Oh, the poor rich bankers. You do one little thing, like make some company transportation arrangements or spend a few bucks to perk up your office, and everyone gets all upset. And what are their girlfriends, wives and mistresses supposed to do in these tough times? Form a support group and blog about it, of course. Our top five this week is from the blog “Dating a Banker Anonymous.” Because when you’ve gone from obscenely rich to merely extremely rich, you need the support of others who feel your pain.

Top five ways the DABA bloggers are cutting back:

5. “My salary is no longer my own. It all will be spent on family expenses.”

4. “Bottle service is a thing of the past.”

3. “I’m switching from having my facials and massages in my downtown spa to a midtown place with ladies wearing pink jackets and lots of make-up giving facials only, once every six weeks instead of monthly.”

2. “It gets worse. I’ll now be doing my pilates with others, in class, on the mat instead of on the machines with my private instructor.”

1. “He wants to have dinner every night. By dinner I mean staying in and cooking. Seriously. It sucks.”

And then there’s this gem from a dumped mistress:

Dear Nancy,
I regret to inform you that I will be cutting you out of my life completely in FY09. Having just reviewed my entertainment spending for the month of December, I discovered that, while I spent an exorbitant amount on alcohol throughout the month, I spent an exorbitant-er amount when you were in my company.
Please note, this is a decision I make with a heavy heart, but it is a necessity. The amount I am spending on Nancy-related-boozing would be better served in mutual funds, an IRA or put towards a down payment on a home. The unfortunate fact is, Nancy-related-memories don’t accrue interest. Nor are they easy to remember.

Only a banker would dump his mistress at the start of the fiscal year.

And yes, I had to Google “bottle service.” I could only assume it was something Senator Vitter paid his hooker extra for.

That’s probably not how Cheney intended to leave the White House. He may have wanted to make an exit that was less Dr. Strangelove-esque. Not so Blofeldian. More elder statesman accepting the thanks of a grateful nation, less Mr. Potter clutching the Bedford Falls newspaper with Uncle Billy’s missing bank deposit hidden inside. No doubt he hurt himself trying desperately to cling to the reins of power with his wizened yet surprisingly strong talon-like grasp.

Bye, Dubya and Dick. You are not getting your damage deposit back.

Top five highlights of the inauguration:

5. Dubya’s traditional letter to his successor: “Here’s the keys to the country. I left ya a coupla countries to invade. Good luck presidentializin, and remember, when something goes wrong, just blame the nearest Clinton.”

4. Dubya’s not-so-traditional sendoff: the 21-shoe salute.

3. Woody’s reaction: “Don’t close Gitmo! Put in more cells! Lots of tiny, tiny, squirrel-sized cells.”

2. Chief Justice Roberts: “Raise your right hand, and if we don’t get it right, what the hell, we can always do it over.”

1. The big highlight of the day that everyone’s still talking about. No, not Obama’s speech. Aretha’s hat.

Oh, Dubya.

What will I miss the most? The corruption, the cronyism, the incompetence? I think it’s the smirk. I’ll miss that most of all.

Top five ways the White House is getting ready for the transition:

5. Using enticingly unredacted personnel reports to lure Cheney into his man-sized safe for shipment to his private undisclosed location.

4. Barney lying in wait outside the press briefing room for one last attempt to cross Helen Thomas off his “reporters I’d like to bite” list.

3. Printing more labels for the shipping boxes, because they keep running out of the ones that say “failure.”

2. Drawing straws to see who has to explain to Dubya that, when people say the skinny black guy is coming there next week to “clean up his mess,” they don’t mean emptying the trash can in the Oval office.

1. In an attempt to emulate staffers who are removing the “O” key from their keyboards, Bush mistakenly pries off the zero.

My fireplace was fixed on Saturday, so I’ve been basking in the warm glow as well as in the knowledge that, as of Tuesday, Dubya will have to content himself with screwing up at brush-clearing in Crawford. To paraphrase the late, great Douglas Adams, so long, and thanks for all the failures.

Brrrr

Oh sure. There you sit in your cozy office with heat and stuff. I went down to my office this morning and turned up the thermostat, expecting to hear the whoosh and see the glow of my lovely propane fireplace. Nothing. Oh crap. The pilot light’s out. I just had the tank filled in November. Yeah, it’s been cold, but not THAT cold. A full tank in November should last through the winter.

Checked the tank and it’s at 40 percent so that’s not the problem. Checked with Dean who checked with his HVAC friend whose computer he just fixed yesterday. Nice to have an HVAC guy who owes us a favor, but I didn’t think we’d need it so soon. He thinks the thermal coupler’s gone out and he’ll come and take a look at it tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll tell myself I enjoy the challenge of typing with mittens on.

Top five signs it’s too &^%#$ cold:

5. The going rate for an Illinois senate seat is now three cords of firewood and 200 gallons of propane.

4. Woody refuses to go to work with me today. “Uh, stupid lady, there’s nice warm heated tile floors upstairs.”

3. The seating arrangements for the upcoming inauguration are based on party affiliation, association with the Obama campaign, and which portions of your anatomy you’re willing to freeze off.

2. Interior Secretary Kempthorne is taking the refrigerator and freezer out of his bathroom and replacing them with a sauna, fireplace and barbecue pit.

1. Ann Coulter’s still biting the heads off kittens, but now it’s to warm herself with their blood instead of just for fun.

Oh, you poor rich people. Why do you have to suffer so in an economic downturn? We dare to whine about stupid things like “having to choose between heating the house or buying food,” when socialites are languishing in their penthouses, fretting over whether the guests will notice they’re serving domestic champagne. But there is an upside to the downturn. Rich people wrote this week’s top five for me. I’m not making these up. These are actual ways rich people are responding to the recession, taken from newspaper and magazine articles:

5. Cutting their 17-year-old daughter’s allowance back from $100 a week to $60 a week.

4. From the daughter: not getting take-out sushi for lunch every day.

3. “Letting Yolanda go, which means I’ll have to learn to iron my own shirts.”

2. From an article describing an elegantly-dressed woman approaching a shopper using coupons: “Oh, I’ve heard about those things. Where does one get them?”

1. From the same article: “Instead of paying $250,000 to take the private jet to Singapore, I flew commercial for $20,000.”

Speaking of money, I bought a lottery ticket in Kalispell the other day. So yesterday Dean says there was a $200,000 winning ticket sold in Kalispell. I checked the numbers and hey, I’m a winner! Of four dollars. On my five dollar ticket. Guess I’ll still be ironing my own shirts. Or would be, if I ever ironed anything.

It’s a list-y time of year. Shopping lists, to-do lists, year-end “best of” and “worst of” lists, naughty/nice lists. And as my friends and colleagues in the old home state are no doubt chanting today, “We’re number one!” North Dakota topped the USA Today’s recent list of most corrupt states. Then again, their formula was based on convictions per capita, and North Dakota can pretty easily top just about any per capita-based list. But it’s good to be number one, isn’t it?

Top five ways to bribe a North Dakota politician:

5. Twenty kilos of pure white primo stuff – fresh walleye, cleaned and filleted.

4. A big North Dakota junket: free tickets to the Medora musical, plus the pitchfork fondue and two rounds of mini-golf.

3. “That’s right, Senator. My kid will snowblow your driveway and shovel your sidewalk. For the whole winter.”

2. A chance to get out of the North Dakota winter and spend a week in beautiful, balmy South Dakota.

1. “Now see, we make these legislurters . . . logislatures . . . . these government guys a free website, and then in return we tell them we want it legalized, not just decriminalated . . decriminizated . . . what were we talking about again? Hey man, any Doritos left?”

Hmm. Maybe it’s not fair to use actual conversations overheard in the workplace.

Nearly there . . .

In our little remodeling adventure that started on October 8, we've gone from this:



to this:



We now have running water in our kitchen and everything. Making a cappuccino no longer involves trips to the laundry room, the downstairs bathroom and the garage. We still need to get hardware for the cabinets and put in a backsplash. The appliances are all in and functioning, the tile floor is heated and now we just have to clean everything up and put the stuff back in. We may actually have a real homecooked meal sometime this week.

I'll post more pictures of kitchen-y goodness later. It's almost done and for a couple of losers who had no idea what they were doing, I think we did okay.