World's most expensive eggs

One of the goals of living on a fixed income is learning to plan your meals so you are not a regular visitor to the area restaurants. In an attempt to do just that, we prepared a meal of scrambled eggs, whop 'em biscuits, butter and molasses.

We should have made the decision to visit Huddle House and eat their eggs. The cost would have been a lot less.

No, these weren't some fancy duck eggs from China - or it is Japan - that have been buried for a century or so. They weren't imported ostrich eggs imported from Australia. Shucks, they weren't even hummingbird eggs from the forest of South America.

They were simple, white, 12 in a carton, chicken eggs!

And they cost $131.45!

How, so, you may wonder. Well it worked this way . . .

There are two adults and one four legged child who live in our house. One of the adults decided that it would be nice to fix a small plate of eggs for the child's supper.

Junior was delighted! He lapped them up in a couple of gulps and begged for more.

The next day he was feeling sort of out-of-sorts. Listless, you know?

He was walking across the living room when the diarrhea hit him. He couldn't make it to the door before it hit him again.

We called the vet for an emergency appointment and packed him up. After a quick exam the doc asked: What does he eat?

Dog food.

Do you feed him off the table?

No. Well, the wife did give him some eggs last night.

EGGS. What kind?

Scrambled chicken eggs.

Uh, do you know you don't feed these kind of furry pets scrambled chicken eggs?

Well, after a bill of $131.45, we do now.

The iPhone

The iPhone!

We've been studying about the novel new (to us) device for months. A few weeks ago we were in the Apple store in Memphis and the bug bit even harder. We even stopped by an AT&T store on the way home and checked to see if they still had some of the original iPhones in stock (the cheaper ones).

It took another week or so before we finally made the decision.

We consulted with our son who has one and he made the recommendation we forgo the $69 extended warranty and said all we needed was the vehicle charger. With his recommendations we headed off to the store and was about to close the deal when the wife sees a sign that says: Special with iPhone purchase. Free Case.

She should have stayed in the truck. The "free" case cost us an additional $108 - plus tax.

But the bottom line is this . . . the iPhone is worth the money!

It's almost scary what it will do. Download a free application (called app for short) and you can find anything you want - gas, food, lodging, hospitals . . . anything.

And then it will guide you from your location to the location you want to go.

There are also the fun things. We found one called The Moron Test. (Maybe not politically correct, but what the heck . . . . it's still fun.

The game gives simple instructions for you to follow, i.e., crack the eggs from largest to smallest. Simple, right?

Well, after an hour we have learned that "you are not much more than a basic mammal."

As with anything Apple does, every detail is covered right down to the padded box.

Bill Gates, eat your hear out!

We were forced into taking an early retirement from our position as general manager of a small weekly newspaper owned by a large company. Knowledge and experience be damned, youth and degrees (and lower salaries) became the thought process of our corporate office.

In all fairness, we had seriously considered retiring at the end of 2009. We informed our employer in the fall of 2008 of our thoughts.

It was December when we were called to the office for an annual evaluation and told: We've talked it over and decided that if you are going to retire we don't need to do an evaluation. In fact, we were told, if you decide to retire 10 months early we're willing to offer a severance package.

And what if I wanted to stay until the end of the year?

Well, I could still leave 10 months early and wouldn't be eligible for the severance package.

We've done some nutty things in our life and people have been more than willing to tell us that. But, in truth, momma didn't raise no nuts!

So, we "retired" and took the severance package.

As it turned out things have worked out fairly well so far. We get to do some traveling, see the country and now we have found the wife a job that will require her to travel the country in our travel trailer (we're the driver) while she works.

Like we said . . . momma didn't raise no nuts!

The Back Page

After being forced into retirement earlier this year, one of my passions was snuffed out . . . I hope to find it again in this new media.