Angie Stephens - Collin County TX Specialist

... and to meet a legendary Cowboy player who stops by your luxury suite to say hello!

Between now and November 15th, 2010, you can enter once per day for your chance to win one of three pairs of tickets to see the Cowboys vs. the Lions at Cowboys Stadium on November 21st. These seats are in luxury suites, and include refreshments.

To go online now to enter, click here.

Our office manager is hilareous, personable, and always smiling. She is also very direct, which may be intimidating to some, but we LOVE her! She's so warm and upbeat, and can add a twist of humor to any mild scolding cocktail served up at office meetings each week.

On her wish list (pretty high up there) is to have everyone on board with being as technically savvy as possible, especially when it comes to social media. Anyone who subscribes to Netted by the Webbys can tell you that not only is there an "app for that" (meaning everything), there are now apps to manage the apps for that. Every day I am tipped off to the myriad of app choices available to us, every one more imaginatively useful than the next!

Our manager hosts "Miraculous Mondays" each week at the office training room, where anyone interested can come and soak up a couple hours of whatever educational nugget is on the agenda for the day. We are often taught technology-based tools, how to use them, how better to utilize them.

At our office meeting yesterday, she shared this video, readily available on YouTube. I thought it was timely, and a bit of an awakening for some of our more technologically-resilient associates. : )

Enjoy... and share!

Warm regards,

Angie

PS - I should mention that this little "@" icon is the link to the video.

Financial Reform

Yesterday, the Senate passed the most sweeping changes to our financial system since the 1930s. These changes will definitely affect you for years to come - here's how.
How Financial Reform Will Affect You

So, this year, I decided I would overcome my pyrophobia and indulge the urge to buy some sparklers and a few fireworks for the season. We drove our boys to summer camp on the 4th, passing several stands selling elaborate displays of 'crackers and I vowed to stop on the way home.

"Oh, if you all get fireworks, you'd better save some for us when we get home! We want Sparklers, too!"

Ok, I'm a sucker, but not THAT much of a sucker. We stopped at a huge stand on the way back home (they take credit cards these days!). We gaped at the variety of boxes of fireworks. They must have been the giant Saturn-shaped ones that you see at the elaborate shows in State Parks: $59, $69, $79, and upwards of $99 PER FIREWORK!!!! This was obviously more than a pyrophobia hurdle, it was becoming a finance-O-phobia issue.

After much ado, and a helpful teen's advice ("oh, yes - my brothers and I chase each other holding these things EVERY year!!!! They're just Roman Candles.... Well, I guess it's not THAT safe...."), we bought a five-pack of Roman Candles (under $10) and three boxes of Sparklers (less than $1 each!).

Not that anyone wants to know the extent of my pyrophobia, but let's just say, there were no candles in the church at our wedding, and I lost my breath during the candlelight ceremony in college sorority "Sentimental Night" every year.... The image of one person scalded by hot wax and dropping their candle next to another person's gown/robe or whatever..... A whole room filled with people and flames trying to escape is not my idea of a party.

We set up our little show in the back yard on the 4th. We actually had the perfect Roman Candle stand: the concrete clothes-line hole (where you put the metal pole that holds the circular, tent-shaped clothes line that didn't last a whole summer). I have to say, I was pretty excited, standing there with our five-year-old daughter and my husband, feeling pretty cool to be having fireworks in our own back yard.

You know, those things go off really fast. It probably would have been better to hold the stick than to balance it in the oversized clothes-line hole. After the first burst of color (aka FLAME) shot out, the Roman Candle turned about 45 degrees toward our house. Instantly, a second burst turned it another 45 degrees, and these things go off five times. You get the picture. My daughter and I ran screaming into the house, ducking for cover, while my husband tried to straighten the thing without getting shot by it.

Roman Candle #2: Same thing.

Onto the Sparklers! My husband used the incense-looking "ember stick" the teenager at the stand gave us to light our sparklers and fireworks. It didn't work. Armed with a lighter and the patience of Job, he did finally get a Sparkler lit at the expense of a molten thumb.

Sparkler #2: Same thing. Only mine was the molten thumb.

Back to Roman Candles - one last shot (literally)! It still turned right toward our house and sent us all screaming for shelter.

We still have three boxes (minus two) of Sparklers for when the boys return, and two Roman Candles. Perhaps the safest thing to do is let them chase each other with the Roman Candles? They wouldn't waste fire by pointing it at the house, that's for sure!

In sum, I can say that the only thing that has changed over the last 40 years is that the Fireworks vendors take credit cards. Even the packaging for the Sparklers hasn't changed since the 1960s. Same star, same smell, same colors, and I'm still just as afraid of them now as I was as a little girl. Mom's still rolling her eyes at me from Heaven as she's rolling over in her grave that I got near those things again. RIP, Mom - not quite ready to join you. We may have to table my pyrophobia-ending strategies for now, if only for our own safety.

Hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July!

God bless,

Angie

My husband has been an estimator in the construction field for about 20 years. He often hears about the "new" thing long before I do, and radiant barrier was no exception. When we were building a home back in 2003/2004, he suggested we have a radiant barrier installed. I don't think it was even in the upgrades list at the time, but we did it (and told our friends who were building to do the same).

Our second summer in that house, electricity rates began to climb. It was our 5th house, and the first time I'd ever given a second thought to choosing an electric provider or knowing if the rate was fixed or variable, or even what the cost per kilowatt-hour WAS. : ) Happily, we found that our electric bill in the most extreme months of Texas summer averaged about half of the bills our neighbors with similar floor plans were seeing (who hadn't installed - or heard of - the radiant barrier).

My husband has heard mixed things about the spray-on, after-market radiant barrier products. Does anyone know what the average cost/sf this product runs, how effective it is, and how it affects resale values? Now that we're on house #7, we've learned not to pour money into a house, as we rarely stay long enough to get a return on investment! We want to be sure we'll break even on the energy bills before investing in this.

Thanks for any/all input!