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The Mailbox Thief Jamboree

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mailbossYou’ll recall Fort Knox, the monster mailbox I had to install out front after last December’s series of mail thefts? It was infuriatingly expensive and a major hassle for me and my handyman to install, not to say a landscape uglification.

Welp, that thing just paid for itself.

This afternoon I strolled out to pick up the mail and spotted WonderAccountant across the street wrangling a bug spray guy, so naturally I went over to chat. In passing, I mentioned that the dreaded PayPal was supposed to send a $1350 check to the S-corp. And of course, she already knew about the $568 the community colleges owe me and so far have yet to pony up.

Her office window looks straight into my front yard. In the course of conversation, she remarked that a few days ago she saw a man in an unmarked white van pull up in front of my mailbox. He sat there and stared at the mailbox and the house for a few minutes, and then moved on.

I said he was probably discouraged by Ft. Knox.

She said probably so; he’d moved on to our neighbor’s house, where he (or someone) broke into and robbed their locking mailbox.

I said ah hah! That explains the locking mailbox plate I’d found in my front yard the other day, where someone had thrown it.

It must have been the neighbor’s. It had been prized off and tossed on the ground.

Unfortunately, I’d already thrown it out and the trash had been picked up, so I couldn’t return it to them.

The PayPal check was in the mailbox when I unlocked it after this conversation. So it looks like Ft. Knox saved me from either a close call or a real loss. How the heck I would ever have extracted a replacement check from PayPal, renowned for its customer service recalcitrance, escapes me. I would just have been screwed, especially if the guy had managed to cash it.

At any rate, evidently the thieves are working the neighborhood again, and evidently they’re not deterred by locking mailboxes.

Our victimized neighbor’s is old. It’s been there as long as I’ve lived here, a good 12 years. So it was probably fairly easy to prize open. Still, the plate was quite heavy. The lock was still locked — the sh!thead had managed to break the plate off the steel box, which is mounted in a masonry pillar.

So…it’ll be quite a job for the young people to get that fixed, and probably an expensive one.

One of the reasons I sprang for the thing’s extra cost is that several customer reviewers who seemed to know what they were talking about remarked that it’s very hard to pry open. Apparently there’s a YouTube video that shows some guy working for 15 minutes before he could break into it.

Apparently the current thief thinks that’s the case, since he moved on to an easier mark.

 

 

 

 

Live-Blogging from the Lake

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Yeah. The back porch is a lake. 🙂

LakePatioLake Patio, we call it.

It’s high rush hour. The I-17 is closed in both directions. Water is still pouring out of the sky.

As the clouds gathered — they looked like nuclear bomb mushrooms along about 1:30 in the afternoon — and later in the day the sky darkened, for a few minutes I thought we might be looking at a potential tornado.

But no. I think this is just a routine freshet.

So far, we haven’t lost power. That’s nice, but the world wouldn’t end: exterior temp has dropped to a highly tolerable 80 degrees.

The main issue is the toilette facilities for the dogs. Ruby tried to go out the doggy door and found herself up to her little hocks in water.

The side yard’s not flooded, but whether they’ll go out there remains to be seen. Dogs, like humans, are hopeless creatures of habit.

My poor son had to drive home in this — assuming he didn’t have the sense or the inclination to stay at the office till the storm passed. If he left even a few minutes early, he wouldn’t have realized the storm cell was this far north and west: by 5 p.m. the local Play-Nooz was showing it in the east and east-central part of the city.

First day of art class today! Personally, I didn’t do well: not feeling very well. Haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks.

Last night I reluctantly dropped a half a Benadryl. The stuff forces me to sleep, but I hate it. Knocks me for a loop. Even after just a half-pill, it takes most of the morning to shake off the fog.

So by 9:30, when the four classmates met the instructor, I was still in a daze, nonfunctional.

However, an allergy pill is probably in order. So much crud has been floating and blowing in the air, my throat’s as sore as if I had a cold!

These summer storms, like the summer temperatures, have changed over the years as climate overall has changed. It used to be that starting around mid-July, we’d get short, spectacular rainstorms around four o’clock in the afternoon. These beautiful events — which really were gorgeous things, replete with wild lightning shows and 180-degree rainbows — would drop the ambient temperatures by 20 degrees: from the low 100s to about 80.

Now ambient temps are more like 110 to 120. The storms don’t come. It’s freaking August, for godsake, and this is the first real “monsoon” storm we’ve had here in the rain shadow of the North Mountains.

When they do finally show up, they’re fewer and far more violent. It’s not unreasonable to brace for a tornado, even though (thank God…so far) they’re nothing like the twisters that blow up in the South and the Plains states. Nevertheless, these are storms that kill the unwary and the stupid. And they don’t usually cut the heat that much.

We are, in a word, screwed.

Hm. I think I’ve said that before.

Ant Détente

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ant monomoriumThe little Ants that appear on the kitchen counter, seemingly out of nowhere, have achieved a kind of détente with the Human. They are so tiny you almost need a magnifying glass to see them at all. A microscope would be required to view the little gals in detail.

Because of their minuscule-itude, the truth is they’re very, very cute. I’ve taken to calling them “fairy ants.” A brief Google search for small-type ants raised little that seems to name or describe these little critters. There are some very small ants, but they neither look nor behave like fairy ants. These little critters don’t seem to be pharaoh ants. They could be crazy ants, which are described as 1/10 of an inch long, but they don’t behave the way crazy ants are said to behave. The most likely candidate is  Monomorium minimum — “little black ant” — which is shown as 1/16 of an inch.

Interestingly, they don’t seem to swarm. They never appear in large numbers. A dozen raiding a speck of dropped food would be a lot.

They don’t bite. They don’t seem to want to defend themselves, their compatriots, or their food.

They’re not very interested in sweet stuff. They’re not at all interested in fruit. They don’t care about sugar.

They rarely march along in a line (although once in a while they will). Where they’re coming into the house is totally not obvious.

Just now they’re obsessed with any kind of grease or oil. They will clean a skiff of carelessly wiped-up olive oil off the counter faster than you can grab a rag to wipe it up. And a mini-microgram of dropped dog food? Ant mirabilis!! All ten of them will be over there trying to cut it up and haul it off.

At this rate, I may never have to clean the kitchen counter again…

In that taste — the seemingly exclusive craving for oil and protein — they are Antish. Ant colonies, we’re told, experience various communal nutritional needs as the seasons proceed. Sometimes they need carbohydrates and sugars. Sometimes they want meat. Sometimes they want oils. Summer seems to be Fat Season for fairy ants.

As long as the countertop is spotlessly clean, they stay away. They never go in the dishwasher. The only time they show up is when I’ve failed to clean the counter adequately.

And you know…that may be a good thing. The place could use some improvements in the housecleaning department.

Whatever they are, they’re a far cry from the Ant Queen’s aggressive amazons. Hmmm… It says here that these little gals (Monomorium minimum), who are native to North America, actually chase off some very obnoxious varieties of ants, notably the hated fire ants.

So I believe we’re declaring a permanent détente with the ladies. As long is the kitchen is kept clean (imagine that!), they’re not doing any harm. And, if they really have beat back the fearsome Ant Queen’s hordes, they may be doing a great deal of good.

 

 

Budget and a Book

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Yay! It’s August 1!

Another day closer to fall, lhudly sing huzzah. But more to the point, I’ve survived the first month on the (re)budget! And I came out only $274 in the hole.

Not too bad, considering how feral my financial garden has gotten. Without the bill from WonderAccountant, I’d have seen only $72 worth of red ink, and that’s despite the $175 I diddled away on the art class.

Art class starts tomorrow…this should be interesting! It’s an indulgence, no doubt of it. But one could also regard it as an investment in sanity. I really, really need to spend more time around some human beings.

This August looks pretty positive, providing no really big unexpected bills occur. Though my estimate of $400 for summertime utilities was just about right on, gasoline cost nothing like the expected $50±. The initial $22 I spent on the first of the month lasted three weeks! I filled the tank last week, and it’s still almost full.

So if that fill-up lasts another ten days to two weeks, the gas card I have to buy this month from Costco may amount to just $25 or $30!

What that suggests, I’m thinking, is that I may only have to buy a Costco cash card to use at the pumps about once very six weeks, which would mean some months would have (wowzers!) $0.00 upfront cash outlay on gasoline.

The grocery bills were much attenuated by the charity handout at the start of July. Those people will be back at the church next Saturday, and you may be sure I’ll be first in line when they open at 7 a.m.

The grocery store bills came in $50 over budget, despite my hardly having to go into a store. But that’s still $100 less than the average $400(!!!) I found I’d been spending over the prior six months. If I can push it down to under $300, I’ll be happy…but think that’s unlikely because this month I haven’t had to buy any meat of any kind, thanks to the gigantic Costco stashes in the freezer. Well, except for meat for the dogs.

In that department, the dog food situation also devolved into a pleasant surprise. The amount I paid out for a giant package of cheapo pork and a package of chicken thighs on the fifteenth bought enough to last the dogs much, much longer than expected.

I cut the pork into easily cooked chunks and stored it in three huge Ziplock bags. We’ve used one of those and half the giant package of chicken. Still have about a day and a half of dog food from that. This afternoon, though, I’ll cook up another packet of the pork for them (mixed with other nutritional goodies). That means we’ve used less than half of the dog meat in two weeks! Significantly less. There’s a good possibility that what I have on hand will last longer than a month.

A miracle!

My plan is to make a Costco run a little later this week, maybe, and while there buy one package of chicken, which is cheap. That will insure that we won’t run out in the next month…and mean that instead of $55, in August I’ll spend about $13 on dog food. With half a bag of frozen dog veggies left, I shouldn’t need any more of those. Everything else that goes into dog food is either on hand or extremely cheap.

The power and water bills this month are going to be astronomical. I expect they’ll far exceed the allotted $400, so the limited spending on gas and dog food is a blessing. That should take up the slack, I hope.

Progress is being made on the writing & publishing book. Despite adding a couple of chapters, I’ve managed to cut the page count to under 400. Alas, though, I still have two more chapters to write. However, there’s still some unduly bloggish material that can go, so I think the final page count will be about a wash.

That’s in the current template I’m using. Its trim size is 5.5 x 8.5 inches, a standard trade paperback size. However, The Essential Feature was 7 x 10 inches.

If I set the copy in that trim size, that alone would cut the page count. So I’m thinking I may buy a another Friedlander template in the 7 x 10 trim size — he has one with the same font and overall design. That would be a lot easier than me trying to figure out the page setup, and the cost isn’t THAT much.

Only problem is, reflowing the copy into a new template will take time. And, of course, it’ll create the usual hair-tearing hassles.

However, it will take time to get speaking engagements, so there probably is time to address a new template. I need to start working on that right now, come to think of it.

Yesterday I learned that WonderAccountant’s sister works at the Small Business Administration’s downtown education center! So: a contact! Hallelujah brothers and sisters. I’m going to call down there and see if they’ll let me do a presentation — if I’m not mistaken, they have a regular roster of speakers who come in on a rotating basis. If by some miracle I could wriggle my way in there, that would soon start to create some new editorial clients.

Also need to rejoin the Chamber (argh! the time suck! money suck!!) and schmooze enough to justify asking if they’ll let me speak. Someone else suggested calling all the BNI groups in town.

Before I do that, though, I’ll need to have the dog and pony show prepared and rehearsed. And…to get the damn book in print.

Since I think it’ll only take another week or two to finish the book & its print layout, I’m prioritizing that chore. Then will get down to work on a professional presentation, which will be a project. I’m pretty comfortable speaking in front of groups, because of all the classroom experience…but because of all the classroom experience, I tend to speak off the cuff a lot. That won’t do for what I have in mind.

So, onward!

The Republican Horror Show

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Have you been following this? Forgodsake. The word “outrage” so understates the case as to be outrageous in itself.

A narcissistic sleaze, whose contributions to American society have been to short-change the architects who design his buildings and to propose a First Lady who sees nothing wrong with plagiarizing the real First Lady’s words, DARES to say that he has “sacrificed” — by hiring a bunch of employees to staff his capitalist empire — more than a man who GAVE HIS LIFE FOR OUR COUNTRY! More, indeed, than the parents whose son died in the service of the United States of America!

A man whose response to a father’s despair is a racist slur against his wife? Somebody really thinks this creep should be President?

How in the name of God can anyone who has even one functioning synapse inside their head fail to see what a dangerous, dishonest, bombastic, one-born-every-day shyster this guy is? Who in their right mind would vote for the man?

Say what you will about the right wing…but at least Barry Goldwater was a decent man. I knew Goldwater, in passing (he autographed my first straight-A report card from the UofA!), and I know what he said about the proto-Tea Party right wing a-borning toward the end of his life. It wasn’t printable.

Even Ronald Reagan retained a few shreds of common decency while he still had most of his marbles. Richard Nixon…not so much.

Maybe Nixon was the one who threw common decency out with the bathwater.

How the hell did the fundamentalist clerics succeed in persuading their followers that a vile line of demagoguery represents the Word of Christ? What Barry said on that topic actually was printable, at least when he spoke in public:

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”

Barry was right. But “a terrible damn problem” ain’t the term for it. It’s fuckin’ Armageddon.

Of Weather, Dogs, Budgets, Stir-Craziness, and Taxes

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At 5:15 a.m., it’s 93 degrees on the back porch, and overcast. Was going to jump in the pool but then heard thunder and thought better of it. Turned around, came inside, fed the dogs, thought better of the better thought, ran outside, and plunged in the pool, thunder rumbling through the skies.

Leapt out, grabbed the hose, watered the withering plants, and flew back inside.

Now at least my hair is wet and braided, which will provide some convenient personal air conditioning for the next several hours.

Damn near 95 degrees at 5 in the morning means no exercise for the dogs. Cassie, with her thick coat and lion-like mane, has never been able to withstand that kind of heat for more than half a mile. Ruby probably could, but it might not be great for her. The prospect doesn’t thrill the human, either.

It means I don’t get any exercise, either. Could do some physical therapy exercises and yoga, but that ain’t the same as two brisk miles. Oh well.

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Y’know, in all the years I’ve fed my dogs Real Food, I’ve never kept track of how long a batch of cooked meat, veggies, and starch lasts. Probably scared: I don’t wanna know how much this is costing me!!

However, we now have a hint. On July 15, I made a Costco run that included a giant package of frozen dog veggies ($6.49), a lifetime supply of chicken thighs ($12.64), and a massive amount of pork ($35.55), for a total of $54.68

Divided the pork into three packages. ONE of those lasted 10 days, when cooked with a sweet potato (on hand) and a few handsful of frozen veggies. So that means the $36 worth of pork alone, in theory, should last the dogs for a month.

It’s almost the end of the month. I’ve cooked 1/3 of the pork, half of the chicken, about half the frozen veggies, and embellished the results with about one cup of rice and two sweet potatoes. We have 1½ Tupperware-type containers of chicken-based dog food left — more than enough to last past the 31st. The first chicken cooking will cover 10 days. AND we have the other half of the packaged chicken thighs, still in the freezer: another 10 days! The remaining pork will make another 20 days’ worth of dog food.

30 days: pork
20 days: chicken
50 days: total days covered by Costco run

That means $55 and change is feeding two dogs for almost two months.

Holy sh!t.  I had no idea  feeding them actual, real food was that economical.

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I’ve been adding a few bites of kibble (Whole Foods’ house brand) to both dogs’ meals, because I’ve not been confident that my dog food recipe sufficed for a puppy. (And of course Cassie will not put up with Ruby getting anything that she doesn’t get.) But now that Ruby is over two years old, she can go wholly on real food without risk. I think we’ll switch her over to 100% real food, which will cut the length of time the supply lasts by about 50%. But that should be tolerable. Especially since we won’t be buying expensive kibble.

Cassie is now 10 years old, and she’s incredibly healthy. You would never know she’s advanced in age. Her teeth are good. The terrible dog breath she had when she came to the Funny Farm is gone. No aches and pains seem to bother her. She races around the backyard with Ruby — and believe me, despite the short legs (or maybe because of them) a corgi goes like a rocket. Her coat is gorgeous. She eats well. And when the weather is tolerable, she can walk a mile at a fast clip with no problem.

My son’s dog, who gets nothing but the very best high-end kibble, has red swollen gums and bad breath. He obviously needs an expensive dental job. My son can’t afford that and so continues in denial. And (btw) that dog gets the doggywobbles every time he turns around. A vet claims this is because of a congenital intestinal problem, but that speculation has never been proven; one wonders if the issue would resolve in the absence of commercial dog food.

Cassie and Ruby eat everything in sight, and they never, ever get sick. Doggy diarrhea is rarely seen in these parts, unless one of them finds something weird to eat outdoors.

I first discovered this dawg wellness phenomenon when I started cooking Real Food for the German shepherd and the greyhound, during the late Chinese melamine fiasco. The difference in Anna, the decrepit German shepherd, was startling. She had been so crippled with age that she could barely haul herself off the floor. Shortly, she was chasing her ball around the backyard again, something she hadn’t been able to do in many months.

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The budget is looking pretty good despite some small overruns.

Last month, on the first, I bought a $50 Costco cash card, solely to buy gas. The first tank of gas lasted until just a few days ago. I now have a full tank, which will probably last until the middle of next month — especially if I opt next month’s junket to Avondale. So apparently in my dotage, it’s costing nothing like $50 a month to buy gas.

As we’ve seen, I indulged myself with a gardening purchase (the composter), which would have led to a budget overrun without the other small surprises. But that may pay for itself this winter when I use it on the proposed vegetable pots.

One reason the budget is so tight at this time of year is that the utility bills are astronomical in this heat. In the winter, though, they’ll drop to almost nothing: both electric and water will fall into pocket change category.

The reason I don’t allow the power company to prorate the electric bill is that I like having a lot of extra budgetary play in the winter, when I want to buy Christmas presents and have to pony up money for church donations. I wouldn’t feel I could afford those things if I had to pay for part of the summer bills all year round. Plus it’s a good idea to be eminently aware of how much air conditioning actually costs you at any given time…

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We’re basically heat-bound here. I feel like I’ve been in jail all summer. Choir is out during the summertime. I suppose I could go to Church on Sundays and socialize a bit…but organized religion per se is not really my thing. I commune best with the Ineffable in nature, not under a roof.  😉

With recreational shopping out (permanently, it seems), hiking out because of the heat, and the cultural scene in estivation, there’s really nothing to do here but read the news on the computer and work. Hence: a 400-page book in draft, in a matter of days. Amazingly enough.

Thank God for the swimming pool. This summer was the first in two years that I’ve been allowed to get in the water. It’s a life-saver.

Wish it had some kind of shade screen over the top, so I could swim in the heat of the day. When I was young, dumb, and didn’t give a damn, I used to drop into the pool several times a day, just to keep cool. Now…not so much. Too scared about melanoma.

Adventures in Medical Science do that to you: create fear.

The weather this summer has been a real bear, and it looks like this is going to be a permanent thing. My son figures the Valley will remain livable until the mid-2020s, which is about when we’ll run out of the water the Central Arizona Project has been quietly pumping back into the aquifer. But water or no, if this kind of heat continues, the low desert really will become uninhabitable.

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He’s talking about moving to Oregon, if his employer will allow him to work from home — as apparently is in the cards. I don’t know if I could afford to live there…the taxes, I fear, are too high.

SmartAsset.com calls Oregon “moderately friendly” for retirees. It’s a little hard to tell, though, because they don’t seem to take sales taxes into consideration. In Arizona, sales taxes are around 10% — depends on the municipality, because some cities tax food and some don’t. Property taxes are apparently higher because the cost of real estate is higher, and Oregon has no sales tax. It does have an estate tax, starting at $1 million — that presumably would not apply when I croak over. Or I could just start maxing out transfers of assets to my son before I die.

If you believe SmartAsset, it looks like Oregon is comparable to Arizona. In Oregon, you supposedly will pay $1,598 on a $40,000 income. In Arizona, the figure is $480. Huh…how do you suppose they have the chutzpah to put those two in the same category? They can’t possibly be figuring the sales taxes in there. Sales tax amounts to hundreds and hundreds of dollars a year here!

Must say that the prospect of moving across the country doesn’t appeal. I’d have to sell all my furniture, since the cost of a moving van is pretty prohibitive. Once there, I’d have to refurnish with Ikea junk or spend months searching for replacements in estate sales. Ugh! Not much fun, either way.

Heh… In the “very tax friendly” category, SmartAsset lists Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Nevada, South Dakota, Wyoming. :-0 Talk about “out of the frying pan, into the fire!” None of those are places I would jump to live in.

Hm. Ordinary unexceptional “tax friendly”:

Colorado is considered tax-friendly: that’s interesting. I could stand to live in Colorado. None of the others appeal, though, with the possible exception of Idaho and maybe New Hampshire.

Colorado: $1,852 taxes on 40 grand. Idaho: $837. New Hampshire: $0.

Zero? What are they smoking over there at SmartAssets??

Ah: here’s the explanation: SmartAssets’ figures don’t include property taxes. Well, hell. Then their calculations mean exactly nothing. It’s the property taxes that do you in when you’re retired!

Hilarious.

All these gingery calculations you see in the media about where to retire on a shoestring are pretty silly. None of them compare apples with oranges or take all the factors into consideration. For example: how much is it going to cost you to fly back and forth to visit grandchildren? If a state doesn’t have property taxes, how is it paying for its infrastructure? You can be sure the Tooth Fairy isn’t covering the cost of roads and schools…

So, let’s move to Mexico or Colombia, hm?

Those schemes fail to mention that Medicare doesn’t cover you when you’re out of the country. And as sad as America’s healthcare system is looking, our doctors and hospitals are still a lot better than what you’ll find in most of those “affordable” countries. Assuming you survive, say, a stroke or a heart attack, how much will it cost to fly you to the US for quality care? And how much more will your care cost you after medical attention has been delayed for the period it takes you to get transportation back to Medicare Heaven?

Welp. I don’t know if Arizona will remain livable for the remainder of my assigned years. If it doesn’t, I suppose Oregon or Colorado would suffice.

Wherever my son goes…I probably would follow him. Oregon, though: that would be good.