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Low-Rent, Low-Harm Weed Killer?

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Well, needless to say, with all the rain we’ve had here in lovely uptown Arizona, weeds are taking over our xeric landscaping like the jungle invading a Mayan ruin.

I’ve grown a little tired of pouring RoundUp on the ground every spring. In the first place, it’s expensive. And it gets more expensive every year. In the second, it’s supposedly carcinogenic. The stuff they put in the newer formulations to keep it from washing off the plants makes it darned hard to wash off yourself, too. Which makes it creepy, in my book.

And in the third place, when my neighbor Sally was here, she used to kill off the weeds on her side of the alley. But the new kids that moved into her house do not give one thin damn how their house looks, and apparently haven’t a clue (or don’t care) that the weeds create a fire hazard. So it’s hardly worth spending a lot of money and risking your life to beat back the alley weeds.

Last summer, I discovered that you can kill off weeds by pouring boiling water on them. Right out of a teakettle. I only tried it on a few milkweeds and dandelion, because I’d already dumped RoundUp on most of the invaders.

But lo! On those few plants, smartly boiling water worked…and it worked just about as well as RoundUp. It killed the plants quickly, and they didn’t grow back.

So this spring we’re going to see if a much more vigorous onslaught can be beaten back with just plain old boiling-hot water poured out of just a plain old teakettle.

We’re supposed to get a little more rain the first part of next week, from the tail end of yet another California storm. So of course that will germinate even more seeds. But between now and Monday, it should be possible to see if the hot-water trick works.

It’s a little more of a nuisance than mixing up RoundUp…but not much. I have to tellya, I do consider mixing RoundUp from a concentrate to be a darn nuisance. The problem with boiling water is that a teakettle doesn’t hold much, so you have to go back and forth from kitchen to yard several times. I happen to have two of them — an old, chipped model that I kept to hold flowers and the one I use every day to make coffee. So that sped up the process some. Still, it was a bit time-consuming.

If you have nothing else to do on a nice day, though, it’s OK.

And for a change, I didn’t. When I woke up this morning I was so whipped after the last eight weeks or so of nonstop work, I could barely move. Cut this morning’s meeting, feeling way too feeble to drive to Scottsdale. And found there was darn near nothing constructive I could do.

In the past month, I’ve billed $7,000. That is almost as much as The Copyeditor’s Desk earns in a year. While I’ve  made more than that on a single project in the past, nevertheless since I “retired” from the Great Desert University, it’s a record. Normally, the Desk earns about 10 grand a year, which is typical for most U.S writers and editors.

Given the feast and famine nature of the business, alas, I don’t expect this to continue. But…gosh! Wouldn’t it be awesome if it did?

No…not really: day after day after day spent unmoving in front of a computer is not good for your health.

But I could do with about half that much on a steady basis. Three grand a month would cover the overhead and then handsomely pay the bills, allowing me to reinvest the forced drawdown from savings and probably stretching the retirement savings to the end of my lifetime. And that is much to be desired.

It’s more likely weeds, though. Editorial weeds. 😀

Images:
Dandelions: DepositPhotos, © Meggan
Filaree: public domain

4 Ways to Potentially Reduce Your Car Insurance Bills

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Car insurance is mandatory in most states, so it’s something you’ll have to purchase as a car owner. There are many factors insurance companies consider when deciding how much to charge you to insure a vehicle. Some of them, such as your age, are outside your control. However, there are ways you can influence the others.

Drive an Older or Less Valuable Car

The value of your car is something that impacts car insurance bills. Generally, if your car is newer or perceived as having significant value, your coverage cost increases. That’s because insurers know it’d cost more to replace an older, less valuable car than a new vehicle, or a model that’s very in demand.

If you’re not too proud to get around in a set of wheels that’s not brand new or the flashiest model possible, driving an older, plainer option could help you save money on insurance costs. If you’re in the market for a new car and want to be as sensible as possible about the eventual insurance costs, research to find out which new cars generally cost the least to insure and set your sights on those.

Follow the Rules of the Road

Driving safely isn’t just a practice that could avoid accidents. It could also help you save money on car insurance. If you have a history of speeding tickets, wrecks, or driving under the influence, insurance companies may conclude it’s very risky to extend coverage to you. If you’ve gone a step further to make sure you understand how to drive safely and completed a defensive driving course, that decision could also lower your premium rates.

Describe Your Occupation Accurately

Car insurance applications often ask about your occupation. That’s because insurance companies know certain work requires a lot of time on the road. If your line of work doesn’t make you have to spend a large percentage of a typical day at work in the car, but the opposite could easily be assumed, make sure to clarify.

For example, if you work for a truck driving company but only do administrative work, mention that the majority of your days are spent behind desks, not the wheel of a heavy-duty truck. The more thoroughly you describe your occupation, the less likely it is insurers will make false assumptions that jack up your insurance prices.

Get Insurance From a Local Provider

Although you may feel tempted to go online and purchase insurance on your own, it’s best to do business with a local insurance specialist instead. That representative should have a strong working knowledge of the types of coverage that exist and be well equipped to recommend coverage that suits your car insurance needs and budget.

Also, you may find an insurance company that offers several types of coverage. If you remain a loyal customer to that provider for many years as you purchase numerous kinds of insurance, you may get a discount for coverage.

Clearly, lowering your car insurance rates isn’t impossible. It’s just necessary to be aware of some of the factors above and act accordingly.

Retirement When You’re Raising Your Grandchildren

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2.5 million seniors nationwide are raising their grandchildren. A fifth of them do so with incomes that fall below the poverty line. Whether your grandkids live with you on a permanent basis, accompanied by their parents, or as a stop-gap measure while their parents get back on their feet, raising young children can affect your retirement plans. Because children are not disposable, you should assume that your grandkids will be with you until they are 18. If you’re wrong, you’ll have extra money. If you’re right, you’ll have the funds you need to help your grandchildren make it to adulthood.

Brush Up on Parenting

It’s been a long time since you’ve parented children, and things have changed. From recommendations about safe sleep positions for babies to expectations about discipline and extracurricular activities, it’s time to brush up on your parenting skills. Consider taking a parenting class, and recognize that no one can know it all—even if they’ve raised children before.

 Balance Work and Childcare

One of the first considerations when you’re raising a grandchild is whether to return to work. Childcare is costly, so look into alternatives, such as a state-funded preschool program or aftercare at the local public school. You may also want to consider alternatives to full-time work, particularly if you’re committed to remaining retired. Consulting, selling items on Ebay, or working part-time for a former employer may work well. If you are married, it might be ideal for one partner to return to work while the other raises the grandkids.

 Look Into State and Federal Funding

A number of state programs assist grandparents raising grandchildren, particularly if they are low income. Your grandchild may be eligible for Medicaid or for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). There may be other programs available in your state, such as grants for families whose grandparents keep children out of foster care. Consider contacting your state’s department of child and family services to explore state funding options.

There is also a variety of federal assistance programs that may help grandparents fostering their grandchildren.

 Find Additional Income Streams

In addition to returning to work, working part-time, and exploring state funding, explore other options. A home equity line of credit can give you significant wiggle room. You might also consider selling your home, downsizing to a cheaper car, or renting out a room in your basement.

Another option is a reverse mortgage. If you’re over 62 and own your home, you can tap into your home’s equity to fund expenses, renovate, open a college fund for your grandchild, or pay down debt. You don’t have to repay the loan until you sell your home, offering you significant flexibility for financially assisting your grandchildren.

 Scale Back on Expenses

Balancing the financial demands of raising your grandkids is ultimately a simple equation of money in and money out. Some simple strategies for reducing expenses include:

  • Getting rid of cable and watching videos online instead.
  • Cutting down to one car. Services like Uber can take you just about anywhere you need to go.
  • Eating out less, and pre-preparing meals.
  • Finding free entertainment—classes at the community center, walks in the park, free outdoor concerts—instead of costly after-school activities.
  • Buying online whenever possible. Many seniors are reluctant to lean too heavily on technology, but programs such as Amazon’s Subscribe and Save can greatly reduce the money you spend on everyday purchases.

Consult a Lawyer and an Accountant

Taking in your grandchildren may affect your tax bill – sometimes for the better, because you may be eligible for certain tax breaks. As usual with income taxes, it’s complex; you should not fail to talk with an accountant.

Additionally, there are legal issues that you should hash out before certain occasions arise. For example, in my state a child’s parent or legal guardian must sign before the child can get a learner’s permit to drive , for some kinds of medical care, and even to transfer a child to a new school. It’s important to be aware that simply being a child’s grandparent does not give you legal rights. At the very least, you will need a power of attorney. If the parents are putting up their kids with you because of drug problems, alcoholism, imprisonment, or illness, you should be sure you have the authority to OK surgery and dental work, to approve a learner’s permit, and to make decisions about the kids’ education, healthcare, and support. This may entail obtaining legal guardianship or adopting.

Zapped and Whapped!

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…and driven to a bourbon and water… {gasp!}

Just sent off 60,000 words to an Honored New Client. Another 30,000 pending. My brain was about paralyzed from that effort when in came a yelp from an existing client...eek! Would I help her get a squib off to a scholarly journal annnddddd it’s due on the 25th h-e-e-l-l-l-p!!!

Heh heh heh… Well, naturally, I’m not about to let Existing Client down, she having been around for quite awhile and also being exceptionally sweet, as human beings go.

Never rains but it pours, hm?

So I’ve been incommunicado for days, struggling to turn around the Magnum Opus for HNC. Spent three hours before breakfast working on the scholarly squib. Then fed the dogs and myself and set out to reach a stopping place 2/3 of the way through the Great Novel of the Western World.

These files can get pretty data-heavy. To give you an idea, the original file for the novel was 589 kb. For reasons I cannot fathom, the edited version is a mere 439 kb (there are some things you don’t wanna know), and the clean version is a slender 292 kb. It has, mercifully, nothing that looks even faintly like a graphic. ♥

More to the point, though, Wyrd’s “Track Changes” function tends to make a file unstable. That’s especially so if the file contains tables, Hanzi characters, or Hebrew characters. Or Cyrillic characters. Or Arabic characters. Or…god help us. Mercifully, our budding novelist does not incline to write in Chinese and does not favor tables.

By way of getting around this instability, I’ve been using Compare Files instead of Track Changes. But HNC, delighted with the edits in the first three of his chapters, pasted them into his MS and then sent it back to me to continue. Heee heeeeeee!

You do not even want to guess what Compare Files > Track Changes on Tracked Changes will do. F’sure, I am not gonna guess and I’m not gonna try it. So that left me with completing the job using Track changes. And that is what we call “a bitch.”

Naturally, the file did crash this morning, about 55,000 words into the job. But fortunately, being wise to Wyrd by now, I’d set the program to save every 5 minutes, so lost only about a paragraph’s worth of work.

Reading HNC’s entertaining fantasy novel riles me up to want to go back to writing my own fantasy novel, the Varnis story: Queen of the Universe Meets Weird Intruders from Another Dimension (we think). But, speaking of Intruders, all the intrusions from the freaking Real World put the eefus on that scheme. I’ve written one (count it, 1) paragraph of chapter 1. 😀

Going nowhere there…

Whenever I finish whinging about this state of affairs, I’ll get on with the current academic emanation.

This influx of work, though it’s kept me glued to a chair like that lady whose body supposedly fused to her easy chair, was OK while it was raining. But today is clear and beautiful and warm, and the poor little doggies haven’t even had a stroll. Sooner or later I must get up and move around.

The influx, however, has another effect: if HNC’s payments don’t return the S-corp’s bottom line to where it was before I took to sailing the Amazon, the next index most certainly will. And about three comparable projects this year will fill the coffers nicely.

I need to net a little over $11,100 p/a to replace the teaching income; that’s a gross of around $14,500. We’re on track to do that if demand continues. But demand rarely continues.

We shall see.

Back at the ranch…

Today saw a fuckin’ FLOOD of nuisance phone calls, unhindered by the CPS call blocker. I think it’s because some bitch got through and got rude to me so I told her what she could do to herself. Probably she had the sophistication to route a sh!tload of junk calls my way.

The problem is (or was) that for some systems (depending on how much junk you’ve got wired into your cable connection) the call blocker can interfere with the Caller ID, so that you can’t see who’s calling. This means that when a call that the gadget has yet to identify comes in, you either have to answer it or let it ring through to the answering machine. That’s a nuisance, but because the call blocker has cut the number of calls down to one or two a day, I haven’t bestirred myself.

Today, though, after about the 8th call, I got on the phone to the company’s customer service.

Which is, we might say, beyond superb.

First off, their guy was able to ascertain that the incoming was random, and so probably not the result of a problem with the device. He explained that sometimes companies share phone numbers (which is exactly what i surmised Phone Bitch had done) and you’ll get a deluge for a day or two. So over the phone, he was able to help me rewire the device’s connection so it no longer keeps me from seeing the Caller ID numbers, and also to show me how to program in certain codes to block specific types of nuisance calls. Since I got off the phone from him, not one more robocall has weaseled its way through.

That’s gratifying. But still…what a nuisance to have to jump through all these hoops to keep sh!theads from constantly pestering you over the phone! Since call-blocking technology exists in several iterations, why aren’t phone providers required by law to offer it?

Okay, so now that i’m duly unwound, it’s time to get back to work. Lhudly sing goddam!

 

 

Six Things That Have Turned Out Exceptionally Well

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The News of the World is not so great — you tune into Google News just to see what new signs of dementia are emanating from the White House — so one looks to a smaller scale in the search for things that have turned out well.

• The CRP V500 Call Blocker ordered up from Amazon a couple weeks ago. Damned if the thing doesn’t WORK, pretty much as advertised. The nuisance calls have fallen off to almost nil. The crooks who like to jangle your phone at 7:00 a.m.: blocked. The sh!theads that call at 9:00 p.m.: blocked.

The number of robocalls per day has dropped from about a half-dozen to one. As a reviewer at Amazon noted, nuisance incoming drops precipitously as you block those who do get through. The first day or two after the gadget came to live on my phone line, robocall harassment dropped from six or eight a day to two or three. Within another few days, it was down to one a day. That’s one helluva big improvement on six or eight interruptions a day, especially when you do the kind of high-focus, ditzy work I do.

Speaking of the which…

• Billing by the Word. Why did I never think of this before? It looks more and more like it’s true that when people hear “YY cents per word,” they imagine that sounds better than “X dollars per page.” This is so even when the YY cents works out to more, overall, than X dollars.

I just sent off the most incredibly mind-numbingly complicated piece of network theory to its Chinese authors — really, on the highest end of what I’m qualified to do. They didn’t even blink when I asked for a stiff fee expressed in pennies per word. The result: I’ll get paid something close to what my time and skills are worth. No more giving away hours of time for minimum wage. Or less.

Now I’m thinking there should be a way to convert this by-the-word approach to indexing. As a matter of fact, the latest would-be indexing client asked how much I would charge to index his academic tome “per word.”

Indexing is not normally calculated by the word; it’s charged by indexable printed page. You work from page proofs, unless you’re entering code in a Wyrd manuscript for machine indexing. I personally find that to be more work than just going through page proofs and…you know…reading the copy. And, oh, say thinking about where entries belong, how they should be ordered, who’s going to use the index, and why.

But it does occur to me that I could calculate an average number of words per page by pasting from PDF to Wyrd and figuring an average from, say, 10 pages. Or simply copying all the indexable pages into Wyrd and reading the total word count.

When you think about how you would do that so as to come up with the desired $4 to $6 a page, you come up with a per-word range of 1.05 to 1.75 cents per word. A typical 350-page academic tome would have something between 81,250 and 82,500 indexable words. That would create a range of about $800 to about $1200, which is what I’ve been getting with the existing page rates. It would even allow for pushing an estimate as high as $1445, for really complicated and abstruse horror shows.

Today, if I have time after getting through 10,000 words of the other client’s Great Novel of the 21st Century, I’ll update the business’s website to reflect a per-word system for indexing as well as for editing.

• The Countertop Oven Gambit. Now that has worked out well. The self-destructing wall oven is permanently turned off at the breaker, and any broiling, roasting, or toasting that needs to be done happens on the propane grill or in the little oven.

It works exceptionally well to make toast. REAL toast, not warm bread, not slabs of charcoal. It’s fast, clean, and out of the way.

Given Mrs. JestJack’s concerns about the potential fire hazards associated with the things, it gets unplugged after each use. It now resides in the garage, on a work table lined with ceramic flooring tiles. It seems to be pretty well insulated — doesn’t ever get hot underneath the thing — but I’m careful not to put any paper products near it and also to be sure it’s left unplugged. Although I have yet to get around to installing another smoke alarm out there, that’s high on the list of priorities. In lieu of an alarm, I’m careful to leave the door open between the kitchen and the garage, and not to wander off while bread is toasting or cheese is melting.

• The Weather, For a Change. It’s raining again, lhudly sing huzzah. We’ve had so much rain this winter, I’ve been able to turn off the irrigation system altogether, thereby cutting the city’s water gouge in half.

Just now we’re getting the tail end of the storm that’s hovering over Southern California. The drought is officially broken in that state, reservoirs full and streams running again. Whether that’s the case here remains to be seen — our drought has run longer than 10 years. However, the kind of soft rain we’re having now is crucial: it recharges the groundwater, because it doesn’t run off to the Gulf of California the way a hard rain does.

We should have wildflowers this spring. Real wildflowers. For the first time in years!

• Shopping Less at Costco. Not allowing myself to be dragooned back to Citibank’s obnoxious Visa card has worked to surprisingly good effect. Because it’s a little bit of a hassle to charge up goods on the credit union’s Visa card or debit card — you have to produce your official Costco card as well as a second piece of plastic, and now you have two statements to hassle with instead of just one AMEX bill — I’ve taken to shopping in grocery stores and on Amazon in preference to Costco.

That means I’m spending a lot less, overall, each month.

Yesterday’s bills came in on budget, in theory: about $1200, right around what I’ve always figured for routine spending. But… The actual routine spending was a lot less than that. The $1200 tab included a $235 HVAC service/repair bill, $200 for a pair of shoes I didn’t need and shouldn’t have bought, and $150 for the dentist.

So that means I spent $585 less than I used to spend routinely! Mostly by staying out of Costco.

• The Wash Machine Gambit. I love, love, love and worship the new Speed Queen washer. Oh, my GOSH what a difference between this marvelous old-fashioned machine and the accursed HE, low-water contraption. It works, it actually gets the clothes clean,  it never tangles anything into a braid, and it does the job in 30 minutes flat.

It’s a miracle.

45 Minutes to Blast-Off

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My friend and sometime editorial client La Maya will show up in a little less than an hour with a plan to go for coffee at our favorite uber-Mexican restaurant. So that will be a nice way to start the day.

Normally by 7:30 I’ve been working for half an hour or 45 minutes and will have another hour to go before disconnecting to feed the dogs and then go back to work.

The Copyeditor’s Desk is experiencing an amazing flood of work, one customer after another lined up at the door. Just now I’m working on two major projects, an abstruse study in business management theory by one of the elite Chinese academics and a wild-assed fantasy novel by an author who appears to be a gamer at heart. We just wrapped up (I hope) another issue of Chicana/Latina Studies, and I’m hoping the client whose ethnic studies volume we just finished editing will hire us to index it and its companion volume.

If this much work would come in all the time, I could make a living off the editorial business. Well, no: I could earn enough that combined with Social Security I wouldn’t have to use every red penny from the forced drawdowns from my IRAs. Then I could reinvest the drawdowns in taxable funds and, with any luck at all, not run out of money before I die.

Exactly how to keep the work flowing in escapes me, though. Facebook does nothing for you as an advertising medium. Twitter is a joke. About the only effective marketing device for this kind of work seems to be word of mouth. The Chinese will spread your fame like wildfire. Americans? Not so much.

Meanwhile, some changes need to be made pretty quick.

Intuit has jacked up its rates for Quickbooks Online to far more than I’m willing to pay. It was more than I’m willing to pay from the git-go, but $15 a month for a program that’s been “upgraded” to the point where I can’t even begin to figure out how to use it is not gonna make it. I keep all my records in Excel and my accountant enters stuff in Quickbooks by downloading from the bank accounts and checking against my spreadsheets.

IMHO, that is fuckin ridiculous.

She wants me to keep QB Online for the business but suggests dropping it for the personal accounts. I would like to switch the business to a program such as Wave or Xero, which can download to .csv files that can be uploaded into HER Quickbooks.

So…that discussion is ongoing.

I’m also royally sick and tired of PayPal. The bastards gouged me $12 for the most recent payment from Taiwan. It’s annoying to use, and since the most recent Flap of Fraudulence episode — in which my business partner’s  husband insisted that we both take our bank accounts offline from PP — the only way to transfer funds to my bank is to make them issue a check. They gouge you for that privilege, too.

Not sure how to jump that ship, though. Although there are several alternatives — some apparently both cheaper and better — everyone uses PayPal. Asking clients to use some other tool is problematic. Most people who live overseas do not use checking accounts. In the rest of the world, interestingly enough, checks are a thing of the past. If you ask someone in Asia or Europe to pay with a check, they’re flummoxed.

They end up having to pay with a money order, which is even more expensive than PayPal, and a nuisance to boot.

And speaking of providers, Cox was up and down all day yesterday. Looks like it’s doing the same thing today. I don’t think it’s on my end, and neither did the Cox tech I chatted with yesterday. My son thinks I need to shut everything down and reboot the computers, the modem, and the router. Did that. Didn’t work. So…struggling with large files when your Internet isn’t working is not a joke.

Lovely Uptown Phoenix has precious few internet providers, so this is going to be a problem. I could switch to Qwest’s successor, CenturyLink, but really, I want nothing to do with anything even vaguely connected to Qworst. And as a matter of fact, CenturyLink’s Yelp reviews are in the sub-sub-basement. Roundly hated. Cox: equally so. They both rank one (1) star. The only ISP that’s well rated is Direct Satellite TV, which states firmly, “We are not a stand-alone internet service provider.”

Since I have no time or desire to sit in front of the television — nor do I even own a TV set anymore — I guess that lets them out.

Verizon has lukewarm reviews; they seem to be hated slightly less than CenturyLink and Cox, but not exactly beloved. The only one that gets really good reviews (all 7 of them, no doubt paid for…) bills itself as a “business-class telecom service,” which suggests their prices are significantly higher than Cox’s. I may call them, though, just to get a bid.

I hate doing business with these outfits. But…it might actually be worth paying more to get better service.

Uh oh…here’s La Maya. And so, away!