April 3, 2023

Yesteryear
One year ago today: April 3, 2022, reviewing BASIC.
Five years ago today: April 3, 2018, Combee Settlement bookstore.
Nine years ago today: April 3, 2014, they stole the eBike.
Random years ago today: April 3 2013, I say $75 is plenty.

           Another lovely morning and a deposit that has to be made downtown gets me out of yard work. The bird feeders will be empty and I want to check my papayas. It is one year this week(?) since the transplant. Way too slow for a cash crop. The Reb checked in and the doggies miss me. How can you tell? They will find some article and drag it to the middle of the living room floor. This time my doggie walking boot and my back porch slippers. One of each.

           Here is a morning’s entertainment in Tennessee, late last week. These events are subject to intepretation, of course. But I’d rather come home to a gal upstairs singing and playing piano that one downstairs watching soaps and gossiping with her sister. I’m just saying. Anything beats stereotype for me and I say it is not that often one gets treated to sock puppets miming Shania Twain, is all I’m sayin’. I can be okay with most anything like this. As long as they aren’t my socks.

           Into town and back in no time, I decided to go to the library to convert my files back to the secure format used in my home office. The Hermitage library uses Windows 10 which is not allowed on my premises. A lady pulls up on a bicycle and I notice she did not lock up. But, you can smell a Democrat woketard so I said nothing and walked inside. Around four minutes later, as I was logging on, she was at the counter reporting the bike stolen. Yes folks, you want diversity, you pay for it. Do I know for certain she was a woketard? Hey, if it quacks like a duck . . . .

           Stop at the Thrift first and got a brand new paper shredder for $5. I also bought an old scanner, but my intent is to support the Thrift. There was a mouthy 40-ish lady in there looking for her next victim. On she went that her name was GG, but it did not stand for Lady Gaga or Great Grandmother, and so on. Me and the staff were trying to talk Trump. What do I think? The left wants a shit-show and Trump is about to hand them one like they’ve never seen before.
           They’ve become the party of rape, murder, burglary, drugs, abortion, and queers. Of course they want everything torn down—it’s the same with all misfits. There is going to be a showdown sooner or later. When I grew up, you just threw your bike on the ground outside the school and it was there when school was over.

           A plant has begun growing inside my workshed where there is almost no sun. It looks like one of the linden trees, so it might be a sucker. See the photo, it shows the plant is quite spindly and it will not last long in the footpath. Again, this is inside the shed in the dark. Look this afternoon for a shot of the “pumpkin” plant that was just a twig when I left two weeks ago. If only I could find an ornamental plant so hardy.

Picture of the day.
The Japanese “Alps”.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Around the yard taking inventory. The squirrels chewed right through the wood blocks, so now I will put metal. Shown here how they gnawed through 3/4” solid wood to get access. They got three jars of peanut butter. The ones they don’t finish, I feed to the birds, but curse the jackass who decided to put food in plastic jars. The pumpkin plant that was just starting two weeks ago is now two feet high and across, see the nearby picture. If only I could find a domestic plant so hardy. The peach tree was dehydrated, I soaked it for an hour. The birdfeeders are restocked and I’ve attracted what seems to be a pair of pigeons.

           I checked the bank and I’m slightly better off than I thought. So Caltier will pass the 5-figure mark by around April 12 and possibly the teens by the 30th. I examined a number of other funds but there is nothing quite like Caltier, which specializes in long term working-class apartment rentals. Remind me to get you some info about the ones I delved most into and why I decided no.

           One term that keeps arriving is “accredited investor”. For openers, it appears to be a hindrance rather than a qualification. They check to see if your net worth is greater than $124,000 (they are shooting for a million) and your combined household income is more than $200,000 per year. This effectively seals off the people making around $100,000 annually who are the very ones who should be doing this brand of investing. Also, it caps the amount a rich person can invest in a given project, at least that’s what I garner from reading the rule book. For the record, I do not meet the Caltier criteria for investing, all the declarations to date are fake. Not false, fake. I do not meet the 10x level of income they check-box you with every transaction.

           The [Caltier] return was disappointing last month, about half what I’d projected. If I didn’t mention, I’ve mailed out the reports to those following this on a personal basis. (I’m far too old for such an investment to actually pay for me personally, but I have others to consider now.) No, I don’t mean the Reb, who is doing just fine, but let’s take a look at just one aspect of how the world has changed due to the ease of tracking people. It now takes inordinate amounts of time to get things done while they check out every corner. You only think you are in charge.
           She has provisions for the doggies in her will. Over the past three years, we found out estates can take up to a year to settle even if the paperwork is in order. I’ve had clients with joint bank accounts whose spouses died and it took them seven months to get their money. The Internet has changed even death, they now check world-wide to see if you owed any money before they pay out. Heaven forbid the Red was gone tomorrow. Who is available to drop everything and get to the pets within the day. Who knows their meals, medications, habits? Who has the space and money to take them in for up to a year (the bill averages $466 per month, by the way)? See, now you know what I’m talking about.

           Later, I suspect one of my papayas is missing. Were there not five on that tree? Well now they are four and nothing is lying on the ground. If squirrels or squirrel-sized rodents can gnaw through the planks I screwed down in place, it is time for the best reinforcement. They know the food is inside, so now we take more precautions. Metal covers at the access points, foam fill that is poisonous or at least toxic to such pests. The plan is to drive to Winter Haven tomorrow and pick up supplies. It cancels a day of other plans, but these rodents have been relentless.
           Here’s the pumpkin plant, I’ll hack it down later today. It’s in the way.

           What’s more, I have a list of 30 items, not blog material, that have to be attended. When I flopped down y’day, I slept 10 hours straight. That’s not how you get things done, sleeping that much. There is still no alternative to Internet service locally other than Boost. Not unless you want to sign a two year contract and tell them your bank account number. Yes, I still pay cash only and DC is working hard to take that away. It’s horrific how few Americans realize the danger of a cashless society. I’ve long toyed with the idea of an Internet service that anonymizes payment but I wonder if they would even allow it. Even the electric company wants your life history of file before they connect service. It’s a free country but that doesn’t mean they will ever leave you alone.

ADDENDUM
           Wilford. I bumped into him downtown so we stopped for a few. He quit his job at the hospital as it was not leaving him time to study for his career move. I know the scenario, he’s lucky he had the option to quit. In my life, I had to drop the study part. Taking an extra hour and a couple beers, I scribbled down some notes for my life story, should I ever get around to that. The dominating theme is that not one of my childhood dreams ever “came true”. No, I never met the right girl or graduated at 24 to become head of the corporation and never played in a successful band (long-term) and none of my hobby-interests ever went viral on-line. Sound familiar? I had a similar convo with the Reb a few days ago.
           This is my “field of dreams”, I suppose. There are some who consider a life like mine somewhat dynamic and I tell them it is crazy to compare me to couch potatoes. I’m reduced to climbing a ladder to seal squirrel holes and taking pictures of plants that grow in the dark. I see the point with my life, however. Maybe none of the big dreams ever did materialize, but that doesn’t mean nothing happened at all. There is something about that which will always irk me, however.
           If you look around at others who never realized anything, it is usually straightforward to connect the dots. Act certain ways, do certain deeds, and think certain thoughts, it is a given they will never have nice things. But that’s where the logic breaks down. I never embraced the known factors that short-circuit life. I made it a point to behave as if I had met the right gal, graduated from the right school, and got the right job. Today I lead a comfortable life due to that, but nobody to share it with. The closest I ever got was the Reb and my job at the phone company. So there, I finally said it. Your turn.

Last Laugh