On the Road with Connie

April 16, 2016 by funny

Folks, have I got a treat for you! Friend of mine is a truck driver. Her company is based in Minnesota, but she does long hauls all across the country, accompanied by her Weimeraner, Silver. As you can imagine, this lady has got STORIES. Recently she started tapping them out on her iPhone and posting them to Facebook for friends and family. The latter have urged her to start a blog, but the logistics of attaching a computer to the Internet and figuring out how to use WordPress while on the road are more than she wishes to contemplate. Hence, I volunteered to post some of her tales here.

El Paso

by Connie Graham

I really, really miss being able to CALL the receiver on the PHONE and get directions from a HUMAN. It had its challenges back in the day when we were expected to call and get directions (bimbos who can’t remember how they got to work), but at least you could ask a question or two if something did not make sense.

Example of verbal directions:

“Take 54 South to exit 40. At the light turn right. The road curves to the left. Stay in the left hand lane and watch for the Wendy’s which will be on the left. Just after the Wendy’s take a left on Elm. We are at the end of the block on the right. The sign will say ‘Larson Manufacturing.’ We are the white building with the blue stripe behind Larson”.

But now we all have Mapquest and Google Maps. They gave me awful directions this morning.

Sorta like:

Take 54W/Relief Road J/Harvey Speinwinkle Blvd .2 miles to 54W/J Loop WE/NW Blvd 345/Friendly Bastard Rd which curves ever-so-slightly toward (not to be confused with “at”) Business Route 54. Go .00008 miles to Junction 54/345 and ignore it. Laugh/chuckle/chortle your way past Junction 54/346 because you haven’t even gone a mile, you can’t remember your own name and are drooling all over yourself.

It was a 2 U-turn morning. Not as bad as some, worse than others. The first was caused by my inability to make sense of the tangle of highways and loops I encountered en route to Loop 375 in El Paso. Once you make enough loops and curves and turns it is impossible to know which way is which. So I looked at the sun and ascertained I should have gone right at the T, not left, because I needed to be going south on Zaragoza.

Scary U-turn in an abandoned Christmas tree lot, just missing a light pole and concrete wall.

I made it to Zaragoza Street. (Thus spake Zaragoza.) I am looking for “Longhorn Warehousing.” The building has a sign that says “Bailey Manufacturing.” So I tool right past.

Fast-forward to the security guard who speaks English with an accent so heavy I can only understand “can’t park here,” “Mexican border,” “meet another driver,” and “Canadian,” After the third go-around I realize he thinks I am from Canada. (My accent?)

I say “ARIZONA” a few times, and he gets it. Now I only have to walk a quarter-mile to the receiving office.

Ninety percent of the 40 trucks at this facility are driven by people who speak Spanish. I am something to be observed. Who knows what the crazy white woman might do? She looks a little stressed out.

Security guard is a very proud older Mexican gentleman sporting Wranglers, boots, and a cowboy hat. He is apparently running the show and directing traffic.

I am assigned the second-worst dock in the entire place. Nice big bright yellow poles surround a fire hydrant right next to my assigned dock. (Which makes the WORST dock the one directly across from said poles.)

I am nervous. I will slam into it unless I “blind side” into my spot. SHIT. Just what I want to do while being ogled by the group of Mexican drivers standing nearby.

They no speak English. I asked.

I steel myself for what might be a very challenging experience, hop into the truck (after asking Silver, politely, to get out of my seat), and put the big green Peterbilt into gear.

I drive around to set myself up for the “blind side backing” and notice that I now have four people standing in a giant circle around my truck.

Wow. That is quite unusual.

I got the truck into the dock with very little effort as I had the help of four extra pairs of eyes. That was kinda fun!

I hopped out to take the lock off my trailer door, and the Mexican/Cowboy/Security guard came over and gave me a big hug.

Again…wow!

PF Blogging: All Our Advice on a Notecard?

April 15, 2016 by funny

Here’s a fine revelation from PBS NewsHour: All the financial advice anyone needs fits on a 3×5 notecard!

Just so. Herein lies the great mystification of the personal-finance blogging boom. There’s only so much you can say when you assay to advise and pontificate about dealing with money. Yet there are still hundreds of us, all nattering on and on about…yeah. The contents of an index card.

Really, how many ways can you say these things? After awhile, if you’re a PF blogger you realize you’re repeating yourself ad nauseam. Many of the original bunch tired of it and sold their sites, sometimes for a decent price. Others, like FaM, started writing about new topics. I see Frugal Scholar has announced that her site will no longer focus on frugality but “other things I’m writing about.”

There are so many other things. And most of them are far more interesting. Than money, I mean.

Politics, for example. Cultural issues…especially in a culture that really doesn’t regard caring for children and a home as productive work. Books. Food. Travel. Real estate. Gardening. Dogs. Cats. The hilarious folly of the passing scene. Life, the universe, and all that.

Knocking Off…or Not

April 18, 2016April 14, 2016 by funny

So I’ve done exactly zero paying work today. Several things needed to be done today, not least of which was to update the Copyeditor’s Desk website to reflect the kind advice of Jackie Beck, our Pinterest guru. She has some good suggestions, which I’d like to apply forthwith. And to figure out a client’s complicated manuscript layout, which I inflicted on a subcontractor but succeeded only in setting her head a-spinning. Those two things really did need to be done today.

But…well. No.

At dawn’s first light, it was off to Scottsdale, to the weekly networking meeting of the Scottsdale Bidness Assn. From there I flew back into town, did some bookkeeping, answered a phone call from one of the PoD guys that clarified a little mystification.

Then it was off to the credit union to deposit incoming checks and make the Copyeditor’s Desk reimburse me for fees I had to put on my debit card (because the vendor won’t take an AMEX card). Got about halfway up there when I realized…yeah. I hadn’t brought the goddamn checks!

So I had to navigate some impossible road construction, turn around, shoot back down the freeway to the Funny Farm, grab the damn checks, and start…all…over…again. Extracted a chunk of dough from savings for a workman who craves to be paid in cash. Hid that in my jeans pocket, lest my purse get lost or snatched while I’m traipsing around the city.

Went by Home Depot and learned that they no longer carry the type of incandescent lightbulbs I use in my garage. Both ceiling fixtures are burnt out, so I need to buy bulbs. Annoyed.

Thence to Costco. Buy gas. Fly into the store. Grab dog meat. Grab some of those wonderful yellow mangoes that I like to eat for breakfast.

Decide to break with custom and buy some prepared foods.

Thanks to the ongoing bellyache (or whatever one would call it), I have not been eating. Last month the AMEX bill, which is budgeted at $1100 to cover all expenses except utilities and insurance, came in at $770…mostly because the cupboard is totally bare. The only thing I’ve been eating is ice cream.

That’s right: I’m gaining weight even though I’m barely eating, because the only thing that quells the GERD phenomena is a bowl of ice cream. Quite a few bowls of ice cream have been consumed over the past two or three months.

Not only do I not want to eat, I absolutely positively do not feel like cooking anything to eat.

So I figured I’d better look for something that’s already cooked. Like Costco’s highly creditable sous-vide lamb shanks.

Found those. Also found a package of “Irish lamb stew” that looked pretty tasty…and it has some vegetables in it, something that has not passed these lips in weeks.

And a package of scalloped potatoes, which I love and which can be guaranteed not to kick off any fireworks.

When I got home, I had to find room in the fridge for these fine items. It being filled with spoiled food, I had to shovel the thing out.

Ended up hauling literally the whole refrigeratorful of food out to the garbage. The refrigerator still stank, so I moved on to taking it apart and cleaning it (long as it was already empty!).

Fortunately, I felt pretty good, for reasons unexplained. Didn’t sleep well last night and had to get up at the crack of dawn, but hitting high gear seemed to make the physical manifestations go away. Or at least become unnoticeable.

So the refrigerator got emptied and scrubbed down and the Costco loot stashed and the mildewy emptied-out containers packed into the dishwasher.

Then I opened the lamb stew. Put about a third of it in a bowl to microwave (the preferred cooking method, according to the package instructions) and stashed the rest of it in a tupperware. That and a piece of Costco “country-style” bread filled the belly like a lead ball. Six hours later, I’m only just beginning to feel normal again.

The stew was pretty good. Salty, like all prepared foods. SO salty the stuff leaves your lips puckered up. That’s not going to help the weight gain problem: oversalted food always packs on the water weight. However, I figure the trade-off is either I eat something that’s not ideal but has some meat and veggies in it or I keep subsisting on ice cream. Water weight is a lot easier to get rid of than dairy-&-sugar weight. 😉

What I really need to do is go out and buy some beef, lamb, or pork and make a real stew. It’s just not that hard to do, and I what I can cook up sure as hell tastes better than something that comes out of a box. Doesn’t drive your blood pressure into the stratosphere, either…

At any rate, along with this exotic meal, I decided to have a bourbon and water. It’s the first alcoholic drink that’s passed these dainty lips in three months. Actually, not quite: I had a glass and a half of wine at M’hijito’s house last week and a small glass of white wine with friends on Easter. Neither of these caused any noticeable upset, so… Lacking a bottle of wine to swill I figured it was worth risking one drinky-poo.

Probably not a good idea. It hit the gut with a reverberation, but that was soon quieted by stuffing in some food.

Yesterday, I made myself good & sick by eating an orange. One very small orange. Fresh-picked off the tree. One. Orange. Small. About the size of a tennis ball. Swallowing a mouthful of orange elicits a sensation like a blow-torch going off in the belly.

So it looks like my orange-eating days are over. That’s very sad, because the Arizona sweets that grow on the two trees in the backyard are just like candy. I love them! Next spring, they’ll all have to be donated to charity.

Anyway, in brighter news, the bourbon had no extended repercussions. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters!

However, one b&w and more food than I’ve eaten in weeks pretty much put me in a coma. I’ve spent the afternoon playing games on the Internet. :-/ And buying things…

Amazon had the desired lightbulbs, for two bucks apiece. Ordered a dozen, figuring they soon will disappear from the market altogether. Since these things last about a year, 12 of them should last me six years. With any luck. Maybe I should buy more?

Also ordered some solar-powered, motion-activated spotlights, which I intend to put on the wall over the Bum’s Latrine outside my back gate. Got three for the price of one (much fancier but more cumbersome) such light at Costco. Many positive reviews, at least some of which appear too good to be true, but a number seem to real assessments and are pretty positive. Complaints are that they don’t dim, they don’t come on dim and brighten (not needed: I want to spook the bums) and they cast a ghastly blue light (good! the creepier the better!). And that they don’t last…which one would expect, given a price of 11 bucks apiece.

They probably don’t have to last long. If they help to chase the current occupants off, that may end the problem.

But along with the evening, in comes an email from our networking group’s webmaster announcing he’s retiring and, surprise! He’s taken our site down. He’d be happy to give the files to us on CDs for us to figure out what to do with.

Thanks for the advance notice, pal!

Peeved, I unearthed the site’s cached versions, which I downloaded as HTML files; also pasted the pages’ copy into Word. My plan is to create a WordPress site, preferably on my host’s server (as opposed to WP.com), update the contents, and paste it into the proposed site. Voilà. We can transfer the old domain name, or get a new one: two that fit are available, conveniently enough.

A couple of the pages need to be updated, anyway. So this will be a good opportunity to do that. And it’ll be a lot easier to ride herd on the thing if I’m doing it from my computer.

Yeah. I really needed something else to keep me busy. 😉

Unwinding(?) with the daily news…

April 13, 2016April 13, 2016 by funny

It’s after 4:00 p.m. I finally finished another of my client’s 15-chapter chunks of his novel — he sent 60 chapters in chunks along about the end of March. In another couple of hours, I’ve got to go to choir. Now’s my chance to take a few minutes to unwind. Unwinding here usually means perusing the daily news headlines on Google News and (many) waypoints.

Paul Ryan, the in full ersatz William Tecumseh Sherman mode, tells us he’s not ~~foolish enough~~…uhm…he’s not overproud enough to wish to be President. Okay. Another crazed right-winger who (we hope) will not go into the White House. Why would we want a President who’s so irresponsible he wants to stymie the budget at the cost of shutting down the government?

Sure beats me.

But…where IS the leader we need? Is he really the antique Bernie Sanders? Say it ain’t so! Hillary doesn’t strike me as a lot better than any of the other pols, although surely an experienced politician is what’s needed in the White House. Experience she’s got, in spades. I guess Bernie has plenty of experience…but a guy who comes right out and says he’s a socialist in this country could very well get his tuchus kicked from sea to shining sea.

Horrible.

Moving on, a recently unearthed, neglected study shows that you’re probably no less likely to die of heart failure if you stick to unsaturated fats than if you eat the stuff you enjoy: red meat with butter on it. In fact, in a newer study, the mortality rate for the men who were put on the low-saturated-fat, corn oil-enriched diet was higher than that of the cholesterol hogs. Some theorize this is because the omega-6 in polyunsaturated fats can, in high quantities, promote inflammation.

Hence, the hamburger defrosting in the microwave, soon to go on the grill.

Comes the monthly report from Fidelity: the thing turned 33 grand this month!

Holy mackerel. It was one damn good day at Black Rock, folks! That is significantly more than I was forced to draw down as this year’s RMD, which is what I’m living on in two thousand and aught-sixteen. If it doesn’t magically go away between now and the end of this year, I will feel not nearly as bad about that RMD as I did last year!

DuckDuck and Drake‘s poolside (and in-the-pool) romance continues, though she spends much more time on the nest and leaves him to float around looking baffled. This morning while walking the hounds, I came across another pair of ducks, only she was mostly white! Must be the offspring of some escaped domestic duck. The mallard accompanying her was smaller than Drake: whether he was kind of puny and so couldn’t get anything better than a dirty-white mate or whether he was just very young, I dunno. They were swimming in a yard’s irrigation.

The thought of buying my friend Nancy’s house with irrigation does appeal. How nice it would be to have a LAWN! I wonder how much Gerardo would charge to mow it? Ruby so loves to wallow in grass that this afternoon she was out in back rubbing her head and neck on the weeds growing among the pebbles between the flagstones. She’d be in dog heaven in a house with a real lawn.

On the other hand…I do like my house. And I know what problems it has and does not have. Do I really want to purchase a whole new set of problems?

And why didn’t the Navy crew that was beset by Russian jets buzzing their battleship blow the bastards out of the air? Here’s the Navy’s excuse: provocative but not threatening. Uh huh. “‘You don’t get to kill people just because they’re being annoying,’ said (Capt. Rick) Hoffman, who commanded frigate DeWert and cruiser Hue City.” Well, folks…if that had been a Chinese or a Russian warship and our guys had gotten up to those antics, you could be sure several American pilots would have been resting at the bottom of the sea.

Possibly I’m irresponsible enough to be President of the United States myself? If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve. Maybe.

Business Is Looking Up

April 11, 2016April 11, 2016 by funny

The editorial business is starting to make up for the money lost in the publishing enterprise.

The Copyeditor’s Desk, surprisingly, is not flat broke yet. I figured that if the many books we’ve published didn’t sell, the bank balance would reach $0.00 along about March 31. That hasn’t happened (mirabilis!), though it’s at about half of where it was when I decided to take a cruise down the Amazon.

It was a calculated risk. Really, I’m surprised I’m not flat broke. Last month Amazon sold one (1) of our amazing books. We sell more when I advertise the erotica at a website frequented by people who like erotic romance, but not enough to cover the cost of the ads. Fire-Rider has 5-star ratings but no one has bought it in months. The cookbook has sold one (1) copy on Amazon since it came out.

Meanwhile, though… The Copyeditor’s Desk has billed $1047 in the past ten days. It has another $2200 pending from academic institutions, traditionally slow to pay, for a total of $3247 earned over the past month.

About $2,800 worth of work is in house, in the “unhatched eggs” category.

Since I only need to draw down about $1320 a month ($1100 + $220 in taxes) to replace my piddling teaching income, this is good news.

Last night I calculated what I would need to pay myself a salary and cover all the business’s overhead, not counting occasional computer purchases. It looks like this:

So, about $1600 a month to cover ordinary expenses. That comes to about $19,390 a year, total gross income needed to pay me and cover overhead.

If I could earn that much, I could keep the wolf from the door. Not exactly a living wage, is it?

If I made $3200 a month consistently, the result would be $38,400 a year. Then I could afford a cell phone! 🙂 Wouldn’t that be nice?

The truth is, I don’t especially want to make that much. The amount of work I’ve done over the past few weeks has been pretty crushing: starting around 5:30 or 6 in the morning and working through, most days, until 8:30 or 9:30 at night. I’m not getting any exercise; I’m lucky if I get the dogs out for a walk every other day; and I’m wearing off my nose at the grindstone. I’d rather have a life than $38,000 a year.

But I sure as heck could do with enough to replace the piddly adjunct teaching.

NIMBY, Indeed…or any anyone’s -BY

April 10, 2016April 9, 2016 by funny

So word came down this morning that the rumored scheme to convert a house in our ‘hood into a homeless shelter is not true. No.

They want to turn it into a church.

This news came ahead of an email from the lady who does the homeowner’s association newsletter. My nose has been glued to the grindstone all day — read another 80 pages of copy on five hours of sleep — and so I haven’t had time to open that message. But I believe she sent something similar to the missal from the person who passed the report along.

So that’s s-o-r-t of good…a makeshift church is better than a homeless shelter. I guess.

Still, there’s no question the ‘hood is up in arms about it. And you have to say: taking a private residence, ripping out the landscaping to surround it with a parking lot, and sticking an Assembly of God sign on it is not especially desirable.

In the first place, it’s tacky. No population is more sensitive to tacky than the residents of North Central. 😉

And more to the point: we really don’t need another church so badly that it’s necessary to convert a private home into one. There’s a church directly across the street from the targeted house. There’s another church about a block to the west. There’s another church half a mile across Feeder Street EW. There’s yet another church about a mile up Conduit of Blight, and yea verily, another one a quarter-mile north of that. There’s another church about a mile south down Main Drag NS. And still another church on Main Drag NS, northerly about a half-mile from my house. If Americans were just slightly less fat and lazy, as a group, all seven of these would be considered within walking distance.

Plus this particular denomination has at least 21 churches in the Valley. How many churches are enough, already?

Meanwhile, speaking of our very vibrant Homeowner’s Club, the group engineered the coolest thing: a big neighborhood party in the park! They’ve got food trucks and a bandstand and live music and all sorts of stuff going on.

The pooches and I walked over there after I finished the 80-page editorial project of the day. Wish I could’ve taken a camera…but one wouldn’t be comfortable posting an image that might have someone’s kid identifiable. And there were kids — galore! What a hoot! Parents with their lawn chairs and coolers and 87 gerjillion little cuties running or bicycling around. Three young boys were trying to launch a kite shaped like an F-16….alas, the air is dead still this afternoon, so the only way they could get it into the air was to run like the wind themselves.

Ruby and Cassie, of course, are Kid Bait. They all come over and ask if they can pet your dog. And they both dote on children…they just think that’s the best thing that ever happened.

So we hung around awhile until Cassie started to tire — she’s showing her age these days. Then came back so the hounds could chow down. Now I’m about to finish off the current job and maybe send it to the client this evening. Really, I should probably sift through it one more time. But I’m tired. I’ve already read it four or five times. I think I may let it rest overnight and then give it a glance in the morning.

In the wake of the homeless shelter rumor, I learned that a Realtor friend is planning to put her house on the market this summer — for less than she thinks she could get for mine. It is a good long distance from Conduit of Blight and the Meth Habitat, and it is in North Central. It’s to the east of both the north-south main drags that have reverse lanes, so if you live there, you can turn east to Scottsdale without a problem. From my house, I have to make my way through not one, not two, but three neighborhoods to reach an arterial that will let me turn east during the rush hour. But is that enough of a PITA to cause one to sell one’s house?

Her house is older — probably built in the 50s, I’d guess; maybe the early 60s. It has good bones, and she did a LOT of fix-up on it. And it’s smack-dab in the middle of one of the fastest-trendifying districts in the central city. That whole area is going berserk. Property values likely will continue to rise, probably faster than they will here in the ’hood because no serious blight is nearby. On the other hand, I have seen panhandlers in that area.

It has no pool (which could be good, could be bad, depending on your attitude toward pools and pool care). But it does have irrigation! And that means one could have lawns front and back for very, very cheap.

In neighborhoods where irrigation is grandfathered in, the Salt River Project pumps in untreated water — this area was all farmland and citrus orchards until late 50s and early 60s. It was way out in the country! So you get very, very cheap water to throw on the ground around your house.

On the other hand, power was also very cheap in those days, so houses built in that era are very expensive to air-condition. In the summer, my son pays over $300 a month to (barely!) air-condition 1300 square feet. My house is almost 1700 square feet and it has a pool, and I never pay anything like that. while I don’t overcool my house, I sure don’t let it get as hot as he does…plus I have a pool pump to operate. So I’m afraid if I traded over to her place, whatever I’d save on the water bill would be eaten up by the electric bill.

Speaking of real estate, check out these 50 fab studio apartment interiors. Gosh, they’re cool! And gee, I’m glad I don’t have to live in any of them!