Coffee heat rising

Uncategorized

Moving on…

by

Mercifully, the much beloved Abby Perry, proprietor of I Pick Up Pennies and author of Frugality for Depressives, is back home and back in action after a brush with a potentially life-threatening ailment while she and her mom, Donna Freedman, were at FinCon. They were able to get to a hospital in San Diego, where the medicos succeeded in identifying the bacterium that had attacked her and beat it off.

So, welcome home, Abby! And…keep on truckin’.

The dust having settled here at the Funny Farm, in another hour I need to make this month’s Costco run — the shopping list is surprisingly short, lhudly sing huzzah — and then get to work on a) the video that we hope will land a grant to support the Boob Book and b) the ever-growing list of house and yard chores that I’ve neglected.

In the general hysteria over the car purchase adventure, I’ve generally neglected life, the universe, and all that. Late last night while cleaning out the 74 unopened emails, I came across an essay I was supposed to have critiqued for an anthology whose board I volunteered to serve on. Ohhh well…10 days late and a dollah short… So by the light of the moon I found myself plodding through some truly execrable writing and trying to formulate a polite way to say “the highest and best use of this thing is to be run through the shredder and turned into compost.”

Got a great idea for the P&S News blog but have not managed to shift the engine into gear to write that.

Have not…

…sprayed the bermudagrass that’s taken over the poolside flowerbed
…cut back the rampant cat’s claw and Lady Banks rose that are smothering the pool equipment like jungle overgrowth burying the ruins of a Mayan village
…raked up the mountain of limes dropping from the tree
…fertilized the citrus
…ordered some more “beneficial nematodes” from Arbico
…tested & adjusted the pool chemicals
…brushed the dog
…vacuumed up the dog hair
…wrestled the bike into the car and schlepped it up to get its tires repaired
…cleaned out the now empty garage cabinets where the Dog Chariot’s back seats were stored
…trimmed back the elephant’s foot plants
…watered the vitex and the feral olive tree
…contributed to the FB author’s group I  joined awhile back
…contributed to the Author’s Guild website
…rejoined the Chamber (grump!) (or, around here, more like “Trump,” something I’d prefer not to have to listen to)
…joined up Toastmasters
…done any paying work

Mea gulpa!

The September AMEX bill, the one with the miraculously low general spending balance, was at the same time one of the highest AMEX bills I’ve ever racked up: I charged the $4,000 down payment for the Venza. So I had to pony up $4,579 in a month when living expenses (exclusive of utilities & the like) only ran to $579. Drat!

On the other hand…that card has a kickback. So we should soon be seeing a nice balance in that department.

Let’s hope the English major math is correct that I’ll about break even at the end of each of the coming five years, despite the car bills of almost $400 a month. This is the stuff of Bag Lady Syndrome.

Well, the coffee is consumed and the hour is late. And so, away!

This: THE most beautiful…

by

This has got to be the single most beautiful vocal/instrumental performance I’ve ever heard.

Oh god. My favorite singer with my favorite classical instrumentalist. Beyond ecstasy.

I wonder if they’ve made a CD? If so, I may buy it just for the privilege of owning a physical artifact of these two together.

Amazon Update

by

So the Kindle people write back and insist they can’t see any sign of my having set up a sale for the 30 Pounds / 4 Months book, in spite of the fact that I’m quite sure I did so.

Ugh. I am simply too discouraged to fart with this any more. Life is too short.

But I will ask Wonder E-Book Dude (whose work gets more amazing every time you turn around — this guy is AMAZINGLY good, especially if you have an ebook with complex formatting or with images)…yes, E-Book Dude if he will please convert the cookbook to ePub suitable for Smashwords. Then I can get it up on a lot of venues beyond Amazon, and after that I’ll start trying to plump it through face-to-face contact and selling hard copy in outlets other than bookstores.

And now here’s SDXB, bringing a halt to any further work for the next few hours. ‘Bye!

Don’t wanna work Monday

by

So I should be, at the very goddamned leastest, posting links to posts advertising my wares on FaceBook (two business pages, several “groups,” and my timeline: a half-dozen separate time-consuming mind-numbing actions), Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.

I should be hustling some new business for The Copyeditor’s Desk.

I should be writing new copy for Plain & Simple Press.

I should be writing some sort of personal-finance post for Funny about Money.

I should be trying, once again, to get into Goodreads so as to hustle my wares there, even though that cause appears to be too forlorn to waste more time on.

But y’know what?

Yeah. That’s correct:

i…

don’t…

wanna…

If it looks like work, if it sounds like work, if it smells like work, if it feels like work: I don’t wanna do it.

That’s not to say I’ve totally diddled the day away, so far.

compostThe new cute little composter arrived. It’s “Cute” (the maker’s term) because it really is quite small: maybe a third the size of the one the fake beekeeper destroyed.

At first as I unpacked it from its cardboard box, I was disappointed. Then thought…waaaitaminit here. Let’s not be stoopid about this.

As a practical matter, smaller is probably better. First, it’s a lot more manageable. The old one, when it was full, could be almost impossible to turn, so it took forever and a day to compost stuff — and I had to reach in there and toss stuff by hand. This thing will be easy to roll even if it’s full.

Second, the manufacturer has made two exceptionally smart improvements in the thing’s design. a) The lid and its opening are MUCH larger compared to the overall size of the tub; and b) they’ve developed a hinge held together with a long, sturdy pin. If you remove the pin, you can lift the lid off the tub, making it easy to lift or dump the compost out.

So. I decided I don’t just like the Cute Composter, I downright love it.

The little guy is now in his place by the side of the house, with a pile of leaves, exhausted potting soil from dead plant pots, and kitchen trimmings in his belly.

Yay! We soon will have compost, and this fall we will have a vegetable garden again, for the first time since the memory of Fatlady runneth not to the contrary.

Gerardo just blew in and blew out; while he was here, he had the underlings gather up some relatively seed-free dry leaves and deposit them in the little composter. It’s full just now, but I expect those will pack down as they start to degrade and as I sprinkle a little water in there. By planting time this fall, there should be some nice compost for the pots that will hold chard, lettuce, spinach, mâche, and some LGOs.

The writer’s group I belong to puts out an annual anthology. They’ve put out a call for submissions — theme has to do with “celebration.” I have an essay that fits, though it fits in a distant way.

So I diddled away a fair amount of the morning editing and tightening that — their length limit is 3,000 words, and the lash-up runs to a little over 3400 words. Managed to cut it down a bit. Last year they accepted an essay of about 3400 words, but they had a different editor. WTF…we’ll see what happens. Nothing ventured…

My son has wondered if he should throw his $20,000 emergency fund at a refinance of his house, given that this could cut his mortage payment by about 300 much-needed dollars a month. His dad advised him absolutely positively not to do that. When the subject came up yesterday, I seconded his dad’s motion. Discussion ensued; the question was left up in the air.

So I called Wonder-Financial-Advisor today. He thirded the motion. We believe he should hang onto the cash, given the still amazingly low interest rates.

The dad has urged M’hijito to make no move until after his 102-year-old grandmother passes away. The suggestion, never fully articulated, is that money could be forthcoming from the estate. Said dad is in charge of the grandmother’s finances and so should have some idea what he’s talking about.

But the question is: WHAT estate?

The old gal has been living in a nursing home for many years. She’s blind and deaf. By now whatever money she might have accrued must have been absorbed by her care. How could there be anything — ANYTHING — left?

Well, I personally don’t think there is any such thing. But why the ex- would advise my son along those lines not once but several times…hm? It escapes me.

Almost.

The immortal grandmother was the daughter — the only child — of a man who owned a lumber company that served Denver, Colorado. He was a prominent local businessman. When he died of advanced old age in 1977, his funeral was overrun by well-wishers from the business community. A LOT of people showed up.

I don’t know what happened to that business. But if he sold it, dollars to donuts he sold it for a substantial profit.

His background was Amish. As that factoid might lead you to imagine, he lived quietly and conservatively. Not sparsely, but frugally. I suppose it’s not outside the realm of possibility that there was a trust. That could have protected the estate from the clutches of the nursing home’s collection agents.

And if that’s the case, there could be a small amount of money there. It wouldn’t have to be much to solve my son’s financial problems, such as they are.

So I diddled away some more of the day on the Internet, trying to track down the old man and, mostly failing that, trying to find some trace of the business.

Total fail on the latter. Inconclusive on the first. Became bored and so brought that to a halt.

It’s now the middle of the afternoon, and I still do not feel up, in any wise, to working. and so…

Away.