Coffee heat rising

Quick Summer Break…and maybe many more

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Yarnell-Frog
The Yarnell Frog at the base of Yarnell Hill, where the road begins its steep two-lane climb up the rim.

Yesterday my friend KJG and I decided to pile our dogs in the car and drive up to Yarnell, the quaint old mining town and wide spot in the road that I covet as a weekend getaway. Perched on the edge of the Mogollon Rim, it’s up out of the Valley’s heat, which at this time of year becomes oppressive with monsoon humidity.

Naturally, we picked the only day of the summer when it decided to rain in the morning. But that was fine: we welcome rain. It cuts the heat.

When we got up there, we went straight to the shady, peaceful Shrine of St. Joseph, retreat center with a religious diorama sculptured into the granite boulders at the top end of the town’s most picturesque road. This provided a place to park so we could stretch our legs and walk the dogs through the adjacent residential area.

Interestingly, the house that I think is absolutely the prettiest little dwelling in town is for sale. Here it is in more halcyon times. Isn’t that the sweetest and best little stone cottage? Probably assembled and mortared, rock by rock, by some miner back in the late 1800s.

It’s abandoned and gone to seed now, but still standing. If I wanted it, it’s there for the asking. In today’s market, the bank or whoever owns it would probably give it away.

Before long we got rained on and had to run uphill to return to the car. Soaked to the skin, we started back down toward the main drag, passing the coveted cottage. A Salt River Project lineman was parked in front—we had waved at him as we were walking around and so stopped to say hello. A Wickenburg resident, he also coveted the little house as a weekend cabin.

I asked him what he thought of the electric service; he said it looked OK to him, probably safe. The panel was relatively new, he said, and the air conditioning system on the roof was new. He remarked that it was a gas pack.

There’s no natural gas service in Yarnell. “Gas” is trucked-in propane.

“So that means the thing runs on propane?” said I.

“Hm,” said he. “Propane’s pretty expensive.” You can tell a native Arizonan by his gift for understatement.

The cottage has only two bedrooms; one of them, KJG noted, is about large enough to accommodate a camper’s cot. I suppose a single person could convert it to a walk-in closet, though.

The big problem with the house, though—other than the fact that it is a house, a white elephant to be renovated, maintained, cleaned, and gardened—is a large structural crack running from the roofline down to the ground. Whoever installed electric service (no doubt as a retrofit) cut a small nook into the stonework near an opening to the low crawl space beneath the structure, evidently to accommodate an outdoor electrical outlet. Though they spanned the opening with a short steel lintel, evidently this did not suffice to bear the weight above it.

So whoever buys the little house will purchase not only a great deal of charm but an expensive repair job. Assuming a repair can be made at all.

Moving on, we dried out over hot coffee (surprisingly good!) and home-made sweets at the Cornerstone Bakery, a favorite of locals up on the main drag. Residents like to pass the time in the charmingly decorated old shop, where everyone knows the proprietors and the proprietors know everyone.  I had a peach strudel wrapped in what tasted like real puff pastry and KJG said her cinnamon roll was the best she’d ever tasted.

Strung mid-town along route 89A are clusters of antique shops, galleries, and gift stores. I happened to know that the next-door Yarnell Emporium carries some interesting hand-designed T-shirts, among many other things. Although my clothes were no longer soaked thr0ugh, I craved a dry shirt and so steered us in that direction. On the way, though, we were waylaid by Behind the Door, a sweet little consignment gallery occupying an old house. Proprietor Carrie Brandenburg carries everything from original oils, acrylics, and watercolors to hippy-dippy bead jewelry of the kind I make myself.

There are some pretty interesting pieces in this store, among them a clever found-art sculpture, a lamp (of sorts) fashioned from old bicycle handlebars. Being the sort with a taste for the near-representational, I enjoyed the only slightly abstract  pictured images here, of pueblos and more recent Southwestern architecture. Click on the photo for a larger view.

We weren’t in the market for big-ticket items, though—or even for mid-ticket items. However, there was no chance either of us could get out of there without at least one of the attractively priced artsy-craftsy jewelry pieces. I picked up these; I couldn’t have made them myself for the amount the crafter asked, and they’re ideal for casual everyday wear.

YarnellJewelry
YarnellEmporium

KJG was in the market for yard art a cut or two or three above the painted plaster campesino slumbering beneath his umbrella in the shade of a saguaro. So she was delighted when we made our way to Yarnell Emporium, which among many other things specializes in some very entertaining and often charming outdoor decor. Just now owner Ed Williams is carrying a lot of metal designs.

I coveted the sunflowers:

KJG, having raised goats at one point in her misspent youth, was drawn to this little guy:

Frugality being the better part of valor, he’s not peeking out from under the shrubbery in her yard this morning. Alas. Inside the shop we spotted a monumental cast bell hung in a circular frame, very Asian in appearance. That was more like what she had in mind. At $500+, the price was pretty good compared to what you’d pay for it in a design shop or at an artist’s foundry in the city. She took it under advisement and is considering how it might fit in her and DH’s carefully landscaped backyard.

We hit it off with the sales rep, who had no one else to socialize with. Kathleen proved to be a discreet but effective shopper’s assistant. Before long we’d stocked up on hats, shirts, skirts…oh my! KJG found a wide-brimmed hat that looked terrific on her; so taken by it was she that she bought another one for her mother. The shop has a nice collection of broomstick skirts, a fashion long out of date but one that I happen to yearn for because it nicely disguises certain unstylish curves on my body. Fabric colors, which appear to be custom-dyed, are too gorgeous:

The little jacket on the right has turquoise-lined plackets that, when you have it on, open out like a shawl. The effect is surprisingly elegant—it’ll be perfect for church as well as for teaching this winter. Got the whole outfit for 30 percent off.

In the course of chatting, Kathleen unveiled a small revelation: the Emporium’s proprietor, Ed Williams, renovated an upstairs apartment and is renting it to the tourists.

“That so?” said we.

“So!” said she.

Since no other customers were braving the rain, she kindly gave us a tour. What we found was an amazing little gem, a beautifully decorated one-bedroom apartment hidden away on the second floor of the rustic store Ed has built on the ground floor. It has, among other things, a luxuriant leather sofa, a beautifully decorated bedroom, and a full kitchen with brand-new, top-of-the-line appliances. Rustic, this is not. And one of the things you should know about Yarnell: it occupies one of the most spectacular venues you can imagine. Step out on the apartment’s balcony, and you have a view of mountains and wide-open spaces in all directions.

Apparently he only wants about $70 night for this place.

Well. Hallelujah sisters and brothers! I might be able to afford that, especially if the Landlord will allow me to bring Cassie the Corgi. May not manage it during this financially nightmarish summer, but I certainly could do it after classes start. And if my scheme for next summer works, I probably could go up there a couple of times a month.

You could rent a lot of $70 rooms for what it would cost to buy that stone cottage in Yarnell.

§ § § §

We learned something else from the locals: The ranch my ex- and I used to own with a bunch of his law partners is now being operated as a bed and breakfast. Nothing would do, of course, but what we had to drive up there and see what was what. That exploration led to an interesting adventure, which I’ll soon tell you about in a new Entrpreneurs post.

Password Security: Riffs on a neat idea

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Here’s a clever idea from Adam Pash, seen on LifeHacker: To create a hard-to-hack password you can remember, simply move your fingers over one key to the right on the keyboard and type in your preferred dictionary word.

Since anything posted on Lifehacker by now no doubt has been seen by every malicious hacker on the planet, it makes sense to create some refinements on that.

For example, you could move your fingers up or down a row, too, or repeat the password in different iterations. Suppose your password is your dog’s name, Rover. Because hitting the shift key is more work than you can bear, you spell it rover.

Using Adam’s lifehack, you get tpbrt. Type the same sequence with your fingers one key to the right in the top row of alphabetical characters, and you get 49f34. Or move your fingers to a different position in the top row—say, two keys to the right instead of one—and you get 6-h56.

If you combine these two sequences to make a single string of characters, you’d get a difficult-to-parse password, something like tpbrt49f34 or tpbrt6-h56.

To enhance security further, you could add an arbitrary character between the two iterations of Rover’s jumbled name: tpbrt]49f34.

Easy on the memory and relatively hassle-free.

Worth Bookmarking…

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Exploring the Internet for new-to-me sites dealing with things monetary, I recently came across a number of interesting blogs. Check these out:

Carpe Diem, by Mark J. Perry, an economics and finance professor at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus. Lots of interesting material pops up here, some of it raw data or close to it, but usually things that seem to have some meaning. Recently, for example:

Median Sales Prices of Existing Homes, January 2008 to June 2010
California Mortgage Defaults, 2009Q1 to 2010Q2,  and, intriguingly,
ASA Staffing Index 24% above Same Wk. Last Year

Econbrowser, by economics Professor James D. Hamilton at UC San Diego and public affairs and economics professor Menzie Chinn of the University of Wisconsin, Madision.

China Land Prices
Fighting Deflation
A Specter Is Haunting America

Marginal Revolution, by George Mason University economics professors Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok.

The History and Future of Private Space Exploration
Jimmy Stewart Is Dead
Gender Parity in Schooling around the World

Would you like to share leads to thoughtful and interesting sites that are outside the PF bloggers’ niche, or outside the niche your own blog occupies? Please let us know in the comments below!

Tomorrow it’s off to the high country for a daylong break from summer’s cabin fever. Back Saturday!

CLICK! Why didn’t I think of this one before?

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LightBulb

Ever have one of those “CLICK” moments, when the light switch snaps on and the brain floods with Insight? They always seem to occur belatedly.

It recently dawned on me, as I was thinking of something other than how I’m going to get by during these summers of unpaid work, that an obvious source of summer funding is sitting right out there in plain view.

For a retired state employee to collect the many thousands of dollars owed for unused sick leave (“RASL”), she or he has to be taking a drawdown from accrued retirement savings—i.e., from the state pension fund or from the 403(b), whichever plan applies—over the three-year period in which the RASL money is paid out. By the time my job terminated, I’d never heard a straight story about how much or how little that drawdown had to be. So, in the absence of any credible facts, I decided to make it $500 a month—amounting to a $389 net.

That was more than I wanted to take out, given the goal of waiting till the stock market recovers some of the $180,000 lost from my savings, but not anything like 4 percent of total retirement savings. So…what the heck.

Time has passed. In that interim, I learned that the drawdown can be anything. Even, say, one dollar a month. That revelation was made by a guy at Fidelity not long before the end of spring semester. Since I didn’t think I could get by on Social Security and bankbook savings alone during the three months summer of full unemployment, I decided to delay cutting the drawdown until September, when a little teaching pay will start dribbling in again. Good thing—without the $389/month net drawdown, by now I’d be deep into the emergency fund. With it, I’m still in the black and, barring another unexpected repair bill, should stay that way until pay starts again in the fall.

But the black ink flows by dint of penny-pinching. And you know what? I’m tired of it. I was pinching pennies through the spring semester, so tightening the belt over the summer means real Scrooge tactics. As I write this, it’s 85 in my study and 90 degrees in the kitchen; the power bill for this month still may break the piggybank. Over at La Maya’s house, whence I just came, it’s cool and comfortable indoors. It really would be nice if my house could be so cool that the dog and I can breathe without panting. And it would be mighty nice not to have a $300 repair bill represent a minor catastrophe.

So. What we have here is 12 months of drawdown, of which 9 months are redundant. When I cut the drawdown to $1 a month in September and leave it that way until May, what will happen is $4,500  of tax-deferred savings won’t be spent. It’s money that I originally figured would have to be spent, so in a way we could regard it as usable dollars. The plan here is to draw a buck a month during the academic year and $500 a month ($389 net) in the summer.

What if instead I drew enough down in the summer to create a net of $1,000 a month? That would require a gross withdrawal from the 403(b) of $1,300 a month.

I’m already going to withdraw $500/month in the summer of 2011. To make it $1,300, I would have to take out an additional $800/month.

$800 x 3 = $,2400

But over the nine months of 2010–11 that I take effectively nothing out of the GDU retirement account, $4,500 of “spent” money will not get spent.

$4,500 – $2,400 = $2,100 to the good

In other words, although I won’t preserve all of that $4,500 saved by cutting the drawdown to $1, I’ll still be $2,100 further ahead than I would be if I continue the present $500/month drawdown until all the RASL payments are disbursed in February 2012.

Meanwhile, during the summer months, the $1,000 net drawdown added to the $975 net Social Security payment would yield $1,975 a month to live on.

That’s $575 less than came in while I was teaching three sections, but still one heckuva lot better than the $1,364 I’m trying to get by on now, during the costliest season of the year.

$ 1975 – 1240  nondiscretionary expenses – 800 discretionary costs = –$65

Not great, but better than I’m doing now.

Of course, the only reason I’m getting by this summer is that last semester the $389 net drawdown plus the $1,574/month net teaching pay added to the Social Security left a little money in the checking account at the end of each month. Enough had accrued over four months of frugal living to almost support me while nothing but Social Security and the piddling drawdown comes in over the summer. However, I’d only be running $65 in the red, or $195 for the entire summer. It’s very likely that $195 will be left over at the end of nine months, even with the drawdown cut to a dollar a month.

How likely is it?

By the time the spring semester ended, I was about $2,500 in the black. Subtract $389 a month from that: $2,500 – ($389 · 4) = $944. Prorate that amount over the 2011 summer months to get about $315 a month. In fact, by $2011, there should be twice that much, because the monthly accrual will have occurred over two semesters, rather than this year’s single semester of earnings. $315 x 2 = $630 a month in savings for summer survival.

$  630  left from living frugally over 9 months
+1,000  summertime net drawdown
+   975 net Social Security
$2,605 net summer funding
– 1240 nondiscretionary expenses
–  800 discretionary expenses
$565 theoretically left each month

How can I count the ways I doubt that? Nevertheless, even if this estimate is two or three times too generous, I could afford to run the air conditioning! And without having to try to keep discretionary expenses to $500!!

Matter of fact, with $565 a month left over, I could afford to go someplace to get out of this unholy heat for awhile! In theory, that would amount to $1,695 of summer vacation money. Holy mackerel! That would put me up in Santa Fe for almost a week!

Assuming I take my shopping cart and sleep under a freeway overpass…

Speaking of the scheme to cut the $800/month discretionary budget to $500 over the summer, that one didn’t work. The $300 air-conditioning repair pushed the June-July expenses for that budget cycle, which ended yesterday, right back up to $800. In fact, I spent about $12 more than $800.

It could have come out of monthly diddle-it-away savings. However,

a) that comes under the heading of robbing Peter to pay Paul; and
b) I’m trying to revive that savings account, which was much impoverished by the clothing spree and the glasses fling. It will take another three months to recover from those spending frenzies.

So, I decided to cover the AC repair bill with cash flow. {sigh}

Pretty clearly, it’s unrealistic to think I can cover discretionary expenses on $5o0 a month. Most months I don’t spend $800, but on average since January I’ve come in only $42 under budget. To get day-to-day costs down to $500 a month, I’d have to stop eating.

And it must be said: not living like an anchorite would make a 112-degree day a lot more tolerable.

Textbook Ripoffs: Why college leaves kids in debt

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One of next fall’s English 101 students e-mailed yesterday. This is a kid who was in one of my other courses and decided to take the upcoming class because she liked my style (read: she got a good grade). She asked how much we will be using the textbook and then said she went to the bookstore and found it was selling for $150. She’s not eligible for financial aid this semester and says she doesn’t think she can afford that much. She’s doing the best she can, she adds, to stay out of debt.

A hundred and fifty bucks. For a freshman comp book. That, my friends, is a $30 paperback.

It would be one thing if the book contained a lot of difficult-to-typeset equations (though most publishers use LaTex for that purpose—works like magic, and it’s freeware!). And it would be one thing if the book contained a lot of expensive four-color graphics. Or if writing a freshman comp book required a great deal of arcane and difficult-to-acquire knowledge.

But none of these apply. When I say this thing is a $30 paperback, I’m not kidding. It’s printed on decent paper and it does use color on almost every page. But otherwise…

Graphics? There’s little in this book that can’t be done with an ordinary word processor, and nothing in it can’t be accomplished—easily—with InDesign.

Permissions? It doesn’t cost $150 a copy to get permission to reprint a few sample articles. When I published my textbook, The Essential Feature (which, BTW, sells for a mere $40), I was amazed to discover how many publishers will give away rights to reprint if you murmur the words “and my publisher is a nonprofit.”

Expertise? Research clout? Gimme a break! This is a freshman comp book! A smart graduate student could write it. A competent junior editor in her 20s could write it. What is required is basic literacy, an acquaintance with mechanics and the structure of essays, and passing familiarity with MLA style. That’s it. This is not Laboratories in Mathematical Experimentation: A Bridge to Higher Mathematics!

Lordie.

So I say to the kid, “The school just started a book rental program. Call the bookstore and see if you can rent the thing.”

Says she, “I did. They told me this text isn’t included in the rental program.”

I call up Amazon.com on the computer. Lo! One vendor is peddling the thing for $14.95 used. New copies are going for as low as $40, though most sellers try to extract $80 or $90. This morning I see the $14.95 copy is gone—hope the kid snagged it. If not, she may manage to snare the one that’s selling for $17.90. That’s more within reason.

Even at $90, a book like this is a shameless rip-off. But in the “shameless” department, what excuse is there for campus bookstores to gouge kids $150 for a book that’s overpriced at $90?

The departmental chair told me we are required to order the book and we are required to use it in the classroom. When he heard that another faculty member remarked to me that she knew of an instructor who was not having his students buy the book but instead was using material freely available on the Internet (yes, Virginia, everything in this book—even most of the essays used as examples—is available on the Net), he demanded, with arched eyebrow, to know who this guy was. Luckily, I didn’t catch his name.

Not that I’m suggesting any collusion with a rapacious textbook industry. To the contrary. A department can’t have every faculty member wildcatting Internet sites as study material and hope to maintain any pretense of academic integrity. The chair would fail to do his job if he didn’t see to it that all the courses came up to the standards set out by the institution.

Nevertheless, it’s not surprising that young people commonly graduate from college $40,000 in the hole, more debt than they’d incur by purchasing a Lexus sedan. At $150, this textbook would cost my student almost two-thirds of what she’d pay to register for the course!

So, if you have a kid on the way to college, or you’re en route to those ivied precincts yourself, what can you do to protect your checkbook?

• First things first: As soon as the bookstore puts the next semester’s texts on the shelves, pay the place a visit. Note all the required texts, and write down their ISBNs. The ISBN is a number that appears on the copyright page, usually on the reverse side of the title page; it’s unique to each specific edition of a book. The ISBN for The Longman Writer, for example, is 978-0-205-7399-8. Knowing this number will ensure that you get the correct edition—in the case of this book, that’s important, because earlier versions do not include the revised 2009 MLA style guidelines.

• Next, the path of least resistance is to check Amazon.com. Enter an ISBN in the search function and it will bring up the correct textbook. Buy used. It’s much cheaper. As we’ve seen, even though new prices are less than you’ll pay in the bookstore, even at Amazon they’re out of reason.

• If you don’t want to own these objects (and really: why should a freshman comp text collect dust on your bookshelf from now until you die?), google “textbook rental.” Thanks to our handy ISBN, we see that The Longman Writer can be borrowed for a semester from Chegg.com for $26.49, about what the book is actually worth.

• Speaking of borrowing, check the campus library. Often faculty members put textbooks on reserve. Even though you can’t take it home, few textbook reading assignments require more than an hour or two.

• And between you and me, at 10 cents a page for photocopying, you could xerox the entire Longman text for $68.20, considerably less than the bookstore wants for a new copy. Though I’m asking my students to read many chapters in this thing, I’m not testing them on the entire book. A smart student with an advance copy of the syllabus (generally available at the departmental office) could buy a copy from the bookstore, photocopy the relevant sections, and then return the thing before the deadline to receive a full refund.

Ethical? Legal? No. But when publishers and retailers are openly ripping off 19-year-olds, I wouldn’t feel too bad about a little larceny. You can always plead self-defense…

• If you bought the book, resell it at the end of the semester. Check online for resale opportunities that will return more than the campus bookstore will pay you. Remember that you can resell the book on Amazon, possibly for more than you could get on-campus. Enter the ISBN, check the amounts people are getting, and compare with the figure the bookstore is offering. Don’t stop at Amazon; textbook renters often buy used books, as do other marketers—google “buy textbooks” to bring up a variety of sites. Sell to the highest bidder.

Oh, I’m getting all worked up over this. It makes me so angry! The textbook business, which ought to be an altruistic endeavor, has turned into industrial exploitation of a captive audience, made even more inexcusable by the buyers’ youth and financial naïveté.

If you’re a kid, don’t put up with it!

If you’re the parent of a new college student, teach your student where to find textbooks at reasonable prices, and help them to find ways get supplies from sellers that don’t steal from them.

Bargains and Such-a-Deals

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A few days ago, La Maya and I made a run on a couple of estate sales. The first place was disappointing—looked a lot better in the online photos than it was. But at the second place we both found some loot.

Check out this fine junk:

EstateSaleLoot

That pan, which I’d call a brazier or braising pan, was part of a large set of aluminum-core stainless steel. Wolfgang Puck. Not a bad pan, not the best, but more than good enough for government work. Similar Wolfgang Pucks on the market are going for $30, which is what I paid for the entire collection of valuables.

These folks decorated in the 1980; hence lots of blue and pink. The blue and pink mugs seem to be pretty good quality stoneware. They’re not signed, but they’re high-fired and in good condition. There actually are four of them–two are in the dishwasher just now.

My beloved yellow-and-blue mugs from Pier One have crazed on the inside. They still look pretty on the outside, but the cracked interiors have soaked up enough coffee and tea stains as to be more or less uncleanable, this side of soaking them in Clorox. An exercise in futility: bleach the stains out and the next time you pour a cup of tea, you have the map of the crevasses of Mars again. These dated pink-and-blue fellows will do until I spot (and can afford) another set that inspires love in my heart.

And in spite of the equally dated pink and blue design on the little Italian dish, it has some real charm. Seen in a context completely devoid of pink and blue, it ceases to cry “1988” and looks like a sweet little decorator item.

The Chantal knockoff teakettle is a Kuhn-Rikon. The amount they charge for those things new is a little on the startling side. On the other hand, the newer models look like they’ve undergone some improvements. This one is all stainless steel, including its (wonderfully loud!) whistle and its handle. It’s not surprising that the steel whistle would get too hot to pull off without a potholder. But the handle? You can’t touch the handle, either, after you’ve boiled water in it.

Come on! All my stainless pans have steel handles that stay cool unless you put them in the oven.

So that was disappointing. The blue Le Creuset that resides in the kitchen now (and will continue to reside there) has a plasticoid handle and whistle, both of which stay cool on the stove. You can grab the whistle with your bare hands the instant live steam stops shooting out. Part of the connection that holds the handle on has chipped, moderately alarming, but it’s been like that for a couple of years and shown no sign of falling apart.

That model of Le Creuset was the perfect teakettle: pretty design, no ersatz early-American look, audible whistle, easy to use, well made. Well, naturally, like any manufacturer, the instant Le Creuset sensed it had made a perfect product, they yanked it off the market. That kettle is no longer available. Of course.

Speaking of bargains and near bargains, how d’you like my new dining room chair covers?

DiningRoomChairs

Mwa ha ha! Bet you can’t guess where that fabric came from!

Might be nice...but who knows?

I’ve been searching for something to go with the orange wall (which is not, as the picture suggests, puce) that would look Southwestern, Provençal, or Mediterranean. Nothing. It’s either hideous flowers or bizarre geometrics or ghastly colors.

Drove all over the city looking for fabric. Nothing. A couple of places online had some pretty fabrics, but most of them were a bit on the oh dear! side. Some that looked really neat online could have been anything by the time they arrived in the mail and spread themselves over the chairs.

Not so long ago, M’hijito and I went lurking in Pier One, searching for a small desk of the sort he envisioned but could not see on this earthly plane. And lo! There I found the fabric.

What was it? Curtains.

Window curtains. Not only that, but they were on sale! I got them for a nice discount.

Why didn’t I think of this before? A curtain is, at base, a length off a bolt of fabric with hems on four sides. One panel provided enough to cover all four chairs, and then some.

There’s enough left over to make Cassie a collar. If I could just find some interfacing. Doesn’t anyone sew around here anymore?