So, what are those Yakezie folks up to? Thought I’d take a little stroll through that country, and here’s what I came upon:
A lot of stuff is going on over at My Journey to Millions. Evan and Mrs. E are expecting(!), which inspires some existential thinking about wealth, spending, and one’s tastes and character. He also has an interesting post on defining the client relationship in your side job—or, we might add, in any profession where what you’re selling to a client is essentially your time.
Over at Out of Debt Again, the incredibly green-thumbed Mrs. Accountability has posted another of her mouth-watering photos of her garden produce. You have to live through a string of 110-degree days to realize what an accomplishment this is. My tomatoes are invariably fried by this time of year. Mrs. A has also begun a series on using Quicken, which starts off with an introduction to the program’s sophisticated ability to download transactions from a bank account.
Frugal Zeitgeist has got a good conversation going with readers over the question of whether we should care where a given consumer product comes from. An expat living in Egypt, FZ has been contemplating cheap places to live, most recently 2010’s cheapest countries.
BTW, Frugal Z— Any way you could shuck the program that sends commenters an e-mail asking them to accept “information” from your mailing list? It’s frustrating to take time to write a comment and then get a “request for information from the [the blogger’s] mailing list,” which apparently will automatically create a subscription.
Miss Thrifty, a lively Brit, has a highly entertaining piece titled “A Week in the Life of Austerity Britain.” Things are rough over there, but maybe not so rough as to keep one from purchasing…what else? The new iPhone. Nevvermind that you may have to patch it with the Home Handyman’s Secret Weapon.
My Money Minute gets a conversation going about the scheme to charge shoppers for bags (in D.C., he was charged for a paper bag!). More behavioral legislation, comin’ your way!
Ten p.m. and neither the pooch nor I have had dinner. Time to pack it in, ladies and gents!
Okay, so on Friday I get hailed in to the Mayo for an MRI. Dutifully show up at 12:30, as requested, bearing an author’s review copy of a novel I’m supposed to be copyediting (don’t ask how copyedits happen at the ARC stage; just be thankful this one is very clean).
Almost two hours later they call me in for the test. I’ve spent this entire time, undressed, in a small waiting room with a damnable television nattering away, rerunning the local morning show, over and over and over and over, telling us all about the weather and the traffic conditions and the six-hour-old news. Focusing on my work over the yammering voice of the woman DJ or whatever the hell she’s supposed to be is passing difficult.
This gives me lots of time to get tensed up.
By the time they finally get around to calling me in for the MRI, this fat lady is ready to go home. I’m hungry, irritated, and would like never, ever, ever to have to hear the inane chattering of some inane blonde talking head on the television again. Or, come to think of it, of anyone. What I would like is silence.
The MRI machine is one creepy-looking gadget, a huge donut-shaped affair reminiscent of a flying saucer stood on edge. It’s confined to a large room roped off with yellow “danger” tape, not very inviting. While it sits there waiting for you, it makes a weird otherworldly tweeting noise, like some sort of manic canary on meth.
The MRI techs pack me onto a kind of cot that can elevate the victpatient into the contraption. They tell me I can’t move—as in not budge and try not to breathe deeply—during the time the images are being taken, which will take about 20 minutes. I’m told this is a relatively brief exposure to the thing. Then they stuff cotton in my ears, which does nothing to dampen the sound of their voices, wrap my head with earphones through which some sort of treacly Muzak is pumped, cover my eyes with gauze, and tell me (only after I ask) that I can expect to be bombarded with a noise that sounds like a jackhammer.
holy. mackerel.
Well, I lasted about 30 seconds in there. They didn’t even get the thing turned on before I was asking to get out.
Creepy. Absolutely, indescribably creepy.
I didn’t feel afraid. I just felt so uncomfortable and so creeped out…sort of like having to pay an extended visit to a cockroach nest under the refrigerator…that I knew I was not going to be able to stand to stay in that thing for 20 minutes.
More to the point, a single cogent thought entered my mind: All these “stress attacks” I’ve been having—and there have been many, many more than the good Dr. Daley knows about—have never been satisfactorily diagnosed. There is some chance that those episodes could be minor cardiac events. If that is the case, then twenty minutes of uninterrupted, rather extreme stress could cause a heart attack.
Eff that, say I, only more explicitly.
Now they want me to consent to going back and letting them drug me with Valium or an intravenous sedative.
i. don’t. think. so.
The techs adjudged me “severely claustrophobic.” Not to be repetitious, but I don’t think so. Though it’s true that one reason I dislike flying in commercial jets is being jammed elbow-to-elbow with strangers (yech!); and it is true that I truly, truly hate the Flagstaff Ice Cave because it’s totally dark, totally devoid of light in there and you can’t find your way out without a flashlight or a lighter and we got in there one time without either of those and I was, yes, freaking scared; and no, I don’t like elevators, “severe” as in “disabling” is not the term I’d use.
Besides, I have a good reason to prefer stairs to elevators. I was once in an elevator that fell 11 stories before we could stop it. That’s 11 out of 13 possible stories…
Since then, if the climb is less than six floors, I’ll take the fire escape, thank you.
The inside of an MRI machine is not dark. It does not go up and down. It does not make you sit next to some odoriferous stranger with a screamy child. And it apparently poses little risk. It’s just creepy. Very creepy.
The fact of the matter is, the shoulder is on the mend. When I called the P.A. yesterday and reported that since the last time I saw him—quite recently—two days passed with almost no pain except for one out-of-the-ordinary position, and that I now can do the hold-your-hand-out-at-shoulder-height-and-pour-the-pop-out-of-a-soda-can maneuver with no pain at all, he remarked that it takes about three months “for the dust to settle.” It may be that given my age and the fact that I can’t take any over-the-counter anti-inflammatories, it simply has taken a long time to heal.
Yesterday after I got home from this entertaining experience, the kitchen sink clogged. To clean that out, I had to hold the plug down tight in the righthand sink and, with the injured left arm, pump a plumber’s helper vigorously in the lefthand sink. This caused exactly zero pain. It’s hard to imagine that if any very serious damage were lurking inside the shoulder, I could pull that stunt without repercussion.
At the moment it feels somewhat like a typhoid or cholera shot, only most of the time slightly less painful.
And frankly…some things are worse than chronic mild pain.
Images: MRI, shamelessly ripped off from a website now disappeared from my computer’s memory.
Elevators at 240 Sparks, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. GNU Free Documentation License.
At 9:00 p.m. sharp, the sound of rockets flying and grenades exploding brought a cop helicopter overhead with its searchlight a-glare.
Around this time of year, the ghost shopping center at Dunlap and the I-17 puts on a fireworks show on Friday nights. They used to do it every Friday night, all summer long, but now that there are hardly any stores left for people to shop in, they limit the gala celebrations to a couple weeks on either side of July 4.
With Sally’s tree gone, I had a great view from my backyard! They shot off some spectacular colored showers of pyrotechnic stars, skyrockets, fountains…it was quite a display.
My old house was practically underneath the fireworks show. But now, deeper in the neighborhood and further away from the hectic intersections of Dunlap and the freeway, the view is often obscured by the neighbors’ foliage. Before Sally cut the big Aleppo pine out of her front yard, it fully blocked any sight of the mall’s fireworks extravaganza.
LOL! They always kick off with some loud firecracker-like things that sound for all the world like gunfire. And invariably, the first night of the season that the fireworks start, some newbie resident calls the cops and reports shots fired. Hence, a cop copter fly-by.
Well, I’d rather have the tree all summer (and winter) than one or two, or even several, fireworks displays. But it was fun to see the show.
Image: San Diego Fireworks. PD Photo.org. Public domain.
This fall I’m teaching a fully online college course that will improve your skills as a blog writer and show you how to write winning articles for magazines and newspapers. Many people use professional-level writing skills to generate the sidestream income that we’ve seen is so important to paying off debt and building savings. And some have parlayed freelance writing experience into full-time jobs as magazine or newspaper editors.
In just eight weeks—October 18 through December 10—the course will explain how to structure, write, and market salable copy for commercial venues.
Here are some of the highlights:
• Types of feature articles • How to structure an effective article • Generating story ideas • Finding markets that will buy from you • Selling to magazines and newspapers • Finding sources • How to interview • Checking facts • The language and style of popular media • How to edit your own writing • Working with editors • Legal and business aspects of writing for pay
When you write a blog post, you’re often writing one of the several types of the feature article. This is why some of the most engaging bloggers around are former or continuing magazine or newspaper writers and editors, such as this one and this one. If content is king, writing skill is the prime minister.
The course is offered for three credits through Paradise Valley Community College, in Phoenix, Arizona. PVCC is a fully accredited campus of the Maricopa County Community College District, and the course, which comes out of the English department, should transfer to many university English, creative writing, and journalism programs.
So, I invite you to join me in this little adventure. It should be a lot of fun, and it’s a great way to learn more about the craft of writing. If your blog is monetized or you use writing in other aspects of employment, the cost should be deductible.
The easiest way to sign up is over the telephone. Dial 602-787-7000 and register for English 235, Magazine Article Writing, Section 58235. The class runs from October 18 through December 10, 2010.
Because of state and county budget cutbacks, the Registrar’s office is open during the summer from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. PDT, Monday through Thursday; it’s closed on Fridays. Sometimes there’s a wait to get through to a registration worker, but eventually you will reach a human being.
Tuition: A reader asks how much the course costs. According to the registrar’s office, for nonresidents it’s $147/credit hour; for those living in Arizona except for Apache, Santa Cruz, and Greenlee counties, it’s $71/credit hour; for those in Apache, Santa Cruz, and Greenlee counties, it’s $96/credit hour. The cost of tuition and materials may be tax deductible: Check this discussion and this site.
The course materials specify that you must have a computer and high-speed Internet connection, and so these costs may also be to some extent deductible; check with your tax advisor about that.
Images: Vogue Magazine, February 15, 1917. Public Domain. Sunset Magazine, February 1911. Public Domain.
Isn’t that a sweet little car? A Honda Fit (turn off the sound before clicking on that link!). And isn’t 28 mpg ever so much sweeter than the 18 mpg the Dog Chariot makes when it’s in a good mood?
Want car.
At $15,0000 or $16,000, the price is pretty good. I could keep the Dog Chariot (or give it to my son, except he thinks it’s “gay”) and pay in cash from my car savings. But if the D.C. is really worth around five grand, as Kelly Blue Book says it is, then what I’d have to pay in cash would not deplete my car savings. Not by a long shot. If I paid myself back a couple hundred a month, or even just $100 a month, over the vehicle’s proposed ten-year lifetime, that would recharge the car savings and then some.
The fly in the ointment is the outrageous cost of car registration in Arizona. They really gouge you for new cars. The tax drops each year—the older your car is, the less you pay for registration—until by the time the junker gets to be as antiquated as the Dog Chariot, registration costs so little even someone like me can pay it out of pocket, without having to borrow or self-escrow for a year.
This flies in the face of reason. Why does Arizona have to do everything bass-ackwards? It would make sense to charge drivers more for each year the car ages. This would tend to get gas-guzzling, unsafe vehicles off the road, and it would gently stimulate sales of newer models. The truth is, the high annual cost of automobile registration is a significant motivator, for me at least, to keep the old junk running.
And of course, insurance would go up, too. Right now my car insurance is almost more than I can afford to pay. I’d have to drop the million-dollar umbrella, which (between you and me and the rest of the galaxy) insures this site against libel suits. Since companies have taken to suing bloggers for saying unkind things about their products and services (is there one among us who has not complained about the likes of Comcast, Qwest, or Chico’s?), it behooves one to have such a policy. Even without the extra coverage, insurance premiums on a new car would end up being around the same as I’m paying now, I expect.
So the savings on gasoline would be mooted, many times over.
But oh! Wouldn’t it be loverly to have such a pretty little, maneuverable little, gas-efficient little car?
So, taking a moment of rest late this morning to read news online, I checked Craig’s List for the third time, to see if anyone might have lost the Found Hound. Depressing, all these people with muttley pups and kittens from unspayed pets, trying to give them away for free…and while you’re at it, will you take the mother, too? Feeling overwhelmed, I was just about to click out of there when my eye was caught by this heading:
I have lost my dog (with a zip code right next to mine)
Click on that and find…
I lost my dog her name is Angel she is a cream colored German Shepperd and Chow mix she was not wearing a collar. She is 16yrs old and can’t hear very well and she decided to venture away from home. Please if you have seen her or have her I really miss her very much and would love for her to come home. If there is anything you know please call me at 888-765-4321 and please only call if your serious. Thank you Crystal
Holy mackerel! That fit Orphant Annie to a T! Called the number: no answer. E-mailed the Yahoo address, attaching a photo. A few hours later, phone rings. A young voice says the photo looks just like her dog. She says she was at the shelter Tuesday noon and didn’t see the dog; I said the guy showed up at my house to pick up the dog right about that time.
So she said she would try to retrieve her dog. Haven’t heard anything more from her. I hope she found her Angel/Orphant Annie and that they hadn’t put the dog down because of its extreme age.
Where she said she lived is about a mile and a half from the park, as the crow flies. But the road she lives on does not follow the crow’s route. It breaks for about a quarter mile between the canal and Central Avenue. To get to the park, the dog would have had to follow quite a circuitous route, and she would have had to cross over the canal. To get to a crossing, she would have had to go a half-mile north or south and a quarter mile west. Then she would have had to walk along and then cross over a seven-lane main drag, possibly in the middle of rush hour. She probably walked somewhere between two and three miles.
Think of that. A 16-year-old large-breed dog is about the equivalent of an 80-year-old human. Imagine your 80-year-old great-grandmother making her way across two or three miles of urban streets in 90-degree heat.
Must be one tough dog.
Update
Crystal just e-mailed to say she found Angel and now has her home with the family. So! A happy ending.
