Monica Kochelee

I was reading in a recent issue of Business Week that there is a bill before congress called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) that would make it a lot easier for employees of large corporations to unionize.  I did not get the impression from the article that very many large corporations were too concerned about this; I guess maybe they have faith that their lobbiests will line the pockets of the regulators and that the bill will not pass. 

If big corporations treated their employees a little bit better, then they would not be in danger of their employees unionizing!  The problem as I see it right now, however, is that in this global economy when a company feels too threatened that their domestic workforce will unionize that they will just shut down domestic operations and take the business overseas where they can pollute all they want and treat their employees as badly as they want.

My hubby was looking at my car a few days ago and declared that we need to take it to an auto body shop to have the roof repaired.  He said that they were going to have to remove the windshield and cut away part of the roof due to rusting.  He has done a lot of auto body work himself, and said he was not comfortable doing this himself; he wanted to let the experts handle this job.  We’ll be looking for one of the Collision Repair Experts companies to do the work; we’ve heard that they are the best in the business.

Modern Bedroom Furniture is what my niece says she wants for her new apartment.  She is moving out of her parents’ house for the first time in a few months, and she is looking for modern furniture for her new place.  She came over yesterday to rummage around my basement and see if I had any “hand me down” furniture items she could have.  She says her biggest hope for her Modern Bedroom Furniture is to have a really great Modern Platform Bed.

She says she has been looking at furniture from the eroomservice.com website and has found several different platform beds that she likes a lot.  She hasn’t yet made up her mind which one she wants, but has narrowed it down to four favorites.  She said that the website sells some really nice bedroom sets and that she is trying to decide whether to buy the complete set, or just the bed and then try to do some mix and match with the rest of the bedroom furniture. 

She found a couple of modern lamps in my basement that she liked that I wasn’t using - my house isn’t decorated in the modern style, and these lamps were given to me by a friend.  I told her she was welcome to take them, and she was thrilled.

My kids have been telling me that they found a website that converts audio and video files from one format to another.  They said it is a new program that is quick and easy to use, and that the company is offering a free trial download of the program.  They lost me when they started talking about video encoding.  I’m embarrassed to say I don’t even know what video encoding is!  I feel so old!

The past few nights, after dark we have been hearing what my husband is convinced are gunshots.  We live in a rural area, and I don’t think that they are gunshots - no one would be shooting after dark!  I think one of the neighbors just got their hands on some illegal fireworks and have simply been having a good time setting them off over the past couple of nights.  At least that’s what I HOPE it has been!  Fortunately they stop by ten pm, so we don’t lose too much sleep - I’d be very annoyed if they went on much later than that - I am an “early to bed and early to rise” person!