Coffee heat rising

THIS Is a Disaster? More news from the insurance front

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The insurance adjuster came by to see what was what with the air conditioning unit. Nice guy: in from San Antonio to help the local Hartford office cope with the flood of claims erupting from the late hailstorm.

He said the air conditioner was pretty well bashed and thought the company would replace it. That wasn’t surprising. The west-facing side of the thing, a set of tinfoil louvers that have something to do with the way the coils operate, had taken quite a smushing, and, the unit’s maker having gone out of business, the part is no longer being made.

But I was surprised when he said the roof was damaged, and The Hartford probably will pay to replace that—a brand-new roof, we might add.

And then, even more amazingly, he announced that the various dings on the KoolDeck around the pool, many of which appeared about the time of the great hailstorm, also qualify for an underwritten repair job!

So for the cost of the $2,000 deductible, it looks like I’m about to get something like $10,000 to $15,000 worth of work done on the house.

A new heat pump is going to cost about $5,000 or $6,000, not counting the cost of installing it so it doesn’t overlap the skylight. The roof on this house, which I had put on a year or two after I moved in, cost something in excess of $5,000. And heaven only knows what it will cost to repair the KoolDeck…does anything happen for less than two grand?

Now that’s what I call a windfall!

Images:

Large Hailstones in Leipzig. Soon Chun Siong. Public Domain.

Hail clouds often exhibit a characteristic green coloration. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce. Public Domain.

College Cooking Crash Course: Superior Christmas Present for Young Adults!

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Have you seen what Frugal Scholar has been up to? She and her college-age kids have created a cookbook for young people living in cramped quarters, such as dorm rooms and studio apartments. This bunch does some awesome cooking outside of the dorm room, and so they have some mighty tasty, fast, cheap recipes in their new compendium.

It’s an inspired idea. Combining Frugal’s recent enthusiasm for using the rice cooker as a multi-purpose tool with some original and clever recipes, they’ve come up with a very handy guide for anyone who has to fix meals in limited space. It’s perfect for college kids, for young people starting out in that first, tiny apartment, or for people who spend a lot of evenings in motel rooms when work takes them on the road.

What better Christmas gift for a young person who’s just flown the nest, or for your soon-to-be high-school graduate looking forward to the first year away from home?

You can get it for the Kindle by ordering here from Amazon, or you can get it direct from Frugal Scholar’s home page or from the College Cooking Crash Course site.

Another interesting day forthcoming

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So around 10:00 a.m. the insurance adjuster is supposed to show up. It’ll be interesting to hear what he has to say about the heat pump, the roof, and the CoolDeck.

The air-conditioning dude who tried to sell me a capacitor for the allegedly destroyed unit (alleged by two other AC dudes) dropped by M’hijito’s house and said nothing was wrong with the brand-new unit on his roof. So I suppose that’s a hopeful sign.

That notwithstanding, it probably would be a good idea to have the roofer look at that house, too. It sez here in Wikipedia, the Font of Hive Wisdom, “Hail damage to roofs often goes unnoticed until further structural damage is seen, such as leaks or cracks. It is hardest to recognize hail damage on shingled roofs [that would be us!] and flat roofs, but all roofs have their own hail damage detection problems.”

Otherwise, I’m hoping for a quiet day, for a change. I still have to read two Eng. 101 papers that the endlessly annoying Blackboard somehow “hid,” despite the students having filed them on time. I do need to track down the invite from a couple of blogging friends to join their Google site, which I haven’t been able to find a minute to do in all the craziness of the past couple of weeks. And I should work on course prep for next semester, since I’d dearly love to have that out of the way before the end of this semester, so I can have an actual break during winter break.

On the other hand…there’s a farmer’s market at Town & Country, starting about the time the insurance guy is supposed to show up. I could dart over there the minute he goes out the door. Or I could just ride my bike around. That would be good.

Or maybe I’d like to spend some time with this. Awesome! And it’s free.

Images:

A large hailstone that fell in Harper, Kansas, May 14, 2004. U.S. National Weather Service. Public Domain.

Gustave Doré’s illustration to Dante’s Inferno. Plate IX: Canto III: Arrival of Charon. “And lo! towards us coming in a boat / An old man, hoary with the hair of eld, / Crying: ‘Woe unto you, ye souls depraved!'” (Longfellow’s translation) “And, lo! toward us in a bark / Comes an old man, hoary white with eld, / Crying “Woe to you, wicked spirits!” Public Domain.

Bit$ and Piece$: Live-blogging from Hell

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Another day, another dollar…in which I didn’t get to do anything I wanted to do but ended up working in front of the damn computer all of yesterday. Shoveled another mound of stoont papers off my virtual desk, but didn’t even get to write a blog post.

And…for crying out loud, now as I sit here at 6:30 in the morning the Google calendar tells me I’m supposed to be in Glendale at the Miles of Smiles breakfast for Andrea’s Closet. And I’m also supposed to be waiting for another air-conditioning guy. And I’m supposed to be getting ready to race to Scottsdale for another meeting with another doctor. And I have no idea what the calendar notation for today’s English 101 class means: “Logic exercise: in-class discussion.”

Logic exercise? I have a logic exercise for them? Where? What?

Augh!

Yesterday my neighbor Carol’s AC guy came by in the morning. She was right: he is chatty. He occupied a good hour of my time, but he at least seemed to be honest and straight-talking.

He said the coils on the air-conditioner are shot, bashed by the hailstorm. He also delivered another little revelation: the over-and-under design that characterized the old Goettl AC units is no longer being made, except by one not very good air-conditioning manufacturer. The new ones are side-by-side, and because of the unit’s shape, it will cover up the bathroom skylight!

This little revelation was not something that was delivered by the other guy.

Those skylights cost a ton of money to install. And I can guarantee you, I do not care to have a skylight shaft carrying the eye upward to the bottom of an air-conditioning unit!

So he’s going to track down the cost of an over-and-under unit (i.e., one where the air intake and exhaust vents are arranged vertically instead of horizontally), and he’ll try to find out if anyone makes a more conventional unit that might fit up there without wrecking the skylight.

Meanwhile, the Mast air-conditioning guy is supposed to show up this morning while I’m supposed to be at the Mayo Clinic. He, of course, does not know about the hail damage, because this is the outfit I’ve been trying to fire. Last spring I paid the annual fee to have Mast come and perform the regular twice-a-year maintenance and inspection for both my house and the downtown house, so, despite their new guy having annoyed me beyond endurance, I decided to just quietly let them show up here and do the job, even though secretly I was auditioning other AC guys. Normally they can do their thing without anyone being home, but of course this fellow, the one who tried to high-pressure me into buying a new unit last spring, is going to jump for joy when he sees the bashed-in coils.

I really need to be here when the guy shows up. Guess I’d better cancel the doctor’s appointment.

Carol’s AC guy remarked that he thought the roof showed some damage, too. We’ll know about that when the roofing guy surfaces…I’d better call those people and nag them, come to think of it. And I’ve got to get these people down to M’hijito’s house, too—if my air conditioning and roof were trashed, his probably were, too. His policy has a $1,000 deductible. So with my $2,000 deductible, we could be looking at an outlay of three grand up front…for starters.

If the AC guys have to rebuild the ductwork to save the skylight, I presumably will have to pay for that out of pocket, and it’s anyone’s guess what it will cost. Plenty, you can be sure.

Oh, god. It’s twenty to eight. I can’t even begin to see how I’m going to get to the doctor’s office this morning—it’s an hour’s drive each way. I can’t write a “logic exercise”—whatever the hell I thought that was going to be—and drive two hours to & from a doctor’s office and sit in the doctor’s office for an hour while contending with an air-conditioning guy 30 miles on the other side of town. I’ll have to cancel the quack and hope whatever this new manifestation is ain’t anything serious. At least it hurts less today than it did yesterday. And if it’s what I think it is, another day or two or three won’t make any difference…I’m gonna die anyway.

Okay, so: trying to figure out how to cope with this new financial hit. If nothing is wrong at M’hijito’s house, the minimum cost of this fiasco will be around two grand. I may (or may not) get $1,500 back from the government as a rebate for buying a high-efficiency unit. If I buy a Lennox—which will cover up the skylight—I’ll get another $250 back from that company. But revamping the ductwork and fixing the resulting damage to the roof will cost one helluva lot more than $250. In fact, it probably will cost more than $1,750.

The over-and-under unit does not qualify for the $1,500 rebate.

So I suppose we’ll have to assume I’ll get exactly zero reimbursement and I’ll end up with a unit that costs just as much to run as the old clunk on the roof now does.

The $2,000 can come out of the post-tax fund I’m using to live on for the rest of the year, cutting the life expectancy of that fund by two months. I don’t suppose that’s the end of the world…it’s just flicking frustrating.

And it will become a problem if I have to pony up another thousand bucks to get repairs done on the downtown house. That will cut a fund that was supposed to last for fourteen months to ten, maybe eleven months. And if I have to pay to have the ductwork and the roofing rebuilt…well, say goodbye to any hope of living off that money into 2011.

😯

Well! We’re live-blogging right along here…

The Mast AC guy is on the roof. He’s been banging around up there for the past 30 minutes as though there were were something to actually work on, and now he’s got the heat to come on. This should be entertaining.

I’ve canceled the doctor’s appointment and not been able to reschedule any time in the near future. It will be December before I can get in to see anyone, and by then maybe I’ll be dead. With any luck.

Computer crashed. Downloaded some updates. Fixed the computer for the nonce.

I still have no idea what the “logic exercise” for the English 101 class was supposed to be but will cannibalize one from the 102s. That will take an hour or so because I don’t have the answer key.

Holy mackerel! Now he’s got the unit blowing cold air and making a really weird noise.

🙄

He just tried to sell me a new capacitor for the damn thing!!!!!

I love it! I just love it!

When I pointed out that two different AC guys have been up there saying the thing was trashed by the hail, he said oh yeah—that, too!

So now he’s writing up an estimate for both an over-and-under unit and a high-efficiency side-by-side unit with the cost of rebuilding the ductwork thrown in.

😆

Here he is, back at the door: $6,100 for the over-and-under upon which I get no rebate, and $5,400 for the side-by-side that will blacken my skylight. However, he says they can adjust the ductwork so as to move the side-by-side away from the skylight. Interestingly, he doesn’t say what SEER this thing is; the feds won’t kick back the $1,500 for anything under 14 SEER.

He’s on his way down to M’hijito’s house, where he’s not to do any work on it other than the maintenance I’ve paid for.

😛

The “Logic Exercise” is something I put online weeks ago, for the little dollinks to do in class today. In the course of tracking this down, another little revelation arose, just this moment:

Blackboard somehow hid four papers whose authors submitted them right on time, on December 9. Not seeing them on Blackboard, I figured the students hadn’t turned them in and so gave each kid a 0 on that assignment. Soooo… Now, whoop de doop, I’ve got FOUR MORE mind-numbing papers to grade between now and 1:00 p.m.

It’s 10:50, I haven’t even had a minute to get a bite of breakfast or feed the dog since I got up at 6:30, and it’s time to get back to work.

Good-bye, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are!

The ultimate frugalist’s candle

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Aren’t these cool?

FakeCandles

Literally! Those candles are burning with a flame that doesn’t melt wax. Real candles: fake flames.

I found a lifetime supply of LED-driven fake tea candles at Costco for about 18 bucks. Thought I could put them in the front windows to make some sorta low-key Christmas decorations, but they’re not tall enough to be seen from the outside.

Lurking in the back of a closet, though, were some old pillar candles burned about halfway down. Idea: set the fake tea candle down inside the hollow pillar candle and stepped back a ways.

As long as you’re not looking down into the candle from the top, this lash-up looks alarmingly like a real candle with a real flame flickering down inside it. Perfect for a mantel or maybe a bookshelf.

Intrigued by the possibilities, I put one in a glass Kosta Boda tea light holder. The LED is a little dim for authenticity, unless the room is completely dark. Then I came up with the idea of setting it in a short French canning jar. Because the jar’s thick, curvy walls distort light, the thing looks amazingly like a real tea candle sitting in there! Perfect for the table on the back porch:

FakeCandleInAJar

In the dark, the camera doesn’t do justice to the effect, I’m afraid…

FakeJarredCandleInTheDark

Is that or is that not silly? Since Costco peddles a lifetime supply not only of fake tea lights but also of fake tea light batteries, what you get for your 18 dollah is rescued pillar candles that will last forever, or nearly so. And enough fake votive lights to experiment with every crazy mood lighting scheme you can dream up.

CostcoFakeCandles

You can buy fake LED tea lights online at Amazon.com, but I’m not seeing any quite like Costco’s, though some are rechargeable. The Amazon specimens all have a little fake flame sticking up like a leprechaun’s finger in the middle. The Costco set has quite a few with a fake wick set down inside the plastic (but waxy-feeling!) fake candle, which looks surprisingly realistic from a distance, especially when it’s tucked down inside a container.

Amazon has some wonderfully tacky versions, though: serious kitsch! Take, for example (please!), these marvelous underwater colored fake candles:

Amazing, huh? One admiring customer reported, “The LED lights are awesome. We put them inside fish bowls filled with marbles and water and they lasted the whole night.”

Lucky goldfish!

😀 🙄 😀

Best Guide to the Medicare Maze

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If you or someone you’re close to is about to walk into the labyrinth that is Medicare, take a look at the December issue of Consumer Reports, now on the newstands. This month CR is running the best, clearest guide to Medicare I’ve seen to date.

Medicare’s rules are astonishingly complicated and booby-trapped with land mines. The government and a vast slew of vendors send you hundreds and hundreds of pages of information and sales pitches. As well-intentioned as most government writers are, the copy they pour out is verbose, involved, sometimes contradictory, and often impossible to figure out.

CR has boiled the entire mess down into two pages of do’s and don’ts. Their article explains why you should get signed up for Medicare before you turn 65, how Medicare Part B works and what will happen to you if you fail to sign  up in a timely way, how to avoid being screwed out of Medigap coverage—and why you really need it—and what the advantages and disadvantages are of Medicare and Medigap.

It’s crystal clear, easy to understand, and mercifully brief. This thing should be offprinted and sent to everyone who’s coming eligible for Medicare.

Hmh. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed Consumer Reports before I let the subscription lapse. Now that I’m feeling flush again (sort of…), maybe I’ll re-up. It’s a useful resource for the frugalist and the wily consumer. If you’d like to subscribe, you can click here to subscribe online at the same rate the magazine is offering on its blow-in cards. Come to think of it, those of us who are running monetized PF blogs ought to be able to write off the cost as a business expense.

🙂