Opinion

Have you ever wondered who decides if you qualify for a loan?I mean, seriously, who says, "Yep, this person is a good risk! Give them all the cash in the vault!"In another lifetime I gave up on my credit score knowing that it would never be what it should be. However, I've recently started watching it like a hawk.

It seems like in my world, where most of my day, and night, is spent online, I find more and more people are being hacked. Sometimes I'll tell you about it, and sometimes I'm so busy, I just ignore it. It happened again this week. I had a Facebook message from someone I had just talked to on Sunday. It was a simple private message that said, "How are you doing?"I knew that it wasn't my friend.

Yep, as usual, I've been plugging stories onto the website for the email today and it hit me, that most of the world is enjoying a day off today. Some with family, some with friends. So I did something I've never done. I pulled the "new" news down for today so that all you will see in this email are stories that can't wait until the email on Tuesday.

I hope I'm the only one that has one of these once in a while. Last week it was one of those days. Nothing particular triggered it, but it was a day of reflection and that was not a good thing to do, but once you're there, you're there. I spent the day traveling a lot covering stories in the southern part of the county and here and in between and making about 5 trips throughout the day, which is a lot.

I knew as soon as I shut the door and closed my hand around my keys that I did it again. I grabbed my camera, my list, yes my handwritten list which I USUALLY leave on the table and then I locked the door, shut it and headed to the car. My first thought was, Oh crud, I grabbed the wrong key, I don't have the car key! Let's see I have a key to a friends house, a key to the mailbox at the post office, a key to the bank box and 2 other unidentified pieces of metal, but no car key.

We haven't had this problem for a long time, so it was difficult to decide what was going on. All I could tell my tech guy was, "I can't get on to the website! HELP!" I told him what I could see on my end, he did what he could on his end and we were back. Then it happened again last night. I had been having computer issues, I think the pictures and video are bogging it down, along with everything else on this little laptop, so I figured it was probably me.

Well now, you can't say that Vinton doesn't know how to throw a party!The exhaustion I feel tonight, er, this morning lays at the feet of one Ms. Melissa Schwan. That gal sure knows how to make this Ms. Reporter Person exhausted! It is now 1:30 on Sunday morning and the party has been over, officially, for an hour and a half.

Being the political animal that I am, I am naturally following all of the activity as the Democrats position themselves for the Iowa Caucuses early next year. There’s a lot of intrigue and daily ebbs and flows of how the candidates line-up against each other with the voters; brings back some great memories.