One year ago today: January 11, 2024, it was warm enough.
Five years ago today: January 11, 2020, eggplant is bland.
Nine years ago today: January 11, 2016, I didn’t bother.
Random years ago today: January 11, 2009, Stratford careers.
Another reason to use my budget only for guidance and not comparison is the way my spreadsheets are set up. It is very easy to enter new data and y’day in the silo I found a clip of receipts totaling $466 that were dated in March of 2019. My budget is no a restriction, but a guideline. However, if you were going to use them for comparison, here’s some figures for 2017 and 2024. Food went from $1,660 to $2,916. Gasoline from $1,390 to $2,440. And I don’t know if it is good news or I’m just that old, my entertainment budget dropped from $3,530 to $2,470. These numbers are post-retirement. Back in my heyday, I would easily spend $30,000 per year on overseas vacations. Since retirement my worst year ever was 2022. That year, just the basics cost me over $10,420.28 where my normal annual budget for this household it just over half that.
Not a good time at all for many. FEMA is refusing to renew the hotel vouchers for 3,500 families in the Carolinas, turning them out into 15°F weather. California, well, that’s similar, but the popular feeling is the rich sat back and did nothing as long as it was a poor White people’s problem.
Planning for tomorrow, a quick glance on-line at Polk County’s offering shows that I’ve pretty much seen and done it all. Other than the Lake Wales museum and a smaller museum in a jam & jelly store, that’s it, baby. Let me check Polk Theater. The one with no parking. They show vintage movies. I would like to go there just to see the place. The reputation is the place is incredible, designed for 2,000 people and mostly famous because Elvis once played there. It is licensed and admission is just $5.00.
Buying the coffee had me short-cutting through the crafts aisle where I saw this box for sale for $12 bucks. It is 15 pieces of unfinished lumber, stapled together with no lid. It has a number of other shortcomings, the most obvious being the corner posts, which get in the way. Labeled a crate rather than a box, it is not sturdy. You could break it over your knee and it could not survive a drop with anything much in the basket. To date, my most successful box design has been a unit that can fit a cordless electric drill. It stores the charger as well, with a simple tray for bits. The length is enough to store the drill with most of the smaller bits still in the chuck. The box can be dropped all you want, you can stand on it for that matter, plus it has brass hinged, a locking lid, and a carry handle. Tomorrow, I shall take a closer look at that box. Starting with how much it weighs.
Antarctica without ice.
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Here is the strangest thing this month. This afternoon another flock of robins came through. I fed them a ton of leftover rice. That is the third flock this season and it is now the middle of winter. Any ornithologists in the crowd? Because I know little about robin migration habits other than this is not climate change.
I opted out of Karaoke for a similar reason. The only hometown pub in the area has lost its atmosphere. It’s more a facsimile of a big city joint and all the local have moved on. The club does not care, as according to Agt. R, they are making money. I can see it—unless some sharp operator opens up a honkytonk. That would cost millions around here. Instead, I bought the best rated coffee I could find. It was twice the price and I’ll let you know.
I have a tale from the trailer court for you. In the summer before I turned five, there was a new priest at the English church. They called it a mission and mother was okay with us playing with town kids who went there. The priest was quite young and somebody had donated a rowboat. I found this fascinating as the priest had to refinish the boat. To peel the old paint, he had one of those old brass gasoline blowtorches that you had to pump up. It was so worn out, he spent more time getting it to work than working. The lake froze over long before he ever took a boat ride. Anyway, you know the tool I’m talking about. A while back I saw a video of a guy scorching wood with one and it brought out the grain quite nicely.
Further searching shows nobody sells these at all, but I won’t let that stop me as regular propane canisters have dropped in price to less than $6 each. And I double-checked, it's true, an Amish rhubarb pie on-line is $50 bucks.
Reading a quip that once again it has become cheaper to rent than own, I glanced through my usual array of home ownership and advisory sites. As pointed out long ago, prices are still rising despite lack of sales, a point on which the pundits have remained largely silent. If there is another bust on the way, it has been on the way for five years now. What is propping up this stagnant market? Well, you get anomalies like New York City where the denizens spend up to 70% of their income on rent. But that’s small beans when you look at Florida, where the market is dominated by foreign buyers. America, for all its faults, is still the best place to own property. So why the sudden on-line concern?
The incoming Trump administration, like in 2016, sparks a surge in confidence. And that draws in huge amounts of foreign money, often to the extent of depressing their own economies. But there is also a surge of resentment about allowing outsiders to own American real estate. Silver is doing nothing, but the pot is gurgling again. Industrial demand has outstripped mining supply, remember that most silver certificates sold still represent ore that has not been mined yet. My hope for 2025? A huge burst in the real estate bubble and a corresponding silver boom.
Let me put some numbers on that hope, reminding all that I have zero empathy for people who lose anything they bought with borrowed money. I would like to see real estate drop by 65% and silver blast up to $500+ per ounce. That would mean Tennessee’s $500,000 houses selling for $175,000, which is about right. And even then, since they’d all be underwater (owing more on the property than it is worth), I’d start waving half that amount in cash to see who bites. I predict, since the banks would be strapped, I could get a Tennessee mansion for $100,000. I want a barn with a loft and a nice shed for my sidecar.
ADDENDUM
Around 50 years ago one of the first businesses I owned in town was a Laundromat. This was well before the days of computerized blogs, so I remember something that I want recorded in case the original is lost. Of course, I did my own laundry there and one time I emptied a dryer where I had 11 pairs of socks. Just grab the load the throw them on the sorting table. They landed randomly all over the table, but all 22 socks landed together matched in 11 little piles. What are the odds?
