Coffee heat rising

Water! Falling Out of the Sky!

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Who’d’ve thunk it? Last night we got fierce thunderstorms rolling through the Valley. And…rain! This wet stuff that fell right out of the sky onto the ground. Weird…

Seriously: it was one of the fiercest little freshets I’ve seen in awhile. Apparently it caused a fair amount of damage and — horrors!! — shut down a football game. Lightning apparently hit a house not far from here…looks like a condo development where I considered buying a place. This story claims it’s a house, but reportage in the local media leaves a lot to be desired. Like…you know…accuracy?

Three in the morning just now: the usual hour for the Little Old Lady Wake-up Call.

Went out to check the pool, figuring to find the Mess from Hell. But no! It was nowhere like a disaster area. This, thanks to the various workmen who inhabit the yard:

  • Gerardo’s crew beat back the palm tree mess just a week or so ago.
  • Pool Dude, who works some kinda miracle with the Hole in the Ground into Which to Pour Money, has kept the pool amazingly clean over the past some weeks. It was still OK as of this wee hour…just some leaves floating on the surface, which I scooped out easily with a net.
  • It’s too dark to see the roof, but no leaks made themselves evident…so I assume (hope!!) it’s OK. Probably was a real good thing that I forked over a few fistfuls of cash to have that thing worked on.

Hmmm…. Can’t see much in the dark, so further inspection of the Funny Farm will have to wait until tomorrow. I think Garage Repair Dude is supposed to show up tomorrow to fix the garage door. Hope so. Checking to see whether that thing is still closed — it could have blown open in the wind, since there’s a side door to the garage that would have invited some mighty gusts in.

…Nope! The side door slammed shut, apparently pretty early on. Don’t see a lot of mess on the floor out there. Can’t bring myself to go out on the west side and inspect that part of the yard…wouldn’t be able to see a lot in the dark, anyway. Plus there would be nothing I could do about it at this hour, anyway.

LOL! And — natcherly — now that I’m ready to crawl back under the covers, the Dawg wants to get up. Never fails!

😀

North Central: Neighborhood from Hell

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An entertaining discussion appeared this morning in the neighborhood Facebook page:
(I give up trying to format this thing! Sorry for the glitches…Facebook content just does NOT carry over into blog format with any consistency. Gaaaaah!)

Fernando M.
Top contributor
What’s going on with all of the cops and chopper?
Victoria H.
Top contributor
F’r cryin’ out loud. Fountain Hills looks better and better
Lily F.
Top Contributer
Listening in on the police scanner and it seems it was a break in/home invasion of some sort and they were trying to locate the suspect. He’s in custody now and we can all rest tonight ◡
Fernando M:

Top contributor They got him.

Beth M:
Fernando M. any details where they nabbed him?

Fernando M:
Beth M: at the third house in on 15th Ave and Harmont.

Fernando M.
Which house?!? We are on Harmont and 15th Drive!

Andrea R. A.:
Squad was parked at 17dr/Griswald. Squad car just flew past my house, heli is low. Squad car just down the street near neighbors house

Michelle B-I:
Andrea R.A. are they at the dead end near my moms?

Andrea R A
Michelle B-I yes they were now at Royal Palm

Aimey O B:
Andrea R. A.  there was one parked down here at 16th & Griswold also, for abiut 1/2 hr. Then we heard he was in the yard under a tree on royal palms, ‘3rd house west of 16dr red roof’ that’s when the helicopter left so assuming that’s where they apprehended him.

Andrea R.A:
Aimey Odom Bussing thanks for the update

Laura Rodriguez:
Thank you all for the updates! Woke up to the helicopters and knew I could count on our neighbors looking out for the neighborhood. Great to have neighbors with police scanners. Might need to get one.

Emily G.:
Laura R.  there’s an app, Scanner Radio

Fernando M:
They have a dog out now

Fernando M:
I’m listening to the police scanner and they are trying to surround someone. Preparing for “him” to jump the wall

Noël D:
Fernando M: did you hear them say it was from a break in/home invasion? I read from somewhere else it was someone running from a traffic stop

Emily W:
Top contributor
I hope everyone is ok. I’m glad they caught the person but it sounds like they did some harm first.

Emily W:
Top contributor
There’s a cop on the corner of 15th ave and royal palm. Not sure what’s going on though

Sonya V.
Been going on a VERY long time flying low, spotlights from helicopter in our yard, voices from helicopter but can’t understand what they are saying. 16th ave and las palmaritas. Any news yet on what’s going on?

Eric T:
I guess no sleep tonight going to be a long day tomorrow

Fernando M:
Royal palm and harmony alley

Fernando M:
I’m someone’s yard jumping to the alley

Fernando M:
He is in the church parking lot

Jessica L. G.:
Heard two loud bangs that woke us up about 30min ago, cops have surrounded the park since, husband saw someone across the street picking up something off the sidewalk on the park side, then ran north on 15th ave just before cops got here

Fernando M:
They just came over the speaker and said you are surrounded!

Aimey O.B.:
I was sitting at the kitchen table working (everyone else was asleep) & all of a sudden our entire backyard was lit up like daylight!! (16th dr & griswold) For several seconds! Freaked me out!! I woke up my fiancé & we watched as cops searched the alley rt behind our house w k-9 & followed them on the scanner!! Wont be falling off to sleep anytime soon after all that!!

Beth M:
I don’t know, I heard voices that sounded like it was from the copter and my backyard keeps getting lit up.

Gail G.O.:
Doesn’t sound like they had them surrounded.

Patti C:
There’s a police car on 17th drive and Harmont. Copter had been circling over my house with lights. I assumed it was something with the apartments or light rail but must be more than that

Andre W:
Top contributor
That glass of wine, didn’t realize anything strange was happening last night.

Jeanne D:
Wow that’s crazy

Ahhh yes. Business as usual here in our beautiful home…

Every time I think about moving to Fountain Hills (or the South of France), I’m reminded of the cop who chatted with me after the Great Home Invasion episode. I remarked to him that maybe I should move to Scottsdale or some such. He said — these are his words, indeed — “Don’t do that! We go to these things all over the Valley. It doesn’t matter where you live. This stuff happens all the time.”

And yea verily, even in stodgy, muffled Sun City, a year or two ago a couple of thugs invaded a home out there. They herded the homeowner’s male house guest into a bedroom and shot him in the head.

Unlikely they could have known the guy. The house guests would have been from out of town. He probably mouthed off to them.

What a place!

Twenty-First Century as Gigantic Rip-off

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Those of us who are decrepit enough to remember life in the late 1900s can surely attest that there were plenty of ripoffs on the float, back then in the “good” ole days. But jeez…

Every which way from Sunday, here’s somebody trying to siphon your money out of your wallet. I swear ta gawd!

Today I had to register the Dog Chariot. Every year or two (depending on how much you’re willing to pay at any one time), you have to trot your car into a state facility to get an emissions test, for which you have to pay about 20 bucks.

Once you pay, they give you a sheet of paper that you have to use to re-register your car. This year: the tab is $227 and change. In other words, it’s going to cost almost $250 to register a nine-year-old car. For one year.

I find this passing infuriating. Yes, I know: we need to pay to maintain the roads and hire highway patrolmen. But we already pay an exorbitant state income tax. And stiff sales taxes on everything that passes a cash register.

But evidently there’s nothing one can do about it.

For a change, though, this year’s ritual was not the unpleasant production of the past. Used to be, you’d drive in and find a dozen lanes, any one of them with ten or fifteen cars ahead of you. So you get in line and you wait and you wait and you wait and you wait and you wait and you…

…and you don’t have much choice of which line you get into. And this is August. The hottest month of the year in Arizona. (Understand: it was 112 here today…and that was actually a fairly balmy day.)

To my surprise, this time there were not very many cars and trucks ahead of me.

A worker motioned me to a line that had only one vehicle, and it was already inside the drive-thru.

So, incredibly, I didn’t have to wait long at all — only a few minutes.

Get in there…and usually they make you get out of the car and wait inside an uncomfortable booth: hot, stuffy, and claustrophobic.

This year, though, they seem to have done away with those. He didn’t even make me get out of the car!

And…it only took him a few minutes to do the job — not a quarter-hour or more. Forthwith he came back, handed me the paperwork, and said I was good to go!

Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! No hassles??????

Well.

Then you look at the paperwork.

The fee to register that nine-year-old vehicle is $227.77.

Can you imagine?

Two hundred and thirty bucks to drive a car I should have traded in four years ago?

Dayum. What do you suppose it costs to register a brand-new Venza? If they even still make them….

I don’t drive that car much. Now that I don’t have to schlep to jobs in Tempe or in Glendale, I rarely have any reason to bucket around the roads. Yeah: I drive to the grocery store, the Costco, and the occasional doctor’s or veterinarian’s office, but that’s about it.

If we had decent public transit here, I probably wouldn’t even own a car.

But we don’t, so I do.

There’s good reason not to feel safe on the city’s buses and trains. Mainly, the transients ride them for free (partly because on the train, no one is taking tickets, and partly because various organizations hand out free bus passes. And o’course, because they’re air-conditioned). Most of those folks are harmless. But some are…not. Many are ex-convicts. Most are drug users. Some are out of their heads with mental illness or the effects of street drugs. So…no. They’re not strangers you want to spend a lot of time with, in elbow-to-elbow seating. Or standing.

And that’s specifically why I don’t ride lovely Phoenix’s buses and vaunted trains.

So here we are in a city — and a state — where public transit is neither very practical nor very pleasant, and those of us who have to drive (that includes almost everyone) gets gouged for the privilege of putting our cars on the road. Don’t forget: this is not the only tax we pay. Gasoline is taxed liberally. Most retail products are taxed at the checkout counter (and points along the way thereto…). Power is taxed. Water is taxed. On and on it goes.

Not that one doesn’t want to support government and public services. But maybe the funds should be used intelligently?

Lordie! One extreme idea after another!

 

Report from the Hubs of Hades

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It’s 6:30 at night.

Storm clouds are blowing in as we scribble.

And the back-porch thermometer says it’s 105 in the shade.

Here in the coolest room in the house, loafing in the direct breeze from an air-conditioner vent, the thermometer says we have 80 degrees.

Wunderground puts the outside temp at 109, with a crackling 15% humidity.

Lovely Arizona. Why do people choose to live here?

***

Hm… Apparently I was too fried to finish this y’day.

It’s 3:30 in the morning — the usual annoying wake-up call for the superannuated. Don’t get old, kids! It’s one irritant after another… 😮

At any rate: 3:30 a.m. and we’re down to a chilly 110, and partly cloudy. Sez Wunderground, anyway. Tomorrow — well, today actually, it being the wee hours as we scribble — we’re supposed to have a high of 116, “mostly sunny.” Ten percent chance of rain both days.

It’s that 10% that’s a killer: it means humidity will be relatively high. Truth to tell, 110 on a dry day is tolerable. But add a “chance of rain” — or even just a little humidity — and you get truly miserable heat.

August is always a miserable month, though. It being the 29th, we shouldn’t have more than another two weeks or so of this stuff. Mid-September will be hot, but not unholy hot.

**

Welp. It’s almost 4 in the morning. Just won another Outspell game (you see how bored one gets in one’s dotage…). I’m going back to bed.

I hope…

Out and About in Loony-Toonsville

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Lordie. Just ONCE for a whole day to go by in quiet, level-headed sanity!!

LOL! Unfortunately, you do not get into a car in these precincts and expect sanity of any kind to ensue. 😀

What a place!

So…the other day we had the excellent Haddox Electric over, doing battle with the latest Adventure in Homeownership. They got everything fixed…took two guys half a day of wrestling with the infrastructure here, so I figured their $400+ bill was fair and gave them a check.

This morning Haddox calls me up and tell me the check has bounced.

What??!? That account has several thousand dollah in it.

Call the credit union; confirm that to be true. The airhead I speak with, however, hasn’t a clue as to why a perfectly valid check would have been bounced.

Call Haddox; arrange for them to charge the bill on a credit card.

Hop in the car; drive to the downtown CU office, which is much less busy than the one on campus and seems to be inhabited by pretty experienced staff.

Traffic: fukkin’ HIDEOUS! Took forever to get down there. About halfway through this be-tangled journey, I realize I should’ve just gone out to the campus branch. The drive is further but the hassle factor is milder.

Belly up to the teller’s counter.

She says nothing was wrong with my check. She says it cleared.

We are mystified by their claim that it flubbed. But she, being a bankin’ type, is suspicious. She says to be careful that it’s not a scam:

a) That the call really did come from the beloved electricians’ office; and
b) What does someone who answers the phone call from me say is going on.

Drive and drive and drive and drive and drive through slums that grow direr as the days pass. Drive through the Old Neighborhood: the beautiful historic Encanto District. Think how much I miss my splendid house there, how much I miss my neighbors. How much I don’t miss the burglars and the wannabe rapists…ohhhh well.

Drive through a couple of neighborhoods where I imagine I might like to buy a house that could get me out of the clutches of Tony the Romanian Landlord.

* Realize there really isn’t another centrally located neighborhood as good as this one; certainly not one I could afford.

* Realize I have to resign myself to a Battle of the Wills with that Romanian bastard. Dayum.

Finally get home.

It’s 109 in the shade of the back porch…and 77 in the “guest room” where Ruby & I have taken refuge.

Every other room in the house is best described as “baking.” Hovering around 90 degrees. The AC is just not up to its job.

Ruby and I have been trying to sleep in the “guest” room. Problem is, a twin bed just doesn’t do the job for a human and a bodacious little dog. We have plenty of room on the queen-size bed in the master bedroom. But it’s hotter than the hubs in there.

How can I count the ways I don’t wanna buy another bed???

And what am I doing to do with the twin bed that’s in there? Which, we might add, was NOT a cheapie.

Well…how obvious is this???  Duh!

I call a couple of movers and have them move the twin bed out of the “guest” bedroom/defunct TV room into the master bedroom, and shift the queen-size bed into the “guest” bedroom.

Et voilà! Problemo solved!

Well. I’ll get on that later….

 

 

Eeeeek!

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Not to say A-a-a-a-a-k!

Just saw the BIGGEST RAT I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!

She was lurking in the garage, and when she saw me she was just as startled as I was in spotting her. She shot underneath the dryer, where she presumably is hiding now.

Called Ruby the Corgi, who came trotting out to investigate.

Corgis are ratters. One of the things they’re bred for is chasing rats around ships and barns.

But by the time Her Majesty arrived, Rattie had dodged out of sight. Dayum!

Well, I have rat poison now. Been reluctant to put it out, lest Ruby find it and munch on it. Or…lest she find a deceased gourmet rat and eat that.

Tossed several pellets of the stuff in behind the washer and dryer, and then put some inside a rat trap along with a little slab of dog food, hoping maybe the combined deliciousness will lure Rattie into that.

Rattie, it develops, is very smart. She has exactly zero intention of strolling into a trap.

That would make her several degrees smarter than a dog, we might note.

I’ll have to keep Ruby out of the garage now, to be sure she doesn’t get into the scrumptious rat pills. Or find a rat roast to munch out there.

This is gonna be a PITA of the first water….

Speaking of water, as we scribble the much-vaunted California storm is making its way into the Valley. It’s thundering away out there, the air having chilled down to a crisp 71 degrees. We’re told to expect an 80% chance of rain and light winds.

Hmmmm…well, it may rip and roar a bit in our parts, but I doubt we’ll see any rain here. The thunder is pretty far off in the distance…I think the alleged thunderstorms are well to the north of the ‘Hood.

San Berdoo apparently got something over 13 inches of rain with this storm. Almost 12 inches in Riverside. Looks like the main part of the thing is bearing toward Nevada. Pretty startling images from the low desert of California…egad! Wunderground is predicting a .o5% chance (whoop de dooo!) of rain here, with a low of 71 during the night. Eeek. Be scared. Be very scared.

And lookee here!  I failed to “publish” this adventure. Apparently.

Trying again…