Coffee heat rising

Common sense

13: The Lucky Number?

by

So we’re number 13. Thirteen? We don’t know thirteen what, but there it is: spray-painted in the dirt at the end of the alley.

Every alley in the ’hood suddenly turned up with a number spray-painted at each end, in ox-blood red. No explanation from our honored city parents or the utility companies as to what’s up.

I assume this is a harbinger of more chaos: they no doubt intend to dig up the alleys and create some more mess for us.

But there’s another possible explanation: one fraught with controversy but one that, if they were to push it through, would be exceptionally good for the neighborhood.

The alleys here provide cover for the bums who are now imported every day by lightrail. The lovely train brings them up to the end of the line at the corner of Conduit of Blight Blvd and Gangbanger’s Way, where they’re all disgorged onto the street — made to get off the cars. So they stream into the nearby parking lots, where they hang out for awhile before roaming into our neighborhood. They use the alleys as their bedrooms and bathrooms. Sometime they peer over the fences by way of figuring how to burgle houses. And a few months back one of these charmers jumped a young couple’s wall and molested two small girls who were playing in their backyard.

Personally, I don’t like to take the garbage out back at all — our garbage cans are in the alley — and will not do so at night. It was OK when I had the German shepherd — once Anna stood off a weirdo when she went with me to take the trash. But these little corgis are useless that way.

After the wall-jumping episode, the City suggested we should fence off the alleys, spanning each end with gates that could be opened, using a code, by residents and by the cops and the fire department.

Naturally, nothing like that can ever be easy. Some people thought it was a good idea; others rose up in arms against it. La Maya, for example, hates the idea, because it would mean garbage and trash would have to be collected from the fronts of our houses instead of from the alleys.

Recycling is already picked up in front. For garbage, communal four-person bins are set out in the alleys, to the City’s displeasure: they want to replace the things with one-household bins to be picked up in front, because the newer garbage trucks are too large to easily navigate the narrow alleys. La Maya thinks people will make a fine mess, stacking up debris in front of their houses for the quarterly loose trash pickup.

They’re doing that over in Richistan now, and yes, it is messy in the week or two before the loose trash pickup, which only occurs about every three or four months. But by and large in a neighborhood where people take care of their homes (most people here do), it’s not a serious problem.

Obviously, blocking vagrants from adapting the alleys as their private toilets and campsites would make life a great deal better around here. And safer: one reason they’re attracted to our neighborhood is that the alleys make convenient hidden passageways for them, as well as campgrounds. And the garbage cans are an attractive nuisance. Tomorrow is garbage pickup day, so the bins are full. This morning when I took the dogs for a walk, what should I see but a seedy character burning his way up past the park, pushing his grocery cart as fast as he could go. Half-an hour later, when I came back into my part of the neighborhood, by golly, there he was in an alley, pulling junk out of one of the trash bins. He was specifically called here by the sheltered trash bins, which make it possible to scavenge for goods you can sell for drug money.

So…yeah. I really hope 13 is a lucky number this time.

Images: Deposit photos.
Transient, Photographee.eu
Trash bins: © Crisferra;

Stylish SPENDING!

by

So my friend KJG and I made a run on our favorite clothing and kitsch boutique, tucked away in touristy downtown Glendale. Their clothes are awesome, and many of them are made in the USA, miracle of miracles. To tell you how much we love this place, KJG has to drive 40 minutes to get there.

I’ve been needing some  new shirts to wear with my uniform — blue jeans. And I wanted some that would come down far enough to cover my tush if I chose instead to wear a pair of stretchy yoga pants, which are much more comfortable for choir practice because they don’t bind when you try to breathe.

Woo HOO! I found not one, not two, not three, but FIVE tops, each one cuter than the other. These are casual shirts with a mildly countercultural look to them, the kind of thing no one expects an old lady to wear (yet not so much so that people wonder what you’re trying to prove). They’re the sort of tops that elicit compliments from other women, about the be-all and end-all of ego gratification.

Lately they’ve started carrying shirts by Jess & Jane. The proprietor says they fly off the racks — she can’t keep them in house very long. and they are perfect for the purpose. (And yes, you can buy them on Amazon, in limited size choices…but I prefer to try on clothing before spending. And given a choice, I’ll always buy local.)

This spending spree set me back $280.

{gasp!}

But before too much hyperventilation sets in, consider: I may go out to this place once or twice a year.  And these clothing items last. Each of these tops will stay in the active wardrobe for at least three years.

When I buy clothes in other stores, they often fall apart after a few wearings. Or they just start looking shabby. That gets old, real fast. IMHO, the new fashion of buying cheaply made clothes engineered to last about three months comes under the heading of “penny-wise and pound-foolish.”

If I replace a $40 shirt in three years, then the privilege of wearing it has cost me $13.33 a year, or a little over a dollar a month.

If I replace a $10 shirt in three months, that shirt — which may fall apart in even less than three months — will cost me $3 a month.

That’s three times the cost of a better made and prettier piece of clothing!

So…in reality, I didn’t spend money. I saved money.

 

 

 

 

Nope…not a paid ad!

 

Come the Apocalypse(?)…

by

So, what d’you think about this thing here?

Sure looks snazzy in the picture, doesn’t it? Looks like a regular gas stovetop, in miniature. Amazon wants $53 for this thing, a bargain compared to Costco’s $200 offering, which (admittedly!) does have a stand to hold it at waist height but which has only a couple of burners that don’t look very efficient.

This morning I was reminded that I’d like to have a propane camp stove that will boil water and fry or stew foods, come the apocalypse. This one has a lot of bad reviews — 18%, unfortunately — so I’m still looking (any recommends, dear readers??). But I definitely want to get something with a stove-like burner to use outside.

And how did I happen to be reminded? Well, once again the damned Cox wireless connection went down. So as usual I shut down the computers, unplugged the router and modem, left the system off for half an hour, replugged, and rebooted. Since this happened right about the crack of dawn, the house was kind of cold, so while I was waiting for Cox to recover itself, I went to turn on the heat for a few minutes by way of warming the place up to 63 or 65 degrees.

And lo! The damned Nest thermostat was OFF-LINE.

Yeah. If your router is off, your nifty computerized thermostat is off. So…let’s think about that. Even if your electric service is intact, if your Internet connection goes down, you can’t run your heat or — far more crucially in lovely uptown Arizona — your air conditioning.

Holy sh!t.

If you’ve been paying even the slightest bit of attention, you’re aware that the U.S. Internet is highly vulnerable to attack from Unfriendlies. So much so that an extended regional or nationwide outage is probably inevitable. A serious attack could disable the Internet not for days but for weeks…possibly as long as three months. The same is true of the electrical grid.

We can all imagine the chaos an extended interruption of service would cause nationally and locally. But it’s worth considering exactly what it would mean to you, personally, in your home.

If you couldn’t even turn on the heat or the air-conditioning — even if the electric grid was operating — you would be in deep trouble.

A major attack on the country’s infrastructure — even a part of it, given our present near-100% dependence on computer technology — would mean you couldn’t turn on your stove, your heater or air conditioner, or your water heater. Gas stoves today operate with an electric sparker system, and so your gas stove would not run without electric power. You might not even be able to get potable water out of the tap — or any water. You would not be able to buy gas for your car, because gas pumps run on electricity and computers. You wouldn’t be able to buy groceries and medicines, because retailers’ cash registers are computers running on electricity.

It sounds like crazy Prepper thinking…but between you’n’me, I think it’s probably wise to be prepared, at least minimally, for an extended outage of these services. That’s even if you don’t live on the San Andreas Fault or deep in Tornado Alley.

Today we all live on a fault line.

My best friend in graduate school came from the Salinas area, where her parents were still living when the last major earthquake hit central California. Her mom was here visiting at the time, but her dad had stayed home. Fortunately, Elmer was a camping and fishing enthusiast. So he had a lot of gear on hand. And he had a camper that was equipped with a propane stove and refrigerator.

All the power went down and stayed down for some time. Roads in and out of town were wrecked — no one could get in or out for several days. Elmer kept the entire neighborhood going with the supplies he had, meant to keep him in comfort for a week or two when he was out in the sticks. He was able to boil water and prepare food for the neighbors’ small kids with the propane stoves he had on hand. He became, to put it mildly, the hero of the day.

So…what would be minimal preparation for an extended Internet or electric outage?

• Water — enough to last  until the government or Red Cross can truck water into the area
• Source of heat for cooking
• Source of light, battery or propane operated
• Supply of foods that do not have to be refrigerated
• Supply of pet food, as necessary
• Source of living quarters heat, if it’s very cold outside, or plenty of warm clothing and blankets
• At least one 5-gallon jerry can of gasoline
• A generous stash of propane, stored safely
• Stash of prescription meds, if you can get them, and stash of OTC nostrums
• First-aid kit

That’s really not very much — nothing unreasonable for most of us to keep on hand.

“Source of heat for cooking” means a device with at least one burner that gets hot enough to boil water. You may have access to water, but it may not be safe to drink without boiling. If your stove doesn’t work, you’ve got a problem.

I have 18,000 gallons of water in my pool, so assuming I have a camp stove and plenty of propane, I could get by for quite a long while in the event of a water shortage.

Foods that can be stored without refrigeration include dried rice and beans. These need to be soaked in water and cooked for a fair amount of time: hence, propane and water.

A generator would be good…but generators don’t run on air. Whether to drive or to run your house, you’d need gasoline. And gas is not something that can be stored and forgotten: you need to empty the jerry can into your car now and again and drive back up to the gas station to refill your supply

I’m keeping all my propane tanks full at all times, and am thinking I’ll buy another one. At this time I have three; four would last for quite a while.

While the grill works well for most kinds of dry cooking — roasting, baking, and grilling — it’s not designed for boiling water. Using it to boil water or cook rice or beans would waste a lot of fuel. That’s why I think I should have a functioning camp stove.

As for keeping warm at night? Dog. There’s a reason for the “two-dog night” saying. A dog’s normal body temperature is 102.5 degrees. Put the critter on your bed at night, and it’ll warm you up just like an electric blanket.

The ultimate heat source…

I personally am beginning to believe that within the next four to eight years, we will see serious civil unrest in this country. The time may come when we cannot safely leave our homes or neighborhoods for any length of time…or at all.

Which is the longer shot — cyberattack or civil war? I don’t know. They both seem like long shots. But who would have imagined Americans would elect a President who wants to shut down the free press, who imagines he can build a Berlin Wall from Sea to Shining Sea, who lies as freely as he breathes, who cultivates divisiveness, and who evinces clear signs of mental illness?

Whether you think it’s going to happen or not, it may be wise to be prepared. Helle’s Belles, none of us thinks the house is going to burn down or we’re going to croak over tomorrow. But we all carry insurance…just in case.

Why You Shouldn’t Carry a Purse…

by

The older you get, the more inviting a target you become for various kinds of low-life. This morning while perusing the electronic news, I came across a squib posted last June (the local play-nooz outfits really don’t understand about “yesterday’s news”) describing a purse-snatching in a local McDonald’s:

A man in his early 20s walked into the busy dining room and spotted a 65-year-old woman.

“He walks past her once, then starts walking towards her again and, this time, grabs her purse,” Burch said. “The woman hangs on, fighting for her purse. As she fell to the ground, the guy literally dragged her across the floor, breaking her finger.”

Uh huh. Pretty par for the course.

This is why I don’t carry a purse unless I absolutely have to. I have a spare driver’s license hidden in the car (you can get a copy by telling DOT you ran yours through the washer or the dog ate it). If I know I’m going someplace that will accept my credit cards, I stick the plastic in a pocket.

It’s a nuisance if you’re a woman, because many — maybe most — women’s clothes have no pockets. That’s why I live in Costco blue jeans: they have five pockets. It means either I can’t run any errands after church or else I have to wear my dungarees to church. None of my presentable clothes have pockets sturdy enough to hold a weighty collection of car and house keys. Fortunately, choir members robe up for the services, so no one knows that one of us looks like an old hippie girl.

Purse-snatchers can be quite violent. Women are often injured in these attacks, and elderly women are frequently targets because they look helpless. The perpetrators are very nasty people, indeed. One of my neighbors, who has since (for obvious reasons) moved away from the ’hood, was shot by a purse-snatcher at one of the corner shopping malls. She and her daughter had gone into a sewing machine and vacuum repair shop. They started to leave, and the guy grabbed her purse as she stepped out the door. Startled, she jumped back and yelled at her daughter to stay inside the store. He thought she was resisting, so he shot her.

So. Don’t carry a purse unless there’s some very good reason that you have to. And if you do have a purse with you, carry your car keys separately, in a pocket.

There really isn’t much defense against some jerk grabbing your purse. Here’s a pretty sappy list of helpful hints, some of them obvious, some of them hopelessly stupid.

My late mother-in-sin favored a belly-bag, which she used to call her “purse.” All those things that women haul around in purses were strapped to her waist. That surely is an option — IMHO not a very aesthetic one, but effective. A purse-snatcher is more likely to accost someone else than to try to unbuckle or cut through a strap running under your sweater or jacket.

You can get small, minimalist wallets to carry your cards in — some of these will fit in a decent-size pocket. Here’s another one that looks better organized and maybe a little classier. If you’re old, though, you have to haul a raft of Medicare ID around with you, and so keeping photocopies of your Medicare card (with the Social Security number blacked out), Medigap, and Part D cards in your car along with a spare driver’s license is probably the path of least resistance.

If you simply must have your lipstick, your Kleenex, your packets of glasses cleaner, your sunglasses, your reading glasses, your cough drops, your notebook and pen, your checkbook, your phone, your business cards, all your accursed store “member” cards, your calendar, the key to the gym locker, your comb and brush, a mirror, and the kitchen sink with you at all times, wear clothing with serious pockets and put your phone, charge card, and driver’s license in them.

Then carry nothing in the purse but the throw-away junk.

PLEASE! Don’t “give” me your right of way!

by

Please. When you’re driving, don’t politely cede your right of way as your Good Deed of the Day. It’s NOT a good deed. It’s dangerous and can cause a wreck.

Couple days ago, a friend of mine was turning left across a thoroughfare to get into a parking lot. Some kind soul, seeing him waiting in the left-turn lane and signalling, stopped in the road, held up the traffic, and motioned him to go ahead. When he turned across the road, some poor soul who didn’t see him and didn’t expect someone to turn left illegally across oncoming traffic slammed right into him.

Totaled his car.

The idiot who caused this fiasco, of course, tooled off down the road unscathed.

These damn people who think they’re being extra-special, nicey-nice kind and courteous by ceding their right of way make me want to jump out of the car, reach through the driver’s-side window, and wring their necks. When somebody stops and sits there when they have the right of way, you do NOT know what they’re going to do. Are they not paying attention? Will they try to move whenever they wake up? Are they stupid? Or what?

More to the point, they’re urging you to break the law.

Y’know, I had exactly the same experience as my friend’s when my son was an infant in his car seat. I’d picked up the husband from Sky Harbor. We had to turn left out of terminal 2 to go west on the airport’s weird little ring road, which for some reason was bumper-to-bumper. Guy stops his car, holding up the traffic behind him, and motions me cheerfully to cross in front of him. I couldn’t see the oncoming traffic in the outside lane but, being a dumb kid, naively drove out because, after all, this guy here is grinning dopily and waving that it’s OK to pull out. The guy coming up beside him walloped me, of course…

Naturally, I got a ticket for pulling out in front of the poor wretch who hit me.

And just the other day I almost hit a woman under similar circumstances.

On Phoenix’s Central Avenue just north of AJs, there’s a fancy new signal that the city put in to accommodate the growing restaurant empire in the ultragentrified area just north of Camelback. Four large globes strung overhead, this array turns red every time a pedestrian hits its button, stays red not long enough for anyone over 25 to get all the way across five lanes, then starts flashing red. While it’s flashing, you’re supposed to drive with caution through the crosswalk, preferably without running down any pedestrians or their dogs.

Guy ahead of me is in a Toyota Highlander, a behemoth that you can’t see around even from my Sienna, which is pretty far off the ground and fairly massive itself.

He’s already proven himself to be a nitwit…in the fast lane puttering along like he’s out for a Sunday drive.

I’ve been stuck behind him for a couple of miles and am fully fed up with him. He stops on the red and the pedestrian ambles across the street. The light starts to flash on & off, and he just STANDS there. I figure he hasn’t read the sign that says you can move on flashing red after the nuisance pedestrian has gotten out of your line of fire.

The light shuts off altogether, but he’s still gathering wool. By now I’m mightily annoyed, because he’s not the first nitwit who has blocked my progress down Central on this trip. The car that he’s been pacing (by way of blocking all the traffic backing up behind him in the fast lane) moves on.

So I start to pull into the right lane, which is clear, and because I’m pissed and because I’m going to want to turn left into AJ’s — which will require me to cut the dunce off within a block and a half — I floor it. With no seats in the back and its handy little six-banger, the Sienna is relatively light and can take off from a standing start…shall we say, promptly. Which it does…

…just as some woman turns left in front of me!

Shee-ut!

Life goes into slow motion, providing plenty of time to think. I jam on the brakes and steer to the right into the west-bound side street, which thank God has no oncoming traffic. The ABS brakes are pretty amazing: the car does NOT skid and not only that, it maintains some degree of steerability. Amazingly, it does let me steer out of the woman’s way.

Fortunately she saw me bearing down on her and jammed on her brakes, too, so we managed to evade each other.

Oh well. It’s nice to know, in an ironic way, that even an old guy with 80-odd years of experience with the morons of this world falls for the “Let Me Do You a Favor” gambit…

Living Life in a Hot New World

by

Anatomy_of_a_Sunset-2Hot where you’re at, is it? Ninety degrees and you think you’re gunna die before the sun goes down?

Mwa ha ha! As nothing! Temps here have run upwards of 112, day after day, and that ain’t new. A couple of days have pushed 120. Friends sweltering in “cooler” climes — which in our Brave New World of global warming are unlikely to stay cool much longer — ask how we natives of the Valley of the We-Do-Mean-Sun survive.

Well. Some of us leave town. NG (SDXB’s New Girlfriend) is in Boulder as we scribble. But most of us adapt. I’ve lived in hot climates all my life: grew up in Saudi Arabia, which makes Arizona look like a balmy paradise. I’m still living. Looks like I’ve learned to survive global warming, hm?

Here are a few pointers for how to live in the Hot New World:

The_sun1Don’t go out in the noonday sun.

Seriously. Think of it as like snowbound. Don’t go outside between about 10 in the morning and 6 in the evening, if you can possibly avoid it. Convince your boss that you love your job so much you can’t bring yourself to leave over the lunch hour.  Work at home if you can.

Please do not be stupid about this. STAY OUT OF THE NOONDAY SUN!

Several people have died here this summer. Morons who feel they just must climb Squaw Peak or Camelback Mountain no matter what die. Got that? That’s die, as in dead.

A couple of days ago, a 12-year-old boy died when a grown man, an alleged adult, took him out for a walk in one of the city’s mountain parks on a balmy 112-degree day. They were on the longest trail in the Sonoran Desert Preserve, the one that climbed the highest hill. Yes: they had enough water with them: two litres. But the kid had a heat stroke anyway.

You can suffer heat stroke even if you have plenty of water. Don’t go out in the sun on a day when the heat exceeds 100 degrees, no matter how much of a man (or woman) you think you are.

Don’t assume your cell is going to work.

MorningSunThe guy who was with said 12-year-old tried to call for help. It didn’t work.

He had to abandon the boy and run through 112-degree heat to summon help. That didn’t work, either.

Be sure your battery is always charged. Consider carrying a throw-away phone as a backup. Keep that charged, too. And remember: if you’re out in the boondocks, your phone may not get any bars, no matter what your provider claims.

Wear a hat whenever you do go out.

Especially if you’re balding. Hey, dudes: nary a critter on this planet is handsomer than a man in a hat! 😉

But dude or dudette, get yourself a wide-brimmed hat and wear it when you have to go out in the sun. It not only keeps you a little cooler, it shelters your eyes from the glaring sun.

Get yourself a decent pair of shades.

Speaking of glare, shell out for a pair of Polaroid sunglasses. Keep them in your car and wear them. Comfort factor: HUGE.

Park your car in the shade, if you possibly can.

Interestingly, the reduction in scorch factor that you’ll get by parking under a tree’s shade is well worth hiking across an asphalt parking lot.

Keep a white towel in your car.

Drape this over your lap when the sun pours in through the windshield or the driver’s-side window and heats your bluejeans to the broiling level. And drape it over the steering wheel when you have to park in an unshaded space: it will protect you from third-degree burns when you get back to the car.

DCP_1260Keep your car in working order.

This means THE BATTERY, stupid. Car batteries die like…uhm…battery-driven robot flies in extreme heat. In Arizona a typical car battery lasts about 18 months. Check the battery regularly, or have your mechanic do so. Be sure your insurance has roadside service; if not, subscribe to one.

Sooner or later, you’ll need it.

Keep your house’s air-conditioning in working order.

In the springtime, have an AC dude come around to clean and service the unit. Yes, this sounds like a waste of money. No, it is not. And even if it is, when you have a “relationship” with an air-conditioning contractor, you’re more likely to be able to get service at short notice.

Sooner or later, you’ll need it.

Set your air-conditioning to cool your house way down at night and let the temp drift up during the day.

The reason you have air-conditioning is so you can sleep at night. With fans (below ↓ ), you can tolerate being warmer than normal during the day. Also, when the ambient temperatures are higher during the day than at night, you save more money with a warmer living space during the day than you do by suffering through hot nights.

Run A LOT of fans in your home and office.

Turn off the feature that makes the thing sweep back and forth. A fan works by blowing on you directly…when it’s swooping around the room, it’s doing nothing for you. Wherever you’re likely to come to light: have a fan pointed at you. Wherever you work — the kitchen, for example — have a fan pointed at you. Maybe more than  one fan. Where I’m sitting right now, for example, I have three fans going.

DucksReduxGet wet whenever you can. Stay wet as much as you can.

If you work in a cube or a private office, use a squirt bottle to spray yourself in the face. Do the same in the car, when no one’s around to pester you.

If you have a pool: use it.

If you have a shower: use it.

If you have long hair (as I do) let it get wet in the shower and don’t blow-dry it. I dip my hair in the pool at dawn, then braid it or put it up in a bun so it will stay damp for several hours. Et voilà: biological air-conditioning!

Do your physical chores before dawn or after dark.

This includes walking the dog. Do not walk your dog in extreme hot weather. Not unless you enjoy vet bills. Or disposing of doggy corpses.

I do all the gardening, watering, and pool care chores before the sun is very far over the horizon.

Do your health or recreational exercise indoors or at night.

Around here, covered malls open early, long before the shops open. You can go to one of them and walk or jog till you’re blue in the face…without risking death.

Some fundamentalist megachurches have gyms and indoor hiking or running tracks. Get religion: go there to do your daily exercises.

Never push a child to exert him- or herself in the heat.

If the kid complains about being too hot, too uncomfortable, or too tired to charge around, indulge. Better you should spoil the brat than kill the brat.

corgiherdingDon’t push a dog or horse in the heat.

Dogs commonly die of heat stroke when temps get high. My homicidal (I use the term advisedly) former son-in-lawsin killed his wife’s beloved dog by forcing him to run with him as he jogged on a hundred-degree day.

While he probably did that on purpose, many naive pet owners lose their dogs because they have no clue that dogs do not tolerate exertion in the heat in the same way humans do.

Horses also can fall victim to heat stroke, especially if the air is dry or breezy, allowing sweat to evaporate too quickly.

If you must leave your animals outside (you should be arrested for doing so),  provide plenty of shade and water.

Never leave a child or pet in a vehicle. Not even for a few minutes.

A car can reach homicidal temperatures within minutes, even when outside temperatures are only in the 80s. Summertime temps commonly reach 160 degrees and higher here. It is a felony to leave a child or an animal in a car here — as well it should be.

Eat smaller, lighter meals more often.

You’ll be a lot more comfortable if you don’t stuff yourself. Heavy meals make your body work harder, causing your metabolism to heat up. This is nice on a snowy day, but not so great when it’s 115 in the shade.

Find daytime hangouts that are air-conditioned.

Which lunch shops are coolest? Can you spend Sat’day afternoon in a movie house?

Cook meals outside on a grill or use a slow cooker in the garage.

Never (for godsake!) turn on the oven. Try at all costs not to heat up the kitchen.

If you can, sleep through the hottest hours of the day.

That’s the theory behind siesta. Do what you need to get done in the morning, sleep through the mid-afternoon, then work into the evening.

And that, my dears, is what Yours Truly is about to do.Rub_al_Khali_002