Everything always starts small, micro-lending to

Face it, big money centers are broken. They don’t really lend money anymore; they fee and fine customers into financially unviable positions. I strongly believe in micro-lending. Micro-lending is when people donate (or lend) money to someone to help them start a small business. If the business takes off the person who made the profit gives back money to the lender. Micro-lending is mostly in Africa or third-world counties, but we could use it here in the USA. The Kiva organization and VISA are giving it try, but I wouldn’t trust VISA with much, not even a goat in Rwanda.

Lawboy-

A Book or a Buck?

My school has about 90 students in band. There are lots of things to keep track of: your instrument, your music book, and sheet music. Also, there are extras like cork grease, cleaning cloth, tuner, and metronome. Further, there are time constraints in putting away your instrument in your locker and all your other stuff too to get ready for the next class. Well, all this hustle and bustle is the perfect recipe for leaving stuff behind. This creates both a problem and an opportunity for our band teacher. It is a problem because the band shares the room with another group and has to be cleared out quickly. The opportunity is a big money maker. He fines us for leaving our stuff behind. Big fines too! To be fair, he doesn’t keep the money. It is donated to the school’s music association.

One day I left my music book and sheet music behind, but I couldn’t find it when I went back to the band room to look. Then, my mom went and bought me another music book. About a week went past and I had forgotten about the misplaced music book when my band teacher came up to me and said, “I have your music book, it will be nine dollars to get it back.” Nine dollars! These are big fines. I told him he could keep it, because I had already replaced it. Then, he asked if I had the sheet music too. Here I bluffed. I said I did, when I only intended to copy it from a friend. This left the band teacher in a little bit of a situation. What is he going to do with a used music book that has my name all over it? I didn’t know, and I think he didn’t either. He then dropped the price to $1 and I said OK. I might lose my music book again, so an extra copy is not a bad thing. Even though I question this fining tactic of making “forgetful and clumsy” seventh graders indirectly raise money for band activities, this was a win-win. I got my music book back and my band teacher got a buck for band activities.

Lawboy-

California Pizza

I was staying over at my grandma’s house, and we wanted to go out for dinner. I had just heard about this great deal on pizza at Pizza Hut: a big Italian pizza as big as two small pizzas for $12.99. My cousin knew the way to Pizza Hut, but apparently he misheard me and led us to Round Table. Round Table is a fine pizza place, but it wasn’t having a great deal. We decided that we would order pizza from the Round Table. Our planned great deal on pizza turned out to be regular pizza price. In most places we would not have just given up and ordered at a non-preferred place, but with San Francisco hard parking, tough neighborhoods, and difficult traffic conditions, we considered ourselves lucky to have found a pizza place and just bought the pizza as regular price.

Lawboy-

Street performers

Street performers are big in San Francisco, California. In tourist areas, there are interesting street performers everywhere. I saw one who was a keyboarder who sounded like he could play at Carnegie Hall and another who was dressed in gold and had gold on his face too, I call him the gold man who could dance like a robot. To be a good street performer, all you have to have is an idea. But, I think that they like and are good at their jobs. However, I doubt they make as much money as working full-time at McDonalds. But if playing the keyboard or dancing like a gold robot is your passion, it is good to be able to do that and pay the rent.

Lawboy-

Crabs Don’t do Valet

The parking in San Francisco California was very different! This is true for visitors. I am sure residents have difficulty with parking too. Everywhere you go, you have to pay for parking. I think my family spent about $150 on airport, hotel, and lot parking in less than a week; and that is with parking no tickets. When you go to San Francisco attractions, it’s either parking meters or lot parking, and lot parking is very expensive. On one visit to Fisherman’s wharf, a sign said that restaurants validated parking for three hours. What the sign didn’t mention clearly was that crab shacks don’t count as restaurants and they only validate for one hour! This little technicality or mistake added $20 to our Fisherman’s wharf visit. But, we did enjoy our calamari. It was really good!

Lawboy-

San Francisco California composting: Where do I put this?

Composting is the recycled use of organic matter such as food waste and low quality paper products. The decomposition of compost is performed by micro-organisms like bacteria, yeasts, and fungi. I noticed that in San Francisco everyone must use composting. I think that it is paid for directly by residents or maybe it is included in their taxes. But if you don’t compost and recycle correctly, you are fined; big time!

Composting is a way to keep San Francisco California cleaner, land-fills less full, and meet the city’s target of 90 percent recycling of all products. This is good thing long-term because it probably attracts more tourists to the city since it’s clean. Yet, I do not think that it is in the citizens’ short-term interest to use composting, but it is defiantly a win-win in the long term.

Lawboy-
P.s.

This is the logo:

New Logo

I chose blue.
Computing problems; image will be posted tommorow.
Lawboy-