Coffee heat rising

Dumb Tax: Monster Morning!

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Grill, inside-out

Yesterday, after an amazingly hectic day during which I fell off the wagon big time (a glass of wine and two beers!!!), I tumbled into the sack around 10:00 p.m. Weary of awaking at 3:00 a.m., as had happened again in the wee hours of yesterday morning, I dropped an antihistamine hoping to drug myself so as to sleep through the night.

It worked. Didn’t wake up until six.

Stumbled outside to wring out  the dog in the backyard, there to find…a soggy, soggy landscape.

It must have rained all night long. Eighty degrees and the air was just wet. Thick with humidity.

The dog, no fool, refuses to go out. So I have to walk out into the yard trying to coax her (unsuccessfully) to visit the doggy loo. That’s when I notice that…oh yes…

Last night after I marinated and grilled the pound of awe-inspiring prawns I’d nabbed at Costco, I left the grill lid open so the perforated pan that held the shrimp would cool enough for me to wash it. Then, in my exhaustion (not to say inebriation), I totally spaced that I’d done that.

Even when, right before bedtime, I went to let the dog out and found it sprinkling, I failed to recall that the grill was hanging open to the evening skies.

Well.

You never saw such a mess in your entire put-together! The drip pan under the burners was overflowing with rainwater and grease. The cast-iron grates, highly rustable, were dripping greasy water into the interior of the grill. Formerly burned-on grease had somehow absorbed water and swelled up into blobs, like greasy puffed wheat. The ignition knob was soaked, as was every other part of the $400 grill. You could hear the meat-eating ants singing, a little squeaky ant chorus, as they danced a jig of joy around the perimeter of Ant City, knowing all this grease was spread across the earth for them to carry home. A gift, no doubt, from the Ant Goddess.

Two hours later…sweat was dripping into my eyes and off the end of my nose, I was drenched with sweat from top to bottom, my shoes were ruined from greasy water and detergent splashing on them, my hands were a wreck (the rubber gloves having died in the last fiasco I had to deal with), and yesterday’s $50 hairstyle was a sad memory.

And the pool was still full of leaves and devil pods.

To enhance the joy of that challenge, the pool needed to be backwashed. The filter was so clogged, the pump couldn’t push water fast enough to mound the leaves and seed pods into discrete piles so they could be sucked up by the hose bonnet. No way Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner could manage all those devil pods: they would choke him to death before he could get halfway across the deep end.

And for more joy enhancement: I shock-treated the pool yesterday, turning it into a puddle of Clorox. This meant I couldn’t even dive into the water this morning to cool off from the hard labor.

Backwashed the pool into the alley, hoping the neighbors would imagine the resulting lake came from the rain. Fortunately, most people don’t go out and about in swampy weather like this.

Recharged the filter. Let the pump run while I fed the dog and…and…yes. Cleaned up the little gift she left under the table, since she wouldn’t go outside into the soggy soggy landscape. Fixed and ate breakfast (mostly coffee, annoyingly decaffeinated). Plodded back out to clean the pool.

The hose bonnet is one of the great unsung inventions of humankind. It vacuumed up about a half bushel of leaves and devil pods. Matter of fact, it cleaned the bottom so well, there was no need to put Harvey back into the pool. Which was good, because he’s allergic to hyperchlorination and shouldn’t be crawling around in there until a shock treatment has dissipated.

Jumped in the pool in spite of the no-no levels of carcinogenic chlorine guaranteed to rot away Harvey’s plastic carapace. This left the skin stinging. Stood under the hot shower for god knows how long, soaking and soaping chemicals off.

The barbecue is now so clean it’s almost good as new. The pool pump is running so efficiently it’s almost silent in its operation.

It is almost noon. And I am going back to bed.

Charging Costs to Your In-Home Business

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So over at the Depot I got these nifty (read “cheap”) motion-sensitive coach lights for the front of the house. Yesterday Dave the Electrician came over, hard-wired them, and got them working right. The equally cheap nifty lights I installed when I moved in here five years ago are crumbling away under the radioactive Arizona sunlight.

But more to the point, the  house has been rewired by some moronic former owner so that two of the three lights in front have to be turned on from inside the garage. When the house was built, one switch next to the front door turned them all on. Why anyone would change this escapes me. I suspect it was Satan and Proserpine‘s idea. “Green” was their affectation, and one way they liked to manifest that was with few and dim lights. As long as he was dorking with the electric (for reasons unknown, Satan imagined he was a great electrical handyman) (don’t ask about the DIY 220-volt outlet!), he probably figured he could save electricity by wiring two of the lights into the garage, thereby allowing him to turn on only one light to cut down lawsuits from evening guests tripping over the threshold.

Which brings us to the day’s point: Can I get away with having the S-corporation pay for the new fixtures?

I believe I can. Here’s why:

1. The office, which has a hardened lock on a solid-core door, is now accessible by burglars only through a front window. This window is lighted solely by the front lights. The nearest street lamp is on the other side of the house, and the trees in the front yard shelter the office window from easy view. Thus at night access to the office is facilitated by darkness.

2. The only things of value in the building are inside the office, which, in my absence, is otherwise locked behind a contraption designed to break a burglar’s drill bit—or his foot, should he try to kick his way in.

• I have no jewelry of any note. My baubles by and large come from the craft store.
• The sound system is an ancient stereo that no one would pay money for today.
• The television is an old TV/computer monitor my son had in San Francisco, tiny and antique. At a yard sale it would bring about ten bucks.
• The furniture is 50 years old. It does not qualify as “antique.” It qualifies as “used furniture.”

3. Besides the fact that the only marketable goods in the house are inside the office, the entire value of my business consists of the data stored on its computer, external hard drive, and flash drives. The very existence of the S-corp would be put at risk if someone came in the office’s window and cleaned out all the electronic gear.

4. The neighborhood is under siege from burglars and home invaders. I can prove this by the constant stream of alerts, warnings, and reports from the police and the head of the neighborhood association.

5. Therefore, installing security lights on the front of the house is crucial to maintaining the security and integrity of the business.

These little lights, which probably will last about as long as the crumbling cheapies they replaced, are great. If anybody comes up to the front of the house, they pop on, so that I can look out a window and actually see who or what is out there.

In the previous regime, if I heard something in the night I could only turn on one light, which did not illuminate the courtyard. There’s no way I’m going to walk into the garage to turn on the other two lights, not if there’s even the remotest possibility that someone’s prowling around outside. The garage has a side door. Even though I put a security door over it, I have to go in and out that side very morning to water the plants, and half the time I forget to flip the deadbolt shut when I come back in. Sometimes I re-enter the house through the back door and forget to close the security door altogether. So, in the middle of the night, opening the door from the kitchen to the garage is an invitation for the burglar to come right in.

Lights that come on automatically if there’s anyone sneaking around out there will allow me to see the person and call 911. And they should deter burglars from breaking in the office window when I’m out.

I like these, because they’re open on the bottom, allowing me to change the bulb without having to deconstruct the whole fixture. Amazon has a cheaper motion-sensitive coach light, but you have to take it apart to change the bulb. That entails work, which goes against my principles.

Now, while it’s true that the new fixtures light the residential part of the house as well as the room devoted to the office, the fact is the only things of any value inside the house are in the office, and if those things are lost, the corporation goes bust. So, I think it’s reasonable to argue that the fixtures can be expensed through the corporation.

How volunteering can help your business

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Little knowing what I was getting into, a while back I agreed to help with the program for the Arizona Bach Festival, a new musical series featuring internationally known classical musicians and the Grammy Award-winning Phoenix Chorale. When I said “help,” I was thinking “editorial help.” But what really happened was that I got volunteered to sell ad space for the program.

Well, of course, I don’t know the first thing about ad sales. But we just made our first sale! w00t!

In theory I’ve been offered a small commission on each sale, but in fact I plan to donate the proceeds back to the festival or to All Saints, whose music director is one of the moving forces behind this event.

Even though I’m just getting started, it’s already easy to see that I’m getting a great deal more benefit from this experience than a 15 to 25 percent commission. In fact, it’s forcing me to go out into the community and meet people—businessmen and women who can use my services and are likely to actually pay for them. How will this help The Copyeditor’s Desk, Inc.?

Let me count the ways:

• Renew and re-establish old business relationships
• Join or rejoin trade groups I’d allowed to languish
• Take time to talk with people whose friendships I’ve neglected
• Remind old friends that I’m still looking for business
• Find new opportunities to market my business as well as theirs

Just about any time you get out of your cave, it’s good for business. A couple of months ago, I volunteered to edit the Arizona Book Publishers Association newsletter. When the group announced on its website that I’ll be taking over with this issue, right off the bat someone e-mailed me asking if we would do editorial work for an offshore fulfillment house.

Business—that is, making money—is about getting to know people. So is volunteering. The two work hand-in-hand.

Student Performance: Is there any question?

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Lordie! Yesterday I went to a workshop on how to identify students who are high or drunk in class, and what to do about it.

Thought I was pretty wise to the use of dope and booze among the kiddies. Wrong!

One side makes you bigger...

Some of the stuff people ingest for “fun” defies belief. A psychologist who specializes in drugs and a counselor who also has worked in caring for people with substance abuse issues—both full-time employees of the college!—gave quite an eye-opening presentation, complete with three pages of drug images and descriptions and an explicit PowerPoint presentation (refreshing well done, for a change) on the symptoms of the various kinds of drugs and combinations thereof.

Combination is the operative term. They said few people use just one drug; most combine their dope of choice with alcohol. Indeed, the specific reason I selected this workshop was that last semester a kid who was occasionally given to belligerence showed up in my classroom at 9:30 in the morning reeking of beer.

Asked how many students in a community college classroom, at any given time, are likely to be abusing some kind of drug, legally purchased or not, they said the figure is about 50 percent.

Fifty percent of students in a college classroom are using something, often more than one something. Think of that. Substances range from meth to over-the-counter cold pills and nostrums.

Among the newer fads, we learned, is a hallucinogen called ayahuasca, a brain-banger from South America.

And, my friends, damned if on the way home I didn’t tune in NPR and hear an adulatory story about some troubled soul who found spiritual peace and enlightenment by trotting down to Peru and ingesting ayahuasca to the beat of a chanting “shaman.”

Says the fool, “I thought something was missing in my life, in walking through the world. I have this job I hate. I feel miserable all the time. Everything is small and just how I related to people, everything was very superficial.” After a lengthy course of mind-bending herbs under the tutelage of a self-styled “shaman” from Los Angeles, who has set up a curative “center” (no doubt highly profitable) near Iquitos, our hero finds enlightenment: “There’s not this gigantic weight on my shoulders anymore, and I can sit up straight and breathe normally and just be alive,” he says. “The world is a significantly brighter and more beautiful place now.”

Tra-la-la la-la!

This  medicament causes you to vomit violently while you squirt diarrhea out the other end. Indigenous people use one of its two ingredients to rid themselves of intestinal worms. It induces hallucinations that can leave you screaming for hours.

Google ayahuasca and what comes up is page after page of woo-woo, replete with terms like “sacred vine,” “enlightenment,” “spirit vine,” “extraordinary healing plant,” “consciousness expanding,” and similar bullsh!t. We are told that worthies such as Sting, David Icke, Tori Amos, and Paul Simon have held forth on the glories of this magical potion.

Heaven help us. Is it any wonder that half the kids sitting in a classroom are busy frying their brains with drugs? Is it any wonder university juniors and seniors think Wisconsin is a Rocky Mountain State?

What became of common sense in this country?

Image: Psilocybe Cubensis by Rohan523. GNU Free Documentation License.

Wake up from that dream!

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So a couple of readers pointed out that something was wrong with the math that suggested I just might manage an apartment in San Francisco for myself, if and when M’hijito makes his escape from Phoenix. Dead right: the problem was that the figure I was using for the 4% and 5% drawdowns, which I had lifted from another column, actually represented the drawdowns plus Social Security. Having blithely forgotten that small detail, I added Social Security in on top of those, for a net income whose optimism exceeded rosey.

Remove the extra Social Security contribution and you get figures that look like these:

Even if I could find a comfortable place for $2,000 a month—a highly unlikely proposition—nothing even vaguely like enough to live on would remain after the inescapable costs. Realistically, I’m finding that I can’t get by with much less than $700 for monthly discretionary expenses, because there’s always some repair bill or unexpected cost to be paid. Even if I put nothing into the monthly diddle-it-away fund (from which I buy clothing, an item that I really can’t do without…especially in San Francisco ;-)), there’s simply  not enough left after rent, health insurance, long-term care insurance, and utilities.

And the fact is that even in the make-believe scenario, my figures didn’t take into account the higher tax rates, nor did they anticipate the inevitability that rents will increase when the economy improves and demand for housing increases. Right now, rents are low in the City, but as soon as commerce heats up and more people migrate to San Francisco, landlords raise their rent rates accordingly.

As for moving to some other venue in California: really, there’s no place else in that state that I want to live. San Francisco has a special allure—it’s a one-of-a-kind city. But the whole state is overrun with people, most of them living in Southern California-style ticky-tacky. I already live in Southern California East; why would I want to spend more to live in the same conditions there?

I guess if M’hijito moves back to San Francisco, I’ll just decamp to Prescott, which at least is a little cooler than the Valley. It used to be a little more urbane, too, in a funny way, a little more resident-friendly—but that’s less so today.