The state of Oregon is considering a bill I think is a fabulous idea. SB 1045 is titled "Limits use of credit history for employment purposes to certain circumstances," and it does just that: prevents employers from requesting credit checks to use as a screening tool for potential employees, unless the credit history provides a substantial relation to the employee's job (for instance, a bank teller or mortgage broker position).

As someone who's seen this issue from many angles: as an employer who checked credit; as an individual with bad credit looking for a job; and as an employer burned by unethical employees, I believe credit histories, instead of providing an employer with valuable tools, are loaded with pitfalls on both sides of the hiring desks.

For the past two years, I've been chasing down a crazy goal: to reduce my family's trash enough that I could call the company which collects our garbage and tell it that, instead of picking up our one 32-gallon can every week, we'd need the service only once a month. Even though we've always been obsessive about recycling, it had taken our family of five a long time to reach this place.

First, we'd started composting all of our kitchen waste, feeding the tastiest scraps to our backyard chickens. Then, I'd begun a serious and totalitarian campaign to stop buying things with excess packaging, toting my recycled glass jars to the co-op to fill with dried cherries and black beans and brown rice flour from the bulk bins; baking cookies and breads instead of buying them; saying 'no' to single-serving foods. It didn't hurt that we were on a "financial fast" that had us buying very little we didn't need.

In the second legal challenge to a Starbucks store's fair treatment last week, a Florida man is suing the Starbucks on Powerline Road west of Boca Raton. Robert Friedman suffers from Tourette's syndrome, a genetic disorder which is characterized by uncontrollable outbursts, often laced with obscenities. Last year, he was visiting the Starbucks and suffered from such a flare-up; customers said he banged on the wall and shouted curse words.

Although Friedman says he later apologized for the eruption, the employees called the local sheriff's office, asking deputies to remove him from the premises and give him a "no trespass" warning.

The house sits behind an upholstery shop on the corner, and while I'm too young to know for sure, I'll bet the upholstery shop has thrived since the streetcar ran down Gladstone Street in the 1950s. The house, like mine, was built in the first few decades of the 20th century. An old grande dame, she is, brilliant with leaded glass windows and gingerbread detailing and a formal dining room and built-ins that must have had the real estate agents in a tizzy four years ago when the market was so hot she was flipped twice in a season, sold last for $417,000 -- nearly three times what we'd paid for our house, a block away, in 2002.

When she was first for sale my husband, who's worked for a few of the city's top residential real estate agents, called his old friends, dreaming of an investment -- he loves how enormous and elegant she is. I told him it was a foreclosure waiting to happen: even pre-crash I could see it couldn't work. The numbers just didn't make sense; the house had been a rental for many years and, despite its great "bones," there were problems that would prevent even the slummiest of landlords from breaking even.

He'd worked in the Starbucks in Sherman, Texas -- an hour due north of Dallas -- for seven years, and shift-manager Benjamin Amos wouldn't have been blamed for thinking that his tattoos were a non-issue. It hadn't just been the cultural mainstreaming of tattoos in the past decade; the popularity of the A&E television series Inked in 2005 and 2006 was just one indication; but he was hired with the tattoos firmly in place and he says he'd worked, covering them per dress code, for so many years.

Last February, however, it suddenly became a problem and, say filings with the United States District Court Eastern District of Texas, and the store manager told him the regional and district managers didn't like the tattoos. When he refused to resign, according to Amos, she fired him -- later phoning him to apologize for the poor handling of his termination.

If you're a homeowner, go outside after dinner and count the cars parked in driveways, on the street and in garages. Divide that number by the number of households on your walk. Got a number close to two, or more? You've got a situation ripe for foreclosure, according to a statistical analysis conducted by the National Resources Defense Council. What's more, car ownership is a better predictor of foreclosure than average credit scores, income or a host of demographic factors; it's the best predictor of all, the NRDC concludes.

I didn't need any time for deliberation when I received my ballot for this month's special state vote in Oregon: I filled in the bubbles for "yes," as did a majority of voters, next to Measures 66 and 67 and took it with all speediness to the nearest library drop-off. Measure 66 raises taxes on individuals making more than $125,000 (and couples making more than $250,000)

Free listings on eBay -- up to 100 a month for sellers who start auctions at 99 cents -- could change the online selling world as we know it: back to the way it used to be. (The company will still take a "final value fee," 9% of the selling price or $50, whichever is less.)

It was 1999; the internet was our oyster. My ex-boyfriend and a business school classmate had an idea: contract with internet sellers to pick up returned goods and, instead of junking them or sending them in pallets to resellers, sell them on eBay. Over the next months and years, I worked with them to hone the idea and develop a scheme for selling barely used things on eBay. At first, it was a brilliant success, and it was new. We sat in rooms with leading experts on auction theory and chortled over economist's jokes. But soon every company with which we wanted to deal was selling on eBay -- my home state was selling old airplanes and windmills there -- and the bloom was off the rose. I left the company (and the boyfriend); eventually, it went through bankruptcy; about the same time, I too lost my love for eBay.

Last night, I had a devastating conversation with one of my favorite dads, about kindergarten. It started innocently enough. "Do you think test scores matter?" he asked. He has a little boy -- friend since (practically) conception to my second son -- entering kindergarten in the fall. This is the man who'd just as soon passionately argue the evils of our fossil-fuel dependent society, or why he built a 325-square-foot house, as fret over his kid's eventual career. And yet here he is, attending his first kindergarten roundup session and trying to figure out where his not-yet-five-year-old will be most "challenged."

Here in Portland, Ore., like many cities and towns across the country, it's time to start thinking about kindergarten registration. And though it seems ridiculous to link a person's future to the choices parents are making right now, well, it's surely not the first time (just look at Baby Einstein and the famously bitter battles to wangle admission to Manhattan's top preschools).

Wednesday, I had told more than a few people who'd asked, would be the day, or thereabouts: the one when my biggest and most regular freelance check would arrive in my bank account. I needed to pay my mortgage payment (just past the grace period, again); my gas bill, my student loans, the cost of a dozen pounds of butter through a friend's buying club (I bake nearly all of my family's breakfasts and treats). I told my husband he could pay his great-uncle back for some money he'd borrowed; I told my son I'd buy him the full version of an iPod skater game (if he did his chores, of course). I had a list in my head: diapers, a big bag of flour, a new pair of shoes for the youngest.

Wednesday, a call was announced, to discuss this month's check. "No bad news," the email said. Perhaps we don't all have the same opinions about the nature of news; on the call, I learned an accounting change meant we wouldn't be getting this check for two more weeks (and the next month's, and the next: no catch-up, no take-backs). Past the 30-day late date for my mortgage; I'd now have to come up with two payments at once, a near-impossibility. Past the cancellation date for our health insurance. Past a lot of things.