I have a great newish stove no it's not stainless steel I worked in the cafeteria when I went to college and it was all stainless, I like white better.

Being a realtor I have a flexible schedule, and being a realtor I am thrifty, and being a 60's person, I am oriented to making things from scratch with wholesome ingredients. All this explains why at 9:30 this am I was boiling plums. My husband has been bringing home apples and plums from an abandoned orchard in Fruitland Idaho (with permission).

I was doing my usual of getting dressed putting on makeup and answering my phone all at the same time when i realized that the plums had boiled over.

That would have been a huge catastrophe several years ago, the purple goop would have permeated every surface and crevice of my old stove. But three years ago with my real estate earnings I bought a new stove, cleanup took only 5 minutes.

LIttle positive things can make a huge difference. I am going to go happily to my office and deal with the day's hassles all of which are leading to sales closing which makes me even happier.

I live and work in an agricultural area. That's farms folks not people farms real growing crops farms. All fall you'll be zippping along the highways and come upon a gigantor machine of some sort lumbering along at 20-30 miles per hour.

To me this means money - my husband Carl sells for a Hesston/Massey/Kubota dealership. However i will admit that it is fun to watch the out of staters screech to a slow crawl and have to put up with ag machines slowing them down.

You can see the irritation on their faces "how dare this farm yokel slow ME down!". Said yokel is driving or pulling a piece of machinery that probably costs more to buy than city boy makes in a year or two!

Right now it's sugar beet trucks. Sugar doesn;t just come from sugar cane it's also made right here from sugar beets! You don't want to be too close to the trucks because if a beet falls off it's like a big rock hitting your car - they're the size of soccer balls!

Ag is everywhere in the US stop and concentrate for a minute on the crops that are grown in your county and smile at the farmers clogging the roads. They're good for our business!

My family and I are major fans of the Mel Brooks movie "Blazing Saddles" we can recite a lot of it and do. There's a song in it called "I'm Tired" sung hilariously by the late Madeline Kahn.

I keep thinking about it because I too am TIRED.

There is a big bunch of buyer businees out there right now and I am working very hard, I"ve worked all weekend and late most evenings. I am going to keep right on doing that because I've been in this business long enough to know it does end!

Last year we didn't have a fall buying season in my market and I am very grateful to have the business I've got this year. This year differs in that I am going all over the place - my buyers are looking at a greater variety of local towns. It seems like I've gone to Parma Idaho everyday for a week - it' sabout 15 miles from my office!

I'll slow down when the snow flies but for now I'll just be tired and happy.

We are back from what counts for us as a vacaton. We took a Wednesday through Sunday off! We took our boat and headed North. We had checked out the boat ramps etc on an earlier non fishing trip. We chose Hat Rock State Park near Umatilla Oregon. Beautiful park and a very easy to use and safe lboat ramp. This is the impoundment waters from McNary Dam just a few miles downriver. It was beautiful, fishing was good but the high point of the first two days was boating all the way to Richland Washington! Probably about 70 miles and fun, the beuatiful parks and homes lining the river at Pasco,Kennewick and Richland (known around here as Tri-Cities) were fantastic to see from the water.

We then went to Arlington Oregon and fished for two more days - it was windy so we stayed close in and enjoyed watching the windsurfers as we were fishing.

We topped it off by going to Boardman Oregon and fishing the river after the McNary Dam. Again a beautiful park and great boat ramp area.

The last two weeks of August and the first week of September are traditionally a slow time. but like everything else in real estate thngs have changed. I got back and was slammed!! That's ok!

Life is Good!

As you may know Oregon and Idaho ended reciprocity as of 7/1/09. We companies who have been doing business under the reciprocal agreement had 26 days notice. My own company had to really scramble to comply because we had an agent renewing in July.

My personal gripe (aside from how ridiculous this is in general) is that I renewed my license in May. Now because we're no longer a reciprocal brokerage I have to pay again - $230 in May and $230 in July.

The Oregon Real Estate Agency - my agency (I live in Oregon so my taxes are helping to pay for this) has in my opinion not served us. I'm not happy about paying twice what a boondoggle. What a handy little surprise profit center this will be for them.

To my knowledge the Oregon Association of Realtors has been silent on this as has the Idaho Association of Realtors.

Because of this when asked to donate to RPAC today I refused. Show me some results before you ask for my money.