Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

The Hallowe’en grinch

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What do you do about Hallowe’en?

I get a big boot out of seeing the kids in costume. But I’ve become pretty curmudgeonly about having swarms of kids, teenagers, and even adults show up at my door asking for a handout. Several things make this custom problematic.

Most obvious, of course, is the cost of candy. You have to get the kids products that are individually wrapped, because many parents, wary of nut cases who lace treats with “tricks” of one sort or another, won’t let the kids eat it unless it’s in a manufacturer’s package. It’s pretty expensive, especially if you don’t eat the stuff yourself. Which I don’t. Any candy that doesn’t get handed out to trick-or-treaters gets wasted. I hate that. It makes me feel like I’m throwing money in the trash.

Next, there’s the issue of out-of-neighborhood families trucking their kids into more affluent areas in hopes of scoring fancier stuff. My neighborhood abuts a very tony district—we form a buffer zone between an area of upper six- to lower seven-figure homes and a couple of gang-ridden slums. So we get the overflow of kids being trucked into the swell neighborhood. Well, I wouldn’t let my kids run loose in the areas to the west and north of us, either, so I can’t blame the parents for bringing them to a part of town they may perceive as safer. But what you’ll see is twenty kids jammed into the back of a pickup and dumped on the street in front of your house. Some years, a hundred kids will show up at the door; some years, none. Just depends on which street the freeloading parents decide to use as a drop-off point.

I don’t mind giving candy to the neighbors’ kids, but…OK, ungenerously!…I resent having every kid in Sunnyslope show up at my front door demanding a handout.

When M’hijito was little, one friend’s parents used to keep a stash of expensive, healthy treats for the neighbors’ kids and a big bucket of the cheapest, grodiest junk they could get for the traveling freeloaders. Worked, I guess…but something about that doesn’t sit very well with me, either. Is it OK to rot little kids’ teeth and contribute to their budding diabetes just because the kids are poor?

And finally, there’s the safety question. This neighborhood has had three home invasions that I know of—probably more that haven’t been gossiped about. I don’t open my door to strangers. Really, you’re crazy to do so. Why should I make an exception for hordes of out-of-neighborhood candy tourists? Especially when many of them are not kids. I don’t feel safe doing that.

In my cranky old age, I’ve taken to turning off the lights in the front part of the house, which discourages people from ringing the doorbell. It’s too bad…but the cost, the abuse of hospitality, and the risk kinda militate against it.

Hallowe’en! Bah, humbug!

😉

Dumb tax

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F’cryin’ out loud. In the “I can’t believe it’s possible to be that stupid” department, here’s a memo: when the binger goes off to tell you the bread dough has finished rising, get up and attend to it!

Yesterday afternoon I was dorking around on the Internet, my favorite time-waster, when I heard the breadmaker hollering “beeeep beeeeep beeeeeeeep,” signifying the dough was kneaded and risen, so I should retrieve the stuff, put it in a pan, and preheat the oven while the bread made its second rise. Did I get off my duff? Ohhh noooo. As I recall, what I did was mutter “please. shut. up.” Then forgot all about it.

Forgot it, that is, until I walked into the kitchen and found the stuff had continued to bubble up, overflowed the container, run down into the breadmaker’s innards, and then, its yeasties exhausted, collapsed back on itself.

That was a fine mess to clean up.

Determined not to lose five cups of flour plus the ancillary ingredients, I had the bright idea of adding a little more yeast, turning the stuff back into the freshly cleaned breadmaker, and letting it knead and rise again.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Lemme tellya: it doesn’t taste good! The result was a large blob of bread dough with a strangely rancid, bitter flavor.

At first I thought I could pass it off as sourdough. On second taste…well, no.

Into the garbage with it.

So, I had to mix and bake a whole new batch of bread dough. This occupied my attention until about 9:00 p.m., annoyingly enough. Dumb tax!

Isn’t it interesting how many of the stupid things that happen TO us are actually stupid things that happen BECAUSE of us? Consider how much of the present financial chaos falls into that category.

Now, I will say: I didn’t vote for our present national leadership and thought anyone who did was nuts; I did not get myself into debt over my head; I do not even run a balance on a credit card.BUT…yes, but: stupidly I left the bulk of my retirement money in the stock market, even as I could see the out-of-control train racing up the tracks. If I was smart enough to think of investing monthly savings (meant to pay off a small loan) in the money market, howcum I wasn’t smart enough to think of transferring at least some of my stock holdings out of Vanguard’s Wellington and Windsor II funds into the same Vanguard Premier Money Market fund?

Right now that moron Bush is on the air saying sure, he knows people are losing their retirement savings, “but I think in the long run they’re gunna be fine.” Long run? That illiterate, bird-brained idiot. When you’re 65, 75, 85 and retired or (as I’m about to be) laid off, there IS NO LONG RUN!

We appear to be a nation of morons who have followed a moron into predictable disaster. I will not disown my personal contribution to the national dumb tax fund, nor, I suppose, can any of us. Our dough has bubbled up, spilled over the bowl’s edge, collapsed back onto itself. The breadmaker alarm has been binging for a long time, while we have muttered “please. shut. up.”

Some vacation…

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I took off the four days of use-it-or-lose it time I’d accrued on top of the 267 hours of time My Beloved Employer has to pay me for if I get laid off. Tomorrow is the last of those four days.

With vacations like this, we don’t need salt mines. When I wasn’t sweltering with figures trying to calculate how (if) I can get by without a job, frantically conferring with my financial advisor,and negotiating with potential Copyeditor’s Desk clients, I was filling out job applications or throwing myself around the yard trying to catch up with several months’ worth of neglected gardening chores. Today I tackled the front courtyard: hauled three jammed wheelbarrowsful of plant trimmings and debris out to the garbage can. The other day I hauled two of the same out of the backyard. There’s still a lot to do—more pruning, more cleanup, more hauling. Today I worked until I couldn’t stand up anymore and then collapsed on the sofa and fell asleep.

There’s a phenomenal amount of work around this place that Gerardo doesn’t do, for the grandiose $75 a month I pay him. Grr! I asked him to trim the Texas sage in front. He nipped off about three twigs, far as I can tell. I cut it down two or three feet—quite a trick to do that without turning the thing into a futbol. I like my desert plants to look like desert plants, not like sculptures of soccer balls, but that doesn’t mean I want them to run amok.

Day before yesterday (was it that long ago?) I shoveled the last of the moribund flowers out of the poolside flowerbed, spaded the compost from the bin into the soil, and chuffed the bin full again with new plant debris. Having decided I’d better have some food growing if I was about to be out of a job, instead of flowers I planted beets, chard, carrots, red scallions, and bush peas. And one hopeful tomato, not likely to produce before the frost—but nothing ventured: it was only a couple bucks. One of last spring’s tomato plants survived the summer (a rarity!) and is blooming, so it may produce before winter nips it back.

The package of bush peas held many more dried peas than I had room to plant. Then the light dawned: around the base of the queen palm! Of course! It gets watered by the bubbler that overflows onto the queen palm from the Meyer lemon, and the palm’s trunk is a natural trellis (tho’ supposedly trellissing is optional for these plants). This meant I had to dig up the desert landscaping to plant the peas, which I really didn’t want to do. So I troweled little “cups” into the crushed granite, cut open the fabric ground covering underneath, planted the each seed in the dirt, and then packed the cup with a mix of dirt and potting soil. This was a chore: those guys who landscaped the backyard dumped four or five inches of Madison Gold Minus Three out there. Digging it up is not a joke. The result looks pretty ugly, but the plants should cover it up, and after they’re spentit should be easy enough to shovel the gravel back in place.

I also filled a big pot with soil and planted a bunch of the peas in there. Pruned roses, cut back some other plants, fertilized and watered roses, dug the dead clover and dichondra out from between the flagstones. What killed that stuff? Gerardo thinks it didn’t get watered, and I will say: it was dry. But it’s been thriving all summer—just suddenly keeled over. Pearl mites?

The watering system doesn’t seem to be working. A couple of sections are nonfunctional. So…why are my water bills through the roof? I suspect there’s a leak somewhere.

Coping with that is more than I can deal with just now, and so I think I’ll probably shut it down and drag hoses. Argh.

Cleaned the hummingbird feeders, made new hummer food, reloaded and rehung the feeders.

Backwashed the pool, refilled the filter with diatomaceous earth, treated the water. It needs a chlorine shock treatment, which I will administer once it’s REALLY too cold to swim. We’re right at the verge of that: this afternoon it was mighty crisp, but it still felt soooo good after spending four or five hours sweating in the sun.

Today trimmed part of the desert willow (didn’t do it much good; had to get the saw out to cut one limb) and the Texas ebony. Invented a system for tying the bougainvillea to the block wall without drilling into the wall and without gluing hooks to the wall. Pruned the bougainvillea and tied it up. Pruned the Texas sage. Cut my foot open on a cactus; bandaged foot, dug out spines; drove one spine in too deep to get it out. Trimmed back the palo brea and the vitex. Hauled heavy metal chairs back and forth. Moved the rustic (read “rusty”) iron crucifix from behind the boug and figured out how to hang it on a different wall without having to drill another hole. Dug the dead grass and weeds out from between the flagstones. Took the scissors and trimmed down the overgrown, leggy, dried-out Mexican primroses. Jammed two communal garbage barrels full of trimmings and plant debris. Left an incredible mess on the ground to shop-vac up after resting. Repaired the pool cleaner & got it running again.

And now I need to get up and finish the job. But first must dig the out the thorn, which hurts.

Ain’t homeownership grand?
EveningUpdate
Fed dog; dog evidently not annoyed by spinach (human having run out of preferred veggies), which she normally picks out and daintily sets on the floor: food dish emptied and chased around the kitchen floor. Dug cactus spine out of foot, accompanied by some profanity. Dragged shop-vac to front courtyard to inhale up leaves, compost, and dirt. Cleaned out four clogs, left courtyard looking about 110% better. Paused to feel smug. Dumped plant debris, compost, & dirt into compost bin. Cleaned out shop-vac; washed filter (did you know you can actually rinse out one of those expensive paper filters that come with shop-vacs? yesh!). Put shop-vac away.
Fired up BBQ; cooked a couple hamburg patties and some freezer-burned mystery meat for dog; cod filet for human. Incredible dinner: how did this happen?
Accidental Wonderful Dinner
You need:

§Charcoal grill
§Charcoal
§Hardwood chops (hickory chips were on hand)
§Filet of firm-fleshed fish such as cod or salmon
§1 cup rice (I used converted; you could use regular white or brown rice but try to avoid instant rice…ick!)
§Olive oil
§21/2 cups water or broth; a little wine or sherry optional
§Chives or other herbs
§Asparagus
§Tarragon or other herb, to taste
§Small blob of butter or splash of olive oil
§Tinfoil
§Your favorite way to light coals
§Fresh lime or lemon
Step 1: Start the charcoal. Set the hardwood chips to soak in cold water.
Step 2: While the charcoal is firing up, pour a little olive oil in the bottom of a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add a cup of rice. Let this turn golden brown; stir now and again. Pay attention: once the browning starts, it can move right along. When the rice is evenly brown throughout, add2 1/2 cups of some sort of liquid. Since I was sharing this with the dog and I had no chicken or beef broth, I used water only. If no canine roommates are in the offing, mix and match to your taste. Sherry is a nice blandishment; so is white wine. Combine about 1/2 cup of either with broth or water. Whatever: add to the rice when the rice is browned, turn the heat down to medium-low, and set the timer for about 25 minutes if you’re using converted or about 35 or 40 minutes if you’re using regular white or brown rice.
Step 3: Wash and trim the asparagus. Set it on a sheet of tinfoil. Add a small blob of butter or a splash of olive oil; top with pinch of tarragon or any other herb that suits your fancy. Wrap tightly in tinfoil.
Step 4: Check on charcoal. Pour yourself a glass of wine or beer. Supervise in a desultory way until the charcoal is ready to use. At that point, place charcoal in grill (if it’s not already there; I use a chimney, so have to dump charcoal into the BBQ when it’s covered with white ash). Drain water off wood chips and toss wood chips on top of charcoal. Place grill over delicious charcoal and wood chops.
Step 5: Place the tinfoil package of asparagus over the heat. Rub a little olive oil over the fish and put the fish over the heat. Close the cover.
Step 6: Continue drinking and supervising. Keep an eye on the rice: don’t let it burn dry. When you flip the fish over, also flip over the tinfoil package. Watch rice.
Rice, fish, and veggies should get done at about the same time. Test fish by gently pushing apart with a barbecue spatula. It should flake but not be dried out.
Step7: Retrieve fish and asparagus from grill. Serve on plates with rice and juicy cut lime or lemon. Add some chives to the rice, if available, or dried herbs and a little butter. Be prepared for dog, if available, to try to sponge dinner from humans.
Step 7: Eat. Enjoy.
And so to bed.

Nifty new toy

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The Barbecues Galore grill I bought a year or so ago experienced its third truly scary fire the other day, the second that was certifiably dangerous.

First time, M’hijito was present. The grill has a drip pan for grease, very nice except it’s about an inch above the propane tank. That caught fire in a big way. I’d managed to turn off the burners and was about to approach it with baking soda in hand when M’hijito pointed out that it was so close to the propane and so hot there was some real chance the tank could explode.

Exit the spectators, stage left.

To everyone’s relief, the fire burned out before it had any spectacular effects. After that I was really careful to be sure the drip pan didn’t collect any grease.

Last week the whole darn thing caught fire. It took three or four cups of baking soda to put out the flames, which, as you can imagine, didn’t do the grill any good. Or the remains of the food, not that any of it would’ve been edible anyway.

At this time of year, Lowe’s and Home Depot are having a frenzy, trying to get rid of their unsold barbecue grills. In Arizona that’s weird, because outdoor cooking season starts about in October and extends through May. But those huge warehouse chains operate on East-Coast time, totally out of sync with local reality.

Also out of sync with The Budget of the Coming Depression. Prices of new propane BBQs range from around $300 to around $700. On sale.

Moving on….

Yesterday I picked up a Weber kettle grill, figuring that with the chimney-style charcoal lighter I already had, I could manage somehow to cook the occasional steak or hamburger over charcoal.

Hilarious! In the first place, a part was missing. But more entertaining: unlike the old, sturdy, solid Weber grills, this thing appeared to have been made by hammering out a few beer cans and bending them into kettle shape. It was so lightweight that when you lifted it by the front handle to move it around on its two wheels, it wanted to tip over backward.

Moving on…

Returned that to Lowe’s. Saw nothing else desirable here. Onward to the Depot.

YES! They had the very smoker/grill thing that M’hijito, the Exceptionally Brilliant Chef, uses to turn out incredible food. How much? $157!

One heck of an improvement over the cost of a gas grill, and you can’t blow up the neighborhood with the thing.

Early this morning I put up Gerardo the Lawn Dude to helping me wrangle the thing into the car and then get it out and into the backyard. Being the macho sort of guy he is, he also saw to it, once he’d put it in place on the slab behind the fireplace chimney, that every bolt and nut was solidly tightened down.

It’s really nothing but a metal barrel with vents, a chimney, and some racks. You have to cure it, much as you’d cure a cast-iron skillet, by painting the entire interior & the grills with vegetable oil and then burning a slow fire inside it for two or three hours. It’s undergoing that process as we scribble. Tomorrow: grilled hamburgers par excellence!

Gerardo. As usual, he wouldn’t take any extra pay. I tried to gift him with a half-dozen Coronas and a fistful of tree-ripened limes. He took one, drank it on the spot, and declined the lime.

This is a cultural problem. How am I going to express some appreciation to this lovely man without offending? I’ll think of something. Maybe food: homebaked brownies? He has a cute little kid and a wife who has hit the 21st century running (she doesn’t cook).

Oh, how he coveted the tractor-style riding lawnmowers. While we were waiting for the HD guy to come along with a large piece of equipment to retrieve the last assembled smoker/BBQ from its shelf near the ceiling, Gerardo tried out every one of the tractor lawnmowers. What could a bright, hard-working young man do with one of those things?

Well, I figure at Christmas maybe I can give him a bonus, either cash or a generous HD gift card. Either one, I expect, would go a long way toward improving Gerardo’s business. Must start saving up.

At any rate, thanks to Gerardo I now have a large, down-home, amazing barbecue and smoker Thing that will do handsomely to cook up some mighty fine vittles. And it didn’t bankrupt me.

Thinking about publishing a book?

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My business partner and I just finished editing a book manuscript for a client of a client. Our client is a book packager (an outfit that puts books together for publishers); the subclient is an on-demand vanity publisher preparing to print a book written by the author of a fairly laughable conspiracy theory.

On-demand publishers have their uses and are worth considering if you have a book that will supplement a business enterprise. For example, a friend of mine ran a lucrative business providing in-house communications seminars to large corporations. She wrote a book that summarized the basic principles described in her presentations, which she sold in large numbers to her corporate clients—and also to the general public through the Barnes & Nobles and the Borders of this world. While the book would have been profitable on its own (she had something to say that people wanted to know), it vastly enhanced her company’s revenues.

You may have a subject too limited to your business or your specific interest to sell to a traditional publishing house, but it nevertheless would be useful if presented in a book. Before the advent of on-demand publishing, you could have the book printed and bound through a vanity press, but then you’d be faced with the many headaches of warehousing, marketing, and distribution. Most people who go this route end up with their cars parked in the street, because the garage is stuffed to the rafters with unsalable books. But lo! an on-demand publisher can produce only the number of books you think you can sell at your next dog-and-pony show, or that you want to give away to your 100 best customers.

If your book is adequately edited (so you don’t look like a screaming fool) and decently designed (not a matter to be neglected), a self-published product can be a valuable adjunct to any number of enterprises.

What you should NOT do is pay a vanity publisher to bring out a book that no one else in their right mind would publish. There’s a reason these outfits are called “vanity presses”: they profit nicely from the wannabe writer’s ego. Remember: when you’re a real writer, you don’t pay someone else to publish your golden words; they pay you!

And also remember:
Every writer needs and editor.
[LOL!]

Times sez retiring set scared

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“Retirees Filling the Front Line in Market Fears,” says a New York Times report still online in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

Damn straight! The craziness of expecting people to base their economic security in old age on the stock market is coming home in the current flirtation with worldwide depression. This country’s need for a better way to take care of elders who have spent their entire lives working with little or no chance of saving enough to support themselves into advanced old age is less widely discussed but every bit as desperate as our need for a decent healthcare system.

In the first place, you need to have stashed away a phenomenal amount of money to have it last you to the end of the life expectancy that most Americans now look forward to enjoying. If “enjoying” is the operative term when what you’re looking at is twenty or thirty years of poverty. If “enjoying” is what one feels when confronted by this circumstance:

At the same time, other parts of the economy are closing in around her. Though her home is paid off, her property taxes have risen to nearly $14,000 a year, up from $5,000 when she bought the house 10 years ago. She was counting on the annuity [through AIG, not federally insured] to pay the taxes.

Fourteen thousand dollars in property taxes? For the love of GOD! I’m faced with the possibility that I won’t be able to stay in my paid-for home with $2,100 worth of property taxes. Fourteen thousand bucks is more than my entire Social Security income would be if I retired today. It’s almost as much as the gross Social Security income I will have if I retire at age 66.

Consider: with a total life savings of around $550,000—significantly more than the average American’s nest egg—my total gross income will be about $38,730. That’s GROSS, folks: the federal, state, county, and city governments all expect their cuts from that. Imagine what my net will be. I’ll leave the imagining to you, since that picture is more than I can bear at 3:30 in the morning.

Interestingly, 38 grand is too huge an income to give a pensioner a break from county property taxes; and in any event, the “break” is no exemption from the rip. If your income is under $12,000 a year, maybe the county will freeze your taxes at the amount where it stands when you apply. So if I were too poor to afford to dine on cat food, I could get my taxes frozen at 17% of my income. How white of the county.

There’s no way I can pay $2,100 out of the post-tax remains of that income and still eat. If the housing market hasn’t turned around in a couple of years, so that I can move out of this house and into a place in Sun City where the taxes and insurance are a little lower, I am screwed.

And darlin’s, if your mom is screwed today, just imagine the screwing you’re going to get when you reach old age. If over half a million dollars and a paid-off house are not enough in 2008, what will you need to stay in the middle class come 2038?

What’s needed here is not assiduous scrimping and smart investing. It’s political action.