Tony Brewer

I really enjoy changing around our flooring treatments.  In the warmer months, sometimes I prefer the look of a bare floor.  It lends an airy coolness feeling that makes the hot summer months feel a little less oppressively hot.  However in the cooler winter months, I really enjoy the extra comfort and warmth of rugs over our floors.  I was just shopping at the TufenkianOutlet.com handmade area rugs website for some nice new rugs for our den.  They have a great selection of Armenian and Tibetan rugs.  I’m having a tough time deciding whether I like the Armenian Twilight rugs better, or the Tibetan Kyoto Tamarind rug better.  Maybe I’ll let Teri decide which one she likes better!

I can remember learning in one of the business courses that I took in college that the stock market responds to unemployment – if unemployment is up, the stock market is usually up. If unemployment is down, the stock market is usually down. I can remember thinking that didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but the professor was adamant that was a true situation. Usually when a company is struggling to make money, the stock goes down until they lay off people, causing the unemployment number to rise, which then makes the stock price go up. Does that make sense to you? Anyway, the professor said that if and when unemployment goes up and the stock market goes down, we will be in deep trouble. And strangely, that is the situation we find ourselves in now.

Stock market is down and unemployment is up and the entire country is in a state of poorly controlled panic. I heard on the television news this morning that President Bush has reversed a prior decision regarding unemployment benefits and has agreed to extend unemployment benefits longer than they have been. I didn’t hear how much longer, but it was interesting to hear the news anyway. The next several months will be interesting to watch.

I love the warm feeling of a real fire in the cooler weather months. Whether from fireplaces, or from wood stoves, real fires feel great – both physically and emotionally.  A wood fire seems to be a moist heat, which makes you feel warmer than heat from a furnace.  When we first bought this house, we saw that there was a hearth and flue for a wood stove in the family room in addition to the fireplace in the formal living room.  We never got around to putting in a wood stove, but I think maybe this year we will do exactly that – buy and install a really nice looking wood stove that has a glass front in it so we can watch the flames.  There is something magical about watching the flames dancing around the logs as the fire burns.

I’d like to buy a wood stove that has a blower on it to blow the hot air out into the room – it warms up the entire house much better if it has a blower on it.  And of course, we’d have to put a steamer pot on top of the wood stove – I found a really cool looking steamer that looks like a dragon that I’d love to buy for the stove at the ibuywoodstoves.com website.

I was reading an article on the BBC.com website today that was talking about how beavers have been extinct in England for almost 400 years. They were hunted to extinction! I did not know that, and was surprised to read about it. The article continues to talk about how the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland groups have joined together to reintroduce beavers to England, in the hopes that they will increase the wetlands. They captured four complete beaver families from Norway and brought them to England where they have been released.

I understand that the people in the Salmon industry believe that this is going to threaten the welfare of fish in England, but I don’t know how that would happen – I didn’t think beavers ate fish, only wood! Of course, I could be mistaken….

I’ve never heard of Eco friendly car insurance before today!  I was reading about it today, and think it is a really good idea.  Sometimes called Green car insurance, what it does is invest part of your insurance premium that you pay into carbon reduction companies and projects that issue carbon credits.  I’d never heard of carbon credits, either until reading about this insurance.  What is a carbon credit?  It is what those companies sell to help pay for the expenses of running the projects.  The insurance company that I read about is called ibuyeco, and they offer an eco friendly car insurance program.