One year ago today: January 9, 2022, if I had known . . . .
Five years ago today: January 9, 2018, wet & heavy.
Nine years ago today: January 9, 2014, overpriced.
Random years ago today: January 9, 2011, now I remember . . . .
Howie & I fired up the old hot dog cart. It deteriorated in storage, mostly the wood parts, though all of it was predictable for being under a tarp. In need of a good paint job, I would have to give it a five-gallon overhaul to even sell it now. We got the burners working but the big 6” deep pan for the hot dogs is missing. And that was $72 four years ago. There was enough gas in the tanks to fire up both burners. The frame is solid creating the idea that instead of painting it, the wood should be covered with aluminum sheeting. Then who cares what’s under it.
If you recall, I ran it long enough to realize it is more than a one-man operation and finding anyone reliable is impossible. That’s one change thanks to the Internet. Everybody with a modicum of aptitude is dreaming of their own gig and what’s left over is barely suitable for a menial McJob and even then, they want $15 per hour for their time. Effort? That’s extra. Twenty years ago they’d wind up on the skids. Today they vote themselves more welfare.
The guitar player e-mailed to say he’s got COVID, which of course I do not believe. He’s not a solid personality and these Polk wannabes are good at sweet-talking. If we connect, it will be the first really new band in Polk in at least a decade so I’m not too concerned he’ll find something. But it will waste time. JZ called and yes, I did forget my flash drive at the library. It’s at his place and that means a decision.
Like most, he has no mailers, no stamps, no nothing and do not Fedex such things or they get held for ransom. (Fedex/UPS demands your life history on file or they won’t hand it over, assholes.) Yes, I know they need to be sure, but they are paid to deliver and most often have no concern about it—it’s unAmerican garbage to make everybody a suspect just to cover your ass. There’s better ways they can go about it.
The Florida law saying secondary schools must reveal certain costs shows professors barely make $100,000 per year. Suddenly I’m glad I didn’t stay in school too long. Do you think any of them professors could drop over here and tell me why, when my Google Web Activity is turned off, I keep getting emails that it isn’t?
Oklahoma’s best roadside.
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Wait, there’s more. January 6, there was a $56 charge on the credit card. There is no cause for panic, because the card is shared and our system does not work instantly. The good news is that was Friday and the transaction was picked up here by Monday. Pretty slick, actually. I’ll let you know. Also, be aware that billing info can get pretty convoluted on-line. You order from one company, get billed by another, and it shows up as Acme on your statement. There are in increasing number of websites that are blocked by my standard security settings.
Here are the parts for the sawdust vacuum. The barrel, the cone, and the collection baffle. All free so far. I picked up a major load of lumber for $38 from the cull cart at Home Depot. It includes enough wood for 24 feet of good shelving and wood to work my new lock miter bits.
The Reb called, one of the doggies needs minor surgery. And we found the $56, it was a pet toy and I got millennialized. It was three payments plus tax that I okayed as a single lump sum, my mistake. I stopped to visit at the Thrift and scored a large plastic-coated wall map of the USA for a couple bucks. Goof, because the rest of today is taken up by paperwork.
Caltier is getting better at moving the funds, it seems their system is set up for a smaller series of large payments. Ours will be small, less than a thousand at a time, due to their pesky insistence that you declare your income to be ten times the transaction. I realize other people don’t have these little rules with their money. And other people wake up on their 69th birthday and realize something themselves. That they have to go to work for another year.
JZ has the flash drive but no means to mail it here. You heard me, he is not alone these days in not having any mailing supplies around the house. Tomorrow the new Republican majority will vote on those 87,000 tax collectors (you call them what you want), it is expected in a publicity move they will defund the lot of them. I’ve got a feeling there will be a host of other cosmetic votes to polish up their image. And a slight reshuffling of the deck.
ADDENDUM
Real estate. In some Canadian provinces, the top 10% own a third of the houses. Some geniuses over at Cambridge, after studying 600,000 files, have concluded that sons from poor families have a harder time getting through college, regardless of their IQ. That sounds familiar, “If you really, really, really want to get through university, you’ll figure out a way.”
How rich is Blackrock? Well, they are known to have $10 trillion. So the only entities which have more money than that would be China, then the United States.
