In 22 years of renting we had mostly great landlords. But the two losers we had were real doozies. We always treated our rented homes as if they were our own and left them in better shape than we found them, and we did our best to work with the landlords so that everything that was done benefited us both.

We did this with our bedroom because after I decided to paint it dark green I had second thoughts. Had paint samples taped up all over the wall for a week and ended up painting it the same dark green I'd originally planned on using. But I didn't buy any paint till I'd made up my mind.

You guys don't watch Dirty Jobs, do you.

In my family, my dad's and my oldest brother's birthdays are always on the same day of the week. My mother's, mine, and my two younger brother's birthdays are always on the same day of the week. Three days apart. So if you know one you know them all. Of course, that doesn't help with the rest of the year, but it's…

True. We once bought a car from someone who not only smoked but drenched himself in cologne. Even throwing away the seat covers and having the car detailed didn't get rid of the smell. We had to leave the windows open as much as possible for years, and the smell never entirely went away in the 15 years we owned that…

Anybody who thinks a little coffee in the ash tray will get rid of the stench of smoke in a whole car has been smoking something other than tobacco.

Ralph Fiennes.

We've talked about doing this several times but always stop at the part about cleaning up the bat crap under the house. I suppose we could put the house on a wall over the rose bushes or something.

Alas, in this house there's only one method: Ask infmom. She'll figure it out.

If we'd tried to save up 20% down we'd still be renting. As it was, we rented for 22 years till a good friend who's an ace real estate agent worked with us to buy a house. And even then, it took over two years of looking at the most depressing dumps imaginable. Our price range was usually reserved for houses that…

Good luck with that in California. Unless you want to add in the cost of a gun and a big dog, you're not going to find much in the way of affordable housing. (Real affordable housing, not the "affordable" housing that the politicians like to point their lying little fingers at.)

We have three cats, they all use the same box, and it doesn't smell. They cover, we scoop.

California is really sticky about out-of-state corporations. Apparently someone caught on to how many people were incorporating in Nevada where they wouldn't have to pay taxes, so now it's a rare bank indeed that will let an out-of-state corporation or LLC have a California bank account. The people at Chase and Wells…

Not everyone can use a credit union. My brothers and I have a LLC that's registered in Indiana. I live in California. Credit unions tend to be local, so in my situation I would not be able to get a business account.

I have a business account at B of A. They currently charge me $14 for any month I don't use my card. So it looks like they are going to stick it to me coming and going after the first of the year. Unfortunately, due to the unusual setup of my business (LLC registered in a state I don't live in) I don't have many…

Do yourself a favor and just buy some pie weights. You know you can reuse those forever.

I worked at a camera store in the early 1990s and we spent a lot of time prying those things apart. They were REALLY popular.

Thank goodness I've never liked Velveeta.

The cable companies always force you to pay for a bazillion channels you don't want in order to get two or three that you do want. They could take all the sports channels off every broadcast outlet in the universe as far as I'm concerned, but I still have to pay for a raft of them in order to get the few channels that…

That will just make it fall apart faster.