Essential employees like hospital workers, rescue workers, fire and police personnel MUST be on the roads during nasty weather. Utility personnel will need to be on the roads as well to repair downed power lines and remove trees. But can someone honestly tell me why you need to add to the traffic, employees of convenience stores and malls? How much quicker, and safer, could the emergency and utility worker do their jobs if employees of retail establishments and other businesses were not on the road?

Employers scramble to keep places of businesses open to make a dollar. After all if they are open and their competition is not they stand to make extra money. So they call the employees and tell them to come in to work because it will be business as usual. So now you have people who would like to stay home and of the roads, forced to drive on roads that are impassable. Why aren’t businesses that are not essential to daily life, fined for forcing employees to be on the road during a declared State of Emergency? I do not believe in government control over businesses, but there should be some accountability placed upon places that have no reason to be open other than just to make a buck.

My wife and I are fortunate that we work from home. Many of our neighbors though had to work on a Saturday. Most of our neighbors would have been forced to work had the storm occurred during the work week. Businesses, especially retail, should have the common sense if not courtesy to place the safety of its employees first and the greed of the dollar last

Well, thankfully those days are behind me. Since working from home as a writer I can now enjoy the snow and enjoy hearing the weather reports. Here are a few pics from this morning. hey, I’m a writer not a photographer..

Windshield Wipers Up In Praise

Snow On Our Patio

No Traffic In Richmond, Va at 7:00AM

"Yay, snow...means my paws will get wet, and it's gonna be cold. Wake me up in March"

My wife and I decided to hit Kroger’s before lunch. Everybody gets crazy around here when the weathermen start predicting snow. We were going to get a few bottles of Coke and a carton of cigarettes. I told my wife we should play a new game at the store. The game is called “How Many Baskets Have Bread and Milk In Them”. I kid you not, folks believe they will run out of bread and milk before they are able to dig out from the Big Snow storm. It was funny to say the least. We were in the store less than 5 minutes and had already counted 20 baskets! People were making b-lines for the refrigerator section. And don’t even get me started on the gas lines…looked like the ’70s all over again.

Well, I managed to get my stable of articles written for today and have everything outlined for tomorrow. Be on the lookout here tomorrow and I’ll have some pics of the Richmond Virginia Big Snow Storm.

"I'm Still Not Going Out There"

I will give the details early next week on The Green Apartment Blog, but here is the short and sweet of what I ran into. I was given a topic to tell people how to use a new “green” product. Honestly the subject appeared to be a simple one. I first began doing my research on the product. As I am reading through the development process and where they are in the market, it was started to surprise me that I was even considering writing this article. Then I started to do some general research to see what was out there in regards to the way this particular article was supposed to be presented. The first three pages of Google came back with results of articles written by people who obviously did not do their research! There are going to be a lot of pissed off people who read those articles expecting the product to deliver. It is not going to happen. At least not in the next six months. Unbelievable.

The client I write for does a great job of editing work before the work is released to the Internet. Some of article sites out there will just allow ANYTHING to go up on the net. It is crazy. Please, if you are doing research on a product or service or need to find out how to do something…don’t rely on the first page of Google. General blogs and article submission sites should not be relied upon. Seek out reputable sites that have editors that do some fact checking before an article goes through. Or look for specific company websites for the information you need.

Ok, so that is my little rant for the day.

Ebby was not impressed by the fog or the fact that the ground was still wet. She has become a little miss priss, not wanting to get her paws wet. Oh well, it is off to writing for me. I have 12 articles to write today and so far I have only four completed. maybe after lunch I will be able to concentrate.