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Happy Days? Here Again?

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Hand holding chalk dollar growth chart on green blackboard
Hand holding chalk dollar growth chart on green blackboard

Welp, the stock market has gone SO berserk on news (presumably) of a bullying egotist’s election to the White House that happy days appear to be here again.

Yes, again. This month’s statements from my financial advisors show that my big IRA alone earned so much last month that the increase absorbed this year’s RMD (required minimum distribution) rip. The increase covered the entire $28,314 gouge with seven grand to spare.

Wow. Just wow. What else can one say?

Well. I could say I’d feel a lot happier about this if I didn’t suspect it ultimately will come at the expense of the American republic and of our children and our children’s children. But hey… let tomorrow take care of itself, eh?

Right.

Problem is, o’course, “tomorrow” is just a few hours away…

The credit union estimates that the downtown house M’jihito and I bought ten or twelve years ago (thinking he would live here about five years, get back on his feet after the penultimate recession, and then move back to San Francisco) is now worth about $35,000 more than we paid for it.

That’s nice. I guess. Well…except…

a) That ain’t what I’d call a grand return on investment (considering that we had to put about 40 grand into it to make it habitable…), especially after something over a decade.

But…

b) At least we’re not underwater anymore, lhudly sing huzzah.

My son is refinancing the loan, which as some of you will recall was a 30-15 deal…because we thought he would be outta there long before the 15-year balloon came up, and we thought we were buying at the bottom of a downward-heading market.

What we thought was…so magnificently wrong.

The credit union locked in a very good rate just before the Fed raised its rate, causing mortgage rates to jump. So if he gets this loan, he’ll be pretty well set.

He’s writing me out of the loan, even more lhudly sing huzzah. This means that if anything happens to him, God forbid, I will no longer be on the hook for the debt. If he goes belly-up (highly unlikely, with this mega-frugal kid), I will not have to pick up the mortgage. If he croaks over (hello, God? let’s repeat that: FORBID, got it?), I presumably will inherit the house but not a hundred grand worth of toxic debt. I would probably break even on the sale of the place.

Sort of. I’ll continue to contribute, since without a wife or a partner he would have to strain every gut to afford the house payments. Financial Advisor points out that in his misspent youth he earned exactly what M’hijito earns and he could’ve covered those payments…but the youthful FA did not live in 2016. Nor did he face a future probably devoid of Social Security and Medicare.

It’s such a pretty little house, historic in its years. Mid-century middle-class tract housing, from back in the day when America had a middle class.

(Think of that!)

He invited me and the pooches over for dinner last night, whereinat he created a pretty awesome home-made chef’s pepperoni pizza. With the gorgeous mahogany French doors and the solid mahogany front door standing open (we built a courtyard in front to slow the dog’s escape and add some “charm”), on a balmy Arizona winter night the place was just beautiful. If I could afford the utility bills, I’d love to live in it myself.

Ain’t a-gonna happen, though.

It’s in the Arizona Public Service power district — APS is just freaking rapacious. His house is much smaller than mine, he has a swamp cooler, and he’s penurious in his use of energy, but his power bills exceed my summer bills by upwards of a hundred bucks a month. I know I couldn’t afford that…so (God — listen up! — forbid) if anything should happen to him, I couldn’t even begin to think of selling my own house and moving in there.

In the bidness department, it’s been a busy week. We have a very  large project in-house — 475 pages, deadline January 31: the product of god only knows how many individual academic contributors, each of them fond of footnotes and references. Two proposed indexes came in; one sounds easy enough that I could probably manage it around the other project, assuming The Kid handles at least some of th’same. Together, they would bring in enough income to cover two months’ worth of target income for The Copyeditor’s Desk.

Which sounds nice until you realize we got hardly any work at all through the summer doldrums.

Alors… speaking of werk, now that the bedding is washed and several days worth of food is cooked and financial data (some of them) are entered and the hair is washed and set and the bathroom is cleaned and the kitchen is cleaned and the dog hair is laundered out of the dogs’ bed blanket and the pool filter is cleaned and the correspondence is tended to and a Christmas present idea is investigated and I still need to paint my face before tonight’s social event, it’s time to knock off the blogging.

And so, à demain…

Got a plan to hang on to whatever ill-gotten gains you’ve accumulated in the (no doubt brief) wake of the Trump triumph?

Image: DepositPhotos, AndreyPopov

How to unlock a Toyota…and other small miseries

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sickdogdepositphotos_90817268_m-2015All you need is a small Allen wrench. Our friend Mike the Ukrainian Contractor, a co-conspirator at the Scottsdale Bidness Assn, locked himself out of his Toyota truck a couple days ago. After waiting an hour & a half for someone to come get him back in, he started to rummage around the Toyota’s bed. There he found a fairly small-sized Allen wrench. Stuck it in the lock, turned it, et voilà! the lock popped open.

Furthermore, this morning we discovered that my two-year-old Toyota key, which is cut exactly the same way his is cut, also will unlock his seventeen-year-old truck’s door. Noooo problem: just as if the key were made for the lock.

He bet that his key would open my Venza, but given the damned alarm system and all the wacky electronic stuff on the thing, I declined to test it. All I need is to be stuck in Scottsdale with a car alarm screaming and not be able to get into the damn vehicle.

Ruby is suffering from some kind of enteritis. It doesn’t appear to be distemper, because right this moment she’s flying around the house like a racehorse at full speed, leaping over rocks and running circles around Cassie. If she were seriously sick, she wouldn’t be up for that. I think the last batch of food I made contained too much rice and that’s what’s done her in.

Night before last, she barfed off the side of the bed. Despite her care to avoid listening to me bitch about having to strip and launder the bedding at three in the morning, she did manage to get a few drops of barf on the comforter and a sheet. Since that’s my thickest feather comforter, getting it clean is a chore even with the new washer. Took all day to get the damn thing dry.

Last night she and Cassie woke me twice. After the second elevator trip to the floor, I left them off the bed. Don’t like to do that, because I don’t run the heat at this time of year (by way of making up for the astronomical summertime air-conditioning bills), so if you’re not on or under the heated throw that tops the comforter, you’re very cold, indeed. Especially if you’re camping out on bare tile. But up-down-up-down-up-down all night long doesn’t make it.

So, mighty bleary-eyed when the alarm went off as dawn cracked, I ran off to the wee-hour meeting without my purse.

That meant I couldn’t run the errands I’d planned to do on the way home. And that means I now have to go out again and drive from here to Hell and back to buy gasoline and groceries. I was pissed about this and pissed about having to listen to more depressing bellyaching about our new fake President and REALLY pissed about having screwed up a manuscript so that I have to re-index 425 pages, a job I’ve already performed twice thanks to a prior screw-up.

As you can imagine, then, I was not pleased to come home to find Ruby’s rear end covered in dried-on dog sh!t.

She nests behind the toilet in the back bathroom. So the wall, the baseboard, the shower frame, the floor, and the toilet base were all smeared in dog sh!t, too.

Shee-ut. To coin a term…

So now in addition to feeling tired, cranky, and incompetent, I had to carry the dog into the bathtub and scrub her butt and thick furry “panties” clean, dry her off as best as possible (it’s still damn cold in the house), get out the disinfectant, and scrub down the walls, baseboard, shower frame, floor, and toilet in the back bathroom. Then open the windows back there and set up a fan at full blast to blow out the noxious disinfectant fumes.

This was really not how I wanted to start my day.

Admittedly, I did not want to make an extra trip out to shop for groceries and gasoline. In a car that anyone can open with an Allen wrench. Nor did I look forward to the first of four or five days of re-indexing chores. But this, I wanted to do even less.

Image: Depositphotos, © tigatelu

Ways to Save Hundreds on Your Move

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Close Up Of Man Carrying Sofa As He Moves Into New HomeWhen you think of moving whether across the country or out of town, the first thing that usually pops into your head is: where do I start? In order to avoid the overwhelming feeling that takes the joy out of moving to your new destination, you must get organized. The first decision you’ll need to make is whether you want to rent a truck or hire a professional moving company like Allied to handle it for you.

You can still save money hiring a professional company

If you’ve decided that you’d rather have someone else handle the driving, there are still ways to avoid overpaying. First, research the companies before simply selecting the first one you call. As a general rule, it’s always best to get several quotes in writing and then do a background check to see how other people who used the companies rated the move. Remember these are your personal belongings and you want to make certain that you make your final decision, not only based on the price but also on the successful handling of the cargo. Once you make a wise and well-researched decision then it’s time to reduce your inventory and bring only what you need.

Packing up and driving the truck yourself

If you’ve decided that the cost of hiring a professional moving company just isn’t doable, you’ll still need to follow the same steps and shop around for the best rates on a rental truck. There are other things to consider as well like how much per mileage and drop off locations. Once you have selected the best rates and done a background, then find out if certain dates are better than others. Most companies charge more during the summer months and on weekends simply because the demand is higher. If you can move during the off-season and during the week you can save a hundred maybe more on the move. Deciding to do it yourself also means that you will have to load and unload on your own. While you may have help loading, at the other end you might be doing it alone.

Additional ways to cut costs

Regardless of which way you decide to go, you’ll still need to pack everything up. Boxes can add a few hundred dollars to a tight budget, but if you are organized and start preparing immediately you can contact your local grocery, liquor or retail stores and acquire them there. Also, you can use blankets, sheets, towels, coffee filters and newspaper to wrap up items such as your electronics, dishware and collectibles to make sure they survive the trip undamaged. It’s also important to remember that if you use a professional company and you decide to pack on your own they are not responsible for any damage that may happen.

Yard sales can bring in big bucks

If it’s been a few years since you’re cleaned out the basement, attic and garage, chances are pretty good that you have items that others would buy. Hosting a yard or moving sale will help you to unload things you really don’t want or haven’t used for quite some time. Remember everything you decide to bring carries with it a price tag, so make sure it’s something you really want. Anything that doesn’t sell in the yard sale you can donate or throw away.

Have a packing and cleaning party

Having a party where you invite family and friends to help you clean your home and package up the last remaining items is a great way to save money on hiring someone to clean for you. It also gives your relatives and best buddies a chance to see you before you go. After the work is complete, throw a party or barbecue as a reward for their services.

Moving doesn’t have to cost and arm and a leg. If you plan ahead and solicit the help of family and friends you can look forward to arriving at your new home.

 

Overworked & Underpaid

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This morning I sat down to the computer at 7 a.m. (having overslept an hour or two). Edited difficult, convoluted, doctrinaire copy for two and a half hours. Stood up around 8:30, staggered into the kitchen, fed the dogs, tossed a couple pieces of bread into the toaster, bolted them down with a pot of coffee, went back to work.

Many mind-numbing hours later, shipped the edits off to CED’s associate editor for back-up checking and to be passed along to our documentation formatter (AKA the Dray Horse). Received.

AE is, in passing (I sincerely hope), irked with Dray Horse, who is not performing up to par (read: is not producing glow-in-the-dark perfection). She’s talking about canning Dray.

Argh.

I have nothing to say about this, because Dray Horse is her underling, not mine. But Dray does a great deal of dreary work that I do not want to have to do on top of mine own fvcking dreary work. Oh well.

Moving on: Returned to the Augean job of proofreading and formatting 445 pages of book copy — a new iteration, lhudly sing goddamn — running “compare documents” on it and the now-outdated version, and highlighting everything of interest to our e-book formatter. On and on and on and on and…you think reading scholarly research and cant is mind-numbing? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

This exercise revealed a number of fairly technical issues blighting the copy formatted for print. Yes. Four. Hundred. and. Forty-five. Pages of supposedly formatted copy. Beat these back, in the process creating several PDF iterations, which themselves revealed a new technicality.

WTF?

Fixed that.

Finished, entered endless data, proofread, and formatted the index. Thrill a minute.

Every time I look at this sh!t, I find something ELSE wrong with it!

What is the answer?

Why…never to look at it again, of course…

Reached that conclusion about 5:15. By then I’d been glued to the computer a good 10 hours nonstop.

Fed the dogs again, whilst considering…

If Dray Horse goes, who is going to do the scutwork? I’ve already quietly tested two potential replacements. Not. A. Chance.

Who in her (or, if especially craven, his) right mind would do this kind of scutwork? Who indeed, for what we can afford to pay? Yea verily, who for any amount of money on this earth?

What would it be like to work for the sheer joy of whatever you do, never worrying about mere money?

If I’d been born 30 years later, I could’ve become a priest. An Episcopal priest. Think of that! Imagine doing good works with your time and by and large not having to worry very much about where your next meal is coming from? Imagine believing you’re doing God’s Work? How beautiful is that, anyway?

Reminder to self: do not do not do not look at the news, online or otherwise.

God help us all. If She’s listening.

And while we’re considering existential questions: why has the wine run out?

I am going to iron the pillowcases and go to bed.

Good night, m’dears.

Ditz

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medusa-500px-vincenzo_gemito_medusa_1911_02
Art Nouveau plaque depicting Medusa…1911, the very year my mother was born. Must be talismanic.

God i hate it when i sit down to the computer and it won’t come on and then i have to fiddle with it to make it work. It’s just another manifestation of the DITZ that is my life.

I am so tired of ditz I could barf. Wonder-Accountant laughs when she reviews my labors, and then she remarks that what I do is the English-major’s answer to bookkeeping. Mind-numbing.

Have spent the last…what? Two weeks? Three weeks, off and on?…reformatting the forthcoming book on writing & publishing.

Formatting a manuscript for print publication is ditz on steroids. I labored and labored and labored and finally got the thing into the template for a 7-x-10-inch paperback. This, because the standard paperback trade-book trim size, about 5.5 x 8.5 inches, produces an ungodly length of 445 pages.

Printing costs for a 445-page paperback are, shall we say, bracing. There is NO effing way I can sell this thing for a profit. So I ordered up a larger template, which yields a mere 316 pages.

Unfortunately, I neglected one small detail before I sent away for that template and before I formatted 77,351 words in the fvcker. I failed to ask the PoD supplier just what he would charge to print  a 7-x-10-inch book.

You wanna talk “ungodly”? Lemme tell you about “ungodly.”

So…after I’d done all the formatting and went to upload the PDF to the PoD guy’s site, that’s when I noticed that the cost of one book, though the larger trim size was more than 100 pages shorter, would pass beyond prohibitive.

The upshot of that was, I realized, that I would have to redo the entire book, again, in the smaller size.

This entails a staggering amount of mind-numbing, brain-banging, head-slamming ditzy layout work, because when you reduce the size you change the page breaks. When you change the page breaks, you change the chapter lengths. When you change the chapter lengths you screw up the opening pages. When you reset the opening pages, you screw up every single page and every goddamn image that comes afterward. When you manage, finally, to get all those things fixed (and it takes hour after hour after hour after hour after hour of horrible ditzy frustrating hateful work to make them right and you have to do quite a lot of it over and over and OVER), when you finally have all those things fixed, then you have to rebuild the table of contents (upon which you stupidly did a custom job) and the index (nine pages of double columns).

Meanwhile, I’d sent the MS over to the e-book formatter, where it was to be converted to Kindle and ePub versions. Pretty quick he starts e-mailing: did you really mean to write?… is this what you intended?… is this an error?…

Wayyyy too many queries are coming over from this guy, whose job is not to proofread. So I get into the file and start reading and realize HOLY SH!T. The thing is swimming in typos and bêtises.

Now I realize I need to go through the entire thing from beginning to end a-fvcking-gain, once I get it poured back into its original 5.5 x 8.5 size and formatted sorta right.

I run Word’s spell-checker on the content, and I fvckin’ cannot believe it. Wyrd finds dozens of errors, many of them very obvious. How the HELL did this stuff get through?

I have no idea. All I know is that I now have to go through 445 pages, after entering Wyrd’s corrects, and proofread line by line by ditzy line, searching out the remaining errors.

There are, it develops, a lot of them. I’ve lost track of how much time it’s taken to plod through this thing.

Meanwhile, mind you: I have paying work. The stupid-stuff has to get done around that.

And I’ll tellya: the stupid-stuff gives me serious pause. If I’m making this many errors in my own golden words, how many errors am I making in my clients’ dross?

I certainly seem to be instilling a lot of stupid mistakes in these blog posts of late. So…it’s reasonable to suspect the same high quality of perfection applies to my customers’ work.

Shee-ut.

All of this fun is on the side, of course.

Just now we have 475 pages of academic educationese flowing in-house. It will take all three of us working full-out to get this thing ready to go to the designer by the deadline, January 15.

As a practical matter, we have about a snowball’s chance. That won’t stop us from trying, though.

This thing is a compendium of contributions from a couple dozen authors. Though (as usual), they’ve been told to use a specific style manual, some have submitted their stuff in APA style, some in Chicago, and some even in (incredibly) MLA. Some, probably, have engaged their own idea of what oughta look nice on the printed page.

Untangling this incredible mess entails…? You got it: DITZ.

Oh, god is it a ditzy job.

I’ve done two of the four articles that came in and could have handled another one today. But we have a whole weekend and two other people working on the damn things, so I thought…what th’hell…I’ll try to make some more progress on the book layout.

Made progress, all right: toward pulling all my hair out.

Sometimes I ask myself why am i doing this? I hate this sh!t.

But then there’s the question of what else would I be doing?

Stocking shelves at WalMart? Yeah: I’d get paid better. Probably put my back out, though.

Walking the dogs? How many hours per day can you walk the dogs?

So far I’ve made no money on this enterprise. But hope springs eternal: with the current project, I’m hoping I can sell my services to continuing ed programs and community colleges to advise similarly deluded souls on how to become Writers with a Capital W. To whatever seminars, classes, and online hoo-ha’s I can wangle, I will bring these books. And thereby I hope, at last, to sell a few of my self-published efforts.

Sounds almost like a viable idea, doesn’t it? We must bear in mind, though, that if an idea is viable, I can kill it with a glance. I’m like Medusa. All the idea has to do is look at my head and it keels over in its tracks.

 Really. I should be spending my son’s patrimony driving around the country in an RV.

Image: I, Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11814743

Didn’t b’lieve me, didja?

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Think I’m kidding about my fellow homicidal drivers? Check out this story: some nitwit taking potshots at a man and his son, on a busy freeway passing through crowded suburbs. The vic’ was a former cop and so had the wherewithal to follow the broad — she must’ve been surprised! Wonder how many other people she’s shot at and gotten away with it.

This kind of thing goes on here all the time — only usually the weapon of choice is not a BB gun…it’s an automatic of one variety or another.

That’s why I generally stay off the freeways. Especially the I-10. They’re not safe.

interstate_17_southern_terminus_in_phoenix
Scenic drive in lovely downtown Phoenix…

Image: Interstate-10 terminus in Phoenix. By Patriarca12.  BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10873679