don’t like it.

In high school, I was able to find a part time job after school at a local florist shop. I loved that job and still love flowers – very easy way to score big brownie points with me.

In fact, I’ve worked for several different florists for short periods of time over the years. At the major holidays they are usually glad to have experienced help and I enjoy the hub bub, helping out, and being around the flowers and plants.

Congrats to our next President, Barack Obama! How exciting to think that America has our first black President. We will have a totally different adminstration now, with hope for lots of changes and a whole new approach to solving the many serious problems facing our Country. I think Obama has a lot of great ideas and can make good things happen. What an historic time for America. I’m looking forward to a time of peace and prosperity again for us all.

A good friend of mine inherited a significant amount of money when her father passed away and she learned about investments with a good financial advisor. She created a financial portfolio and has put the money into various investments and I’m so glad she was smart about it. We had lunch yesterday and we got around to talking about real estate. Imagine that!

She wants to buy something for personal use once or twice a year and then rent it out the rest of the time it is ot in use by herslef or her family. So we’ll get together soon and look at someof those types of properties.

My son in Alabama is beginning to understand that starting up and running your own business is full of pesky little chores that take up a lot of your time and need to be handled in a timely manner, such as balancing the different business bank accounts so your employee’s checks don’t bounce and keeping a paper trail of disciplinary actions with a problem employee so the Department of Labor doesn’t get on your back.

I told him about a nice software package called “Manager Assistant” that can help him get better organized and stay on top of those HR and manager details. I like the feature that let’s you schedule and manage employee reviews because I am a firm believer of constant feedback and working with employees as a team, with common goals and measureable progress. But this program has many different modules to help you with many different kinds of management tasks.

My goodness, my son has a lot to learn! But glad I’m here to help and glad to do it. I have no doubt he’ll end up being a great boss and make his business a great success.