I had one of those "Senior Moments" today. Actually, a few.
I go to the bank often, almost daily now because the exercise machines are upstairs in the bank building. If I go past the bank, I'm likely headed for the recycle center. And sometimes I actually go to the town hall, which is further south. If I pass the town hall, I'm headed for Rhinebeck, Poughkeepsie, or Wappingers, which I do several times a week.
So today, I headed for the town hall to pay the county taxes. South of the center of the village, I happened to glance left, and realized I had just passed the inn, so I thought "Oh, Foo!" and I turned around in the insurance office parking lot and went back to the bank. Sitting in the bank parking lot, I realized that's not where I was headed. Left turn (not easy anymore in the village) back out, keep heading south, and without thinking, I turned in to the recycle center. Sitting at the closed center gates, I thought "Oh, Fooey!", that's not where I was headed either, and went back out. Left turn, kept heading south. I passed the town hall and was on my way to Rhinebeck and points south when I realized that's not where I was headed. "Razzelfrats!" Turned around in Hardscrabble Square, saw the Subway shop, bought a sub, headed back north, and was halfway home with my sandwich when I realized I hadn't stopped at the town hall. Tomorrow is the last day to pay the taxes without penalty, and who knows what tomorrow will bring, so I turned around and went back. This time I made it, and actually found my way home again.
I think.
This place looks sort of familiar, and the cat seems to recognize me.
Why the confusion? I was preoccupied, running on autopilot, following habit, and listening to a Dolly Parton CD wasn't helping.
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The nice neighbor lady from down the street stopped by today to ask if she could borrow some firewood. Her furnace isn't working, it has to be replaced, not fixed, which means it'll be a while, and although she has lots of downed trees in her woods, she can't get them cut until the weekend. I keep a small amount of maple and locust racked on the side of the house for emergencies, so we put about 10 logs in her daughter's car trunk. I was very surprised that that was all she wanted, it looked to me like about one day's worth of wood, and it's been in the low teens at night lately. But that's all she wanted.
Um. Just realized. It's one day's worth for an open fireplace, but if she has a woodstove, 10 thick logs might last three or four days. I didn't ask what she was burning it in.
She says she'll replace the wood after she gets her downed trees cut, probably this weekend. I was about to say she didn't need to replace it, but ... actually it isn't that easy to replace a small amount of short-cut hardwood, and if we ever have another multi-day electrical outage, I'll need it. So since it's "free" to her, I'll take it. I gave away the wood from my last few downed trees, and I'd prefer not to have to hope for more falling trees, or to have to buy a whole portion of a cord of unknown species and unknown curing from some guy who thinks it's mahogany or something.
It's unfortunate that the furnace died. This is the family that just put the house up for sale, so they can move to wherever the daughter will be going to college.
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I had a bunch of things on the "To Do" list for today. I have decided to stop waiting for the Hairless Hunk's trailer, and I'm going to get one of those (smaller) construction dumpsters, so I can get rid of basement junk. And I wanted to see if I can get some info on the Coach House Players - I was a member back in the late '60s. I can't act (well, actually, I can - what I can't do is remember the lines) but I can build sets and paint stuff, and whatever else is needed. But mostly, it might be fun, and I might meet people my age. And I need to get the tax stuff together and catch up on correspondence. (No wonder I got so many "aloof"s on my Nohari!)
I didn't get any of that done because I spent much of the day doing research on charities for the friend who is setting up charitable trusts. The woman was a high level executive in one of the largest computer companies, and yet she's completely lost on the internet. She also has an almost paralyzing fear of viruses. She won't even open mail from known friends unless they put something specific and personal in the subject line.
I found lots of good stuff from various sites that provide official financial reports and filings, and ratings based on efficient use of donations. You can even find the CEO's salary and benefits, and the size of the slush funds! And information on how charities can use creative bookkeeping to make the numbers look better. And clues to indicate that they might be doing that.
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There's a website (http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm) where you can find out the odds of your dying in various ways. But it would be so easy to draw invalid conclusions from the data.
For example, the site says that the lifetime odds of a person's accidental death while riding a motorcycle are 1 in 1,159, whereas the odds of dying in an automobile accident are 1 in 228. (I chose the motorcycle and automobile because they're so much more obvious than other possible comparisons.) It would be easy to conclude that you are many (like 5?) times more likely to die in an automobile accident than in a motorcycle accident. This is probably true for the population as a group. However, you cannot conclude that motorcycles are safer than automobiles, because we don't know how what proportion of the populace regularly rides motorcycles. If 10% of the population rides motorcycles, then their risk as a group is more like 1 in 116.
We are told that riding in a car is much more dangerous than riding in an airplane. Now I can't help wondering if the people who say that are using numbers that apply to the entire population. Not everybody flies. There are a lot of people who have never flown. So the risk goes up for those who do fly. If your group is only those who do fly (and I have no idea what proportion of the population that is) how does that compare?
Just wondering, but not curious enough to look it up.
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