Infographics! I love them for their sheer sassy silliness. Here’s an entertainment I ran across on Mashable: Mac vs. PC People. Herein we learn that Macinoids are likely to be older than PC lovers; PC enthusiasts are more likely to live in the suburbs than Mac cultists, Mac fans like modern art while PCites prefer impressionism, and on and amusingly on.
What’s your preference? And how do your other preferences, lifestyle attributes, and personal quirks align with the alleged characteristics described at Mashable?
Pour moi, I prefer the Mac for some of its traits and the PC for others. Wish we could have a computer called, say, the Wallaby, that would blend them both.
{love!}
What’s so great about the Mac?
• Customer service. The world’s most awesome customer service!
• Fewer virus issues. Daring Mac aviators sometimes even fly naked: no virus software at-tall.
• Fewer crashes. Many fewer crashes.
• Fewer update hassles. It just does its thing. And when Apple publishes an update, it rarely requires a vast learning curve.
• Classy style. Oh, I love the look of the beautiful minimalist iMac!
OMG! It changed my life!
And what do I love about the PC?
• Speed. I think the PC runs faster than the Mac, especially for multitasking. A Mac really, truly does not like you to run more than two or three programs at a time.
• Keyboard commands. Garrrrrhhhhh! Word for Mac is still relatively user-friendly compared to the PC versions with the accursed “ribbon.” BUT…all your beloved keyboard commands? The damn things are Mac system commands. Write macros at your peril. Basically, this means point-click-point-click-point-click-point-click ad infinitium nauseum. If you’re used to speeding things along with keyboard commands, making the switch to Word for Mac means a real cut in productivity.
• Cheaper. But…uhm…you get what you pay for.
• Compatibility. Most people have PCs. Some programs for the Mac, such as Quicken, don’t translate to the PC platform.
• Availability: Lines of buyers never stream out the purveyor’s door, wind around the building, and extend out into the parking lot.
Quirks? I live in the city (but wish I was back on the ranch), like impressionism and some modern art, can’t afford to throw parties, prefer real news (the Times) to play-nooz (USA Today), love Rachel Maddow, love Jon Stewart, and wouldn’t be caught dead on a Vespa.
The other day we heardreports of widespread pessimism about the economy. Unemployment is dropping, the stock market is up, and the economy appears to be growing. But nevertheless, the number of Americans who think we’re headed for Hell on a skateboard has risen some 13 percent. The price of gold is shooting toward the stratosphere, supposedly because investors worldwide are losing faith in the dollar’s strength and because the person on the street is having to sell her earrings to pay her mortgage. Meanwhile, the value of residential real estate continues to plummet, the drop so extreme that it suspiciously resembles the dread double-dip. Experts say this will continue until foreclosures abate, another way of saying “no end in sight.”
Be scared. Be very scared.
It’s not surprising that gold bugs would scuttle for shelter under the gilded refrigerator after the startling threat by Standard & Poor to downgrade the United States’ credit rating if the politicos don’t quit squabbling and do something to repair the wounded economy. If I could afford some gold, I’d probably be squeezing under there with them. On the other hand, I’m not in any rush to pawn my earrings.
Let’s get real.
Yesterday, U.S. stocks ended at a three-year high, a sharp recovery from the drop after the S&P’s dire warning. The Wall Street Journal, hardly a bastion of liberal Pollyannism, attributes this to consumer optimism (!) and strong earnings by “industrial heavyweights.”
Elsewhere, observers suggest that the S&P’s pronouncement could work to improve the country’s debt outlook. A credit downgrade, if it happened, would erode investor confidence in U.S. companies worldwide. The one-in-three chance of such a disaster just might push the demagogues on both sides of the political aisle to set aside ideology long enough to work together to resolve the debt problem. In that case, treasury prices could rise as spending is cut and taxes are increased. And if a downgrade actually did happen, causing the stock market to drop around 6 or 8 percent, investors would flock to safer havens: government bonds.
It’s worth remembering, though, that the state of the national debt may not be as dire as we’re led to believe. Writing at TPM, Brian Beutler notes that by historical standards, the debt is nowhere near as desperate as people think, and he provides graphs to prove it. He points out that the problem we need to address is unemployment:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides the data that suggests Congress’s priorities are out of whack. Currently, civilian unemployment is higher than at any point in the post-war period save for a brief spike in the early 1980s when the Federal Reserve briefly used contractionary monetary policy to fight inflation. Already its clear that unemployment is falling much more slowly than it did in 1981. And when people get back to work, revenues will climb, and deficits will shrink on their own.
As for real estate, despite the Bloomberg report that puts Phoenix at the bottom of a declining market, an April market update based on Arizona MLS listings reveals that the total number of active listings has dropped and sales are up 26 percent over the past 30 days. The supply of homes on the market here is now down to what has traditionally been regarded as normal, a 3.8-month supply. Meanwhile, in another hard-hit real estate market, Florida’s Miami-Dade County, March sales are are up 84 percent over March 2010 sales, largely driven by foreign investors.
So, it would appear that pessimism is in the mind of the beholder.
Me, I’m feeling a great deal less grim than I felt at this time last year. As ill-paid as it is, work seems more abundant: despite skyrocketing food and fuel costs, eight sections of comp and writing courses at the community college will support me in the style to which I intend to remain accustomed, and if the budding new client relationship works out, The Copyeditor’s Desk will be set for quite awhile. The happy stock market has revived my retirement savings nicely. Despite the dismal loss on the downtown house and the drop in value in my own residence, my net worth is $21,660 more than it was in August of 2007.
How about you? Are you feeling better, worse, or pretty much the same about the economy, compared to your sentiments a year ago?
I’m driving down the road headed back from campus to the Funny Farm and thinking, “Good grief! Three thousand dollars is more than a fourth of the savings I’ve earmarked to supplement Social Security for the next year. That ‘supplement’ represents half my month-to-month living allowance. So we’re talking about disappearing three months’ worth of money for living expenses.”
Furthermore, think I, the prospect of sitting in a dentist’s chair while the guy bangs away at my mouth for two hours sounds…well, counterproductive. As in a very, very bad idea.
Then it occurs to me to wonder whether two crowns are really necessary. Dr. Davis, he of the pricey parking lot, once opined that though the chipped crown on the bottom molar is unaesthetic, a) no one can see it unless I open my mouth in public and yawn like a hippopotamus, and b) it’s perfectly functional. As for the broken tooth on top, the new dentist polished the surface smooth, so that it doesn’t irritate my tongue (in fact, it irritates a lot less than it did after he filled the first break in it). It also seems to be perfectly functional. It doesn’t hurt, and since my teeth are already so dull I can’t chew up a normal bite-sized piece of meat, there’s no change in my ability to chew or eat. hmmm….
The light dawns...
INSIGHT!
If you can get a second opinion for a doctor’s diagnosis and you can get a second opinion for a veterinarian’s diagnosis, why the heck can’t you get a second opinion for a dentist’s recommendation?
If this tooth were so badly damaged it needed to be crowned, wouldn’t it hurt? Not very much of it broke off…certainly not a big chunk, as this guy described it. I would have noticed if a fourth of a large molar had fallen into the mouthful of rice and canned beans I was eating at the time. It says here that the stuff underneath the white enamel of your teeth is called dentin, that it’s yellow, and that if it’s exposed, what you get is sensitivity. I’ve been guzzling iced tea, bourbon on the rocks, and hot coffee for the past two days, with nary a twinge.
Bounce out of the car and into the house, grab the phone, and call Old Doc Davis’s office. Ask if he’ll see me. The receptionist whose head I nearly bit off the last time I was there is polite, if you can imagine. She arranges an appointment on Monday.
Grab a mirror and a flashlight. Take a real close look at that busted tooth. It’s white all over, just the way it looked in the digital image New Doc made of it. That is to say, it’s the same color and consistency of all the other teeth in my head. Pretty clearly, this guy doesn’t think there’s any urgency to crown it; otherwise, he wouldn’t have let his office assistant make an appointment at the end of May.
Maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t need to be crowned at all. Or, if it does, maybe there’s no reason to remove the old crown on the bottom tooth and change that out. And even if that is necessary, maybe it doesn’t have to be done in one long torture session.
And if I really do need two crowns, maybe Davis will do them cheaper.
So, here I am, back at the dentist’s office, cooling my heels until he can squeeze me in to deal with the latest little emergency. God only knows how much this will cost. Nothing, I hope. But we don’t bank on hope, do we?
Saturday night the filling he installed a month ago—less than a month ago—crumbled and fell out. with any luck, he’ll stand behind his work, since I haven’t been chewing ice or cracking walnuts with my molars.
However, in all honesty, I suspect he can’t be blamed. The pain from the torn rib muscle has revived my bruxing habit. Well, the bruxing probably never goes away: I’m sure I still clench my teeth on the rare occasions when I’m sleeping. But in the past week, when every minor task like lifting the dog’s dish off the floor has brought a surge of agony, I catch myself clenching my teeth to force myself to keep moving through the pain. When you unconsciously clench, your bite can exert a pressure of 140 pounds per square inch, which no doubt doesn’t help a filling compound.
What with the cost of gas and the ever-rising grocery bills, I no longer can stay on budget. Over the past few months, I’ve run $200 to $320 over budget every month, at first because of the occasional extravagance like the shoes and the cheap jewelry and now simply because it’s costing every penny budgeted just to live. One modest extraordinary expense puts me in the red—and since the budget includes $100 to $150 for unplanned expenses, that means the base cost of living has risen about $100 to $170 a month.
To make up the difference, I’ve been raiding monthly savings (a.k.a. “diddle-it-away money”). But that is a very finite source. If the overspending continues at that rate, my little mini-emergency fund soon will be gone…and then what?
I can use my tax refund, I suppose, but that also is finite.
Welp, it looks like this is what’s gonna have to happen here:
1. Must replenish that short-term emergency savings account; and 2. Must get spending under control.
Putting money back into savings turns out to be relatively easy: instead of transferring a paycheck over to the joint mortgage payment account, I just moved it into the ravished savings account.
I’ve been putting all my community college pay into a joint account with M’hijito, which holds money to cover current and future mortgage payments. Since my share is $8,604 a year and I net $10,800 when I’m teaching three sections a semester, obviously I’m earning more than enough to cover that bill.
Yes. The operative phrase there is when I’m teaching three sections. There’s no guarantee that I’ll always be able to teach three-and-three. First, the school has no obligation to hire me to teach the maximum number of sections available to adjuncts; and second, even when the chair assigns me to teach three sections, if one class doesn’t make, then I don’t get paid for it. The magazine-writing section is particularly iffy. Each semester we’ve watched with bated breath, expecting it to crash in flames. So far it’s always filled at the last minute, but in any given semester there’s a good chance it won’t make. A course load of three-and-two would net $9,000, a scant $400 more than the amount needed to pay my share of the mortgage.
So…as you can see, raiding my pay for $916, the amount I grabbed last week, is ill-advised.
I will use my summer pay (net $3,840) to live on while the extreme heat here pushes living costs to extreme heights. But that won’t begin to materialize before mid-July. In the interim, the horse starves while the grass grows. During the second half of May, all of June, and the first half of July, I’ll have exactly zero income other than Social Security, and so will have to live on savings. And that means I can’t be running over the budget.
So. “Must get spending under control” surfaces as the most important part of the two strategies, and the most difficult.
These budget overruns have been happening while utility bills are very low. I’ve hardly run the heat all winter, and in the past couple of weeks only turned the AC on a few times to knock the heat in the house down enough to sleep at night. Air-conditioning bills will add about $140 a month to the power bill and about $50 a month to the water bill.
How to make $190 materialize out of a budget that’s stretched to the max? Well…not sure.
• Avoid driving, to the extent possible.
All the extra cost here is coming from gasoline. As much as I try to keep it down, what was an $80/month bill just a few weeks ago has jumped to $120+ per month. The weekly trips to the Scottsdale Business Association’s breakfast meetings will end when summer school starts in July, since I’ll have to be in front of a classroom by 7:00 a.m. four days a week. I may have to weasel out of those sooner, though. It’s a wash, though: the school’s about as far away as the restaurant where SBA meets. All errands will need to be folded in with trips to campus, and shopping will have to take place along that route.
What this means in practical terms: I can not drive anyplace for socializing, curiosity, or fun.
• Cheapie down the food bill
More beans, less meat. Unfortunately we’re coming to the end of the season when veggies will grow in my meager garden, so lettuce and other veggies will have to come from the grocery store. I’ll need to buy produce of lesser quality from cheaper stores than Safeway.
• Quit drinking all beer and wine.
That one’s a no-brainer.
• Short the dog on the quality of her food
Watch the ethnic stores, which sometimes run a little cheaper, for inexpensive chicken and pork.
• Let the hair grow out.
Gonna have to give up on the short hairstyle, I’m afraid. Long hair doesn’t have to be cut every four to six weeks.
• Reinstitute the detailed, tightly categorized budgeting system for discretionary spending.
I’d thought I could get rid of the OCD stuff and just keep a running tab: $800 – x, y, and z as the costs came along. But apparently that’s giving me a false sense of confidence. I need to know, at any given time, how much I’ve spent on items like gas, food, clothing, and the like, and how much is available to spend. This does allow me to shift spending in response to unplanned expenses and increased costs.
I figure I drink three bottles of wine a month and maybe three four- or six-packs of extremely fancy beer. At $10/bottle, the wine is running $30 a month, and the $9 packs of beer would add up to $27 a month, for a total, with tax, of $62.35. No haircut represents a saving of $50 a month. We’re at $112 right there. Since gas prices sure aren’t gonna go down and I’m already restricting my driving as much as possible, about the best we can hope for is to keep the monthly gasoline bill stable. That’s leaves $78 a month that will have to come out of groceries, at least until my summer pay starts. But let’s remember that, absent unplanned expenses, I’m already running as much as $170 over budget, before the summer bills hit. So the real amount that needs to be economized, with sumer y-cumin’ in, could be somewhere between $178 and $248. A month.
Wow! That’s a lot of beans, eh?
§ § §
Update
Well, no. That wasn’t the new filling that crumbled and fell out of my mouth two days ago. It was the tooth itself.
That’s right. About a quarter of the tooth just fell apart and broke off, for no good reason other than old age and probable bruxism.
So. Instead of one new crown, to replace the chipped crown I’ve been delaying fixing because it’s not doing any harm, now I need two new crowns. The broken molar is in the upper jaw directly above the crown. If my jaws are going to fit together right, both crowns need to be fixed. Now, not later.
For the crowns alone, not counting a new $350 night guard, the tab will be $2,695! And now I’ll have four gold teeth glinting in the sun every time I smile or open my mouth to speak. Lovely.
That’s my entire tax refund!
I’d planned to use that to help me get by during the two months when no pay will be coming in, and then use whatever remained to further delay the time that I’ll have to take a drawdown from my brokerage and IRA accounts.
It’ll have to be done as soon as they can get me in. With the sharp edges smoothed off, my teeth no longer fit together evenly, so my bite is lopsided. Just imagine the headache, jaw pain, and ear-buzzing that will cause.
Oh well.
It’ll certainly make this year’s medical bills tax-deductible, too, just like 2010’s.
Okay, we have no idea how many days into Lent we are, because we are innumerate and cannot count up a total if the figure to be calculated exceeds the number of our fingers and toes. Therefore, let us offer up the last couple of thanks to God, who has more important human errors to marvel at.
Lenten thanks, Day 39
Dogs, God…thanks for making dogs. Nice microcosm of the in-Your-image paradigm: a creature at once magnificent, hideous, merciful, merciless, kindly, fierce, forgiving, angry, best friend of humanity, dangerous nemesis.
Lenten thanks, Day 40
Thank you, God, for making the human a musical creature.
At the risk of enraging Her, I’d say this has been a Good Friday from Hell. Except it really hasn’t—by midday it was hugely redeemed.
The Cassowary is happily chasing tennis balls around the house. She is not vomiting and shitting blood, as expected, and since she’s not doing that now she probably won’t be, at least not anytime soon. I hurt all over my body but probably will get over it in a week or two.
The emergency trip to the vet set me back only $90, somewhat less than expected. Thank God (set that type in Lenten purple!) I had not made my usual start-of-the-billing-cycle run on Costco…we’ll be holding off on buying groceries for awhile! The nocturnal trip to the Mayo’s ER should set me back little or nothing, if the pricey Medigap policy works as advertised.
oohhhhhhhhhhh what a night, what a day!
But things could be worse. Much worse.
Earlier this week, in the midst of rehearsing a performance of Tavener’s Lament for Jerusalem (listen! the choral part is on the far side of the orchestral section) and fielding what appears to be an infinite number of semester-end student papers and reading an ARC for The Client (well…the favorite Client) and seeking out The Pup of 2011, I took it into my feeble little brain to do a little terraforming in the backyard. Building and reinforcing a berm to hold water under the big orange tree (rather than having it flow downhill under the back gate and into the alley), I hunker down on the ground, reach out simian-style, grab a 5-pound rock, lift it…and damn near faint from the stab of pain that penetrates my chest.
It feels like the stiff waistband on my jeans has shoved its way through the fat and come up under the ribs and yanked on the rib cage, in an up-and-out motion.
Holy God, what pain!
At first I thought, “Have I perforated my liver? Where is the liver, anyway?” Then thought I must have fractured a rib. As the wave of pain receded, I realized it felt exactly the way your achin’ back feels when you first put it out. Concluded it was probably a muscle spasm. After I caught my breath, I went on about my business. This seemed like it ought to be hunky and dory, except…
Over the next day or two, it got worse. Progressively worse. A lot worse.
Last night I had to lie down on the floor to fish a tennis ball out from under a piece of furniture, whence it had fled Cassie the Corgie. Only way I could reach it was to lie on my back and stick my arm under the cabinet as far as I could reach. Success…ball back in the welcoming jaws of the dog….and…
I could. not. get. off. the. floor.
No. The torso hurt so much I couldn’t lift myself off the ground. All the phone extensions were a long way away, and up on top of other pieces of furniture.
Uh oh.
It took a while, I don’t know how long, before I could force myself through the surge of agony required to climb to my feet. Omigod, it hurt!
So I staggered down the hall, grabbed an icepack out of the freezer, and lay down on the bed. After a bit, this seemed to calm things down, so I moved on with life: cleaned up the kitchen in a half-assed way and went to bed.
Along about 1:30, the usual insomniac awakening occurred. Dog wanted to go out. I needed to go to the bathroom. Went to climb out of the bed, and oh my GOD what pain! Take-your-breath-away pain; as in literally I can’t breathe. Managed to get the dog off the bed—getting her back up there was out of the question, and getting myself back onto that elevated bedstead was a bit unlikely, too. Began to wonder if I’d broken something after all. Or done more serious damage.
Finally about 2:30 a.m. I presented myself at the emergency room. The advantage of going to the Mayo in the wee hours is that you actually get some attention, contrary to what you will experience at any other ER in the city. I was out of there by 4:00, bearing a doctor’s opinion that I’d probably torn a muscle but not broken a rib and carrying a prescription for an addictive painkiller. {sigh}
Back to bed; out of sheer exhaustion, fell asleep and stayed asleep until around 7:30. Looked up the addictive painkiller online; decided some things are worse than a terminal backache situated in your ribs.
Had time between the end of breakfast and choir call to putter around the yard. Out front, discovered I could lift my arms well enough to pull off some of the desert willow’s new suckers, which have sprouted since it was so massively mutilated by the roofing vandals. Cassie is also puttering around the front yard. I look up and notice she’s digging and…and eating. What????
She’s in an area that was covered by an overgrown bougainvillea, until Gerardo trimmed it back so Jack the Handyman could paint, by way of repairing some of the hail damage. Mine is a corner lot, and so every passing turkey that drives by dumps trash on it. Once a month Gerardo comes over and, among other things, gathers the fast-food wrappers and drink cups to haul them to the dump.
So she could be eating the remains of a Burger King or a McDonald’s. Or…
The neighbor across the street has declared war on the roof rats. She puts rat poison out along the tops of her block walls. And where does a sickened rat go to die? Right: under the shrubbery. Under, for example, an overgrown bougainvillea.
I can’t find the remains of any animal—no feathers, no fur, no beak, no bones. If anything organic and animal was there, it’s decomposed in the leaves and compost from the boug. But Cassie’s mouth has recently been full, she’s going smack, smack, smack, and she stinks. She smells of some sort of chemical. The ground where she was digging has a similar stink.
I call the vet’s. Her assistant says, “Can you be here by 10:00?” It’s ten to ten. I say, “I’m on my way.” I scoop a bunch of the smelly dirt into a plastic dog, toss it and the dog into the car, and race to the veterinary, wending my way around every moron in the city who feels compelled to get in front of me and drive 10 mph under the limit!
We arrive at the vet’s. They park us in the very examining room where I had to say good-bye to Anna the Ger-shep. Then they come and take Cassie away from me. I sit there and start to cry.
Some time later, the vet comes in. Her opinion? In a nutshell: I dunno. They can’t tell anything from the amorphous crud I’ve hauled in. The dog seems OK, but it’s probably too early to see anything. The biggest risks are that she’s swallowed something that could harm her gut or that she indeed has eaten a poisoned rat or mouse. The vet thinks there’s some probability that even if she has consumed a dead rodent, she may be OK, warnings on the outside a the rat poison box to the contrary. At a bit of a loss, she suggests we try a prophylactic course of vitamin K, which is what they give animals that have swallowed rat poison, and pray for the best.
At 11:01 a.m., I stumbled into the house with the dog, unwashed, untooth-brushed, and swathed in dirty jeans and a sweaty T-shirt. Choir call for the Good Friday concert is at 11:30. I wrap a pill in a slice of chicken, hand it to the dog, and run for the shower. Arrive at the choir room at 11:27 with wet hair, face free of make-up, and body barely clad in a pullover dress.
What was it the ER doc said? Slow down and let that injured muscle rest! Oh well.
The music was just awesome! We sang the Taverner lament to a marvelous orchestral setting, directly after the stations of the cross. The effect was stunning. The centerpiece of the senior choir is a small ensemble of professional and semiprofessional singers who are capable of carrying the day. Our director had selected two soloists—an alto and a soprano—to sing the parts in the recurring “cosmic laments,” and they were both splendid. What a privilege to be allowed to play a tiny part in supporting such wonderful performers.
So that erased the Not-So-Good from Good Friday.
It’s almost 6:00 p.m. I’ve dosed myself with a fine dinner and my favorite analgesic (alcohol!), and still the little dog needs to go for a walk. By the time I’ve limped around the block with her, I will be capable of nothing more.
And so, soon, to bed. Happy Passover, Happy Easter, Happy Whatever to all of you.
A couple on the choir drives a Prius around town. They live on the west side—in Sun City West, which is quite a ways to the west—and so to get to the activities they enjoy in their retirement, they have to do a substantial amount of driving.
Yesterday evening at choir they reported that the Prius’s batteries died, to the tune of thirty-three hundred dollars! Yes. That’s $3,300 for new Prius batteries. The batteries were warranteed for five years, and our friends have had the car a few months longer than that.
Wow! That about made up my mind about the Prius. I don’t think these are wealthy folks—before they retired, she was a teacher and he a minister. From things she’s said, I gather they live frugally.
I sure couldn’t afford $3,300 to replace a car’s batteries, and I’ll bet it’s a stretch for them, too. At least they have two Social Security checks coming in…but they also have to buy food, clothing, and meds for two.
We’re told that, other than the batteries, the Prius is cheaper to maintain than a conventional gasoline-operated vehicle. Let’s think that through.
If it gets 40 mpg, it achieves approximately twice the mileage my Sienna does. I’m now paying about $110 a month for gas, or $1,320 a year. Because a Prius is a hybrid with a gasoline engine as well as the electrical component, the cost of routine maintenance is about the same. Some insurers will give Prius owners a little discount; others charge more—so we could call that a draw, too.
So, all told, if the mileage is twice as good as a fairly clunky gasoline-only vehicle, one would pay about $660/year for a modest amount of driving (I average about 10,000 miles a year).
Meanwhile, since few of us have $3,300 sitting around the house waiting to be spent on a new battery pack, the average frugalist suffering from a chronic aversion to debt would want to self-escrow enough to cover the cost when, after about five years, it comes up. How much would that come to? Well, $3,300 ÷ 5 years = $660 a year.
Yes. Exactly the gas savings engendered by owning a hybrid vehicle.
In other words, every penny the car saves you in gasoline will have to be set aside to pay for new batteries! Unless, of course, you buy into the idea that you should get a new car about every three years. Calculating that cost is more than my feeble brain can contemplate.
Image: 2004-2008 Toyota Prius. IFCAR. Public domain.
