Aging is such fun! Ha!

 I've been reading a few blogs daily for some time; one being thebayfieldbunch.com.  It is some information about a couple, Kelly and Al, who did quite a lot of rv travel and finally retired to a place in Canada.  The lady, Kelly, passed away yesterday after a severe bout of liver disease.  It is terrible to hear of her passing but not being ill every single day; not being in pain every single day; it's a relief in some ways.  

My wife broke her ankle 2 years ago and still isn't walking well.  Her doctors aren't managing to do anything right!  But she's not ill.  Having her taking every sort of pain medication and just having it knock her out; that's a hell on earth!  I feel so sorry for Al but at least Kelly's awful illness is over. 

 I'm lucky; there isn't much wrong with me but there is always tomorrow!  And in the mean time I read about Mr. Trump and the bunch of rich assholes he is going to inflict on us.  And that's worse than most illness!  There aren't any words strong enough to say what I feel about those idiots.  The one redeeming feature is that the folks who voted for Trump will know soon enough how they screwed up when they voted him into office.  

If you've bought anything electronic lately; that price will go up.  If you've bought a vehicle; that price will go up.  If you've bought lunch; that price will go up.  Oh, and your Medicare coverage will go down.  And your GI retirement will go down.  And your social security income will go down.  And finding someone to fill jobs at your business will be even more difficult.  And finding someone to repair things around your house will be more difficult. 

Don't worry, voting for a draft dodger, felon and molestor of women will come back to bite those folks.  Oh, and then there is the total unknown he chose as Vice President.  When Mr. Trump is declared incompetent, which might be pretty soon from the way he talks in interviews and on stage; then we are going to get more surprises.  I can't even guess what will happen then!  

Life goes on.  Keep away from those sick folks and keep washing your hands!

Just hanging around....

It's been pretty quiet around here if you don't pay attention to any news source.  The news is, as always, pretty noisy.  This whole coronavirus mess is interesting.  By the way, I do believe there is such a virus and I do believe it will be growing more dangerous here in the USA.  Listening to our esteemed President about this makes no more sense that listening to him about anything else.

Anyway, our little town has lots of RV'ers who seems to have stopped here and they are making shopping just nasty.  Ok, they are spending their money here but they are also clogging up roads, parking lots and even restaurants!  Go away, people!

Sorry, I had to get that off my chest.  Actually, they aren't doing anything too awful.  They are just stocking up for their next month or two of self-imposed isolation.  A couple days ago there was no hand sanitizer left on the store shelves.  Now, I don't use that crap so I didn't care but that's not where it stopped.  Yesterday we went into Walmart for a couple things (dog food and some blackout curtains if you must know) and decided to look at the meat counter.  There was NO beef!  There were only a couple packages of pork chops left!  The frozen food area was half empty as well.  Really?  I should have taken a picture.  People are just going crazy over this.  Now, granted, the media is carrying coronavirus headlines every day but jeez! 

Ok, I'm over 70 but fairly healthy so EVEN I should have a decent chance of surviving this thing.  So who the hell has stripped Walmart of all their meat?  It is just stupid.  I guess I'm not used to seeing panic in the streets.  We were in a restaurant the other day and the two guys at the next table were talking about buying ammunition - lots of ammunition.  Like it is going to be the end-of-the-world and sick people are going to be attacking them and they needed to shoot them to save their hand sanitizer supply.  What idiots!  And, yes, we are still going out to eat.

Of course having the stock market go nuts is only to be expected.  Those traders are just one step away from nuts most days.  Do we have money in the market?  Yes.  Has our investment gone down?  Yes.  Will we be eating dog food next week?  No.  The dog will but, naw, unless the supermarket doesn't come up with more hamburger we'll stay away from his food. 

In the midst of all this our daughter is still in the process of moving to Austin.  Her house sale did go through and the one she purchased is being spiffed up.  I'd be going crazy if I were her having people doing things to my new house and not being there.  But, if it works for her, great.  Of course we'll have to visit her one of these days but Austin is a lovely town and there are lots of other places to visit between here and there.  It should work out just fine. 

Gotta go.  Thanks for stopping by.

Silly market

There is an old saw about getting out of the market in April and returning in September.  Isn't working well this year!  Dow is down over 300 points today.  Up a hundred one day, down a hundred the next, makes you seasick watching the darned thing.  Oh well.  Not much I can do about that!

We've spent the morning cleaning the house.  At least that's productive!  A friend mentioned cleaning their deck with a pressure washer.  I don't know why we hadn't thought of getting one before but we did and it sure makes short work of the deck.  It looks a 1,000% better in half an hour and the pressure washer uses less water than we'd use with just a hose and a brush.  Life is good!

I was reading Random Roger (as usual!) and he commented that it seems many people of retirement age still have a lot of mortgage debt.  Well, why not?  Having EXCESSIVE debt is always bad regardless of the origin of the debt but the key word is 'excessive' not 'debt'.  We owe $10K or so on our car as well but Toyota offered us a 0% loan.  We get to keep our money invested and pay off the car over several years.  What's wrong with that?  It's not like we trade vehicles every year.  Our cars last us a while:  Mazda 626 (10 years); BMW 325 (15 years); Bronco II (10 years); GMC pickup (9 years).  Aside from this 0% deal we haven't had a car payment since about 1995.  Well, that's not quite true.  When we bought our current Ford F250 they had a deal where if you financed the truck you got an additional $1000 or so off the truck.  We financed it for something like three months then paid it off.  The things we'll do for a grand!

Gotta go.  Keep your head.  The sky isn't falling quite yet!

Just Doing....

On our last trip to California, I misjudged a service station entrance and bent the rear stabilizing jacks on the trailer.  Bought new ones about two weeks ago but it wasn't until this morning I installed them.  I just used the original self-tapping screws so it wasn't too tough. 

We also had the carpets in the house cleaned this morning.  Now that guy earns his money!  It's hard work bending over using that machine.  Moving all the furniture off the carpet is almost as tough though.  We'll probably spent part of tomorrow putting it all back.  (Oh my aching back also!) 

Finally we have an electrician coming in this afternoon to install a new switch for a light.  I guess I could do something that simple but we weren't sure what was wrong.  Sometimes the switch would almost work; other times nothing at all.  We had this guy out last week to replace a couple circuit breakers and he figured out that time what was wrong.  I figure it's only fair to let him replace it.  These days it's tougher than usual for these small business folks to make a dollar.

Gotta go.  I'm doing well working on the trailer.  There's always more!

Taking a drive

I like my little town and often take a ride around town in the afternoon.  There are all kinds of people living here; some very nice houses, lots of manufactured homes, plenty of mobile homes and lots of shacks.  A couple blocks from our home there is a nice house with an old mobile home in the back yard that is used as a stable for the people's horses!  Folks out here can be pretty creative. 

There are also a lot of empty homes; lots and lots of foreclosures.  There just isn't much work here so people have to travel to Las Vegas to earn their living.  It's tough.  We've lived here two years; this photo is of a house that has been just sitting all that time.  It is probably 75% finished; paint it and put some doors and carpet in and it would be complete.  Instead it just sits empty and unusable.  What a waste!

It's a big house with a carport and a two car garage.  The windows are in; the tile roof is almost finished.  Someone's dream died here.  It's just sad.  There isn't even a real estate sign; I suppose some bank owns it and just hasn't bothered to list it.  With all the other houses on the market, it wouldn't pay them to finish it. 

Sorry to be so negative today.  I'll find something good to cook tomorrow and that will put me in a better mood!  Take care.

A Strange Thing

Yesterday started out totally normal; until I spent most of the afternoon in the ER.  NOT a fun day but it was basically nothing. 

We started out for lunch and a bit of shopping.  Went into the restaurant feeling just fine; by the time the server brought our cokes I was so dizzy I couldn't stand.  I swear, I looked like every drunk you've ever seen on 'reality tv'.  We had the sandwiches packed to go and headed for the ER.  A few tests and the answer 'vertigo' came back though the doctor did mention labyrinthitis.  Well, hell, I knew that!  It's what to do about it.  Happily they handed over a prescription for Meclizine and that plus about 18 hours flat on my back seems to have done the trick.  At least labyrinthitis sounds like it would be a terrible title for a movie.

Aside from my personal problems, it wasn't a great day in the news.  People are arguing that unemployment here may be 18% rather than only 14%.  Requests for food stamps are up 250% over 2008.  Just sunshine where ever you look. 

Speaking of sunshine, it was 74F (23.3C) yesterday breaking the previous record and 17F (8C) above normal.  Nice afternoon.  Wish I'd been spending it on the patio with a glass of wine.  Have a good one.