September 14, 2013

Fall, my favorite time of year....



It's nearing time for pumkins, home cooking, kids in costumes begging for candy...
I love fall!  It's nice and cool for dog walking, even if you don't get out of the house until 10am - such a nice change from getting up and out early when it's hot.  For some reason, I love to cook more during this time of year.  Weird, eh?  I purchased a cookbook specifically for making homemade marshmallows, and plan to try the basic recipe this weekend.  If it works out (i.e. not too messy or takes forever), then I plan to make some and pair it with a cute mug and cocoa mix, or graham crackers and chocolate for smores to give as gifts this Christmas.  I was thinking of my hairdresser, casual friends, etc.  I'll let you know, and maybe include a photo ~ if they aren't too ugly!!

In the news: 

Greece scraps extra holiday for civil servants using computers


(Reuters) - Greece's austerity drive has cost public sector workers a privilege they have enjoyed for more than two decades - six extra days of paid holiday every year if they use a computer.
The decision to scrap the bonus was a "small, yet symbolic" step in modernizing an outdated civil service, said Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the administrative reform minister who has taken on the challenge of overhauling public institutions.
Bailed out twice by the euro zone and the IMF, Greece has started cancelling arcane benefits to cut state spending and reform a public sector widely seen as profligate and inefficient with a 600,000-strong workforce.
Allowances that have already gone include a bonus for showing up to work and one regulation letting unmarried daughters receive their dead father's pension.
The ministerial decision giving a day off every two months to those who sat in front of a computer for more than five hours a day was taken on 12 June 1989, a week before Mitsotakis's father Constantine won a general election.
"It belongs to another era. Today, in times of crisis, we cannot hold on to anachronistic privileges," Mitsotakis said, according to a statement from his ministry on Friday.
Greece's European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders have given Greece by the end of the year to place 25,000 public sector workers into a so-called "mobility pool", meaning they will either be transferred to another department or fired. Half of those must be placed into the pool by end-September.
(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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No wonder Greece is having financial problems....extra 6 days off a year if you sit in front of a computer during the workday?   A bonus for "showing up to work'?  Kinda makes you wonder about those people who don't show up, doesn't it?  

Love, 365

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