'One Voice' up and running

The new Website is up and running, although in sort of a skeleton form so far.

It's called "One Voice," and you can enter the following URL:

http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice

I'm not sure what we'll be doing here, but the new site is the place to be.

Thanks.

'One voice' will be the new site

Where do we go from here?

I'm hopeful the new site will be up by the end of the week, and this one will then either be a subset of the main one or will just be absorbed into it.

I'm hoping to put more of an emphasis on the theme of this site -- the things that really matter in life. I really don't intend to write about political issues here anymore; I do so much of that on AllVoices.com, where I have become one of the leading contributors in the never-ending battle between left, right and the middle.

I'm changing the name of the site, largely because I think calling a personal site "All that matters ..." is a little arrogant. Who am I to decide what matters for all of you?

I thought about "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche," because I love the title and I found that old book recently. I also thought about "How to Pick Up Girls," an amazing old book from about 35 years ago that you could only buy through mail order.

In the end, I settled on "One Voice," the title of a lovely song from about 10 years ago, mostly for the lyric "life's not that simple, down here on Earth."

And for your enjoyment while you wait, a lovely picture of the Amazing Baby.

Changes coming to the operation

Sorry I have been a little slack in posting here the last couple of weeks, but I have been involved with some other things and figured it wouldn't be the worst thing to back off a little.

Actually, over the next few days I'm hoping to revamp and redesign the entire operation. This site will remain where it is, but I hope to make it a part of a larger mikerappaport.com site. I posted on that site for five or six years before switching to Blogger, and I'm hoping to do more.

I'm also planning to start working with video and podcasts; AllVoices is giving me an HD video camera to do reports for them, and I can use it to get some additional stuff on my own site too.

So sit back and watch as we move forward into the future.

Beatles remasters sound wonderful

His name was Bob, but we always called him "Tunes."

He was always singing, or whistling, or humming, usually something from one of the popular songs of the day. Tunes loved the Beatles, and since we were growing up in an era when Beatles music was everywhere, we heard a lot of Lennon and McCartney songs.

I haven't seen Tunes in nearly 40 years and I have no idea how his life has turned out, but I'm sure he is really happy this year now that all the original Beatles CDs have been remastered and re-released for modern audiences.

Tunes really loved "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver," and both of those would show up on any list of greatest albums of the '60s. My favorite was always "Abbey Road," though, and I remember vividly listening to it for the first time in the fall of 1969.

I always thought George Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun" would be pretty close to the top of any list of greatest Beatles songs ever. It's certainly my favorite.

I never heard Tunes singing it or humming it, but I can only imagine.

Go Tunes go.

Music still has its charms ...

When my lovely wife and I decided to make our annual visit to the L.A. County Fair today, we figured it would only be for a couple of hours.

That's the way we usually do it. We walk around some and we visit the shopping buildings so that she can pick up the latest ShamWow or 1,000 thread count sheets or whatever it is they're selling this year.

But this time was a little different. When we got there a little before 3 p.m., we noticed that the featured concert at 7:30 p.m. would be the Beach Boys. Now I know the group is a pale imitation of the original, with Carl Wilson and Dennis Wilson dead and the others split into three different bands.

This one had Mike Love, though, and it had Bruce Johnston as well, along with a group of younger guys who weren't even born when Beach Boys songs were all over the radio all the time.

I had seen the original Beach Boys -- minus Brian Wilson -- three times before, in 1974, '75 and '76 in Washington, D.C. They were great shows, and the group had provided a major part of the soundtrack of my life since their first national exposure in 1962.

Still, Love and Johnston are 68 and 67, respectively, and I'm still getting used to the idea of senior citizens rocking and rolling. But in a pretty tacky week, culture-wise, I suppose I was willing to try it.

It couldn't be worse than Mackenzie Phillips going on Oprah (no, not really on Oprah herself) saying that someone needed to speak up for consensual incest victims or Tom "The Hammer" DeLay channeling his inner Travolta on "Dancing With the Stars."



So I definitely needed some of the wonderful, upbeat music that I loved when I was in high school. Without the three Wilson brothers, the soaring harmonies from the '60s weren't there, but the audience didn't seem to mind. I saw people from 15 to 65 on their feet dancing and singing along with song after song, crammed into a 90-minute performance.

Johnston sounded all right on the lovely "God Only Knows," but he knew he was just a fill-in. When he finished, he dedicated the song to the "one and only Carl Wilson, forever in our hearts."

It was a pretty nice evening, and I didn't hear one person talk about politics all day.

I needed that.

Million dollar shot great to watch

Talk about a dream come true.

I have been playing golf for 15 years and have never had a hole in one. I've come close a couple of times, including once on my favorite hole, the par-three No. 7 at Empire Lakes in Rancho Cucamonga.

I put a shot eight inches from the hole and tapped in for birdie. Close, but no ...

That's why seeing this shot from the Mark Eaton Celebrity Classic in Utah, in which a restaurant manager from Provo won $1 million, is so amazing.



The hole was 150 yards, just a little shorter than No. 7 at Empire Lakes, which is why it's obvious this guy is a much better golfer than I am.

You see, I use a five wood to clear nearly 150 yards of water.

He used a nine iron for his shot.

Amazing baby takes her first steps

Milestone, milestone.

Madison Nicole Kastner, aka The Amazing Baby, took her first unaided steps today -- five of them before sitting down. I wish I could post the video here, but if you're a friend of mine on Facebook, you can see it on my home page.

Since today is Sept. 16, little Maddie walked three days before her first birthday. She's also really close to speaking her first words, so she's right on target developmentally. With her parents in language training, Maddie is spending her daytime hours in day care. She started in a class for kids who hadn't started walking yet, but it looks like they're going to have to move her up to the next class now.

Yay, Maddie!

Am I crazy, or is it possible ...

I have decided I'm not going to go gently into that good night.

I want to learn to surf. I want to get a board, head for the beach and learn how to ride a wave.

Editor's note: Mike, you're an idiot. You're almost 60 years old. You can't learn to surf.

Why not?

I can swim, I'm strong enough to carry a board and I've got enough endurance to work out for an hour at a time. Why can't I learn to surf?

Heck, if a penguin can do it ...



Seriously, from the first time I ever heard "Surfin' Safari" in the summer of 1962 on high-flying WING radio in Dayton, Ohio, I dreamed of going to California and trying it myself.

Of course, at 12 I wasn't going anywhere, and other than 10 days in the state in the summer of '78, I didn't make it back until I was 40 years old. I could have tried it in the summers of '90, '91 or '92, but for some reason it never crossed my mind.

Maybe it was just that I didn't have the kind of car you could strap a board to the top of, or maybe I was at a point in my life when I thought I was past all that. Then I became a family man and didn't think of it at all.

But it can't be that difficult.

You paddle out, turn around and raise ...

Isn't that all there is to the coastline craze?

A life without memories ... maybe

One of the most difficult things about being human is the memory.

I always loved Annie Savoy's line from the wonderful movie "Bull Durham:"

"The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self awareness."

I remember mentioning that line to my sister Laura once. I don't know if she was in a bad mood or what, but her response was that she had never considered me particularly self-aware.

I wish she was right. I wish I were a year old, as my lovely granddaughter will be this Saturday. I wish I could sweep away all the mistakes, all the hurts and just live my life again from the start.

Of course, we don't get to do that. Even if we were in one of those goofy movies where the older person and the younger one switch bodies, it wouldn't be fair to Maddie to cheat her out of nearly 59 years.

I would actually be happy just to forget my past and live what's left of my life in clueless oblivion, to wake up to a new world every morning and just concentrate on loving the people I love and being good to the others.

Maybe I should try for that.

'Liberal' should not be a dirty word

One of the things that fascinates me, particularly in some of the comments to posts, is how many of you seem to see "liberal" as a dirty word.

I can't say I blame you. For the last 30 years, the right has been hammering away at the word, doing its best to equate "liberal" with "libertine" in people's minds, and completely ignoring the fact that there are shades of difference in those left of center on the spectrum.

One of the tactics talk radio hosts like Fat Man and Little Boy have used for years is basically saying that liberal, socialist and communist are all pretty much the same. There really aren't that many people except on the lunatic fringe who try to equate conservative with fascist and Nazi.

What have liberals done for America?

Well, even though they were Republicans at the time, they fought to end slavery. They fought for women to have the right to vote, and for a whole myriad of workplace rights from child labor to minimum wage to workplace safety.

They busted trusts and created the inheritance tax that at least limited the creation of a permanent American oligarchy. They created Social Security and Medicare, and they led the fight for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam.

They stood for food and drug safety and for consumer protection, and they battled for women's rights in the workplace and in reproductive freedom.

If you look at each of those issues, in almost every one of them, conservatives were opposed. They don't believe in the minimum wage and they have hated Social Security and Medicare ever since they were created. Look at one of their current leaders, Sarah Palin, who wrote in the last 48 hours that Medicare should be changed to a system of vouchers for people to buy their own health care.

I have never been ashamed to consider myself a liberal, although I think in some areas I would go beyond where liberals go and consider myself a European-style Social Democrat.

Here's what that means, according to the definition by the Socialist International, which supports social democratic and moderate socialist parties:

Social Democracy affirms three basic principles.

First, freedom — not only individual liberties, but also freedom from discrimination and freedom from dependence on either the owners of the means of production or the holders of abusive political power.

Second, equality and social justice — not only before the law but also economic and socio-cultural equality as well, and equal opportunities for all including those with physical, mental, or social disabilities.

Third, solidarity — unity and a sense of compassion for the victims of injustice and inequality.

That mostly adds up to two things -- we're all in this together and we are our brother's keeper.

I don't disagree with any of it.

A little wisdom from the South

I wanted to find out if folks really were as stirred up about Barack Obama as some are saying, so I went to my best source.

I called my friend Cooter Jackson. Cooter lives in a little town about 20 miles from Durham, N.C. He spent 30 years as a columnist for the Grits Advertiser ("All the news that fits, we print"), although he had to retire when he lost his sight in a fishing accident.

Some of you may notice that Cooter has a small resemblance to my friend Mick, who teaches at two community colleges in Southern California.

But it's obvious from the picture that the two men aren't the same. Cooter's hair is shorter, and you can tell from the dark glasses and the vacant stare that he's blind.


In fact, if you look at this picture of Mick teaching, his hair is longer and darker, and he clearly has his eyesight.

Now that we've settled that, it's actually sort of ironic. Cooter says being blind has actually helped him in a couple of ways.

"I was always purty good with the ladies," he said. "But now that I can't see, they're even more eager to come over. They say they don't have to put no makeup on and that's a pure pleasure."

So I called to ask him about Obama.

"Well, he surprised me some when he carried North Carolina last year," he said. "Part of it was McCain runnin' a bad campaign and part of it was folks bein' real fed up with ol' Dubya. Obama caught 'em at the right time, and there really ain't as much racism around here as there used to be."

And now, I asked.

"He wouldn't carry the state today," Cooter said. "Part of it is people thinkin' a president should be a miracle worker and he shoulda solved all the problems by now, and part of it is that he's probably a little more liberal than folks realized."

I asked him what he thought.

"Hell," Cooter said. "He's no more liberal than LBJ was, but Lyndon was a white Southerner, and back then conservatives hadn't turned 'liberal' into a dirty word. I think his biggest mistake is he left it to Congress to do health care instead of proposin' his own plan."

What about all the spending? The huge deficits?

"Bush ran the biggest deficits in history," he said. "He's the only president ever who cut taxes and went to war at the same time. Nobody was fussin' about it then. It's all about the propaganda, and Obama's losin' that battle to idiots like that Fat Boy on the radio and what's his name, Glenn Beck."

I knew Cooter had spent time with both Rush Limbaugh and Beck and he ddin't have much use for either of them. Rush had gone with him on one of Cooter's famous fishing trips.

"Worst one ever," Cooter said. "He just wouldn't stop talkin'. Scared all the fish away. And he kept smokin' those big ol' cigars."

Even so, he said he liked Rush a lot better than Beck.

"I met him at a party in Chapel Hill," Cooter said. "He has kind of a crazy look in his eyes, and I swear I never shook hands with anybody whose hands were softer and damper."

I asked him if he had any advice to pass along to Obama.

"He needs to get mad," Cooter said. "He needs to show some emotion, instead of just bein' so cool and collected about it all. Start runnin' people out there whose lives have been destroyed by insurance companies turnin' 'em down. Start askin' the folks on the other side what they'd do about that. He can still win this thing. He just needs to show he cares."

Howard Beale told the truth

Howard Beale, huh?

I can live with that. If you saw "Network," you may remember that Beale was killed for telling the truth and threatening to scuttle a major corporate takeover. Listen to the 1976 speech Paddy Chayefsky wrote for Beale and see how much of it was truly prescient.

I don't mind criticism, especially when I'm wrong, but I've read and re-read my original post and my response to Jim and I don't see anything I need to walk back. I said I was tired of haters and that they were bad people and liars, and I said something mean about Ol' Dubya.


Sorry, but I just don't much like the man. I thought it was a disgrace he was even nominated, let alone elected. The man just didn't have the gravitas to be president, and thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis paid the ultimate price for that.

As for being far left, uh, not so much. For one thing, I'm pro-life. For another, during the years I was writing a newspaper column, I called for Bill Clinton's resignation over the Lewinsky thing. I'm not a big fan of Nancy Pelosi, but I do think one reason so many people are so worried about Obama is the way the media is distorting the debate.

Two Ph. D's, huh Jim? Good on you. The closest I ever get to two Ph. Ds is when I go to bed at night. I dropped out of school in the seventh grade myself. Wanted to explore the exciting world of carnival geeks, but when I found out they wanted me to eat chicken every night, I couldn't handle it.

Besides, my old daddy used to tell me that arguin' about who's smart and who's not makes about as much sense as rasslin' with a pig. You get dirty and the pig enjoys it.

So no, I'm not insulting your intelligence or trying to claim I'm the smartest guy in the room. I am the smartest guy in the room right now, but that's only because I'm sitting here alone.

But I tell you what. If you're looking for fairness to Dubya or Dick Cheney, or measured commentary about Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter, you're probably at the wrong place.

I don't think I'm far left, but I am not ashamed to be called a liberal.

And Nan, in case you were wondering, I never censor comments or delete blogs.

I'm not afraid of words.

Time to put haters in their place

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

I'm tired of seeing people trying to do something good and then seeing the haters try to turn it into something bad or evil.

Demi Moore and Ashton Kutchner, along with quite a few other recognizable Hollywood stars, made a video called "I pledge," which is basically a lot of people pledging to be less self-centered and do good things for the country and the world.

It's a response to President Barack Obama urging people to look outside themselves and be a better neighbor.

Here are some of the things the people in the video promise to do:

1. Work to end hunger.
2. Smile more.
3. Laugh more.
4. Love more.
5. To be a great mother.
6. To be a great father.
7. To be an American, not an African-American.
8. To find humor in everything.
9. To consume less.
10. To volunteer time.
11. To show more love to others.
12. To meet their neighbors.
13. To be a mentor.
14. To help build a culture of intelligence, not of ignorance.
15. To understand that we're all in this together.

All good things, but in the last minute of this 4:18 video, two different people pledge to serve President Obama in what he is trying to do to change America. It's these two quotes out of nearly 4 1/2 minutes of quotes that the people who hate Obama are using to characterize the video as "indoctrination" or "cult-like behavior."

The media is doing what it always does -- covering the controversy. Instead of the truth of the video, which is that people are trying to get people to do good things, they're treating it as if it is something shameful.

I'm tired of it. I don't care if it's liberals or conservatives, if anyone in this country urges people to do good things to help others, I'm on their side. If Rush Limbaugh says we should volunteer at the local hospital, I'll praise him. Ditto if Jane Fonda were to say the same thing.

It's time to call the haters what they are.

Bad people.

And liars.

Movies can have lasting effects

It's funny how some things stick with you.

When Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" came out in 1960 with its famous shower scene, there were quite a few people who didn't take showers for months after that.

I was too young to see "Psycho" in its original release, but I know of one Brian DePalma film that still affects my behavior nearly 30 years after I saw it.



"Dressed to Kill" was released in 1980, and I have never looked at elevators the same way since. In the early part of the movie, Angie Dickinson has an illicit affair. When leaving the man's apartment, she learns that she has probably gotten an STD from him and also that she left her wedding ring in the apartment.

She takes the elevator back up to his floor, and when the door opens and she starts to get out, the killer slashes her throat with a straight razor and murders her.

It's quite a scary scene, and ever since then, whenever I am getting into an elevator or coming out of one -- particularly when I am alone -- I always look around before I take a step. Just making sure there's no killer with a straight razor waiting for me.

Silly?

Probably, but I'm still alive.

Wildfire threatens some lovely homes

When you live in the West, you always have to accept the possibility of wildfires.

And the last few days, with the humidity in single digits and the temperature in triple digits, fires have been burning all around the Los Angeles area.

We owned a home in La Canada Flintridge for more than 18 years. Homes in our small city have sold for a median price of more than $1 million, making it one of the most desirable areas in all of Southern California. That's why even though we were selling in the middle of a housing crash and a national recession, we came very close to getting the price we were asking.

Boy, did we sell at the right time.


Less than three weeks after we closed and collected the cash for our equity, wildfires have destroyed most of the forest above La Canada. Families living within a mile of where we lived have been evacuated, and firefighters have been working day and night to save their neighborhoods.

We haven't been through a lot of anguish, but if this fire had happened a month ago, we would have been right there with our tenants/buyers doing whatever we could to keep the fire from destroying our property.

Ah, Southern California.

It's definitely paradise, as long as you don't mind earthquakes, fires, mudslides and the rest.

To my son on his wedding day

My son got married today.

It wasn't the beautiful November wedding he and his fiancee had planned. That will still happen as a celebration of their love, but Virgile is leaving for Washington, D.C., in less than two weeks to start his career in the U.S. Foreign Service and he wanted to take Sterling with him as his wife.

We have come to know her well over the three years they have been dating, and we have seen how good they are for each other.

Things got rather hectic on our way to the courthouse in Lancaster, the only one within a reasonable distance that could fit them in. Our brand-new car conked out a few miles short of its destination, and we took a cab the rest of the way.

I didn't really have a chance to talk to my son about marriage, which disappointed me a little. We have had so many good conversations about life and what to expect. We even had the sex talk that so many fathers and sons struggle with.

I have seen marriage from both sides, from a failed one in my twenties to a good one that is coming up on 17 years this fall, so I probably wouldn't presume to give him much personal advice.

I actually would rather tell him about love, and I've never known a better description of love than Paul's first letter to the Christians at Corinth. Here's the famous excerpt from what he wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:

"Love is patient and is kind; love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud, doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil; doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails."


I learned those lessons about love from a wonderful person -- Virgile's mother and my wife. Nicole is the most loving person I have ever known and God granted me the greatest blessing of all when he allowed me to meet her on Sept. 12, 1992.

She and our two wonderful children from her first marriage, Virgile and his older sister Pauline, have brought awe and wonder, grace and meaning to my existence. I have fallen short of glory so many times, including today when the car broke down and I lost my temper, but Nicole's love epitomizes all the best characteristics of the words in the Bible.

She will always be the best person I know, my favorite person in the world.

So the best blessing I can give our son on the day of his wedding is this:

"May you be as good a husband as you possibly can, and may you have a wife as loving and as wonderful as your mother."

Best to speak no ill of the dead

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum."
-- ancient Roman proverb

Ted Kennedy, a man who would almost certainly have been president if not for a wrong turn he took in 1969, died this week.

I have been wondering for a long time what some people will say when it happened, knowing that it is relatively traditional to speak no ill of the dead. Over the last 40 years, no one has been hated more by the lunatic right than the last son of Joe Kennedy.

No, not even Hillary Clinton.

It wasn't all about Chappaquiddick, although Kennedy's failures there gave the nuts the ammunition they needed to attack him without ceasing. It was also because he was the last son of what could have been a political dynasty, and that made him beloved to a lot of people in a way few other liberals were.

What did they say about him today? I don't know what the Limbaughs and Hannitys said; I don't listen to them anymore. But I did check in on Free Republic, the most "mainstream" of the lunatic sites, and they didn't disappoint me. A lot of "scumbags," and "good riddances" and a lot of talk about how the 77-year-old Kennedy is certainly frying in hell.


Far be it from me here to argue with them. I never expected them to be as gracious as liberals were when Ronald Reagan died and they didn't disappoint me. I always considered Kennedy a tragic figure, the least of the brothers who had to bear the burden of the family and the nation's hopes after his older brothers were murdered.

He made a fine record for himself in the Senate, and was considered by members on both sides of the aisle as one of the greatest senators ever for his 47 years of service.

Beyond that, let's just say rest in peace.

Pride goeth before a realization

I was feeling pretty good about myself for a while today.

My wife and I had gone to meet with two financial advisors -- with the object of choosing one -- to discuss our impending retirement. I'm not sure when exactly it will happen, but the odds are pretty good we're down to counting the months on our fingers and toes.

We're not incredibly well off, but we have been working very hard to build up Nicole's 401(k) account and it's looking pretty good. We're living within our means and saving a significant account of money each month.

We managed to impress the advisors with our frugality, but what impressed them the most was the total amount of our liabilities.

Zero.

We just completed the sale of our house, so we no longer have a mortgage. We own all three of our cars free and clear and we have no personal loans or credit-card debt.

Frankly, I'm amazed.

I think I may have been in the same position for a while in 1984, but I didn't have any assets other than a 1979 Subaru that had already blown one engine.

So naturally, I felt good.

Then I thought about how little I really had to do with it. All I really did was marry well; my wife's income in one year is nearly equal to what I made in my best three years. She's a world-renowned scientist. I'm an unemployed journalist.

I write the checks to pay the bills, but that's about it.

So I'm happy I have a wonderful wife and proud that she loves me enough to keep me around.

That's enough for now.

Twists, turns and 17 wonderful years

I was sitting in the front seat of my car a few minutes ago, waiting for a parking space to open.

My son and his fiancee were occupying the space, and they were carrying some things down from our apartment to load into the car. They're getting married Friday and moving to Washington, D.C., in about two weeks as Virgile starts his career in the Foreign Service. It means we'll have a true empty nest, with both our children traveling around the world for their careers.

Nicole carried a few things down too, and I found myself watching her in the headlights and remembering for about the one-millionth time why I love her so much. In 20 days, on Sept. 12, it will be the 17th anniversary of the day we met. Just 51 days later, on Nov. 2, it will be our 17th wedding anniversary.

Can a life really change so much in that short a time?

I'm here to tell you it can. When I married my first wife in 1975, I was 25 and she was 21. A month after my 30th birthday we had separated for good. I know I loved her -- it's tough to hear a lot of songs from the '70s without thinking of her -- but I know we got married for all the wrong reasons.

Nearly 13 years separated the end of the first marriage and the beginning of the second, and there were certainly other opportunities. For one reason or another, though, I was still single in the summer of 1992 when I met Nicole.

I used to occasionally wonder what it would have been like if I had met her younger and we had had a child of our own, but I rarely think of that anymore. I have the most wonderful daughter and the most amazing son; Pauline and Virgile are not just high achievers but geniunely nice people as well.

Now Virgile is getting married and I will have a lovely daughter-in-law. Someday, God willing, there will be a lot more grandchildren. They may not have my blood, but just like their parents, they will have my heart.

And as I sit and look at my wife through the headlights, I know one other thing.

I'm married to the most beautiful grandmother in the world.

A nice day, a nice new car

For the last couple of years, I have been driving a car with some weird defects.

Both of the back windows in my 1999 Pontiac Grand Am are broken -- they won't go up or down and have to be wedged shut with cardboard. My gas gauge doesn't work, so I have had to estimate when I need to fill the tank.

But I like the car. It's the first one I've had in 30 years that wasn't a compact or a subcompact, and as I get older, I've been feeling more and more overwhelmed by all the giant SUVs on the freeways.

Still, it has 134,000 miles on it, which is a lot for an American car, and I have been looking longingly at car ads ever since we put our house on the market a year and a half ago. As we got closer and closer to completing the sale, I started comparing small SUVs and thinking how well my golf clubs would fit in the back of one.

When we were visiting in Seattle earlier this month, the rental car that I drove a few times was a Hyundai Sonata. I was impressed with some of the features, and I started looking at Hyundai's small SUV, the Tucson.

After 17 months of struggle, we finally closed on the house last week. The amazing thing was that despite the economy, we wound up selling for only 2.5 percent less than we wanted in the beginning. Believe me, it really is true what they say about "location, location, location."

To make a long story short, we salted away most of the money we got so that we'll have it to buy our retirement home. We did save a nice little chunk to buy a car, which we did today.

I didn't participate at all. My wife Nicole and my son Virgile both love to haggle, while I'm probably the only guy in the world who sees the sticker price and thinks that's what you have to pay. They got me a nice 2009 Tucson -- the same color as the one in the picture -- for $2,000 less than the sticker price and also got the dealer to throw in a $2,000 navigation system for free.

The best part is that we wrote a check and paid for it all today.

No car loan. No mortgage. No credit card debt or anything else. For the first time in my adult life, I don't owe anyone any money for anything.

I could get used to that.