5063 I can't win

Friday, March 11, 2016

Social media has raised writing to a new low.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd been trying to get up to the country house for the past three weeks, but there was always somthun....  I was all ready to go this past Tuesday, but a big chunk of metal fell out from underneath the van onto the driveway.  I think it's the thingy that you're supposed to use for placing a jack, but until I find out how badly rusted things are under there, I don't trust the frame not to break in half on the NYS Thruway.  So I drove up Wednesday morning with the little car, and returned last night.

Didn't get a damn thing done up there, but that's ok.  I had a late lunch with Piper.  I fired him.  It's ok.  I think he's angry, and he thinks I'm making a mistake, but that's ok.  (What bugs me is that he seems to think he has done a wonderful job with my investments.  What he doesn't know is that I've kept track of my "pre-Piper" portfolio online, and if we had never touched that stuff, left it as it was, it would be 50%+ higher now, even considering what I have pulled out over time.  The trouble, the reason I went to him in the beginning, was that it was all oil companies, mining companies, technology, and chemicals.   I felt a need to diversify.  I guess I should have left it as it was.)

I got a late start returning, I knew I'd hit the end of rush hour traffic on the Garden State Parkway, but that's ok.  I wanted to be home by 8 if possible to catch Big Bang Theory, but if not I could watch it today on CBS.com (which I did).  The GPS predicted an arrival time of 7:32. 

BUT!  There was an accident on the GSP.  After 25 minutes of creeping in the middle of the three lanes - 3mph for 3 car lengths, stop, wait, 3mph, stop, wait, repeat - I finally got to the point where I could see all the flashing lights way ahead.  By then there was no way I'd be home by 8:30, let alone 8, but at least I knew that my clutch foot would finally get some relief soon.  The BMW does NOT like moving at idle speed.  It took a lot of coordination between the clutch and gas to keep it from stalling.  My left foot was getting tired.

So, at one point I stopped after creeping at the usual 3 mph, and within less than a second after stopping, I got hit from the back.  Bonk.  The car jumped a little.

I had to move over through the right lane bumper-to-bumper traffic to get to the shoulder and find out what my bumper looked like, and that maneuver left me more shaken than getting hit did.  Amazingly, the huge white pickup who had hit me followed me over.  We couldn't see a damn thing, it being dark, but we started to trade info when a cop showed up out of nowhere and shooed us back into our vehicles.  He took our documents and info, said I could get an accident report at a certain website, and sent us back onto the road.

(And then, I got lost when I got off the Garden State onto what was supposed to be Rte. 9.  The GPS lady kept telling me to bear right on the exit, but I was still distracted and my left-right confusion kicked in so I very carefully went left and ended up on the NJ Turnpike headed north, exactly the wrong direction.  I ended up wandering through city streets to get back to route 9, near Newark, of all places.)

Today, in daylight, I got a look at the bumper.  There's a smear of white paint, and a star of hairline cracks all of maybe 2.5 inches by 2 inches.  It's near the backup sensor, so I don't know if that got messed up or not.

I called my insurance company today, I'll get some kind of appraisal on Monday, and then whatever comes next.

I'm almost embarrassed to make any noise about this.  If there's no hidden damage, then it's almost nothing.  On the other hand, it's NOT nothing and not my fault.  On the third hand, I know from an earlier incident that BMW doesn't like to repair plastic bumpers, and a replacement bumper will be over $1,000.   And the guy was so nice to follow me over to the shoulder.  He says he was hit from behind and pushed into me.  Whoever hit him just kept on going, and remains unidentified forever.  He could have done that, too.  This is NJ.  I'd almost expect him to have kept going.  I'd hate to be the one to make him regret pulling over.

Oh, well. 
.

5044 Brush fire 3 - investment account

Sunday, January 17, 2016

"The beauty and intricacy of a person's mind has little or nothing to do with outward appearances."

-------------------------------------------------------------

First, some extraneous thoughts:

Microsoft keeps urging me in popups to "reserve my copy of Windows 10".  Why "reserve"?  Are they in danger of running out of copies?

The huge Power Ball lottery.   I am amused by the people who accuse ticket buyers of being mathematically challenged, pointing out the enormous odds of winning.  So what?  Even though I never buy lottery tickets, I don't see those who do decide to take a chance on huge winnings as mathematically illiterate.  The way I see it, someone has to win, someone will win, and I have exactly the same chance of winning as that person.  So two dollars is not too much to share that person's chance at a billion or two.  (However, I don't have the same attitude toward buying tickets every day.  There are better ways to spend that money.)

Anybody else getting whiffs of McCarthyism from the Republican candidates?  (An interesting detail -- Joseph McCarthy's grave is on the banks of the Fox River.)

-------------------------------------------

Back in November I got a call from Piper.  He was sending me some papers he wanted me to sign.  He's moving his clients' accounts to a different custodian.

So, the papers arrived.  Currently the custodian of my account is a well-known Wall Street bank.  I didn't recognize the name on the forms to which he wants to move my account.  He's also changing the brokerage that holds his license.  As of January 1, his relationship with the old brokerage ends.  I don't know the right terms for all this stuff, or the nature of the relationships, but that doesn't really matter.

Anyway, having never heard of this new custodian, I did some research, and I really really don't want to transfer to them.  This issue has consumed a lot of physical and emotional energy lately, and I'm tired of it.

They're in Alabama.  (Immediate bells went off.  Alabama?  Would I be depending on graduates of the Alabama public school system?) A bit over a year ago they fired several top executives because, uh, somebody was using company funds for yachts, summer homes, vacations, or whatever.  Digging a bit deeper I get the impression that this company is a good-old-boys country club run for the sole benefit of the good-old-boys who figured they'd found a goose that lays golden eggs with very little attention required.  

Lots of other unpleasant details.  

The most damning, as far as I'm concerned, is that in the summer of 2014 an employee took a laptop home and lost it in a restaurant bathroom.  The damning part is that client records (personal info, SS#s, account numbers, account activity, etc) are kept on the laptops, the employees are allowed to take them home, and nothing was encrypted.  A lower-level employee said that purchase of an encryption package had been submitted for the budget every year, and every year it had been rejected, "no funds in the budget" for that.  But check out what the executives are paid.  This is a clear indication to me that the safety of client data is very low on their priority list.

They've got some large nasty lawsuits going on, some from those fired executives, at least one multi-million dollar suit alleging shady business practices, and so on.  Of course, they might even prevail.  I don't care.  What matters is that there have been some very bad decisions made, and the culture of the company is such that an employee does not feel free to bring problems to management's attention for fear of being seen as "not a team player", or "rocking the boat", which is never a good thing.  They were fined (a piddling amount!) for the lack of encryption, and I have been unable to find anything about what they're doing about security now.  Doesn't matter.  I am not convinced that the attitude that lead to the cavalier treatment of client data is not endemic.  It'll crop up somewhere else, in some other form.

After a hundred years in business as a private company, they've been bought out by one of those fast-growing folks who snap up "companies in turmoil", as these folks have been described, at a bargain price, such purchase frequently to raid the assets or at least to absorb them.  This could be a good thing, but according to what I have been able to find out about the agreement, they are going to be allowed to operate autonomously.  I presume under the same management.  Not a good thing.

I asked Piper why he chose this particular bunch, and what I got back was a long screed about how wonderful the new brokerage firm is (is that what you call the folks he now works under?), but nothing about the custodial idiots in Alabama.  So, then I did the research on the brokers, and they're fine. 

So, no, I'm not going to sign the forms to move my account.  If Piper can't handle it where it currently is (does it matter who he's licensed through?  Maybe it affects how he's paid?) then, well, oops.

Piper is getting frantic.  In my latest email to him (I won't talk to him on the phone anymore, especially not about this) Friday I asked what our options are.  I know him well enough to know that now he's going to go into high gear to convince me, but my mind is made up, heels are dug in, and I really don't want to discuss it further.

Up in the air right now.

-----------------------------

Something else I know about Piper -- "research" is a foreign concept to him.  He used to send me some of the most outrageous emails, you know, those mass mailings forwarded all over the world that originate with satirical "news" sites as truth, but are obvious blatant lies to anyone with half a brain, but believed by people who WANT to believe them.

I always responded to those with articles and sites that refute them, usually Snopes.com, but he never learned, and I finally had to get a bit insulting -- "please, before making yourself look like a total ass, do some minimal research before forwarding this crap".  He stopped including me in his distribution, but I'll bet he still believes that crap.

So, I'll bet he took someone's recommendation in choosing that Alabama bunch without ever doing any research of his own. 
.

4094 Stock Market

Monday, August 24, 2015

There's more money to be had in pandering to ignorance than in explaining it away.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah, how 'bout that stock market, eh? 

I talked with Piper last week, and told him yes, I'd heard, no, I'm not worried, and I told him strongly, in no uncertain terms, he is not to attempt to "play" the market with my account.  No selling off anything, no buying anything in an attempt to find bargains, no nothing.  Stand pat with my account.  Let it ride.  He seemed to be ok with that, which surprised me.  I'm sure he's freaking out today, but he's got other accounts he can play with besides mine.

The market has crashed before, and it always recovers eventually, and then goes higher.  We just need to be in nice solid boring stuff that will recover, and I have plenty of patience.  It was a bit too high, too optimistic given the state of Europe and China, and with no nice stimulating wars on the horizon it had to drop to a more reasonable level.  This huge drop is because people are in a panic.  It will stabilize when everyone calms down.

I told Piper at the end of last year to get me out of the far east, primary and secondary --- it was obvious that China was headed for the same housing-lending-banking train wreck that the US had not so long ago.  Yep.

---------------------------

The green quote above, by the way, is absolutely random.  Not that it applies, anyway, except that it mentions money.
.

4041 Swamp cooler

Saturday, May 23, 2015

I'm going to have the heat pump a/c at the country house replaced with a standard compressor-type a/c system.  Piper is trying to talk me into choosing an evaporative system instead (also known as a "swamp cooler", not because they are used in swamps, but because they can smell like one).  They are less expensive to install and less expensive to run, especially given the cost of electricity in the Mid-Hudson Valley.

However, the freakin' things don't work in high humidity!  Yeah, they're great in Texas, or Arizona, and they've been used for centuries in the Middle East, but they simply don't work in areas where the humidity gets above 50%, maximum.  Because, uh, duh, they depend on evaporation, which doesn't work well when the dew-point is 70 degrees. It's not often that high in the Mid-Hudson Valley - only on very hot days, which is exactly when it matters.  Sheesh.

I've given up arguing with him.  He tends to fall for every sales pitch.  I've warned him over and over that you don't get information on which to base buying decisions from the guys selling things - you get information from actual users or disinterested parties.  But he doesn't use the internet at all, except to follow "cookbook" directions for email, so he doesn't research things.

He says it's not the same thing as a swamp cooler at all, and he's sending me some brochures, and I've promised to look at them, but ....

Sheesh!
.

3995 Life is ... well, it just is.

Monday, December 1, 2014

"Most people would rather be certain they're miserable than risk being happy."

 --Robert Anthony--

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

I went up to the old house Saturday morning, November 15, just for the day, just to make sure the furnace was on and that it was running well.  It was 40 degrees in the house when I arrived and turned the furnace on.  I spent the next five hours sorting papers in the big filing cabinets, while the house warmed up.

I found a lot of neat stuff.  Once upon a time, in the old days, people wrote letters - actual penmanship, on real paper.  I had always kept personal letters and cards.  I found letters from my mother, letters from my youngest sister, copies of letters I had written to Jay's family when he was sick, and a few old love letters from suitors, including a love letter from Jay from before we were married.  

I set most of those aside to bring down here. I read the one from Jay several times up there before adding it to the "keep" pile; I'll read the others some day. I brought back with me a large box of paper for recycling, thinking I'd bring the "keep" letters back on the next trip, which was supposed to be later that next week.  

I stayed only until evening.  By 5 pm the house was up to 65 degrees, but I'd had enough.  I was freezing!  Shivering.  My hands were shaking so badly I was having difficulty handling papers.  We forget that it's not just the air in the house that's cold and needs to be warmed, but everything in the house. Walls, floors, furniture, appliances - they all suck heat out of the air (and out of me) until they get up to air temp.  That takes a long time.  So I set the thermostat back to 60 degrees, went to the diner in the village for dinner, and came on home.  I intended to return the next Thursday, the 20th, then stay until Saturday, and sort and pack up some more.

That Thursday morning I woke up and couldn't bend my left knee without a lot of pain, and it wouldn't support any weight bent.  It was fine straight, I just couldn't bend it.  There was no swelling, no heat or redness, no lumps, no tender spots, nothing.  I suspect I'd slept on it funny and sprained or strained something.  The main problem was the knee, but my hip was complaining, too.  (I notice stuff like this happening more as I get older. Side effect of increased wisdom, I guess.)  I was walking like a pirate swinging a wooden leg.  Stairs were interesting, and I couldn't drive because I couldn't use the clutch, so I wasn't going north.

By Sunday it seemed a bit better, but I didn't really trust it until like Tuesday, but with Thanksgiving on Thursday, there was no way I'd be on the highways until ... well ... today at the earliest.  Sigh.

So much for my determination to get moving on that house.  I hadn't been up there since early summer, for various reasons that now sound like excuses, but were really valid at the time - like Hal being in the shop and waiting for parts several times, and a very bad cold followed by a sinus infection, and commitments made to Daughter and to Nugget, and so on.  Not to mention that IRS thing and some other businessy garbage that took time and attention.

-----------------------------------------

Speaking of the IRS thing, I am going to have to have a serious talk with Piper.  He is in charge of my investments, and he moves money around too much in my estimation.  He's always buying this and selling that.  I can't complain that he has lost money for me, but he seems to consider it a game to "beat the market".  He's starting to look like a damn day-trader, with MY MONEY!  Having no particular expertise in that area, it's difficult for me to rein him in.  Well, he was proud that he had increased my holdings by something like 22% in 2013.  Then I got the annual statements from my 401K and my IRAs, which I control, not him.  My strategy is to find the best place to put the money, put it there, and LEAVE it there.  

My 401K and three IRAs all had gains over 33% in 2013.  That's 33%.  If 22% is pretty damn good, then 33% is fantastic!

So next time I see him, I'm going to tell him to find the best place to put the money, put it there, and LEAVE it there. I don't want to see more than three trades a year.  Period.  I'll spoil his fun, and he's going to have fits, but that's it.  I've had it.  Every trade he makes costs me money in processing fees, and I see no advantage in "playing" the market.  My IRAs are in no-load low-fee index-based mutual funds, and they are growing just fine, thank you.  They dipped a little in 2007-8ish, but they more than recovered just fine.  

Actually, I know what's going on.  He dearly loves everything Wall Street.  I don't think he has any other hobbies.  The Market IS his hobby.  His daughter has joined him in his business, and over the past five years she has gradually taken over most of his accounts, the largest of which are large union and business retirement funds.  He has retained his private accounts.  Like mine.  We are all he has left to indulge his passion.  

The other problem is that his buddies are all gloom-and-doom Wall Street Republicans who can't see anything ahead but recession and depression from Democrats (especially when led by a brown one), so he takes their advice and panics and sells off everything before every election.  I could strangle him for that.  Is anyone aware that the economy is just fine?  33% growth in index accounts in 2013?  Yeah, the middle class isn't recovering very quickly, but that fabled 1% is doing just fine.  The rich are getting richer.  Corporations are doing just fine.  

I hope I can convince him to settle down.  I hope I don't have to fire him.  I will if I have to, but it would cost a small fortune to pull out, and I don't know where I'd put it then.  I've met a few investment counselors in the past decade (remember The Ditz, for example?  That's what she does) and I don't trust any of them.  At least I can trust Piper - trust is not the problem with him.  He really thinks he's doing the best for me.  I just don't agree with his political philosophy and management methods. 

--------------------------------------------

Oh, almost forgot.  There was a big storm at the old house the day before Thanksgiving, and a huge tree fell across the top of the driveway.  One of those that pulled the root ball out of the ground.  The Hairless Hunk sent me a text msg plus photo this morning. His wife's mother had died last week, too, so he apologized that today was the first time he'd checked the house since the storm. (Sheesh.  Yeah, take care of your family first, Hunk.  Don't apologize for that.)  He has been rotating his excess vehicles at the top of my drive so it looks like there's activity at the house, and from the tiny photo it looks like maybe his car got hit by the tree.  His note didn't say anything about that.  So, anyway, until he clears the tree out, I don't think I'll be going up there.  I hope It doesn't snow before then, or it will be a real mess!

Why are things so complicated?
.

3988 Freakout

Friday, October 17, 2014

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.

 --Ralph Waldo Emerson--

-------------------------------------------------------------

Our mail arrives usually after 5:30-ish, too late to conduct any business based on it.

One innocent-looking envelope today was from the IRS.

They claim I owe $61,569 additional on my 2012 income tax, $9,786 of which is a "tax understatement penalty". They want the money by November 13, 2014.

What?!

Tomorrow I'm going to copy the multi-page letter, and send copies to my investment guy Piper, and my CPA Angelo.

Something is VERY wrong.

I think my total 2012 income was around $72,000, including social security, retirement, capital gains, interest, and dividends, most of which is reinvested and I don't actually "see" it.

I fully expect Piper and Angelo to FIX THIS!
.

3737 Wasting time...

Sunday, June 2, 2013

You can give a man a fish and he will eat for a day,

or you can teach a man to fish and he

will sit in his boat all day pouting because no one gave him another fish.

--------------------------------------------------------

Amost all birds, no matter what they eat as adults, feed their babies meat (bugs, worms, larvae) because the babies need protein to grow muscles and bones.  Even adult seed-eating birds need real seeds.  They won't get the nutrients they need from processed stuff like bread.

So I have to (secretly) snort at my neighbors who toss out bread scraps to "feed the birds".  It's ok once in a while, to attract birds to look at them, but I wish people wouldn't make a habit of it.

If you want to feed baby birds, you should put out a chunk of rotting meat, to attract bugs.  The parent birds would appreciate that.  Or half a container of cottage cheese.  That'll be full of nice fat squirming maggots within hours.  Yummy!

--------------------------------

I went to the country house last Thursday, returned yesterday, first visit since last fall.  I was very worried about what I'd find.  Afraid the house would be full of yellow jackets, mice, spiders, snakes.  Afraid I'd find all the pipes and wires stolen.  I was worried enough that I reserved a hotel room for Thursday and Friday nights.

Actually, I was surprised that the house was actually fine.

Well, the mice had gone to town over the winter.  There was nothing for them to eat, but it was a warm place to hang out.  And they did nibble the buttons on the TV remote.  Finger oils on the buttons, I guess.  (Maybe potato chip flavored oil.)  They had gnawed them down flat.  I could still use the remote, by pressing the buttons into the base.

I had taken my laptop so I could keep up with the mail and feed reader, and because there was an eBay auction I wanted to snipe.  And because the country house has no internet, I took along the portable wifi pack I'd bought a few months ago to replace the (lost, accidentally left at a hotel) plug-in DSL dohickey that had served me so many years.  (I try never to use "public" wifi like in hotels and coffee shops, because I don't trust their security).  I tested the setup again just before I packed up Thursday to leave.  Worked fine.

Got to the (internet connection-less cheap place) hotel Thursday night, and although my cell phone had four bars, the wifi pack had only none or one bar.  First thing Friday morning I took it to the Verizon store, waited for a half hour for a rep to get to me, complained that it wouldn't pick up a signal, and that although I had been told that the battery would last a week if it was left on and a month if turned off, I'd never gotten more than two hours use before it needed charging.  So they kept it for the day to test the battery.

Then I went to the house but didn't get much done because I had to meet Piper for lunch.  I absolutely did not go to his office, because every time I've done that I've ended up sitting there for an hour or more waiting for him to get loose.  Damn!  If he's going to insist that we meet, he'll do it on my terms.  I called him and said I'd be at the village diner at 2 pm (that's when I eat lunch on this six-meal plan), and that I'd be there one hour.

Well, Piper being Piper, the lunch was the usual almost two hours.

Didn't get make much forward progress back at the house, had to clean up mouse poop and refill all the plumbing traps that had dried out over the winter, stuff like that, and then go back to Verizon early evening.  They said the battery was fine, that it will last a week left on but asleep and a month turned off, but if you're using it, two hours is about right.  What the hell!?  But, they noticed that even there, where it should have had 4 or 5 bars, it was picking up only 1 or 2.  So eventually they swapped out the SIM card, and it went to 4 to 5 bars.  They have such crowds in there that you have to sign in and wait.  I was there about an hour and a half.

But now it's all fixed, right?

Back at the hotel, now it would come up and connect to the laptop, but not to the internet.  "Local connection only".  Huh?

Friday morning back to Verizon.  Sign in and wait again.  This time I took the laptop, too.  The device is bad.  It worked in NJ, but the last thing it had done before I packed it up to leave was auto-install a software update.  They figure the update must have gone bad, but that doesn't really make any sense.  No idea. It's still under warranty so they will send me another, will arrive Tuesday, then I have to go to the NJ Verizon shop and get the laptop tweaked for the new device.  That's going to eat up half the day Wednesday.

I am also pissed because they no longer sell the simple little plug-in I had used for so long with no problems, so I was forced to upgrade to this thing, which is complicated enough to need software updates, and therefore has the potential to crap out again at any time, especially after the warranty is gone.  I hate being forced to upgrade to something less reliable and more complicated (and more expensive) than the old thing!  (My cell phone is a little clamshell that takes and makes calls, and that's enough for me.  I think it can text, too, but I've never tried.  It needs charging maybe once a week. I hope to hell it never breaks.)

Crap.

So, between Piper and Verizon, I got nothing done on that trip.  And a trip to the country house isn't cheap.  $40 in gas, 260 miles worth of tolls, and this time at least two nights at the (cheap) hotel.  I am royally pissed.

So, ok.  I get home, and the first thing I do is start up the laptop to check all the things I hadn't been able to check.  Here I use the house cable wifi.

"Local connection only."  Huh?  No internet again!?

Oh, my God!  Is it the laptop that's screwed up, not the little device?  What do I do now?  What about the new device that will be arriving, and my laptop is screwed up?  How much time have I already wasted on this?  Oh Good Grief!  I completely freaked.

I went over to Daughter's house and asked if I could use her laptop to check my mail and feeds.  Hercules was there, and I asked their advice about what to do with the laptop.  He said if I want to buy a new laptop (this one is six years old, and the a, e, t, and h keys are worn blank, and I don't touch type, and that's the least of its problems)  he'd transfer all my junk for me.  He suggested that I bring Herman (my laptop's name) over and try it with their house wifi.  So I did, and guess what - it worked.

My city house wifi somehow got messed up, too, and I wasn't even here!

So back to my house, and I reset the house wifi (pulled the plug and plugged it back in again) and it worked just fine.

Two separate unexplained problems.  Weird.

Someone is trying to tll me something.

--------------------------------

I'm going to have to do something about Piper.  He wants to have lunch every time I go up there.  I've explained to him over and over that I don't really have the time when I'm there.  This trip I tried to limit him to one hour, but that doesn't include that I get dirty working there, and there's no A/C so I have to wash up and change clothes and drive into town and back again and then change again, so even one hour for lunch is actually more like almost three.  And it's never just one hour anyway.  Not to mention that the house is cooler earlier in the day, before the sun hits the glass walls on the west.


New rule:  I will have lunch with him every fourth trip.  Period.  And I'm considering making it an early dinner, so I don't lose the earlier part of the day.

Wish me luck.  I must not cave in when he starts acting hurt!
.

3612 What to say

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Folks who rejoice that "The system works!"

are usually referring to another's parking ticket, not their own.

----------------------------------------------------

I have a friend whose mother has been declining steadily for the past five years.  His older sister died about two years ago after months in a coma, and they never told the mother that her daughter was even ill because they didn't think she could handle it.  Although she doesn't have Alzheimer's, she's far enough into dementia that they figured she wouldn't notice.

He called me the other day to say he's headed for Florida, because they figure there's not more than a few days left.  She's on morphine, and that has a habit of easing people out.

He'll call me when she's gone.

Of course I've been thinking about what to say when he calls.  That's always so awkward.  When his sister died it wasn't difficult because her death was a relief.  She was basically vegetative after multiple strokes.  The doctors recommended taking her off life support, and everyone agreed except her son, who started legal action to prevent it.  So she lingered for almost a year, until someone "found" her living will and health proxy among her files.  (It was my idea, by the way, that if they looked for it, maybe they'd find it, or "find" it if necessary.  I don't know the details, how they managed it.)  So when he called to say he had pulled the plug, I said good, I'm sure she appreciated it, and that was the right thing to say, and it wasn't difficult because that was his attitude.

This is going to be much harder for him.  He's the only son (several sisters) and was/is very much an Irish Catholic momma's boy. 

I never know what to say to friends and coworkers.  "Sorry for your loss" seems so trite.  Mostly, I'm afraid, I don't say much of anything.  In most cases, I didn't know the deceased person, so it's hard to "share memories" like all the columns suggest.

There are a few times when I went further than the simple sympathetic nod, and I don't know whether it was good or bad.  I have a tendency to miss, or ignore, that sometimes people know things, but are avoiding or hiding it.  Then I go and point it out.  I draw attention to the elephant in the room.  I do that a lot.  It's seldom appreciated.

The Hairless Hunk's wife had a miscarriage.  H.H. told me that she was having a lot of difficulty with it, and he didn't know what to do about it.  I told him that I understood, that I'd had three miscarriages and a stillbirth, and it's a very private anguish because no one else understands.

Now, at the time, I didn't know her at all.  The only time I'd ever seen her was on the road.  She walked a lot.  One day shortly after my talk with H.H., she was turning at the end of the road as I was pulling into the driveway, and she waved for me to stop.  I rolled down the window, and she said that H.H. had said I'd had some miscarriages, and that she should talk to me.  She said she was having a lot of trouble getting past it, and that everyone says she should just get pregnant again as soon as possible, and how that just makes her feel worse, like the baby didn't matter, and she doesn't want another pregnancy.  She asked how I'd got past it. 

I told her that the problem is that to everyone else, the baby was just an idea.  She's the only person who actually knew the baby.  To her, and only to her, the baby was a real person, with preferences, likes and dislikes.  She knew when he was asleep and when he was awake.  She knew his nap/exercise cycle.  She felt his arms and legs moving.  She knew whether he was a runner or a kicker.  She even knew what kind of music he liked, and how he liked to be rocked, and when he had hiccups.  Nobody else knows that.  To them, the baby was just potential, just an idea. To them, starting another baby is just getting on with the idea.

She burst into tears.  "Yes!  Yes!  Exactly!"  She cried so hard it scared me.

I advised her to write up everything she knew about the baby's personality, and then either tell H.H. and her parents, or let them read what she'd written.  Make the baby real, as real to them as he was to her.

H.H. wondered what I'd said to her.  I guess she was a mess after that conversation, cried constantly for days.  I don't know whether she "made the baby real" to others or not, but she was pregnant with twins within a year.

For a long time after, I wonder if I'd helped or just made it worse.  Maybe the elephant would have wandered off on its own.  I can argue either side.

Another time involved a classmate in a law class.  She was an IBM Director in her late 40s, I think, single, no children.  Her mother died unexpectedly.  She and I were sitting on a bench outside during a lunch break one day about a week or two later.  She seemed to be handling it well, so I was surprised when she brought up that she couldn't sleep, felt very depressed, like why bother with anything, nothing matters.  She just didn't want to do anything any more.

I asked if she had any other family, and she said no, that she was an only child, and that her father had died several years ago.  Her father's death hadn't bothered her so much and she couldn't understand why, because she was actually closer to him.

I said maybe it's because now you feel like an orphan?

Her eyes got huge, and she turned slowly to me.  Yes!  Exactly! Orphan!  I'm an orphan!  And the elephant sat on her and she cried.

I don't think consolation, condolences, are supposed to make people cry.  They're supposed to smile wanly and say thank you.

Sympathy.  I'm doing it wrong.
.

3289 Not a lot of headway

Friday, June 24, 2011

The question Diane Sawyer (interviewed on Oprah) would most like to ask the Pope:
What do you think Jesus would think of the way you dress?

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Yesterday I slept a bit late, shuffled a few things around in the old house, watched "The View", which I hadn't been able to watch since moving, then went into the village for lunch. When I walked into the diner I saw Vinnie in a booth, so I joined him. He said Piper would be coming. So I had lunch with Vinnie and Piper - the usual l--o--n--g lunch.

Vinnie'd had a hip replacement since I'd last seen him. Piper had just returned the day before from a two-day trip to Florida to sign the papers to have his sister (who has been trying to die in a hospital in Florida since January) taken off life support, but at the last minute her sons, who refuse to face facts, started legal proceedings to stop it, so he was very upset. Turns out that they couldn't find a lawyer who was willing to take the case for what they were willing to pay, so she would be taken off support yesterday afternoon, and Piper was angry and upset that he would not be able to be there. So there was a lot to talk about.

After lunch I went to my car guys. They are willing to work on Suzie, but suggest that I have AAA tow her in, save some money. So I'll do that today.

When I got back to the house I looked in the "cars" folder in the (HUGE!) file cabinet, and naturally, the car titles, the main task for this trip, aren't there. In fact, the folder was empty. It's supposed to have all the service records, too. I don't understand. Where are they?

So all afternoon and evening I sorted through the "to be filed" pile looking for the car titles - one of the main things to accomplish on this trip. And that's all I did for ten hours. Naturally, I had to read everything to determine whether it was to be saved or tossed (I saved all personal correspondence), shredded or not, and at the end of the evening I had cleared two square feet of floorspace in the den. Wow. Only 3,998 more square feet of floor, attic, and basement to go! At this rate it will take me only three years to get out of here.
.

3264 Moving forward, but slowly

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

“The deeper insanity becomes, the more consistent it becomes,
until it wraps around and looks like sanity.”
-- Silk, August 9, 2008 --

-------------------------------------------------

It was a beautiful day today, sunny and warm with a gentle breeze, the first nice day in the past week and a half. And I spent most of the best part of the day, from 10:30 am until almost 4 pm, in the doctor's office or the hospital.

I admit I was worried when the doctor, to all appearances, was in no hurry to look at my scans, and then once he did look at them he wanted to see me immediately. That's almost never a good sign.

Last night I ran through all the bad scenarios, what he could say, end-stage renal failure, kidney cancer, bladder cancer, etc. etc., and pretty much came to terms with it all.

When I got there, the nurse put me in an examining room, and then later the doctor stuck his head in the door and asked me to come to his office. You know, with the big desk, and the two chairs in front, and the box of tissues on the corner. Another bad sign.

That made his news a relief. The most recent scans do not confirm either the first set which implied one collection chamber and one ureter on the left, or the second scan which says two collection chambers and two ureters. This latest set says two collection chambers, with the stent in the upper, and the obstructing stone and a few smaller ones in the lower, but neither the x-ray (IVP) nor CT confirm a second ureter, because I've got really good kidney function apparently, and the upper chamber cleared the contrast solution so quickly that it never even reached the second chamber or ureter (which is blocked anyway, remember?). So we still don't know exactly what we've got in there. But at least it is pretty clear where the stone is.

So we're going to smash the stone(s).

Not this week, because of the holiday coming up, but probably the end of next week. The procedure is Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL), described here: http://www.healtheast.org/st-joes/programs-services/kidney-stone/treating-stones/shock-wave-lithotripsy-eswl.html.

I told him how the stent is now causing bleeding after physical activity, it's irritating the bladder, and how I can feel it poking and it is getting worse, to the point where the seat belt hurts, and the urinary urgency is getting worse, so will we be removing the stent at the same time? He said no, because we're not sure where and how the second chamber drains, and the worst case is only one ureter, and some piece of the smashed stone gets stuck in it, blocking the entire left kidney. So no, the stent stays until we know what's going on.

Crap. I can lessen the bleeding and poking and irritation by avoiding physical activity. No lifting, raking, mowing, walking far, dancing, driving long distances, etc. etc. etc., anything that makes the stent move. Crap crap crap. I want this damn thing OUT! NOW!

So when I got home I read up a bit on ESWL. Two possible negative consequences are damage to the pancreas leading to diabetes, and damage to the capillaries in the kidney, leading to renal failure. The pancreas thing is unlikely because we're working only on the left kidney. The capillary thing worries me a little. I have fragile capillaries. I'll have to tell him about that. However, my stone isn't very big, so it (I hope) won't require much to break it up, and it's localized, and my clotting abilities are ok, so maybe that will be ok.

[My theory of what's in there is different from his, I think. I do think there's a second ureter, which the larger stone is blocking, because there are also a few much smaller stones in that chamber which, if that chamber connects with the chamber with the stent, seems to me that I should have passed those stones by now through the stent. A few other details argue for the second ureter joining the first somewhere north of the bladder. So the stent could actually CAUSE the moving stones to get jammed at the joining point. But at least then the second ureter would show up on a contrast x-ray for the length that it's open, and the blockade could be eased by pulling the stent. So I'm not going to argue with him.]

I just want this DONE!

After I left his office I went to the hospital to pick up my personal copies of the scan and x-ray done elsewhere a few weeks ago, that they had asked for for comparison, and to get copies of the recent scan and x-rays with contrast. There were at least three misunderstandings. It was three and a half hours before they managed to get it all together. About every 40 minutes or so they'd bring out part of it, and I'd have to ask again for the rest. And then wait. (At one point they actually insisted that I had NOT had the CT scan.)

When I first arrived at the hospital, at about noonish, as I was putting the top up on Hal, I got a call from Piper. We had a lot to talk about, and about 20 minutes in I mentioned that I had a bone to pick with The Angel, and told Piper about the IRS and NYS letters. Piper said he was worried about The Angel. He's had some kind of serious medical problem for the past few weeks or months, and Piper had called him twice yesterday and again this morning, "...and he always returns my calls immediately", but he hadn't heard from him. Piper was afraid The Angel was in the hospital, and if so, it was bad because otherwise The Angel would have contacted him.

Piper said if he hadn't heard from The Angel by this evening, he'd call his parents. He'll let me know.

So. Onward. Fred's tire is still flat. Sigh.
.

3217 Observe

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different.

--------------------------------------------------------

It has been said many places that Obama's presidency has unearthed the shallowly-buried bones of racism. Yeah. I remember when John F. Kennedy was elected, as the first Catholic president. A lot of people muttered then, too. Like that the Pope would be the actual unelected president. Americans in general are third graders, still using playground rules. They don't like or trust anyone who's different.

-------------------------------

I drove 2.5 hours north yesterday to deliver the tax stuff, had coffee/tea with Piper, and then drove back south. The weather was nice while I was in the village, but the drive all the way up and all the way back was in pouring rain.

I got annoyed because I'd be potting along just fine, and then a huge truck would pull in front of me, and throw so much spray I couldn't see. So I'd slow down and drop back a bit, and because (*) there was now a wide space between me and the truck, another car would slide over into the space behind the truck, and then he couldn't see, so he'd slow down and drop back, and because ... repeat from (*). That's how traffic slows from 65 to 45. I wish those damn trucks would get some mudflaps or deflectors or something.

--------------------------------

On the drive, I heard some senator or something on the radio say something about this being "the greatest nation ever in the history of the world". My eyes were rolling so hard I almost had to pull over.

In history? Ever? Um, what about the ancient Chinese dynasties? The scientific and mathematical advances of the Arabic world and the Golden Crescent? How 'bout the Roman Empire? The British Empire? ...and more.

I get annoyed when I hear people say, "The rest of the world wants to be just like us! They copy our culture!" Bull poopy. It's not our culture or lifestyle or even our system of government or economic system that's getting exported, and certainly not because it's so admirable. It's corporations exporting their products, pure and simple. The American penchant for jeans didn't get adopted because we're so wonderful. They got adopted because they got advertised and SOLD. Unfortunately, we believe our own advertising.

In all those other nations that influenced the world, the great fall came right after they stood up and said, "We're wonderful. We're the greatest!" That's the first sign that they're about to get kicked in the teeth.

--------------------------------

Quick lesson for Spring:

Do you know the difference between a shovel and a spade? A shovel has a straight end and usually curved up sides to hold the material, and is used to move stuff from one flat place to another. A spade has a pointed end with shoulders next to the handle to push with your foot and is used to dig holes. So you'd use a spade to dig the hole for planting a tree, and then a shovel to fill the hole.
.

3169 Spitting

Sunday, February 20, 2011

“[That] is forbidden. But possible.”
-- Common French saying --

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I don't get into political discussions with Piper any more. He's solidly extreme right wing, sees only the wingnut viewpoint. He tries to "educate" me, to turn me from my obviously mistaken ways, but I just shake my head and change the subject.

In all the bad things that have been happening in his life right now, the good thing is that the market is picking up. He congratulated me Friday that of all his investment clients, I've been the only one who didn't panic at all back when everything was tanking. I just shrugged and assured him that everything would eventually come back. Sooner or later. Sit tight. (During the bad times he looked really bad. Discouraged. Wanted to avoid talking to his clients.)

I've made back all the money I lost during the dip, and made 3% on my investments in the past month alone. Piper wanted to give all the credit for the turnaround to his new tea bag buddies in Congress. I pointed out that yes, rich folks are brightening up. I've heard that sales of BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus are up, luxury resorts and spas are picking up again. But it's not so bright for the little folk. His buddies in Congress are making all kinds of cuts, but the programs they're cutting are all cuts to the poorer folks. Services. They're taking from the poor and giving to the rich. So yeah, naturally the rich are happy, and that's what's reflected in the market.

As Field says, "Those 235 poli-tricksters remind me of the bully that goes to the playground looking for a fight, and ignores the bigger kids shooting hoops and heads straight to the swing and jungle gym to pick on the smaller kids."

The smaller kids can't afford lobbyists.

--------------------------------

I don't understand why they want to cut Social Security. Despite everything you hear, SS is not running out of money. In fact, SS has been running a significant surplus, and actually lends money to the federal government. They just don't want to count the loans as SS assets, because then they'd have to pay them back. Oh, by the way, remember when "they" wanted to "privatize" Social Security, i.e. invest the money in the stock market? Funny that we don't hear so much about that these days. I wonder why. I guess they forgot why Social Security was started in the first place.

--------------------------------

Last time I had been to the old house, from all the droppings it looked like the mice were running riot, so I set mouse traps. I caught only one mouse. I don't understand.

--------------------------------

I buy a lot of stuff online. The delivery guys around here (FedEx, UPS, USPS, and that other one) just drop the stuff on the doorstep. UPS is the only service that bothers to ring the doorbell, sometimes. At the old house, I was way up a long drive off the end of a dead-end street, and the house wasn't visible from the road or from neighbors' houses, but delivery guys always rang the doorbell when they left a package. Here, houses are cheek-by-jowl, the doorstep and anything on it is close to and clearly visible from a street full of traffic, cyclists, and pedestrians, but the delivery services just dump the package and run.

Several times I've stepped out the front door and found packages I didn't know were there.

Worse, I could have stepped out and NOT found packages I DIDN'T know SHOULD have been there.

FedEx is the weirdest. They have little stickies that say "We delivered your package", and have spaces for date and time, and check boxes for things like front door, back door, garage, neighbor, and so on.

Only two problems. They don't fill out ANY of the spaces or boxes, and they stick it on the package!

What good does that do?

(Oh, look, there's a Delivery Notice on this package saying they delivered a package. I wonder where the package is?)

--------------------------------

When I'm on the computer in the morning and evening, Jasper bugs me to play. I accidentally discovered how to get him to not disturb me.

I sit at the desk on a canvas director's chair. I had put another canvas chair next to mine one day to show someone something on the computer. Jasper has appropriated the chair. I guess he likes the canvas sling seat. He's happy to sit or sleep there, as long as I reach over and stroke his head every so often.

The only problem is that it's right below the printer, so I have to warn him before I print anything. He's such a chicken....

-------------------------------

Last month Daughter was running out of pants, so I invited her to shop in my closet. I had some loose knit drawstring pants that fit her expanding belly fine. She's fine on tops - she wears a lot of baggy sweaters anyway. Yesterday she said she's down to one pair of shoes, running shoes that are wide enough for her expanding feet. We wear about the same size, but my feet are wider than hers, so I think I'll be short some shoes soon, too.

Baby's due the end of April. No, after three frustrating ultrasounds, they still don't know, so "quit asking!"
.

3168 Life is what happens when you're not looking

Saturday, February 19, 2011

The philosophy of the school room in one generation
will be the philosophy of government in the next.
-- Abraham Lincoln --

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Got this one from my sister - Homemade Implants:


--------------------------------

I haven't been here in a few days. Haven't really been keeping up with others' blogs, either. I guess I've been busy.

Thursday evening I drove northwest to have dinner with the Southern Orange Mensa sub-group. It was supposed to be a 1.5 hour drive, but it took two because I followed the GPS, and he took me down tiny roads, through areas with traffic lights every quarter mile, during rush hour, finishing up with a narrow winding road through the mountains, in the dark. It took two harrowing hours, which, given the route and time of day, was pretty good time. I don't think I'll use the GPS for that trip any more. I'll go north on the highways, then ask his opinion just for the cut over to the west.

After leaving there, I drove northeast another 1.25 hours to the old house.

On Friday I filled more bags and boxes to throw out, recycle, sell, and bring back here. It's still pretty overwhelming. I visited Piper and his daughter at their office before heading back here. Piper was pretty low. His favorite sister had gone into the hospital for surgery in early January, and picked up a MRSA infection that rapidly shut down organs, starting with her kidneys. It's been touch and go since then.

He'd gotten the call Thursday afternoon that she had maybe 48 hours, so he and his niece were wait-listed on a flight to Florida early Saturday morning. Holiday weekend. Bad for travel. Piper's elderly mother is in poor health, and the family had not told her that her daughter was so ill, hoping for a miracle to make it unnecessary, so now Piper is worried about what this will do to his mother.

And, as if all that isn't enough, it looks like his housemate may be having a recurrence of breast cancer.

Not a good week for Piper.

We went to the diner for coffee, and ended up eating an early dinner.

--------------------------------

Just before meeting with Piper, as I was putting the last things into the car, The Hunk came barreling up the driveway. (It's funny, but whenever I see him driving up, he looks like a Mountie.) We talked for a while. It might have been longer, but I had to head down to Peter's office.

Anyway, the Suzy the Suzuki is still there, and he suggested that I start her. I haven't started her on the last few visits because she's been pretty much buried in snow. So, we stomped down the snow on the passenger side so we could get the door open, and I crawled across and started her. Good Girl! She started right up!

Then she started blowing smoke into the passenger cabin. Nothing coming out from under the hood, but definite smoke inside. Turned her off, checked under the hood, nothing burning. Gave it up for now. Next trip north we'll have to figure it out. Maybe a mouse nest in the heater? A belt rubbing? Whatever....

--------------------------------

Today I've been sorting and laundering and distributing what I brought back last night. Went out for lunch with Daughter. Trying to catch up with email, news, and blogs. The online Mensa groups have been buzzing all week with the Watson/Jeopardy thing. And having missed the first of this season's Survivor I had to watch it online.

Life goes on. I play catch up.
.

3254 Short trip north

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

We kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong.

------------------------------------------

I used to watch Antiques Roadshow a lot. Now I catch it occasionally, accidentally. I think the British version is more interesting. I noticed a telling difference between the "tone" of the American and the British versions: the American appraisers tell the people what they could get for the item if they sold it; the British appraisers tell the people what they'd have to pay to buy a replacement, therefore what they should insure it for.

Actually, that's a cultural difference. It's a subtle difference in the way we define value.

--------------------------------

The only prescription I take is Synthroid, 50 MCG. Under my prescription plan, I have to get them through the mail. I get a three-month prescription with three refills. When I get down to the last 10 pills, I go online and tell MedCo to send the next three-month batch.

Early last month, I went to the website to order more, and discovered there were no more refills. I need a new prescription.

I don't have a doctor here yet.

So I called my old doctor and asked if they could please send me one month's prescription, and that would give me time to find a doctor here.

No go.

She said I hadn't had a physical exam in two years, and I'd have to come in. Period.

I was a little confused, because I remember a LOT of blood drawn last year about this time, lots of visits, but she said yes, but that didn't include a physical. The next appointment I could get was February 7th. That meant no Synthroid for at least three to four weeks. My other choice would be to attempt to find a doctor here who is not only taking new patients, but would accept a new Medicare patient, and then I'd still have to get a physical and wait for the TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) blood level results, blah blah.

So, yesterday I drove the 2.5 hours north for a physical.

My appointment was at 1 PM. I got to the village at 12:25, so I stopped in to see Piper and his daughter. I figured I'd get to the doctor's office at 12:50, since I wouldn't have to fill out any papers or anything.

Surprise. Sometime in the past several months, my doctor's group merged with another group, and they have a new computer system. I had to fill out the 10 pages of "past surgeries, dates, all vitamins and supplements you take, insurance numbers, emergency family members, family medical history" - all that crap detail that I don't carry around in my head and hadn't brought with me.

Hey, folks. All that stuff is in your old database, AND in that paper folder you keep looking in. Couldn't you find some nerd to write a simple program to transfer data from the old to the new database? Couldn't youse guys input from the paper folder when you knew I was coming? At the very least, will you let me look at the paper folder, and just copy the crap onto this new form, instead of wracking my brain trying to remember?

No, no, and no.

I've got strong pulses in my hands and feet, good reflexes, nothing weird about my skin (except that it doesn't fit very well any more), no chest noise, no lumpiness anywhere, etc., got a PAP, and paper to take somewhere (where?) for a bone density scan and a mammogram. Blood was taken for I don't know what besides the TSH level, and they gave me a prescription for another year's Synthroid. I mentioned that my morning urine has been smelling very bad, so they're going to culture it. Pending the blood, urine, PAP, bone density, and mammogram results, I was declared in marvelous condition for such a decrepit old bat.

Then I went to the old house. I had the little BMW, not the van, because freezing rain was predicted for overnight, so I couldn't bring much back, but I picked up a few things I had been missing, like more dishes, my moisturizer which I haven't been able to find around here, measuring cups, some books, etc. I turned the well pump off, just in case. And I set some mouse traps. That may have been a mistake. If I don't get back there soon, everything might smell of dead mouse. Well, that's not an odor I haven't dealt with before.

Then I went back to Piper's office to finish the earlier conversations. They had a meeting at 4:30, so I left at 4:15, and that's when I realized that if I headed south then, I'd be getting to The Oranges at about 5:45 - a very bad time, traffic-wise. So I decided to go to the diner for something to eat.

I hadn't ordered yet when my phone rang. It was The Hairless Hunk. He said he'd seen a little black convertible go by, and figured it had to be me. "Who else but you would drive a beautiful little car like that on this sloppy salty road?" The phone conversation was getting long, and I was uncomfortable talking in the diner, so I invited him to the diner for coffee.

As usual, we talked. And talked. I don't know if he's starved for conversation, or if he's always like that. It's amazing how much time we can talk, and never seem to run out of topics. We were still at the table three and a half hours later. Yeah, I kind of miss him. I don't want anything beyond a mild flirtation, but I really do like talking with him. Plus, he's pretty. Plus it's a boost to my ego to know that he finds me .... interesting. My daughter finds me boring.

It did rain on the drive back south, but it didn't freeze.

-------------------------------

When I was standing at the window in the doctor's office, a woman was talking to the other receptionist, and was annoyed to discover that her 1 o'clock appointment was at the other office, not this office. The two offices are about 5 miles apart. The receptionist said, "Well, if you just go there, you'll be only 5 minutes late. They won't mind." The woman snapped, "Oh, I don't care about their time. It's MY gas!"

I'm sorry, but I couldn't help saying to my receptionist, "I just drove 2 and a half hours for this appointment, and all I want is a refill of my prescription."

I'm unsympathetic.

Mainly because I don't believe their insistence on my coming in was for my health. I suspect they held my prescription hostage for their bottom line.
.

3159 The rich get richer and the poor, well, what do they matter?

Friday, November 12, 2010

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
-- Aristotle --

---------------------------------------------

Piper and I have some social and political differences. He is Republican to the point of thinking Sarah Palin makes sense. When you get him started he rails against lazy people who don't work, don't save, and who are experts at "working the system". Yeah, I saw a lot of that when I was doing court and family mediation, and I don't like it either. Where we differ is that he wants to eliminate all government social programs. He doesn't seem to realize that there are people who are in honest need of assistance. He seems to think that it is always their own stupidity that puts them in that position, and he shouldn't have to pay for their lack of planning.

Here's where that kind of thinking leads:

The real 'death panels' are coming from the GOP

Read the article. It's frightening, and I believe it to be absolutely true. Giving tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations, and giving tax dollars to the military industry, creates deficits that some people, mainly the beneficiaries of those programs, want to use as an excuse to reduce or cut out social programs.

My tin hat is buzzing so hard it's giving me a headache.
.

2361 Blowing away

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Lunch with Piper today. The Angel's office is in Fishkill, almost an hour downriver, and he didn't make it to the village with the tax forms yesterday, so Piper had gone down after work to get them. So I got to see the tax filings this morning, but I didn't get to review them because Piper didn't also pick up my envelope full of input. Oh well. Nothing obvious popped out, so I told Piper to tell The Angel to go ahead and e-file. If anything's wrong, it's better to file an amended form than to get an extension.

I owe over $3,000 additional federal, and I'm getting a $6 refund from the state. Gag. Choke.

Something I found out today - under the stimulus package, we do not have to pay taxes on 2008 capital gains. I wonder how many people know that. I sure didn't. Piper says it's in the instructions, but if you're using a software tax prep package that you bought in, say, early January, is it in that?

--------------------

If you're an "Idol" fan and a Simon hater, the following video will blow you away. Meet Susan Boyle, a 47-year-old country dumpling of a British spinster with cats, caterpillar eyebrows, and a dream. She entered the British version of the show, "Britain's Got Talent". Apparently in Britain, the auditions take place on stage in front of an audience.

This one may mess up your eye makeup. Fair warning.

(Embedding has been disabled "by request" for all of the versions of this video on YouTube, so you'll have to follow the link. Go. It's worth it.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY
.

1953 Small Progress on Taxes

Thursday, August 14, 2008

One of the uses of journaling is to force linear thinking on a scattered mind. Sometimes it even works.

I think I figured out something on the taxes. The tax owed is $5,000. The Angel says I have to send only (only?) $3,000 instead of the $5,000 the amended form shows because the IRS assumes they cut a check to me for $2,000 on the original return, which I would have to pay back. But I didn't get a check for $2,000, so I don't have to pay it back.

That's not what the amendment says, but I think that's what the interpretation is.

That's one question answered, but the total tax impact of the additional $15,000 income is still too high. It's still $6,000 over the original total tax due.

A second issue I have to address with Piper is that the total income is much higher than I expected. I sold some stock last spring, which was then reinvested in mutual funds and bonds. Selling the stock produced taxable capital gains, which would be taxed at the long-term rate. I am aware of the amount of gains from those sales. But the total income is MUCH higher than those gains would explain. Therefore, um, has Piper been "thrashing" my investments, producing a high amount of short term gains? Which are taxed at a significantly higher rate? And might that explain my way-too-high bracket? That high percent could be half short-term capitol gains tax.

The last few investment company statements seemed to indicate some thrashing. That doesn't mean bad. I know that we've been doing some balancing based on stock opportunities, and I know he moved a significant investment because a particular fund manager resigned. Several bonds reached maturity, too, but I don't think they generate capital gains.

I guess I'd better find out what's going on. It can't be too bad, because in this lousy market I've been gaining, not losing, but I'd gain more if I lost less to taxes.
.

1849 2007 Taxes

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Boring. Reread that top bar. This whole thing serves as my notes to me, you know (and to keep Daughter apprised as to my sanity).

I finally got my 2007 tax forms from Piper today. I had given him the 2007 folder before mid-April, but The Angel, the CPA, was a bit overwhelmed, so he had applied for an extension for me (I guess he figured it was ok because I am "a friend of the firm". Piper got extended, too). Then they kept promising and promising, and it kept getting put off for one reason after another, but they were aware I was running out of patience, so today they produced.

Angel has already e-filed both federal and state, before I had a chance to review it, which annoys the hell out of me. I wish he wouldn't do that.

It took me about 30 seconds to notice that he hadn't listed my Company retirement as income. I have income from several different sources, but the ones that get their own lines are the SS widow's pension, and the Company retirement, and it's rather obvious when it isn't there. There were two 1099s from The Company in the file I had given him, one was my retirement income, and the other is my (tiny) widow's share of Jay's retirement, and he apparently used the smaller one and dismissed the second much larger one as a copy of the first without looking at it.

Then I looked at the state business sales tax filings, and noticed that I was being charged a $50 penalty for late filing. Bull poopy. I gave him the materials in plenty of time. If it was filed late, The Angel will have to pay the penalty. Piper agreed with me on that.

I am not happy. He's going to have to file an amended return, and I STILL don't have my final numbers.
.

1799 Up and Down Wednesday

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

I had another of those long lunches with Piper today. I took Clyde, the Pleo, so he could meet him, and during the course of the afternoon The Angel, Jim, and Vinnie stopped by, either at the office or at the restaurant, so they got to meet him, too.

I am amused at how different people have such different reactions to Clyde. It's almost always a different reaction than I would expect from that person.

This afternoon I got a call from Jay's eldest sister. Jay's father has had a series of strokes, and he isn't able to swallow. Today is his 91st birthday. They haven't yet decided what direction to go in treatment, but all agree he'd be a lot happier at home, no matter what else is decided.

He already has three live-in caregivers, so as soon as they can be trained in the new requirements of his care, he'll go home. We've agreed that the day after the transfer, I should go to visit.

Distance is our enemy here. The father lives in Rochester, NY, the eldest daughter is just south of Washington, DC, the next daughter lives near Boston, and the third daughter lives about 40 minutes south of me. So it's ironic that I, the daughter-in-law, despised wife of the deceased son, is actually, at five+ hours' drive, the closest.

I've been out of the loop for a long time. Looks like I'll be getting back in. But he always liked me (when he figured out who I was). Maybe I can do some good, finally.
.

1707 Selling and Settling

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Business meeting followed by lunch in the pub with Piper today. Piper had met my friend on Saturday, when friend and I had passed through the village and stopped for lunch, and we ran into Piper, and I was interested in his reaction. He approves. Says he got "good vibes". That's nice. Piper is a very good judge of people, and he's not going to sugarcoat for me.

My driveway was full of snow when I returned on Sunday, but I didn't clear it yesterday because it was melting nicely. There was a storm predicted today, but ALL the TV maps and all the online maps showed the snow to the north of us. We absolutely weren't supposed to get anything more than a little rain.

When I left the house this morning to meet Piper, it was snowing heavily. After lunch, Piper had to drive south to a meeting in Fishkill, and I was worried about it, so I asked him to call when he got back. He called at 5, and said that as soon as he got out of the village, it turned to rain. No problem. He went on to say that the snow had now stopped in the village. I looked out the window, and it was still coming down thickly here at my house.

There's something strange about this place. I've mentioned before that when I drive north from NJ, I get depressed as soon as I get within three miles of home - because the snow is so much deeper here. It's a three mile radius circle around my house. Even north of here has less snow.

I don't understand.

--------------------------------

There's a commercial, I don't know exactly for what brand, but it tells us about a girl in South Africa who is "forced to miss school as much as one week out of four" because she doesn't have sanitary supplies. Buy our product, and we'll contribute (pads or tampons, I forget which) to girls in African villages.

Um, forced?

I went to high school in a very economically depressed area. Very few girls in my high school could afford to buy a commercial product that they'd use once and throw away. That would have been seen as the height of extravagance. Profligacy. Stupidity. They used the same thing their mothers and grandmothers had used - rags. Skillfully folded, pinned or tied, washed, bleached and then boiled, and reused.

Nobody is going to convince me that a girl is FORCED to miss school because she doesn't have access to rags and boiling water. Sorry. I don't buy your sob story. You don't have to have something just because someone is selling it.

Ok, I'm tough. And yes, I have used rags. That's where the expression "on the rag" comes from, you know.

-------------------------------

"Settling", for and against, has been all over the blogosphere this past week, after an article written by Lori Gottlieb in The Atlantic. She says that women should settle for “Mr. Good Enough” before it’s too late.

A lot of men don't want to marry these days. They'd rather have serial long term uncommitted relationships. Stay while it's good, get out when it isn't good any more, without all those costly legal entanglements. The number of younger men who have a genuine desire to get married is dropping. Women's clocks are ticking, and men don't have a clock, until they start to fall apart, and then they want to marry a nursemaid. So Ms. Gottlieb's point is that if your standards are too high, you may never find the perfect man, the soul mate, the passion, who will ALSO be willing to marry you, and so you'll have to lower your expectations. Settle.

I haven't heard anyone else say this, so I will: It's women's fault. We have made it too easy for the valuable men to get anything they want without having to make any committment. It's Nature for woman to want home and family, and for man to want woman. But the old expression is "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free"? We're giving too much away. We've made it too easy for men. Female sexual freedom came with a price, and now we don't want to pay it.

This has a deeper effect that no one has mentioned (not in what I've read, anyway). If there are children (and even in an uncommitted/temporary relationship, an unmarried woman in her mid to late 30s is hearing the clock ticking), when the man leaves the children will most likely be left to the woman's care. Sure, he'll likely pay support, but it's the woman whose career takes the hit. Raising a child takes more than money. It takes time. She can't put in the overtime, go on the business trips, take evening classes, she has to stay home during measels and mumps and childcare glitches. She becomes professionally undependable. He goes on with his life. His career progresses and hers stalls. He can afford the damn child support! He's getting raises. (Not to mention time for dating.) She is slowed down for the rest of her life.

Damn it ladies, stop giving your lives away! Stop making it so easy. We old feminists worked hard to get you younger ones an equal chance for the good-paying jobs. You're letting the men take it all away! And they're chuckling about it. They know they have you over a barrel.

Make him work to deserve you. Make him share the responsibilities and effects of the fun times.

Stop giving yourselves away!

---------------------------

The "Silken Touch" is turning into a riding crop lately, eh?
.