First toe in the water....

Greetings from the dual bloggers, Tom here,

Maybe this can replace all the Emails I've been sending. I give you the Rangoon Creeper, extraordinary vine entwined around our front wrought-iron fence, that opens in bunches of 8-11 buds, that are anywhere from 2-3 white ones and the rest pink, for the first day. The second day all the white ones have turned pink and the pink ones are deeper rose. By the third day all are rose.

Has your bank screwed you lately? For years, Mance and I have forced all our credit charges onto our Smith-Barney credit card, which offers air miles at a dollar-on-the-airfare per-point, with exchange to any airline, not just, say, Continental.

When Mance called them today to book our flights to Spokane for Mollie's wedding using points, she was told the owners of Smith-Barney, Citibank, had "restructured" the air miles program, and without notice on March 1, reduced all air mile programs to one point equals one penny toward airfare cost. Instead of getting our Portland trip with miles, too, we barely had enough to get to Spokane.

Thinking revenge? Some counter-punch to such underhanded tactics to grab my wallet? Me, too, especially since they've enjoyed all our charges for so many years, and, are recipients of the big billions of bucks from our tax dollars in the bailout.

Oops, sorry, Citibank, to get some quick cash, sold Smith-Barney to Morgan-Stanley's Bank, and I imagine they were quite happy to only be saddled with one-cent on the dollar of Smith-Barney's air mileage club debts. So, they got us. But good.

I've spent the day painting, a tango theme I started fourteen months ago and left standing. It was fun! But made the day fly by....

Love,

Dad