"Keeping One's Balance Straight"

I don't use a debit card myself. Being of the "old school", I like the feel of paper checks and good ol' foldin' green. But, for those that DO use them, you might want to be careful especially when paying with them at the gas pump. A recent report I read states that debit cards may actually tie up any funds in your account, freeze the account or even cause you to overdraw due to the rising number of gasoline drive-offs. Now many stations want to make certain they're paid, so the transaction may take up to 3 business days to complete, putting a hold on any other funds you have in the account.

In other words,if you pay for $30. with one at the pump, then later that day need $30. in cash, it may refuse the second transaction until the first one clears, which could be up to 3 days.

My wife and I are real careful about writing checks. I haven't had an over-draft in at least 15 years, and even then, it was accidental due to not knowing my wife had writtin more checks and not yet taken them off our balances. Afterwhich, we initiated two new methods of keeping up with our funds.

First, we started notebooks, beginning with our current balance, and when we wrote checks we'd each subtract them every night from said balance. (Since that time I guess we've gone thru over 100 such notebooks.),br>
Secondly, our bank started this Overdrawal Insurance deal which covered overdrafts at a fee. It can cost you a little more $ wise, but can save you a LOT of embarrassment at some store which had called you up to tell you that you have a "cold check" somewhere.

In other things, today we journied to Elizabethtown (Yes; the same place that current flick was made about) to visit with my father-in-law because we didn't think we'd get to next week. Next Tuesday he's turning 75 years old. Still in spry shape, he's even building a deck to the back of his house!

Picked up around 20 some odd issues of the DC Comics 1990's series, L.E.G.I.O.N. today while I was in E-Town. Going to have to find a longer comic box to keep my "Legion" titles in; currently I'm using a larger-type "short" box and it's just too crowded, so I suppose that particular collection will now graduate to a Long Box soon. There's just been so very many titles which contain Legion characters since they were introduced back Circa 1958. Off-hand I can think of: Adventure Comics, Superboy V1, Superboy & the Legion of Super-Heroes, Tales of The Legion of Super-Heroes, 2 different LOSHs titles, Legion Lost, Legion Science Police, Legionnaires, L.E.G.I.O.N., the current series, plus mini series and other such titles ("Timberwolf", "Karate Kid", etc.), not counting their guest-app.'s in other DC books. And, I'm sure I've forgotten some of the Legion series than those just mentioned.

I've also gotten interested in another character DC introduced back in '93 in Action Annual #5 called: "Loose Cannon". Granted, he's a Hulk-Clone, but an interesting one. He's seven foot tall, extremely powerful, and his skin turns different colors depending on his moods. And, when he's NOT LC, he turns back into a lame(as in, not able to walk and "not" pitifully written) regular sorta Joe. There were 4 issues published on the character back in '95, and besides the Action Annual he also appeared in Showcase '94 #5 (just in case you wanna dig thru the back issue boxes to take a "look").