One year ago today: January 23, 2025, the guy is clever.
Five years ago today: January 23, 2021, somebody in Michigan again.
Nine years ago today: January 23, 2017, day 37.
Random years ago today: January 23, 2005., millennial packaging.
Dammit, silver, break $100 so I can get things here underway. At 09:22 I get my wish, silver at $100. Good morning. I’m watching the stock ticker and looking up an old formula. This info is partly useful to seasoned investors. Most silver is bought and sold in stages, making tax treatment difficult. I won’t get into detail but you might find the concept amusing, it’s one of those equations on accounting exams that few ever use in practice. Mixed nuts. Imagine this.
No pics, but all the spots where they placed the EKG and other patches over my torso have all turned red and sore. Or more precisely, the spots where they tore them off after, and we are talking around 40 of them. They took a layer of my dermis with them and I’m not pleased. Winter storm Fern is heading this way, so I’ll do some shopping before the surge. Hey, aren’t surges associated with hurricanes, not blizzards? Yes, but I meant the prices, ha-ha.
This tight-money stretch is not helping with the vet bills, so I dug into the bin. I cannot have the Reb worried about Chooks, who has a paw cyst. I do not dabble in gold, now $5,000 per ounce, but I set these four grams aside for an emergency back in 2012. They are going to be very welcome news in Tennessee in about another hour.
The market price for the gold was $163 per ounce, the best I could get in reality was $140. As for the $102 for silver, I received $90. Keep this in mind, investors, seeing and getting are not the same. Same with women. An article on campus women had me do a search of hippie chicks from back in my college days. It took just moments to learn every last picture of slender blonde babes in their early teens has been scrubbed from the Internet. Lots of Japanese, though. Anything even close is either not blonde or never shows a bare midrift, with the exception of what are really young-looking adult women with fat thighs.
Another consequence of tight money is pet health. Chooks has developed a limp, but the –x-ray alone is $300. There is the issue of teeth, which I do not fully consider important. I have not seen a dentist in decades. If I survive the bypass, I intend to make an appointment. I understand the need for canine dental, but not why we had pets in my day that never needed this and lived long and happy.
Prison cafeteria.
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I had to run the Hyundai into town. It has all the same repairs not done since last Octover when money got tight. A slow leak in one rear tire (which is otherwise brand new), the crack in the tailpipe, a battery that slowly dies, and the starter is located under the hood. But, it still saved my bacon today and may do so again next week. I would have no hesitation to take it to Miami, but I must replace the portable air compressor. I could use a smaller unit now that I have an extra storage tank I had not planned on. But is that wise?
The storm is due Sunday, so I stocked up on coffee and some canned goods. Never need much and after twenty-five years in Montana, nothing in Florida is that bad. How about the New York forecast of “3 to 16” inches of snow. That sort of accuracy is their motto. My food prep amounted to making a key-lime pie, which will be ready by midnight. Wheeling the shopping cart a bit was an effort, so I’m planning an evening of Austin Powers re-runs. Sure he’s a cornball, but I guarantee you he gets 100 times more than my brothers.
This weekend is dedicated to a lot of planning. At every stage it is scary to note that, as far as relying on anybody for anything, I’m on my own. Of the dozen people I know best in the area, not one would constitute a dependable ally. This means every contingency I can think of must be set (and paid for) in advance. What I do know is even if with zero complications, they will keep me in the hospital a week, and from asking around, three weeks is not uncommon. My money schedule is fried, I could land back here with my phone and wifi cut off, etc.
There you go, none of these things ganged up on me while times were good. I hope the system hates people like me. I’ll never know how they know just when to strike. If I completely cover myself for the worst-case scenario, the next four weeks is going to cost me $1,800 more than I have. If nothing further goes wrong (like a major KIA repair next Monday, the best I can do is break even. It’s ho-hum blog material, but recorded out of long-term habit and the fact this is, in the end, a daily journal.
I have spent a day or two in the hospital, and not being the TV type, it was hell on me. There were places like Mt. Sinai that never even had magazines to read. I had to pay a nurse to smuggle me crosswords and a Time. That says a week will be an ordeal and demands some careful anticipations. I cannot read Arduino more than two days without overload. As I’m writing this, I realize this is similar to the way I plan many projects. Why not treat this as an opportunity, to try something I’ve not had time for?
Work with me, or the challenge could become finding something. No planning for any movement or motor skills. I’ve talked to others who say the hours of nothingness are the ordeal. They are unlikely to let me play bass, so put on the old thinking cap. Is this a good spot to mention if my hands don’t get better, my bass-playing days are over. Well, maybe I could revert to using just two fingers like my brother and join up with the Hippie again. The situation, boys, she’s mighty mercurial.
Starting soon, New Yorkers will be ticketed for driving 1 mph over the speed limit. The cameras never blink. Three tickets and you lose your license. Then again, I’ve always said such people deserve each other.
ADDENDUM
Plenty of reports are flying about the massive fraud schemes in Minnesota, which should have been kicked out of the union in 1965. Anyway, nobody is reporting how the scams worked, so this is your lucky day. No, the people that ran them were not clever operators who figured out how to scam the system. None of them are that smart. There are no Lex Luthors in the Atlantic Northeast. Here’s how it generally works.
You open a “Democrat-style” non-profit, a charity. Choose a bleeding heart name, like “Feed the Hungry Whales” and apply for a Minnesota government grant. Whaddaya know, you get approved and a $2 million dollar check arrives. You feed the whales, and ask for another $2 million and notice the money arrives without anybody bothering to check if you really fed the whales. This is America and we use the “bribery” system. That is where the genius police arrest the person who takes the money but not the person who paid it.
