Gee, I miss one day of watching the evening news and I miss everything! The war on terrorism is over, the economy is no longer in the toilet, fuel prices are down, stock prices are up, and all of the illegal aliens have gone back south of the border.  It must be true, because every newscast I have seen for two days now doesn’t talk about anything but the death of Michael Jackson.  

I find it interesting that while there is so much discussion of the singer’s grand career, in which they call him the King of Pop music, we hear very little about the other side of his life; the repeated accusations of child molestation, his bizarre behavior, his prescription drug use, and his financial troubles.

No, let’s just glorify the King. I’m sorry, he wasn’t a king to me, or even an interesting performer. He was just a freak wacko that had been idolized and coddled since he was a little boy, had been allowed to do things that society would not tolerate from the rest of us, and never had to live in the real world. All because he was an “artist.” Let’s get on with life.

I reported in yesterday’s blog that a couple of subscribers to our digital edition of the Gypsy Journal had to download a newer version of Adobe Reader to access the file. We have also discovered that some users of the Firefox web browser cannot access the file, unless they use Internet Explorer to do so.

While Terry was busy stuffing envelopes with the new issue of the Gypsy Journal yesterday, I spent the afternoon working on a new seminar called 100 Miles From Here for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally. The seminar will highlight dozens of interesting places to visit within a 100 mile drive of the rally site.

No matter where we go in this country, we find interesting places to explore, from historic sites, to oddball museums, to the homes and graves of notable people. I created this new seminar to illustrate how, wherever you are traveling, there is plenty to see and do.

Miss Terry has been dealing with computer problems for quite a while now, and yesterday evening her Compaq laptop died. When she turns it on, whether on battery power or plugged into an AC outlet, the power light comes on, but that’s it. No fan, no screen, it doesn’t even begin to boot up. We have taken the battery out and put it back in, it’s fully charged, and we’ve tried every fix we could find online.

The laptop is less than two years old, but these days the quality of HP and Compaq products seems to be pretty bad. We’ll give Jim from Geeks on Tour a call today to see if he has any ideas, but I think we should just buy her a Dell and be done with it.

Thought For The Day – Don’t be afraid to fail. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

I received three e-mails in as many days from different people who have been dreaming of the day when they could shake their sticks and bricks home and hit the road as fulltime RVers. The theme in all three messages was the same: With the current state of the economy, with the RV industry in such a slump, and with a new president in the White House, would they be foolish to take such a drastic step? Is the dream of fulltiming dead?

Yes, the economy is in the toilet. Yes the robber barons on Wall Street have pillaged and plundered their way through millions of peoples’ retirement funds. Yes, the con artists who run the big banks are wasting the tax dollars the government gave them. Yes, speculators are driving up fuel prices again. Yes, the home you thought would appreciate in value and finance your retirement has become an albatross around your neck that you can’t sell. Yes, many RV companies have dropped out of the game..

Folks, we can’t change the way things are. What we can do is live our lives the way we choose, not the way some jerk in a three piece suit tells us we should live it. There will always be doom and gloom if we look for it. But there is even more to be happy about and to rejoice in, right in front of our noses.

You may have lost a ton of money in the market. But maybe that was a wake up call. Should you really trust what you have left to the same clowns who got you into this mess? Or should you take it and live your dream?

Fuel prices may be on the rise, but they are still lower than they have been in years. I can fill my tank for about half of what it cost me a year ago.

Indeed, many RV companies have closed their doors. But remember, cream always rises to the top. As the weaker RV manufacturers fade away, those who remain should be the companies who build quality into their units and take care of the customer after the sale.

Okay, you can’t get what you hoped to out of your house. But anything is only worth what somebody will give you for it right now. Be realistic. Was its value a year or two ago real, or just numbers in the air? Do you hold on forever, waiting for the market to rebound, or do you do what you have to do to unload it and get on with your life?

The flip side of that coin is that it’s a buyer’s market for RVs and prices have never been lower than they are right now. Get creative and you can probably still make a deal.

When I was in college, a professor illustrated to me the difference between a pessimist and an optimist. A pessimist is a little boy in a room full of shiny new toys who is crying because he just knows if he takes one out of the box, it’s going to break. An optimist is a little boy in a stable piled waist high in manure, shoveling away with a big grin on his face, because he knows there’s a pony in there somewhere!

Only you can decide if the dream is still alive.

Are you in a room full of fragile toys, or are you working your way through all of the crap that life has piled in your way, getting closer and closer to that pony with every scoop?

Thought For The Day - Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.