Moving is an ordeal. On the one hand it gives a person the opportunity to get rid of some items that were considered almost priceless at one point in time. Funny how that seems to happen, several years later those same items are priceless for another reason, they're not worth anything. We cleaned out the attic, a large portion of the garage and a few closets. All I can say is that I'm glad Allen Branum has a big truck.

We were trying to move before leaving town for a business trip and things got a little hectic those last couple of days.

Gary Abernathy was going to handle the big stuff and we were all set to go on a Thursday afternoon. On Wednesday I had been out of the office most of the day. About three o'clock Gary called to say he was working a lot and didn't know if he would be able to get off on Thursday. However, he said, he would be available that afternoon when he got off work.

I called my wife and told her she was moving in about an hour and a-half. It was a few minutes before she realized I wasn't trying to play a practical joke.

I dashed home to begin doing a few things scheduled for that night before the planned Thursday move.

One of those things was unhooking the clothes washer. The connections probably had not been turned off since we moved in that house some 15 years ago. The cold water knob went off pretty well. I then turned my attention to the hot water connection. I grunted and strained, pulled and even fussed at it. The next thing I knew I was holding the pipe in my hand and sounds of running water came from under the house.

Fortunately, it only took a minute to shut the water off at the meter.

All in all the move wasn't quite so bad and it turned out to be a learning experience. For instance, my wife learned that looks aren't everything.

In the den of the new house was a return for the air conditioner. My wife decided that was an ugly looking thing in her new den. There appeared to be enough returns elsewhere, so she had the contractor remove if and close up the hole. He did.

Several weeks after that we couldn't figure out why the a/c wasn't cooling the house.

A couple of weeks and several hundred dollars later we were so proud of our new return I could just burst. Small consolation that the return is not in the den.

We had been looking at houses for a while after deciding to move. One we had our eye on was on Linden Circle. That house sold before we had any action on ours.

However, rumor has it that the folks who live over in that area, Roger Wheeler, Daryl Wilcoxson, Jim Warrington, Mike Hunter all got together and bought the house before I could get a deal done. That's just a rumor, but I a little suspicious.

We then looked over on Lincoln Circle in the Westgate subdivision.

I think John Henry Stephens and Randy Caldwell might have had a similar idea. However, while they were trying to figure out what I was going to do Mark Moore slipped in and bought the house at the other end of the street.

At that point I guess they figured it couldn't get much worse. We're in and mostly unpacked.

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Interesting sight

One afternoon last week I walked out of the office and noticed a man taking a picture of a woman standing by the sign in front of the Sheryl Crow Aquatic Center. By the time I got down there they had gotten in the car and were leaving. The car had tags from Pennsylvania on it, so I figured they were tourists.

Even though I didn't get to talk to them, I thought it was interesting.

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Good news

It's good news and since it concerns the administration of Gov. Matt Blunt chances are you won't read it in any of the statewide papers or see it on television newscasts.

According to St. Louis Commerce magazine, the state's economic growth is getting some national recognition.

"The Summer 2007 issue of Southern Business and Development magazine gives Missouri and Gov. Matt Blunt high marks for job growth and economic development in its ranking the Top 100 corporate and industrial job and investment announcements in the South in 2006."

"Missourians have created nearly 90,000 jobs since January 2005. In what the magazine called 'Missouri's best year yet,' the state received an honorable mention and a 2nd place finish among 17 southern states it follows. Adding that 'change is in the wind,' the magazine also said it was 'very impressed with what Gov. Matt Blunt has done.'"

The article -- picked up on it through a link on johncombest.com -- goes on to cite a lot of the programs Blunt and the General Assembly have enacted that have enabled the state to experience such growth.

There was another good news story, of sorts, that the Associated Press reported on.

Seems for several years during the Bob Holden years the state stopped letting businesses know whether or not they had overpaid state sales and use taxes.

"Those funds were simply kept by the state, and a taxpayer may not have known that he or she had overpaid," (Maura) Browning (a spokesperson with the state Department of Revenue) said.

Many of the top spots at the Revenue Department turned over when Gov. Matt Blunt took office in 2005, and the state's finances have since improved to where it now has a surplus. Late last year, an attorney from outside the department brought the previous policy change to the attention of the state's current tax administrators, Browning said.

Missouri was short of money at the time. To try to balance the budget, then-Gov. Bob Holden withheld money from colleges and most state agencies and urged departments to save money.

And held on to taxes he shouldn't have too, apparently.

Bud Hunt is the publisher of the Daily Dunklin Democrat.