Coffee heat rising

Angst

If It Ain’t Broke…

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Ever feel like you’re oversensitive to change? Dunno whether it’s age or just a manifestation of the ever-more-unlovely dystopia in which we dwell…but I have just about had it with having to adapt, adapt, and re-adapt to change made for no very good reason.

I mean, if there’s a reason for it, fine. But to shake things up for the sake of shaking them up — and hassling everyone who uses said things — not so much. Especially when it comes to techno-change: since electronic technology is now ubiquitous, even rather small changes can mean big, time-consuming headaches. But BIG techno-changes? Ohhh shee-ut!

This weekend, the credit union is shutting down its website for three days in order to disgorge an “update.” This creation is supposed to make our lives easier and ever so much more wonderful.

But you and I know exactly what it will do, right? Make our lives complicated and ever so much more miserable. 😀 Been here before, done this…

FAQ’s:

Will my account number(s) change?
Your account number(s) will have a new look in the upgraded system. We will add a number at the beginning of your current account number to identify the account type (savings, auto loan, etc.). Checking and HELOC accounts will not change, so your current account number will remain the same.
You will see your new account number(s) in online and mobile banking after the upgrade.
We will also link your various account numbers to one Member Number, which is tied to your Social Security Number. If you currently have multiple individual account numbers, your oldest account number—the account you have had with us the longest—will be used as your member number.

Ducky!!!

Will my scheduled transfers in online banking continue to work after the technology upgrade?
If you have scheduled auto-transfers in Popmoney or Funds Transfer, you will need to reestablish them after the technology upgrade with your new account number(s). Auto transfers from checking accounts must also be reestablished even though the account number will not change.

Never heard of “Popmoney” and don’t expect I want to. Funds Transfer? I do transfer my (shrinking…) share of the mortgage on the downtown house to my son, since he manages those payments. So it looks like I’ll have to screw around to keep that happening. Probably will end up having to write him a check next week. Dollars to donuts…

Will online banking and bill pay be available during the technology upgrade?
Online banking and bill pay will not be available from Friday, August 31 at 6:00 p.m. to Monday, September 3 at 9:00 a.m.

Paid the bills that are coming due. Since I’ve been totally distracted for the past several days, two of them are going to be paid late, thanks to the CU shutting down for three days. Whoopeee.

Looked up all account numbers for all the recurring bills; made a note of each in a single place, so it will be relatively less of a PITA to rebuild all those bill-pay structures. Ugh. How can I count the ways I don’t want to waste time doing that?

This is the same outfit that changed its name, pointlessly, from the perfectly intelligible “Arizona State Savings and Credit Union” to the cutesy, unpronounceable and unintelligible moniker, OneAZ. No one knows what that is, and half the people who see it can’t figure out how to say it.

So…it’s hard not to suspect that this “upgrade” is yet another pointless change.

Dollars and Tree$

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Big ole’ storm is building up to the north. Kinda doubt it will blow down this way, even though it looks mighty threatening. The mountains just to the north of us — hills, really, but big enough to create a rain shadow — usually block incoming from that direction. Our most vigorous storms usually come in from the southeast or the southwest. Although…fortunately the most recent freshet, the one that blew down a 60-food-plus Aleppo pine, did fly in from the north. If it had come in from the south, it would have blown that tree right down on the homeowner’s house. And that would’ve been an even bigger-dollar event than it was.

Turns out that when a tree that size blows down across a city street, the city has the US Forest Service come and cut it up. But the homeowner has to pay to have the debris hauled off. Apparently they’ll pile it up on your yard, but you have to find a way to get rid of it!

And good luck with that.

Apparently, too, if your tree falls on the neighbor’s house, your homeowner’s insurance doesn’t cover it. The person whose house is smashed has to try to get their homeowner’s to cover it.

“And again I say…” good luck with that. Presumably if your neighbor isn’t insured — or not adequately insured to cover the damage — you’ll end up in court fighting over the damages.

devil-pod-treeI’ve been thinking for awhile that I should have the west-side devil-pod tree removed before it drops a limb (or itself) on my house or Terri’s. Even though I don’t think (right now) it poses much of a hazard — it has been thinned, and yesterday I inspected from a distance and think the wind can blow through it all right — it has got to be the single messiest, dirtiest, junkiest tree in all of God’s creation. Whatever it can dump on the house and on your roof, it dumps.

A wind from the north would, if the tree does decide to break despite being trimmed and thinned out, drop it on the fence between the side yard and the front yard. Actually, it wouldn’t even do that: it would fall on the paloverde tree and smush it. Falling due south or due north would not bring it down on either one of our houses. But if it fell to the east or the west, it would cause some serious damage.

It provides a lot of shade on the west side of the house. It’s now so tall that it shades my roof in the afternoon and Terri’s in the morning. So if I take it down, we’re both going to enjoy even more extravagant power bills than we already get…and mine was pushing $300 last month. It will take several years for another tree to grow big enough to shade that west wall, and one that won’t cause any damage if it breaks would never get big enough to shade the roof.

I’d like to replace it with a desert willow, which a lovely plant. Some of them bear pink or purple blossoms. It’s about as xeric as a tree can get — extremely drought tolerant — and it can stand winter temperatures as low as 10 degrees. The one I have in front is gorgeous.

Problem is a desert willow doesn’t get very big — certainly not tall enough to shelter the roof from the afternoon sun. It’ll get maybe 25 feet high. And it’s pretty slow growing. You can get them from landscaping nurseries that are fairly mature, but it’s quite the project to plant such a thing. Presumably would require a crane to lift it over the wall…for that matter, I can’t even imagine how they’d get it around or over the paloverde tree back there.

I don’t even want to know what any such endeavor would cost!

So… It may be best to leave bad enough alone. Get Luis back up there this fall, only this time browbeat him until he agrees to seal every cut with tree tar. (He resists…and the damned willow acacia does not heal where a limb has been cut off. Result: it drips molasses-like black sap on the the ground, not for a little while but permanently. Forever!)

* * * *

Whoa! Several hours later, and it’s really dark and threatening in the west. It’s unusual for a storm to blow in from the west…even stranger than one coming down from the north. Hm.

What do you suppose could have possessed Satan and Proserpine (the house’s previous owners) to plant something like that tree so close to the house? It’s just a few feet off the west edge of the patio, and maybe 18 or 20 feet from the house’s wall. That just seems so mind-bogglingly stupid.

Welp, they were very naive about outdoor plantings. They put two sissou trees in front, which they imagined would never get much more than 15 or 20 feet high. The pattern fits the sales methods indulged by Moon Valley Nurseries, the used-car dealers of the nursery business in this state. They high-pressure you to buy a “package” of a half-dozen trees, about four of which you don’t need. And I’m sure when they saw those two turkeys waddle in, they figured they’d found a place to dump the junk smarter buyers declined to consider.

People are dumb.

Speaking of the smarter parts of God’s creation: I’d better feed those dogs now, so they can wring themselves out in the yard before that storm gets here.

And so…away!

 

Why Didn’t I Think of That Before…

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Ever have one of those why didn’t I think of that before moments, borne out of some altogether irrelevant little challenge? It’s like looking at something askance and spotting a detail you’ve been missing every time you stare straight at the thing.

This morning I set out to soak the vines that grow in mounds along the Funny Farm’s back wall, by way of cutting the likelihood — however slim (or not) — of a fire starting in the dry stuff under it when the local yokels take to the alley to set off their illegal fireworks. My twitly neighbors, as you’ll recall, have dumped so much trash out there that Gerardo figured he couldn’t get it all in his (very large) trailer.

And our legislators, who by tradition indulge in stupidity that far surpasses mere twitliness have set things up like this:

• Confused about the difference between firearms and fireworks, they eliminated all laws and regulations limiting the possession and use of DIY fireworks, except the kind that rocket up in the air and create giant shows.

• When several cities stepped into the breach and banned certain types of especially dangerous fireworks within their city limits, our idiot legislators passed another law stating that cities and towns may not tell retailers that they cannot sell these devices, whether or not they’re illegal to use within the city.

• Thus, bang-bang enthusiasts run down to the local Albertson’s (ours has set up a tent in its parking lot for the sale of such toys) and stock up on fireworks of all kinds, including the ones that are illegal here in lovely uptown Phoenix.

• The enthusiasts, of course, know that if they’re caught shooting off a locally illegal firework, they’ll be cited.

• So, by way of avoiding a citation, they sneak into the alleys to set off their most dangerous toys.

And of course, when you have oleanders or vines along your back lot line, or when someone has dumped a lot of dry trash in your alley, what you then have is a fire hazard. Wow! More than you might imagine: 18,500 fires per year, including 1300 structure fires, 300 vehicle fires, and 16,900 outside and other fires.

Personally, I would prefer not to see my home or yard be included in this year’s $43 million of related property damage.

By way of minimizing that hazard, my plan is to get those damn cat’s-claw vines soaking wet, so that by dark this evening they’ll be too soggy to catch fire.

The prospect of dragging the hose and a sprinkler across the pool and up and down 100 feet of back wall on a 113-degree day does not appeal.

Ugh.

But as I get started along about dawn, it occurs to me that one could take the soaker hose that runs along the base of the plants and lay it over the crown of the hedge. Then turn the timer to run as long as it will go — two hours — and let water drip down over the tops of the plants. This would obviate some hose-drag. At least it would allow me to escape having to haul the hose over and through the pool and physically tie the sprinkler to the top of the wall.

So I start to do that: disentangle the thing from the plants’ stems and lay it over the top of the vines. This looks like it’ll work, except…

Yeah. Except…the hose is so old that it crumbles as I handle it!

Fuck.

I manage to pinch off the broken end and get it to run well enough to see how this scheme will work. And yeah. It sure as hell will work. It delivers a load of water to those vines and it dribbles down into the insides of the vine cover. This means the most flammable parts of those vines get really wet. And they get wet with ONE hose-bib turn, not eight or ten hose-drags.

Not only is this working exceptionally well, it now occurs to me that it would be pretty easy to set this up as a permanent thing: instead of running the soaker hose along the ground…duh!!! Run it over the tops of the vines, where water will flow down over the plants and drip onto the ground where rain would normally drip: to the root area where the vines need to get water.

Those vines are looking a bit peakèd these days, partly because the 15-year-old drip system is failing in places, and partly because you can drip-irrigate until you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t get some rain, drip irrigation does not suffice to keep something like that alive forever.

And we haven’t had rain in years.

So…why not add some fake rain?

Needed:

• One short length of regular hose: on hand
• Double-outlet hose bib: on hand
• One 100-foot or two 50-foot lengths of soaker hose: HD is open today
• One hose timer: on hand

Well, hell. Who’d’ve thunk it? Or more to the point, why didn’t I think of it before this?????

So whenever I get around to it, I’m gonna run up to the Depot and pick up the proposed soaker hose.

This is going to be great. It will make watering those damn vines one whole lot easier. Right now it’s a hassle, because I have to climb under eye-poking shrubbery to connect the backyard hose to the soaker that runs around the back of the pool, and that doesn’t reach all the way along the back wall, so a hose-drag is required to reach the whole “hedge” of vines. It’s such a PITA I tend to put it off until it doesn’t get done at all. With the drippers working poorly or not at all, that means the vines are dying back because, lacking any rain, they don’t get enough water.

And with the two-hole hose bib, I can run the short, unused length of hose sitting in the storage shelves over to the soaker hose connection and just leave it there permanently: never have to connect, disconnect, and drag the hose again!

It seems so obvious. Why didn’t I think of this before?

Some Punkins!

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How d’you like this mess?

And this one?

And how would you like to hit this chunk of concrete in your car or truck, while you’re tooling up the alley?

Guaranteed to take out your oil pan!

That crap is the dried-out remains of my former neighbor Sally’s backyard landscaping, which the new young owners have hacked out and dumped, higgledy-piggledy, into the alley. It’s actually less of a mess than it was: at first they just dumped it all over the thoroughfare. After a week or so, they (or someone) went out there and stacked it against the kids’ wall. More or less. Except for the chunks of concrete, which they left there to catch an unwary motorist.

See that thing that looks like a shrub somebody yanked out by the roots and threw on the ground? That’s a juniper. Juniper is one of the most flammable plants you can put in your yard. And all that loose debris? It’s been there a good ten days: drying out in 108-degree heat. It is, in a word, a pile of tinder.

The day after tomorrow is the Fourth of July.

Every July 4, people sneak into the alleys — ours included — to shoot off marginally legal and illegal fireworks. Our idiot legislators, who confuse “fireworks” with “firearms” and so must preserve our right to carry them, did away with all state regulation of consumer fireworks. They did allow a few cities to lay down limits…but their workaround for that was to pass another law stating that cities and counties cannot tell retailers not to sell any fireworks they please — whether or not said fireworks are illegal within the city limits;.

Right. Got that?

City to Morons: You can buy these things that will blow off your hand and blast out your eyes but you can’t set them off.

Morons to City: Sure, boss. Yup yup yup!!!

Phbhphbhthphththt!

So now every July 4 and every New Year’s, we have chuckleheads blasting powerful, dangerous fireworks in every neighborhood. And since some of these things are illegal to shoot off inside the Phoenix city limits, they sneak into the alleys to play, where they think they won’t be seen.

Fun, eh?

Well, my back wall is covered with a vine called cat’s claw. Satan and Proserpine planted it there, and I’ve let it grow because I like a whole lot of privacy around my pool. And everywhere in my backyard, for that matter. The building code forbids a backyard fence higher than six feet, but nowhere is there any law that says ornamental plants growing along a back wall can’t be as high as you like. So one way get around this regulation — other than ignoring the law and stacking block eight or ten feet high — is to plant oleanders, vines, and other plants that will block the curious and the criminal from peering into your backyard.

Cat’s claw can pile up on your fence to make a ten- or twelve-foot high barrier. But of course…it’s a plant. Far as I can tell, it’s no more flammable than any other ordinary plant — nothing that I’ve looked up mentions flammability as a problem, in the way that juniper and eucalyptus and cypress are problems. That notwithstanding, Gerardo keeps it trimmed up about four feet off the ground. Still…it is a plant. And there is a lot of it. And people who sneak into alleys to shoot off their illegal fireworks do not give one thin damn about the safety of your property.

Nor, speaking of thin damns, do the neighbors. Their piles of debris are easily three to four feet deep. If that stuff catches fire, the likelihood that it will jump across the alley and set my landscaping plants alight is extremely high. Not just the cat’s claw, but the palm trees (four of them) and the citrus and the devil-pod tree and the paloverde and the olive and the …yeah: and the roof of the house. All it will take is a stiff breeze — like the one we had late this afternoon — to spread sparks from here to Hell.

So this morning I went over and visited the guy who seems to be in charge. Explained the problem. Would he please have that stuff hauled off, it being illegal to dump in the alley?

He refused. By way of blowing me off, he actually said (can you believe this?) that the City’s bulk trash collection was supposed to come by before July 4.

That’s the day after tomorrow. Did I mention that?

Well, anyway: no. Look it up online, where it’s always posted. They won’t even start bulk collection in this area until July 30.

My insurance agent advises that I should call the city and launch a complaint. He thinks everything possible needs to be done to eliminate risk of a house fire.

My son, who also is in insurance, thinks this would cause neighbor trouble, big time. He suggests making a record to the effect that I asked them to get rid of the flammable debris — like sending them a registered letter! My insurance company would then have a paper trail so as to file a claim against their insurance company.

Heee! This is supposed NOT to cause neighbor trouble?

😀

Even if a registered letter could get there by tomorrow(!), that sounds like an exercise in futility. But I do have a record: my camera dates its pictures. And I’ve just described my exchange with the jerk here in WordPress, which also dates content.

Interestingly, it appears that the guy is staying there. His decrepit truck has been parked on the street day and night — all night — for as long as the landscaping exploit has been going on. After I walked away, I heard the woman come outside and ask him what I wanted. So she does know that I asked him to clean up the mess.

I figure he must be a relative or a friend who agreed to help them with their landscaping project.

Whatever he is, he sure ain’t a landscaper!

What a mess they’ve made of Sally’s formerly dull but pleasant enough backyard. They’ve pulled out all the planting except three or four scrawny cape honeysuckle up against the back wall. And they’re spread some sort of dust-like top cover all over the back yard, with no break or planting or anything.

I don’t know what it is, only that it’s not quarter-minus. It’s like a fine dust. Weird.

These are the people who claim to want four children. They’ve already started toward that goal. Maybe they think they’ve made a giant sandbox???? I wouldn’t let a child play in that stuff on a bet: it’s Valley fever waiting to happen. And Other Daughter’s damned cats habitually used Sally’s gravel — real gravel, the heavy stuff — as their catbox.

Ugh! It won’t take long for those animals to saturate that powdery stuff with cat urine and cat shit. What on earth could they possibly be thinking?????

Anyway, absent certified letters, my plan is to go out there along about four or five p.m. on the Fourth, haul the hose with a sprinkler to the far side of the pool, and soak the bejayzus out of those vines. Get them all very, very wet, like totally drenched.

That way if a moron does get a fire started in that debris, sparks that hit the vines probably won’t set them alight. At least, given that cat’s claw supposedly isn’t extraordinarily flammable, there’ll be a fair chance that they’ll resist burning if they’re already good and wet.

If the wind comes up, though, there will be nothing I can do should sparks or embers reach that damn weeping acacia. Those trees are as flammable as eucalyptus — which is very — and the thing is a good 40 or 50 feet high.

Damn, but I’m tired of dealing with other people’s stupidity.

Budget off the Rails

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Yuck!

Okay, I admit it: I have neglected the budget. Yea verily, I have lost the art of penny-pinching.

Result: I’m running out of money, two months before the start of my next “personal fiscal year,” which starts in September. In 2017, that’s when I took the last Required Minimum Drawdown from the 401K, which was supposed to last a year.

Didn’t.

So next year I have to figure out how to live on 21 grand plus a pittance from Social Security. Since running this house and feeding me and the dogs consume about 2 grand a month, that’s a challenge.

Just now I’m as close to broke as I can get, budget-wise, considering that I have enough cash in the bank to cover about six weeks of expenses, and it’s eight weeks before the start of September.

The other day I mentioned the “envelope method” plan I’d cooked up: fill a Costco cash card with a budgeted amount to spend there during a month, and when it runs out, stop buying. This makes some sense, though nothing is to stop me from streaking out of the Costco over to the nearest Safeway and filling out the shopping list…probably at more expense than just buying everything at whatever CC would cost. Hmmm….

Whilst staring blankly at an unfriendly spreadsheet, a little INSIGHT dawned… Don’t budget by the month. Budget by the year. And instead of using cash cards as “envelopes,” use bank accounts. I already have a checking account, which juggles cash flow; an emergency savings account (containing $4.61); and an account to hold payments from Medigap and Medicare B, preparatory to forwarding that money to the Mayo.

[The Mayo does not “take Medicare assignment.” This is a bureaucratic way of saying they don’t accept direct deposit from Medicare or your Medigap insurer. So, every goddamn time you go to the doctor or an ER or whatEVER, you have to field a blitz of ditzy little annoying checks, deposit them in your bank account, and then pay the Mayo. Right now one has been sitting on my desk for awhile, waiting for me to get around to the hassle of scanning and uploading it: $24.17. The Mayo’s outstanding bill is several hundred dollars… It is, in a word or two, a fuckin’ nuisance.]

Where were we? Yes, staring blankly, dreaming up a fresh scheme…

A little calculation showed that if I were to get a freaking grip on spending, in theory this year’s drawdown should just about cover 2018/19 expenditures, if nothing happens. By “nothing,” we mean no major car repair bills, no appliances having to be replaced, no giant vet bills, no dental work…a very big “nothing,” indeed. But let’s pretend a person could get through 12 months without having to confront any of those.

Right.

What if I kept the drawdown that just hit my checking account in my checking account, but did not keep Social Security income in checking? What if I auto-transferred each Social Security deposit over to the Emergency Savings account…. Said E.S. account is empty just now, putting me at considerable risk of future misery. Twelve hundred a month would, in theory, load that account with some 14 grand over the next year, allowing me not to have to spend crazily to keep up with routine month-to-month costs.

And instead of keeping the entire drawdown in checking, what if I transferred the $8,408 a year demanded by taxes and insurance (!!!!!!) over to the present tax & insurance savings account, now empty because the 2018 T&I bills have all been paid. What if?

What would then remain in checking would be the amount I could spend on living expenses. This would be much truncated by setting all the net Social Security income aside for emergencies. But since I now have approximately $0.00 set aside in emergency savings, the truncation would be very much worth it. And, according to my English-major calculations, if I could cut the Costco bills down from $300 a month to $200 a month, this scheme would be eminently do-able.

Why do I think it would work?

Because the AMEX billing cycle closed yesterday. I charge everything on American Express, mostly including Costco but also racking up bills at various grocery stores and other retailers. This month the tab was only $775. Basically, an AMEX bill reflects all living expenses except utilities, taxes, and insurance.

It’s usually more like $1200. That means I spent some $425 less this month than I usually do.

Well, if I can spend $425 less than normal in June, I can do it all the time, no?

Yeah: probably “no.” But what’s to stop one from trying?

So the money from Fidelity hit the credit union this morning. Here’s what we now have:

$16,644 to live on for the next year (stashed in checking)
$8,408 for taxes & insurance (stashed in T&I savings)
$14,532 incoming from Social Security over the next 12 months (routed to Emergency savings)

So even though Social security will bring the year’s total cash available to something over 31 grand, the plan is to try to live on just $16,644.

That works out to $1,387 a month. So far in the current year, the one that is driving me to the metaphorical poorhouse, I’ve spent an average of $1,750 a month, a difference of $363.

So to live on this proposed new budget, I’ll have to cut spending by about $365 a month.

However, a backup fund will be growing at the rate of about $1200+ a month. If need be, I can draw down from Emergency Savings to make up the difference. So even if I regularly went over budget by some $363 every month, the red ink would only amount to about $4355. That would still leave something like 10 grand in Emergency Savings at the end of a year.

How to cut $363 a month out of normal spending?

Well, obviously:

• Don’t go to dentists.
• Don’t go to vets.
• Don’t drive the car any more than absolutely necessary (so as not to run up repair bills).
• Don’t buy clothes.
• Don’t buy shoes.
• Don’t go out to eat.
• Don’t go to shows or movies or musical events.
• Cling to every goddamn red penny.

It’s going to be a mighty dull year, I’m afraid. But I can’t be running out of cash two months before the end of every 12-month cycle. Something has to be done to get caught up with the spending