<p>Don’t put the hate on college4K. I emailed both my senators today - the office for one seemed to be up and running, but from the other I got a message saying that the office was closed because of the shutdown.</p>
<p>Sounds like different offices operate under different procedures.</p>
<p>DH says his VA jobs are considered essential services…and are not affected. Oops!</p>
<p>Yes, we’re affected. All member websites should be accessible. If you’re having difficulty I would assume the increase in traffic is significant.</p>
<p>Hubby and I are both government workers and non-essential. This is so frustrating. On the bright side, I was able to qualify for a HAMP modification on our mortgage during the last furlough with our trial payments ending this month and our modified mortgage starting Dec 1st. So we can make things last as long as we get some type of paycheck before the end of the year.</p>
<p>I guess this is the one time my hubby can’t complain about our freezer having too much food. It should be able to last for at least a month. All we’ll need is perishables- milk, eggs, bread. On the other hand, our son’s tuition payment may be late…</p>
<p>For those of you retired military, I heard that Shoppers (in Northern Virginia) was offering a 10% discount on your bill while the commissaries are closed. Maybe other stores are doing this too?</p>
<p>There’s going to be an Occupy Yosemite protest on Friday afternoon. I so wish I could be there. The Honor flight WWII veterans ‘occupied’ the WWII monument on the mall, maybe that sparked the idea.</p>
<p>My (African Immigrant) mom is in the process of US naturalization. I’m not sure how that is going to work.</p>
<p>My very trivial one: I have a china cabinet for sale and a woman wants it. The problem is that her husband isn’t working due to the shutdown and so she is leery about spending the money. So we both wait.</p>
<p>How do I find out who is my Congress person? Our zip code is served by two Congress people.</p>
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<p>In our state you can go to the (state) Secretary of State’s website, navigate to the Elections Division, and they have an online service where you enter your street address and it will list all your elected officials. I would think most states would have something similar.</p>
<p>I do some work at JPL, where we have an interesting situation compared to the rest of NASA. Everyone that works there is employed by Caltech, but all of the buildings and facilities are owned by the government. Apparently the way funding works is the government pays Caltech, who then pays JPL. There’s about a two week difference between when those happen, so if this thing stretches over two weeks we’ll probably be shutting down as well. Not sure what’ll happen to my job if the shutdown continues for an extended period of time, as funding is always very late, and there’s a very real possibility of things not coming through at all.</p>
<p>My son did not get the house he had an offer on. They were planning on accepting his offer up till Monday, then decided to accept a different one because they were worried about his financing getting held up (he was pre-approved for an FHA loan).</p>
<p>So sorry, SCMom. We were very upset when our “dream home” slipped away because of our awful real estate agent (a relative). We switched agents and went on to find the house we bought and are very glad the other one fell through. Sometimes things work out in mysterious ways. Wiki aging the best to your S.</p>
<p>Thanks HImom. It’s very rare for houses to come up in the area he wants to buy that are affordable for him and this one was kind of a steal - it was only on the market 5 days (it would cost about 1/6 the of the price in our market, but there aren’t really any "starter: homes where he is ). He was pretty disappointed, and pretty mad when he found out the reason! But I am hoping the same, that something better will come along.</p>
<p>We were crushed when we didn’t get the home we wanted, because homes rarely go on the market where we were looking, which meet H’s criteria and are anywhere near our price range. The old dream house turned out to be directly across the street from one home that ran an auto body shop out of their home and another that split up the home and rented it out to lots of students, as well as right next door to a family that had about six cats that they let roam the neighborhood. </p>
<p>We love the house we ended up with. I’m convinced everything happens for a reason, even if it takes time to evolve. Good luck to your S. I’m sure things will work out.</p>
<p>My D works as a patent examiner for the US Patent and Trademark office, and due to the fact that the USPTO is one of the only government entities that actually generates revenue, they have operating funds that will allow them to continue doing business for a bit (for how long, I’m not sure). So hopefully, D won’t have to dip into savings. </p>
<p>H is a DOD civilian employee whose department still has operating funds to last a couple of weeks, so he too is exempted from furlough for the time being. Needless to say, we’re keeping our fingers crossed that this government empass doesn’t drag on for much longer. </p>
<p>My niece is a mid-shipman at the US Naval Academy, so reading that fully half the instructors there are civilians who’ve been sent home has me wondering just how seriously an extended shut-down will impact the academic year there. And this thread really drives home for me just how much we depend on government day to day. It’s rather astounding, really. </p>
<p>Did I read correctly earlier that many airport security screeners have been sent home? Geezus, I sure hope that’s not the case.</p>
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<p>I wonder if they’ll start pulling military personnel from the surrounding area in to teach. I thought I did read that they were already pushing some military instructors into the classroom in classes they may not normally teach…</p>
<p>Navy-Air Force Football is back on. It remains unclear what will happen with other sports scheduled this weekend and into the future…</p>
<p>To find your representatives…</p>
<p>For congress go to <a href=“http://www.house.gov%5B/url%5D”>www.house.gov</a> The opening page has a link to help you find yours. </p>
<p>For the senate go to <a href=“http://www.senate.gov%5B/url%5D”>www.senate.gov</a> In the upper right hand corner there is a link to find your senator. </p>
<p>If you’re a techie there’s an app Bobblehead Rep to look up your representatives, phone #'s, address, email, etc. It used to be free, so worth the entertainment value and info. Now I think it’s $1, in which case I’d rely on the websites.</p>
<p>Won’t find my congressman at his local district office. He furloughed 16 staffers, put office telephone on answering service, locked up office.</p>
<p>I just fired off a few angry emails. I will probably wind up on a list somewhere…</p>