Coffee heat rising

Angst

DUCK-Duck saves Day from Hell (almost)

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Well. She tried. Until a fly fell into the last few drops of cheap red wine we were self-medicating with.

She’s so, soo cute. Come 4:30 in the afternoon, she dropped into the pool (like a fly into a puddle of wine, only DUCK-Duck can swim). Ruby and Cassie the Corgis went bat-sh!t, of course. Cassie has been distracted by Ball but Ruby is still running around in circles. Anxious. A very anxious little dog.

DUCK-Duck is a calm bird. Nothing seems to faze her, not even very anxious little dogs. Evidently realizes that the VALD can’t get through the fencing between Duck and Pups. Even if VALD could pull that off, by some magical canid trick, Ducks have wings. VALD’s do not.

Today has been a Day from Hell, oh so inappropriate for a Sunday. Especially the Sunday of a Memorial Day weekend. I guess it’s because we’re not singing for the summer, unless of course we could afford to go on the European tour. Those of us who are on Social Security, who believed the Mayo Clinic would ding us for something between three and ten grand, and who are generally flat broke under the best of circumstances do not fit into the European Tour category.

By late last night, it became apparent that DropBox, the system through which we deliver services to Our Beloved Clients, had cut off the Fat Lady from its sacred services. The Kid could still access it, but to her puzzlement noted that those things I claimed I was posting to Our Current Beloved Client’s folders seemed not to exist.

A little squirreling around revealed that DropBox was quietly — very, very quietly, yea verily almost inaudibly — saying that it was “not running.”

Not running on the laptop.

Not running on the desktop.

Not fucking running.

So to make a long story short, I started working at 5:00 a.m. of this lovely, crankifying Sunday. I worked until 2:30 p.m., with one midmorning break of about an hour to gulp down some fruit for breakfast, feed the dogs, and run a  load of laundry.

Six hours of banging around seems to have caused DB to “run” on the laptop but not on the desktop.

Having been around the technological block a few times, I sensed that the damn thing was about to do quite the little number. Seeing the hundreds of thousands of megabytes that resided on DB still visible on my terminals if not on anyone else’s, I began the downloads.

Downloaded as fast as I could to flash drives (one was not enough to hold all the data, ohhh no). (We do run a bidness here, after all).

I backed up to flash drives. Backed up to the laptop’s hard drive. Backed up to the iMac’s  hard drive. The iMac backed up to Time Machine.

These processes revealed some extraordinary weakenesses in our organizational architecture: to wit, this stuff has been growing like kudzu.

Grabbed a machete and started to hack.

Reorganized and sanitized the mess on one computer.

Cloned the reorganization and sanitization on the other.

Searched (and searched, and searched, and searched) for a fix online, since as is SOP for these accursed tech entrepreneurs, no human being could be reached.

Struggled and thrashed and banged and thumped and struggled. Eventually both terminals were back online with DropBox.

Let both Bidness Partner and Client know they could access the ongoing project.

Five minutes later, the iMac lost contact with DropBox.

Just this minute, the MacBook (laptop) still seems to be in touch. But I don’t expect that to last long and don’t give a damn. Whenever I sober up (which probably will be along about 5 tomorrow morning), I will open a new account at some other provider of free online Cloud space.

Pisseth me off.

Do you know how much productive work I expected to do today?

• Download and install Scrivener
• Learn to use Scrivener
• Apply it to at least one FireRider serial installment; but
• Ideally, apply it to three
• Check on new online stoonts
• Read the several papers early-bird online stoonts have already posted
• Work on Old New Bad Novel
• Come up with some spice to replace a very boring post-adolescent passage therein
• Clean the pool
• Walk the dogs
• Socialize with the neighbors
• Socialize online

Oh hell. At least we got the pool cleaned.

I love computers. I hate computers

YoungDucksminimized

Life in the 21st Century

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DebitCardIt could be argued, my friends, that living in the 21st century is a continual major effing hassle.

You’ll recall that after Costco announced it will drop its credit-card program with American Express in favor of a new deal with  Citibank, I decided I would forego the pleasure of doing business with Citibank, use my debit card to buy at Costco (an activity that has been much curtailed of late, anyway), and replace my Costco AMEX cards with a single new AMEX account unrelated to that worthy retailer.

So about ten days or two weeks ago, I called AMEX and asked for a new account, so that would be in place well in advance of the upcoming jig at Costco.

Instinct told me that doing this would entail some sort of hassle, and so I’d better not wait till the last minute. Boy, was I right!

Yesterday evening comes in the mail a note from AMEX. “Due to the freeze you placed on your credit file, we cannot obtain the necessary information…” yada yada. They want me to call them and give them the password to unfreeze my credit bureau reports!

Yesh. Over the phone!

Well. I’m not sure how to deal with this. I unfroze those accounts and set the unfreeze for ten days. That means it took them over ten days to even bother to get around to opening a new account in my name. Plus they’ve got not one but two credit cards in my name right now, neither of which I’ve ever welched on. Since I’m already a customer, why is it necessary to jump me through a hoop to prove I’m unlikely to do anything different from what I’ve already done?

And I am not happy about giving some phone clerk in a boiler-room the key to unlock my credit bureau files.

The reason I had to freeze my credit bureau accounts was that the Maricopa County Community College District’s incompetent IT department kindly gave to hackers my full name, my address, my phone number, my date of birth, my Social Security number, my entire employment history dating back to 1967, my entire educational history including a list of every single college-level course I’ve ever taken with the number of credits and the grade I got, the name of my credit union, and the routing number and account number of my checking account.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect American Express to respect what little I can do to stop hackers from using that data to frickin’ ruin me.

If I’m going to do this at all, I’m going to have to wait ten or fifteen days, then go back to Equifax and hassle around with changing my password. But since AMEX doesn’t seem to be able to get off its butt in any given two-week period, that may be counterproductive.

I still have the Citibank credit card that I stopped using. Didn’t close the account (you can’t; you can’t reach a human being there to speak with), so I suppose I could just leave that one on the books, use the debit card for everything, and just not bother to use a credit card at all.

You pretty much have to have a credit card. You can’t book a motel room without one, to say nothing of buying your favorite junk form Amazon. But God, I hate doing business with Citibank.

No matter which way you turn these days, you’re hemmed in by hassle.

Day from Hell After$shock: The Water Heater Bill

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Nine hundred eighty dollah and twenty-six cents. That’s what a new water 50-gallon water heater costs, installed.

I expected this, because the last time I bought a water heater — about 11 years ago when I moved into this house — the plumber said prices were headed for the stratosphere because of new safety requirements. He said then that heaters would run upwards of $600, which indeed they do. This one was $820, plus the cost of installation.

And now I see that Bradford White, the brand my new guy installed, is almost universally disliked and reviled. One buyer said their four-year-old model turned into a “blowtorch,” burned their house down, and killed their dog. That was just outside of Tucson…three months ago!

Well, the plumber didn’t get the icemaker line reattached. I may tell him to return the thing, when he comes over here tonight to connect that. Wish I’d had the sense to look it up yesterday before he installed it!!

Wouldn’t you think a plumber would know the products better?

What am I gonna do here…? There’s no way the guy is going to be able to return the thing, now that he’s installed it and filled it full of water. But holy mackerel…another Consumer Affairs commenter said a year-old model filled their home with carbon monoxide, poisoned her and her husband, and killed their dog. The thing is in the garage and the door between the garage and the kitchen is supposedly a fire door. But that door leaks like a sieve.

He wouldn’t take AMEX, so I had to give him a check. So that means I don’t have the credit-card warranty/insurance deal.

Why do I think I’m lined up for a royal screwing here? This does not look good.

I guess what I’ll have to do is buy a home warranty, which will replace the unit when it craps out (assuming it doesn’t explode my home), and also put a fire alarm and a CO alarm in the garage. There’s already a smoke alarm in the kitchen.

Another half-assed home warranty…dayum! Just what I need: another monthly charge. They cost about $500…maybe I’d be better off to simply put $42 each month toward the next water heater, which, if this one doesn’t burn the roof down around my ears first, will be in about six years and two days. It comes with a six-year warranty…which the guy failed to give me attached to the unit.

Five hundred dollah times 6 years is $3,000, enough to buy three new water heaters…

Well, meanwhile, it’s off to Costco to return the Panasonic telephone lash-up. The instructions are so complicated they are simply incomprehensible. I never have figured out how to bring up the “menu,” and to use the “Block Call” button to beat back the phone solicitors, you can’t just push the button. You have to somehow “select” the phone number, but you can’t find a way to “select.” And apparently “out of area” is not a blockable code.

The thing wasn’t that expensive, but with a thousand-dollar bill for a new water heater that may kill me, the dogs, or all of us, every little bit helps.

Day from Hell Peters Out in the Wee Hours…

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It was quite the day yesterday:

  • Killer bees take up residence under the outdoor deck in my favorite shady bosque.
  • Duck returns; as expected, poops on CoolDeck, with the same effect as dog poop.
  • Speaking of the which Cassie finds another cache of the neighbor’s accursed cat’s deposits in the unused flowerbed.
  • The water heater goes out, after I pony up a chunk of dough to the new arborist dude.
  • Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner comes to a dead stop. He has, it appears, croaked right over.
  • The neighbors in the rental(?) across the street announce they’re having a big chivaree for a daughter’s wedding reception — we should expect the streets the be parked up and the “music” to be loud…hope that’s not too much of an inconvenience for you folks.
  • Programming the phone system I bought turns out to require a master’s degree in engineering; damned if I can figure out how you bring up the [MENU], which you have to accomplish to make it do anything. Decide to take it back, which will help because all these little surprise expenses are gonna land me in the poorhouse.

Ohhhhh god…

§ § §

Okay, so after Arborist Dude clued me to the new occupants of the westside yard, I jury-rigged a barricade across the backyard’s narrowest reach, by way of keeping Cassie and Ruby from enraging the little gals. Ain’t it lovely?

P1030450Logged into Angie’s List and called a couple of exterminators, in search of someone who could deal with the bee issue. All wild bees in Arizona are now considered Africanized, so our new occupants posed a potential threat — not just to small dogs given to annoying them by trying to catch them on the wing, but just about anyone or anything that disturbs them.

One guy, a fellow named Irish Doherty called me back. He offered to come by yesterday evening, but the Accountant from Heaven and I had tickets to a Chanticleer concert and plans to go to dinner beforehand. No problem, said he…how’s about he comes by around 10 p.m.?

Holy mackerel.

Well, we got back to the ’hood around 10:30. When I called his cell, I found him in the middle of another job. An hour or so later, he surfaced here, just about the time the noisy party across the street was breaking up.

Get this: the guy uses organic pesticides!

Uh huh. Lots of organic things, like, oh, say, nerve gas, are organics… But whatever. He proudly showed me the label. Enough remains of my long-lost photographic  memory for me to remember the ingredients long enough to Google the only one that had a chemistry-lab-bench name. It turned out to be a common ingredient of hand cream. The other stuff was mostly odoriferous “essential oils.”

Knowing my experience with objects and substances eco-friendly, you no doubt can sense my skepticism about this proposition.

Marginally, it seems to have worked. One lonely bee was flying around out there this morning. I thought she’d gone away, but now, a few hours into the day, four or five of them are going in and out. That’s a lot fewer than were out there yesterday, but… If the guys managed to kill the queen, then the surviving bees will die. But if not, they’ll soon be back in force.

Amazingly, in the middle of the night the guy and his assistant went totally beyond the call of duty to get at the nest, which the bees had established on the ground underneath a set of boards that were bolted down. They removed the boards, sprayed like crazy, and then replaced the boards.

It was 3 a.m. before I crawled into the sack, and  of course as usual Cassie and Ruby were ready to bounce at 5 a.m. Thank HEAVEN we have no choir this morning!

Meanwhile, as I was building the Great Wall of Corgi, it dawned on me that the wire garden fencing I was layering between the old strips of picket-fence garden fencing could substitute nicely for the chicken wire I figured I was going to have to buy and lay down over the empty flowerbed that damn cat is using as its toilet. Thank gawd I never throw anything away — one fewer thing to have to spend money on and hassle with.

So I took a bunch of the stuff and dropped it on the ground where the cat has claimed its territory. Probably all that will do is move it over to some other part of the yard. Wish I could figure out how to get rid of that cat without getting blood on my hands…

And yesterday morning when Ruby barked up the duck, I sprinkled the little gal with the garden hose. Hilariously, DUCKS DON’T LIKE TO GET WET!!!!!

No kidding! She took to the sky like a 747, and she didn’t come back until…just now

😀

Chased her off again. Later today when I take Harvey up to Leslie’s to be shoveled out — after I’ve had a chance to get some rest — I’ll see if I can get one of those floating pool alarms for a reasonable price (like I’ve got even a nickel’s worth of spare cash laying around…). If it’ll go off every time she lands in the water, she’ll probably give up in short order. Then I can give the contraption to the  young couple across the street, the folks who are raising four little kids on a teacher’s salary.

Called the plumber who surfaced at SBA a few weeks ago. Our building contractor guy liked him and was impressed, so since the beloved Mr. Lutz seems to have gone out of business, we’re trying him out. He said he’d come around mid-day on Monday, meaning two days (at least) without hot water.

So I’m washing the dishes by hand, which would be OK if the ACCURSED new dish detergents actually worked. In cold water they do not touch grease or stuck-on food. To get the dishes clean last night I had to boil a pot of water on the stove and pour it into the sink, therein to soak and rewash the damn dishes.

While I was waiting for the Bee Dude to show up in the middle of the night, I finally plowed my way through an enormous, difficult, and highly technical paper on the potential complications of the various types of mastectomy.

Holy shit. If women had ANY idea of the astonishingly high rates of adverse outcomes from reconstruction, no one would even think of subjecting herself to such a thing. Ordinary mastectomy, even one that does not involve messing with your lymph nodes, poses some serious risk of very unpleasant aftereffects. But reconstruction ups that risk by orders of magnitude and adds some special nasty complications of its own.

The fact that the medico-pharmaceutical complex has launched an initiative to persuade every woman who needs a mastectomy to elect breast reconstruction…well…it’s just abhorrent. The only way doctors could possibly persuade anyone who’s not just effing dumb as a post is to downplay the many potential negative consequences and the astonishing length of time it takes to recover from such procedures. What we don’t know won’t hurt us, eh?

It appears that, thanks to the Pink Craze, we’re not only performing large numbers of surgeries that probably are unnecessary, in addition we’re inflicting even more traumatic and potentially very harmful surgery on women by pushing reconstruction.

This book is going to raise the roof.

The research is going faster than expected — I’ve had a lull in stoont papers to read. I’m about two-thirds of the way through the stuff I printed out to annotate and organize; in the course of that job, I’ve also found a number of other relevant scientific papers, which I’ll need to print out, analyze, and annotate. But progress is definitely being made. With any luck, I’ll have the proposal ready to ship off before the end of the summer and the book pretty well written by December. Sooner, maybe, if I can shake clear of enough paying work over the next few months.

And so, away…

Existential Angst, Depression, or Just Plain Boredom?

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So here’s the problem:

I cannot make myself get back to productive work.

No matter what I try to do to get back on track, I just. cannot. do. it. Before the past seven months of surgical fun began, a normal day’s to-do list consisted of fifteen to twenty tasks. Now I’m lucky if I get through five. Day by day, I’m not getting any work done, and perhaps more alarmingly, I don’t want to get any work done.

If this is the New Normal, it’s going to freaking bankrupt me.

When I am supposedly working, I’m spending about half the available time cruising the Web: reading various news sites, reading up on the odd item some client or student addresses (how do you spell Genghis Khan’s real name, and why, and who was he anyway, and did he really bring civilization to Europe, and speaking of Europe, I wonder what the BBC has to say this afternoon?), playing computer games, blogging, reading e-mail, hanging out at the corgi site, and whatnot. Add up the actual  number of time-stamped hours spent on a client’s Wyrd file, and you get about half the number of hours I sat in front of the computer while pretending to work on the project.

Okay, I’ve always had that tendency. But it’s never stopped me from getting work done, one way or the other, sooner or later. But now I’m not getting much done. Because…

• I don’t want to start.
• I don’t want to stay focused (or can’t stay focused?)
• I’m stuporous with boredom.

So I decided to devote some time today to trying to figure out what the heck is the matter with me. Hence, the following rumination…

The Problem: I can’t get back to productive work.

Reasons:

1) What I’m doing bores me stupid!

 Even though most of my paid contract work is pretty interesting, even the best of copy can get a little old on the second read and what we might call “boring” on the third read and exponentially more boring on the fourth read.

Reading student work is not only boring, it’s often annoying. Yea verily, even infuriating.

BUT: It pays the bills.

BUT1: The bills aren’t so huge that they can’t be paid from other funding sources.

2) Possibly I’m suffering some sort of existential angst.

Any health crisis brings one’s mortality to mind: Do I really want to spend what little time remains to me on work that puts me into a coma?

No.

BUT: What else am I going to do?

• Can’t afford to travel
• Can’t work up much enthusiasm for any other pecuniary endeavor
• The status quo is comfortable

3) Possibly the status quo is too comfortable?

4) Possibly I’m mildly depressed?

Are There Any Solutions?

1) Bored with work

a) Stop editing copy

• This would cut boring tasks by about 20% to 50%

BUT: I use the money to keep computer hardware up-to-date and to support websites.

BUT2: Most of the websites would be redundant if the business were closed.

b) Stop teaching

• This would cut boredom by about 50% to 80%.

BUT: Teaching makes it possible to live without drawing down much from retirement savings.

c) Get a job

• This would make Social Security pure gravy and eliminate the need to spend savings. All required IRA withdrawals could be reinvested or gifted to M’hijito.

BUT: I dislike few things more than having to trudge to a workplace every day.

BUT3: I’m too old to get a decent job.

d) Take a break

• Go on a vacation somewhere. Get out of here for two to three weeks.

BUT: Who’s going to care care of the dogs?

I can’t afford to travel.
I find flying aversive in the most intense way.
My car should not be driven into the sticks.

• One could go camping. It’s easy enough to camp for a week or two at a time. Rent a truck and get some new camping gear. The dogs could then go with.

BUT: Who’s going to take care of the house, pool, and yard?

• Simply sign off all work, including Scottsdale Business Association, for a couple of weeks.

BUT: I’ve already done that, perforce, thanks to the past five surgical procedures. The effect was to make me not want to come back to work!

• Find ways to take mini-breaks.

Set aside days in which no work will be done.
Rent vehicles for day trips.

2) Existential angst

a) Find something else to do with life.

Quit teaching, quit editing, sell the house, and go someplace utterly different.

BUT: This seems way too risky and could lead to more, not less angst.

b) Find some other line of work.

• Look for a paid job.

BUT: I don’t want to go back to work! UGH!

BUT4: Last time I tried to get hired, prospective employers made it abundantly clear they considered me too old. That was six years ago!

• Try going back to freelance reporting. It’s fun and does allow one to meet a lot of people.

BUT: Talk about your second childhood!

BUT5: It pays no more than what I’m doing now.

BUT6: And it would put a helluva lot more wear and tear on the ancient vehicle.

• Get a real estate license. This could be amusing and might even earn some money.

BUT: It’s costly and there’s no guarantee I’d earn anything. The amount of work put into marketing real estate could be devoted to selling books.

• Quit working for others and do your own thing.

BUT: The chance of earning a living wage is exactly nil.

3) Change the status quo

a) In a small and subtle way: Devote specific amounts of time per day and per week to the boring work. Do not devote any more time than allocated to these tasks.

b) Make day trips once or twice a week or a couple of times a month. Rent vehicles and bring the dogs.

c) Change the effin’ attitude!!

4) Address the possibility of depression

a) Limit boring work to specific, scheduled periods. Do not work outside these periods.

b) Get more exercise.

• Back on the mountain!
• Bicycling
• Specific, scheduled period, maybe more than once a day, for exercise; e.g.,

dog walk
human hike
yoga/physical therapy exercises

c)  Train the puppy properly

• Take Ruby to obedience training

d) Take art classes

• Check at Shemer, Desert Botanical Garden
• Or just start drawing again

e) Break loose time in which to do only my own thing

• Set computer to run offline; use offline time to write my own books.
• Or do my own writing on paper, of all things, and then type second drafts online

So if I were to organize time so as to accomplish the following, what would that look like? The following:

1 day trip per month
2 days/week to do my own thing
1 new endeavor, such as returning to art
4 hours of paying work per day, five days a week, for paid work, limited to that.

4 hours x 5 = 20 hours
20 hours x $60/hour = $1200/week, max
4 x $1200 = $4800/month, max

20 hours x $45/hour = $900/week, max
4 x $900 = $3600/month, max

Okay, I can live with either of those scenarios.

When do these famous work hours get done? Eight to noon or one to five, obviously. This leaves the evenings to grade student papers in front of Netflix, which dulls the pain. It leaves four hours a day for exercise, dogs, shopping, and housecare. And it leaves two full days per week in which to do nothing or to go on day trips.

On Thursdays I’m in Scottsdale, getting out of a meeting around 9 a.m. An upscale Costco is located on the way home from that venue, as are two Trader Joe’s, an AJ’s, a Walgreen’s, a fancy Fry’s, and a less than perfect Whole Foods. If I diddled away an hour until Costco opened, I could go there once a month and hit the grocery stores on the other Thursdays, thereby minimizing the car trips and allowing me to shop in much nicer stores than the ones in my part of town — for the same price.

{Sigh} It’s hard to believe that just “getting organized,” which is what all this comes down to, would dispel whatever the present cloud is — whether it’s boredom, angst, or nascent clinical depression. On the other hand, some steady exercise certainly wouldn’t do any harm. And starting something new, such as a new art course, doggy obedience training, or just exploring more by bicycle would at least create a distraction.

 

Would You Stop Your Car for This?

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So I haul off the freeway at Dunlap Road, a major east-west thoroughfare that passes through some of the most…interesting…parts of town. Street-wise, as I hit the off-ramp I maneuver to put my car in the outside left-turn lane, so that the panhandler at the off-ramp’s signal can’t easily walk up to my door and holler at me.

About three or four blocks off the freeway, at a bus stop near 25th Avenue, I see a guy — a BIG, athletic-looking guy — who looks like he’s having a major seizure. He’s jerking his torso back and forth and flailing his arms in the air. At first I think another local crazy and then, even less kindly, ya gotta be more careful with that dope, brother. Then realize, as he falls to the pavement, that he could be having a grand mal epileptic seizure.

I’m in the middle lane and so can’t pull over to stop even if I were inclined to do so — which I am not, for reasons I’ll explain in a minute. Traffic is just flat-out fierce, so I can’t reasonably grope around for my purse, dig out the seldom-used flip-phone, figure out how to use it without crashing a fellow homicidal driver, and dial 911.

A-n-d… Just a week or two ago, the neighborhood association sent out a safety alert. One of the neighbors, tooling down Main Drag East due south of Dunlap, had some guy jump out in front of her car. When she stopped, thinking she had hit him, he mugged her. The police advised that this is a common scam to get people to get out of their cars so they can be robbed.

We are now told never to unlock our doors if it appears that we have hit a pedestrian. Of course, it’s illegal to leave the scene of such an accident. (If it is an accident…) So you should stop your car, lock your doors, stay inside the vehicle, and call 911. Wait until the police arrive before getting out of the car.

With that little bit of intelligence in mind, you may be sure that I was not about to stop and render aid to a flakey-looking large man who’s waving his arms around, jerking frantically, and flopping down on the sidewalk.

As soon as I got to a place where I could call safely, I did call the police, who relayed the message to the fire department, who said they’d send a meat wagon.

But lordie! How un-Christian is that? What the hell has the world come to when you dare not stop to help someone who appears to be in dire trouble?

Am I too, too crazy paranoid? What would you do? Would you stop your car beside an eight-lane thoroughfare in a sketchy part of town to try to help a guy thrashing around as though he were having a seizure? Really?