Fingers Crossed...

...that the worst of tax season is over. We got our butts royally kicked for nearly four weeks straight. At this point, we've got to be a hundred returns past where we were last year. Even now that things have slacked off a bit, I'm still cranking out ten returns every shift. By this time last year, I was spending most of the day reading books, doing blog posts, checking up on Facebook, etc. If this keeps up, we'll be sittin' pretty come season-end bonus time, but getting there has been fairly grueling so far.

Not that corporate is making our jobs any easier with their Advances, Walmart gift cards, and every other gimmick you can think of to extract money from the clients for anything other than doing their taxes. Without all the "banking products" (every one of which is pitched to us as a way to "enhance" revenues), we could easily shave 20% off our fees. Worse yet, the code monkeys at HQ completely screwed the pooch implementing the stupid gift card thing so about one out of every ten people never get one. But the $50 is still being subtracted from our revenue by corporate. And we usually end up writing a $50 check to shut the customer up, who will likely never darken our door again. When you call the help desk, all they tell you is to talk to the local rep. Who has not one iota more control over the thing than we do, which is absolutely none.

In other news, there ain't much other news. Debbie is still cranking away for her busy season, which just got a little busier because one of the few remaining agents is "no longer with the company." For the entire five-and-a-half years she's been working there, the number of agents has steadily dwindled from 13 or 14 to six, with no plans by management to get anyone new anytime soon. And by the time they do, given their past history, another agent or two will become "no longer with the company."

In spite of all that, we did manage to sneak away for an evening to go see Bob Seger at the Amalie Arena in Tampa. As usual, trying to get anywhere in Tampa while an event is going on was a bad joke, aided by the fact that the Tampa police were a complete no-show. The concert was on a Thursday evening, meaning we had the twin joys of dealing with daily commuter traffic, which by itself completely gridlocks the mess the city "planners" have made of downtown, combined with an extra 20,000 or so people trying to get to the Amalie.  But the concert was well worth all the grief of getting there, and, for a few hours at least, we were able to forget all about taxes and cruises and old-people park drama and the Carefree RV Resorts corporation and its ass-hat CEO, Nancy No-Nuts. It was a very pleasant few hours. The trip home was easier than the drive in (no thanks to the still-non-existent Tampa police) because by then, the commuter traffic was gone and everyone was more-or-less going the same way.

And then it was back to the same-ol' same-ol'.

Speaking of which, I see that ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh released a video of the beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians who were in Libya, which, thanks to the tender ministrations of the US military, is now a part of the Caliphate. As they were Egyptian, the Egyptian military responded with air strikes inside Libya with which is shares a long border. This is an entirely logical response. I'm sure the US will be equally logical and will strongly condemn the killings, offer condolences to the families of the victims, and let Egypt handle its own affairs.

Heh. Yea. Right.

I'm sure it's just a matter of time before, as the Joker said, "everyone loses their minds," and we stage another of our ISIS recruiting events. The Forever War must be perpetuated.

Meanwhile, our "leaders" have been so lost without the Cold War that they seem desperate to start a hot war with Russia. I can't for the life of me figure out what we hope to accomplish by getting into a shooting war with a major, nuclear-armed military power, over who gets to claim the complete basket case of a country that goes by the name "Ukraine". This won't be like any of our recent wars with such military non-entities as Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan. Not that we've been exactly decisive in all of those, but they were a cake-walk compared to what going head-to-head with Russia will be. Unless the goal is to eliminate a sizable fraction of the US's 20-something population, I can't see what we hope to gain. (Other than the obvious benefit to the military-industrial complex, of course. But that goes without saying.) Why would NATO or Europe want a corrupt, bankrupt country without much in the way of oil or gas? It currently serves as a pipeline route for Russian natural gas being sent to Europe, but how is destroying that infrastructure while simultaneously pissing off the Russians going to benefit Europe? Are our heads of state beginning to believe their own bullshit? That the US can supply all of Europe's natural gas from our non-existent surplus (The US is still a net importer of natural gas) converted to LNG in non-existent facilities, and shipped aboard a fleet of non-existent LNG-capable ships?

Have we gone stark raving mad?

OK, that sort of answers itself.

It Begins

I'm three days into another tax season sitting in Walmart, and I'm ready to start punching people. Things did not get off to a good start; on my very first day, as I'm walking into Walmart, I get smashed into by a People of Walmart type going out the entrance. She looked drunk, stoned, or possibly both, sporting some serious bed-head, and was dressed in pajamas, a bath robe and bunny slippers.

As I walked in the door. On the very first day. Not good.

Our tax booth is located in the same prime real estate: across from the bathrooms. That's good, because bored men waiting for their women to emerge from the restroom are easy sales targets. It's bad because it seems every woman in Pasco county turns into a screaming harpy every time Walmart tries to clean the bathroom. Understand that, thanks to the lawyers, they have to close everything down anytime they mop until the floor is completely dry. Do the screaming harpies care? Nah. So the entire time (we're talking 15 to 20 minutes), they stand outside the restroom, sometimes alone, sometimes in a giant harpy chorus, screaming profanity three feet from where I'm trying to do people's taxes.

FYI, ladies; when you act like that, this is what every man around you is seeing.

Lovely. Simply lovely.

I also fully expect, sometime before the end of tax season, to have my lifeless body pulled from the rubble that was once our tax cubicle. I can't go five minutes without some blind old dude smashing one of those electric shopping cart things into the walls, or a texting hipster walking into the side of the thing. Listen up, people; it's a temporary structure and ain't exactly what I'd call sturdy.

[As a side note, a little tip for purse and/or baby snatchers: outside your local Walmart's women's restroom is a target-rich environment. And Walmart even helpfully provides comfy benches for you to sit on that have been placed in the most advantageous spots for you to ply your trade. Better yet, they don't seem to mind if you camp on one of them all day. You can even bring drinks and snacks if you wish.]

As far as actual tax preparation, we got off to a bit of a slow start, but yesterday things seemed to pick up. I managed to complete a half dozen returns over my eight-hour shift in spite of constant glitches. That whole "we can download your W-2's" thing is an even bigger fiasco than in prior years. For example, the only way to download a Walmart W-2 is to type in a special code. That is only printed on the employees W-2. So we still have to have the physical W-2 to download the electronic W-2. So what is the point, exactly? It doesn't save me any time. After I go through all the crap to download the electronic W-2, then type in all the numbers to confirm that the W-2 downloaded correctly (which means I also need the physical W-2 to do that step), I've spent more time than it would take me to type in everything manually from a physical W-2. It doesn't mean that clients can file their taxes earlier. In order for electronic W-2's to be available for download, the employer has already done all the necessary year-end work and has likely printed the physical W-2's. Which I need in order to download your electronic W-2 anyway. The whole mess sounds like yet-another rent-extraction scam by outfits like W2Express that "facilitate" (for a fee, I'm sure) all this unnecessary "work".

Sort of like the tax preparation "industry".

Anyway.

Speaking of beginnings, I'm going to call it. The fracking bubble has popped:

Layoffs are cascading through the oil and gas sector. On Tuesday, the Dallas Fed projected that in Texas alone, 140,000 jobs could be eliminated. Halliburton... axing an undisclosed number of people in Houston. Suncor Energy... will dump 1,000 workers.... Slumberger... will cut 9,000 jobs.
...
Larger drillers outspent their cash flows from production by 112% and smaller to midsize drillers by a breathtaking 157%....
...
California Resources... watched [shares] drop to $4.33 by today....

Its junk bonds... were trading at 79 cents on the dollar today....
...
Samson Resources... junk bonds... traded at 26.5 cents on the dollar today....

Halcón Resources... saw its shares plunge 10% today to $1.20.... Its junk bonds slid... to 72 cents on the dollar.

Hercules Offshore... [is] trading for $0.82 a share.... In mid-October, its 8.75% notes due 2022 traded at 66 cent on the dollar. Yesterday they traded at 45.
...
Today, Paragon’s shares trade for $2.18.... Its junk bonds are now down to 58 cents on the dollar.

Swift Energy... stock, now at $2.37... saw its junk bonds shrivel another eight points over the week to 36 cents on the dollar.

Now you're probably saying to yourself, "Self, it's OK. I don't own any of that stuff." Don't be so sure. For example, it's a safe bet that your pension fund has some of this crap, or derivatives based on it, just like it had bunches of derivatives based on crap mortgages back in 2008.

And although you would never know it from the media, this isn't just about oil:

On Thursday, the Swiss franc rose a staggering 30 percent against the euro, and the Swiss stock market plunged by 10 percent.... Meanwhile, the euro is in greater danger than ever.... With this move by Switzerland set off a European financial crisis?
...
And one of these days, another extremely important currency peg is going to end.  Right now, the Chinese have tied their currency very tightly to the U.S. dollar.  This has helped to artificially inflate the value of the dollar.  Unfortunately, as Robert Wenzel has noted, someday the Chinese could suddenly pull the rug out from under our currency, and that would be really bad news for us…
...
So keep a close eye on what happens in Europe next.

It is going to be a preview of what is eventually coming to America.

Hong Kong is also pegged to the dollar and they may become impatient with us more quickly than China.

Are we having fun yet?

Welcome to 2015!!

OK; so I'm a few days late. Sue me.

We managed to make it through 2014 without becoming homeless nor did we kill our moron neighbor and bury her body in the woods. Yet. It was a close call on both of those, but we somehow snuck through by the skin of our teeth. Those two items were our only goals for 2014 and given our present situation, will likely remain our only achievable goals for 2015. We'd like to be able to set other goals for ourselves like eating healthier, exercising more, saving money, but heh; who are we kiddin' here?

We have made modest progress towards getting our trailer a bit more livable with the new closet and shelves in the Florida room. We'll probably make a bit more progress over tax season assuming I can fit it in time-wise. It seems like it's taking us forever to get anything done, but all we can do is keep picking away at all the projects we have around here. We figure by the time we finally get everything the way we want it, we'll sell the place and move.

One thing we finally did get done this year is planting something edible outside. People keep giving us ornamental plants which seem to do OK, but every attempt we've made at growing food has not really done well, other than the rosemary bushes that are trying to bury our porch. This time, we used a bunch of containers with real dirt in them instead of trying to grow anything in the sterile sand around our place. We are having modest success. We have some lettuce that seems to be doing well, and a few tomato plants that are beginning to put on, along with a couple different kinds of basil, sage and parsley. So far, thyme and oregano have been no shows, but I'll just keep trying and see if I can make anything happen. At least down here, we can plant pretty much anytime we want so if something fails to germinate, we just keep replanting until something grows.

Politically, 2015 is off to a surreal start, with the New York police on what amounts to a work stoppage following the assassination of two police officers while the mayor was perceived to be siding with the anti-police protests:

Furious at embattled mayor Bill de Blasio, and at what Police Benevolent Association chief Patrick Lynch calls a "hostile anti-police environment in the city," the local officers are simply refusing to arrest or ticket people for minor offenses – such arrests have dropped off a staggering 94 percent, with overall arrests plunging 66 percent.

If you're wondering exactly what that means, the Post is reporting that the protesting police have decided to make arrests "only when they have to." (Let that sink in for a moment. Seriously, take 10 or 15 seconds).

So either two-thirds of what the police in New York City do every day is a waste of time, or the city will quickly plunge into utter chaos. I don't follow the news very closely these days, but I've not heard of much in the way of chaos yet.

And we have the now-infamous hack of Sony by North Korea. Except it now appears that the FBI was working backwards from the Whitehouse-ordained conclusion that the perpetrator was North Korea rather than the disgruntled ex-Sony employee(s) who actually did the hacking. But never mind; as we learned from W. and Iraqi WMD's, modern presidents never change course no matter what the facts show:

US foreign policy just jumped the shark: a few days after both the FBI and the US State department were humiliated when it was revealed that it wasn't North Korea but a disgruntled, laid off Sony employee that was responsible for the "hack", and when the best possible course of action would have been to simply let this latest embarrassing incident fade from memory, moments ago Obama - currently not working out next to a rainbow or flashing his support of "Shaka" -  just signed his first executive order of 2015, imposing even more sanctions against North Korea.

Ye gods and little fishes.

As for the economy, the fracking bubble may have not yet popped, but it's certainly leaking air faster than a week-old birthday balloon. Like the housing bubble, there is a great deal riding on it other than the fortunes of a few drilling companies. Pension funds, in an attempt to win back the loses from 2009, are up to their eyeballs in fracking-related junk bonds and derivatives. So are the banks, although we already know that the taxpayers will once again bail them out and guarantee Jamie Dimon and Loyd Blankfein will be paid their multi-million dollar bonuses. But anyone on a pension can expect to once again get the shaft. By any honest measure (meaning statistics generated by pretty much anyone other than our government), the working and middle class continued to get hammered in 2014 by any and every means possible, while the one-percenters piled up more wealth than they and the next dozen generations of their descendants will ever need. I don't expect that to change in 2015, although our government will continue to produce all sorts of numbers and graphs trying to convince you that what is happening to you isn't.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!!

A dual-purpose post: First, does Blogger's scheduling thingy work (and do I know how to work it), and to post my traditional Christmas videos:






Merry Christmas!!!

Run, Run, Run

December is our traditional crazy month with a bunch of stuff all happening at once, and not just Christmas/New Years. This is supposed to be Debbie's slow time, but she just set a new personal and office-wide record for the most cabins sold in a pay period (and week, and day, and probably hour). [Correction: I've been informed that this was not a record for a pay period; Debbie sold 80 cabins in a pay period back in February while this time it was "only" 72. It was, however, a new record for one week: 52.] I've been doing more security gigs, plus taking on more up at the Moose Lodge, plus cranking out CPE and trying to get ready for tax season.

Then because we're not already having enough fun, our crazy neighbor decides to go off her meds and start harassing Debbie every chance she gets. She always been nuts, but up to this point it was the harmless kind of nuts. Then she decided she was going to screw with Debbie, and, well, that ain't going to fly. I called the park manager, which as usual accomplished nothing. So I unloaded a whole truck-load of my kind of crazy on her wrinkled ass and it's been relatively quiet ever since. (I don't think it will come as any surprise that the only person in the park who doesn't think she's batty is a certain other "person" who decided my parents were fair game last spring. If you're thinking of involving yourself in my business again Dickhead, I seriously suggest you re-think.) Have I mentioned lately how much I hate Carefree?

Anyway, the other project this week is Christmas cards. Debbie has made four dozen or so cards, which ought to cover us for this year. We're only sending to close family and a few people here in the park. We just don't have the cash this year for card stock, envelopes and postage to do all 200+ names on our mailing list. Sorry. Maybe we should do a Kickstarter campaign. Debbie is mostly done with her part (making the cards), so now everything is waiting on me to clean up the address list with all the changes/additions since last year, print labels, and prep and stuff envelopes. I should be able to get step one completed today. Maybe. It's another Moose night, and I'm doing this instead of that, so....

Later.

The Big Five-Oh.

Yep. Half a century. Got my AARP card in the mail. More years behind me than in front. Hit the local CVS for a walker and some Geritol. Blah, blah, blah.

The reality is, of course, that I am exactly one day older than I was yesterday. But Western Civilization loves its anniversary dates almost as much as it loves its "old people talk" about pills and pains and procedures, so here we are.

In more important news, it's cold. The "polar vortex" (which is, in fact, nothing new but gets people all worked up thanks to a rather silly movie from a few years back) is knocking our temps out of the 70's and 80's for the next few days. I'll probably move our plants that are in pots into the shed or up onto the porch snuggled up against the trailer. The stuff planted in the ground is on its own. If this plays out like it usually does, our little micro-climate we have back here in the corner will stay up close to forty and it will be no big deal. By Friday we'll be back into 70's territory, and everyone will be talking about how we survived the Great Polar Vortex of November 2014. Ya know, it used to be that people were too busy surviving for real to waste time blowing perfectly normal weather events into an endless series of apocalypses that we "survived" by the brave expedient of putting on a sweater....

We were busy last weekend making more changes to the trailer. We installed some shelves in the Florida room that will also serve as a partition between the "living" area and the spot for the laundry, hot water heater and a small, upright freezer. We put twelve-inch shelves facing front to replace the monster book shelf we currently have taking up one entire wall, and sixteen-inch shelves facing the back that will hold the vacuum, folding chairs, laundry and cleaning supplies, etc. The long-term plan is to move Debbie's work space into the Florida room, and move the TV and my computer into the actual living room in the trailer itself so we can seat more than one guest at a time. We will also be able to set up a better space for Debbie's card-making operation out in the Florida room once we've shifted everything from the Monster Bookcase to the new built-in, and ditched ol' MB someplace. We'll probably donate it to the park library or some such. That's all a bit further down the road. I want to get the paneling up in the Florida room before we get too anxious shifting things around.

Anyway, some pictures:

The "before" shot.

A view of the rats nest we had to relocate.

Sorting through the boards. Typical of the Crapification of Everything, lots of damage and defects to hide.

The back of the first shelf unit in its place.

The front of the deep shelf unit.

And the finished project before it gets filled up with shelves and books.

I still need to cut the shelf boards to fit, which will likely wait until the weekend, then we can check another thing off the to-do list. While adding three more. But we don't talk about that.

We inherited a couple rose bushes that someone else was killing. I'm not sure how it happened, but we've become the park Plant Doctors. We've been receiving a steady stream of dying plants from people who hear that we can "fix" them. Our "miracle cure" generally involves re-potting in an appropriate-sized container and placing the plant out of full sun. (Almost nothing, including plants sold as "full sun" plants can survive Florida full sun.) Not sure how that makes us plant whisperers, but apparently it does around here. Anyway, the rose bushes. We got our first blooms. Just in time for them to be knocked off by the cold tonight. But there will be more:

I was going to say something about economics again, but with the gloomy weather, it seemed like piling on. So instead, here's a few links for those readers who aren't depressed enough by the cold and the rain/snow:

The Crapified Magic of the Obamacare Marketplace

It’s the crapification that gets me: We’ve got, on the very same continent as our own, a single payer system that covers everybody for a boatload less money — those wacky Canadians call it “Medicare” — and the best we can do in this exceptionally great country, this shining city on a hill, is normalize a program that still leaves 41 million uninsured, that has gross defects in its construction, and that is a full of traps for the unwary that will cost you bucks to some unholy number or needed treatment for a vital organ, whenever you look at it sideways or put your foot down in the wrong place. Because markets.

Japan Is Dying and We Still Don't Get It

What is it with us? Don’t we WANT to understand? Japan announced on Monday that its economy is in hopeless trouble and back in recession (as if it was ever out). And what do we see? ‘Experts’ and reporters clamoring for more stimulus. But if Japan has shown us anything over the past years, and you’re free to pick any number between 2 and 20 years, it’s that the QE-based kind of stimulus doesn’t work. Not for the real economy, that is....

Japan’s stimulus has achieved the following: banks get to pretend they’re healthy and stocks rise to heights that are fundamentally disconnected from underlying real values. On the flipside of that, citizens are being increasingly squeezed and ‘decide’ not to spend (not much of a decision if you have nothing to spend). Since Japan’s ‘consumer’ spending makes up about 60% of GDP, things can only possibly get worse as time passes. If ‘consumers’ don’t spend, deflation is the inevitable result – and that has nothing to do with the much discussed sales tax, it’s been going on for decades.

The Instability Express

Plummeting oil prices are a symptom of terrible mounting instabilities in the world. After years of stagnation, complacency, and official pretense, the linked matrix of systems we depend on for running our techno-industrial society is shaking itself to pieces. American officials either don’t understand what they’re seeing, or don’t want you to know what they see. The tensions between energy, money, and economy have entered a new phase of destructive unwind.

Two Detroits, Separate and Unequal

That Detroit is a more than 80% African American metropolis makes the idea of its rise from bankruptcy with second-class status all the more problematic. As Hammer explains, the plan for Detroit bears an eerie back-to-the-future resemblance to the famed Kerner Commission report of 1968, issued by a presidentially appointed panel in the wake of the urban rebellions that were then sweeping the country. Its findings were that the nation was moving toward two societies: black and white, separate and unequal.

“That was viewed as a call to action, as unacceptable in 1968,” comments Hammer. Nearly a half-century later, he adds, it’s portrayed as progress. The vision of a future Detroit as a sprawling second-class black city with a small, wealthy downtown and a few elite neighborhoods surrounded by thriving white suburbs will, he projects, bring the 1968 finding to life. “The truth is, what [bankruptcy] Judge Rhodes will do when he approves the bankruptcy plan of adjustment is ratify that conclusion as prophecy.”

If anyone needs me, I'll be curled up in my blanket escaping reality by reading about fictional murder and mayhem.

Porch Project

Now that the weather-gods have decided that we may have 72 hours in a row without rain, we decided it was time to do my mom and dad's porch. We scrubbed it all down with deck cleaner, let it dry for 24 hours, then started slapping on the stain.

Started with the outside edge.

Edge and steps all done; time to start really putting down some stain.

Lunch break.

Missed it by THAT much. We had to open a full gallon of stain to do this little bit.

The more-or-less finished product. I'm over on the left still trying to pry the plastic ring off the new can of stain. I'd forgotten what a royal pain those things are.

That took up Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I decided to pressure-wash the patio up around the porch before cleaning and staining the deck. That way, the first thing my parents do when they get here won't be to blow black gunk all over the freshly finished deck.

I'm still kicking out the occasional security gig. This Sunday I get to work the local America's Got Talent thingy down at the convention center. It will be one of the longer jobs I've done so far: 6am til 8pm. Feet will be aching by the end of that shift for sure. Debbie is still cranking out cruises, but she's hitting her annual slow season. She's still getting enough cabins sold to bonus, but not by much. I'll need to try to pick up more security work during November to make up the difference. Initially, her bonus money was just extra, but thanks to the rent going up 5% every year for no other reason than the bastards who own this place want to, Debbie's bonuses are no longer... well... bonuses.

Speaking of money, I haven't written much about the economy lately. But recently, I'm starting to get the same queasy feeling I had back in late 2008. That didn't turn out well for a lot of people, including us. This time around, it may be worse given that most of us schlubs are still digging ourselves out of the manure pile. Normally I just keep those sort of feelings to myself, but it looks like other people are coming out of the woodwork that make me look like an optimist:

The bear market is here, and a 30% decline is highly probable. So be defensive, raise your awareness, and get help from professionals who survived and thrived in the previous three crashes. Those who ignore history are doomed to experience the worst.

That'll hurt, especially given all the retirees that were forced into the stock market after the Fed cut real interest rates down to negative territory. But given the nose-bleed level the stock market is at currently, even a 30% drop is hardly Armageddon. Of course, last time around, it was the bursting of a nice big real estate bubble that turned a normal economic event into The Great Recession. So this time, what part of the economy suffers from constant hype from analysts and our government?

-By 2040, production rates from the Bakken Shale and Eagle Ford Shale will be less than a tenth of that projected by the Energy Department.

-The three year average well decline rates for the seven shale oil basins measured for the report range from an astounding 60-percent to 91-percent.

-Four of the seven shale gas basins are already in terminal decline in terms of their well productivity....

-The three year average well decline rates for the seven shale gas basins measured for the report ranges between 74-percent to 82-percent.

And all of it paid for with borrowed money. Yea. Nothing can go wrong there.

And we have some sort of election coming up. The only thing about it I'm looking forward to is an end to the non-stop political ads everywhere. I know I say this every election cycle, but I cannot fathom in what universe there exist people so stupid that their vote would be influenced by the barrage of crap that pours out of our TV to do anything other than stay home on November 4th and declare a pox on all their houses. That's exactly what I'll be doing. I'm done. Throwing in the towel. The pricks (and sorry; they're all pricks) will do whatever they want regardless of how anyone votes, so I'll be watching this circus from the sidelines.

Not that voting has any meaning whatsoever in the age of touch-screen voting and the registration of illegal aliens. Sure, there has always been a certain level of shenanigans when it comes to voting in this country, as evidenced by the Chicago ballets still sitting on the bottom of Lake Michigan. But at least with a physical ballot, you have to work at it (hanging chads not withstanding). When everything is a ghost in the machine, a reasonably bright four-year-old can rig an election.

And enough of that. I'm off to do some dishes so we have something clean to eat dinner off of.

More Standing on the Box

At this point, I've survived four events while wearing a shirt that has the word "Security" splashed across the back of it. The first two times, I was at the main gate for the last couple Rays games. So I was standing in the full Florida sun for several hours wand-ing down people and repeatedly yelling to the crowd to "Please take everything out of your pockets. Everything means EVERYTHING. Cellphone, keys, change, wallets, small furry mammals. Everything needs to come out of your pockets. Please" Then the first person I wand gets a beep. "Do you have something in your back pocket?" "Just my cellphone. I need to take that out too? You want me to take my shoes off? This is worse than going to the airport..." Blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, there are 20,000 very hot, very sweaty, very impatient people behind said person. Fun stuff. I didn't actually lose my voice, but by the second or third hour, I was starting to sound a lot like Darth Vader. But other than being hot and hectic, it really wasn't anything I'd call hard work. One thing I really like about the company I work for: they do the laundry. You're handed a clean shirt at the beginning of your shift, then seven sunny, Florida hours later, leave the sweat-soaked toxic mess for someone else to deal with. Sweet. The downside was the drive. The stadium is waaaaay down in St. Petersburg, so the cost of gas takes a serious chunk out of my take-home pay.

The second pair of gigs were concerts. The first was a real pain in the ear; 65,000-plus screaming, prepubescent girls and yet-another, record-label-created boy band. (Four Directions? One Dimension? Ah, here it is: One Direction.) I started out at one of the gates doing bag checks. (Primary things we were looking for: weapons, sex toys, lewd or profane language on signs and/or clothing. Simply wearing lewd clothing was not a problem.) Once the warm-up act was done, my gate was closed and I was "redeployed" (yea, some of these guys are seriously into their military jargon) to the main floor. My job was to keep the aisle clear and make sure that no purple wristbands tried to get up to the stage. I expected it to be a nightmare, but it only took me making one pass down the aisle before things got rolling, making sure everyone knew the drill. After that, all I mostly had to do was start walking towards someone or even just wave them back into their row. The only real problem children were not, in fact, children. They were the cougar moms trying to get to the stage. I'm not sure on what planet any self-respecting 20-something guy would give these wrinkled crones a tumble. When said 20-something is an international celebrity, its a safe bet the odds are effectively zero. And for Cthulhu's sake, put some clothes on. Anyway, it was a fairly easy gig, although we did have to do the human line thing when everyone on the floor tried to rush the stage during the final encore. No one tried to scratch my eyes out, so I guess that makes it a good day.

The second concert was a road trip. We all jumped on a big tour bus and headed north to Archer, Florida. Well, to be precise, we were bused to a cow pasture somewhere in the general vicinity of Archer, Florida to help beef up the local security presence at one of Luke Bryan's Farm Tour stops. I got a major cush gig in the VIP area, checking credentials of people trying to get on the roof of the lounge they had set up. It was kind of a cool little deal; a semi-trailer that expanded out into a 1,000 square-foot lounge and bar, complete with restrooms and four flat screens connected to a satellite dish. (We'll leave aside the question why someone would pay hundreds of dollars to get into the VIP area, then sit indoors and watch a ball game....) People with VIP passes could pay an extra $500 to go up a ladder onto the top of the trailer for a better view and all the free beer, soda, water and Five-Hour Energy they wanted. My job was to make sure the people up there had actually paid and that they didn't try to jump off the roof. It was the easiest money I've made in a long time. It did get a little intense when all fifty people started bouncing in unison. Me and the other security guy both had two fistfuls of railing trying not to get thrown clean off the roof. I swear a couple times I had a good foot of air under me. But we made it through, then did our usual herd-everyone-out-the-gate routine and got back on our bus. The only bummer with the whole thing was the five hours on the road. I came crawling into the trailer around 3am Sunday morning.

Anyway, so far, so good on the whole security thing. I can pick what events I want to work, and they don't mind that I'm going to disappear for tax season. This weekend coming up, I'm doing a couple football games. We'll see if my luck holds out, or if some drunk tries to knock my teeth out.

Native American Powwow

Debbie happen to be reading through one of those free ad papers and found a blurb for a Native American Powwow not too far from here. We both had Saturday off, and we didn't feel like more yard work, so off we went:

These three girls had been named princesses at other powwows for work they do in the Native American community.

Some of the regalia. Love the blending of western and Native American.

More regalia.

This little guy was having a blast running around behind his dad.

The only time we could get a pic of this guy that wasn't blurry was during a break between songs.

The Head Woman Dancer and the Head Man Dancer and his son.

The guy in the shorts on the left was still going strong after a couple hours of dancing; the Native American version of Tony and Leo Boris?

The regalia was awesome, but I can't imagine wearing all that in Florida, never mind dancing around in it for hours.

This little guy just stole the show. You could hear the Awe's and OMG's follow him around the circle:

I could have sat and listened to the music all day. Unfortunately, the weather seemed to have other ideas. Everyone shrugged off the first couple rain showers, but when the lightening started, the organizers pulled the plug. By then we were pretty well drenched anyway, so we called it a day.

Standing on the Box

So I've been back in school for the last week. I've got a new gig for the nine months of the year that I'm not doing taxes: security. Yea, I'm That Guy you see at ball games and concerts rummaging through purses or standing around looking important. In Florida, you have to spend forty hours in class, pass not one, but two tests, and blow over $200 in fees.

To stand.

I feel safer already.

We really haven't done much lately. Days are just sort of going by without much to show for them. We have been playing with plants that were given to us. Our side yard is beginning to fill up with green stuff.  Here is where things stand at this point:

My parents' hibiscus has been doing well back here, so we got one of our own.

Some sort of night-blooming cactus. Ugly as sin, so we sort of hid it on the other side of the car.

Vine with clusters of white flowers. We're hoping it will eventually cover most of the frame over our parking spot. The canvas cover that went on the frame never surfaced, and we've been trying to figure out what we were going to do with it. Trellis is as good an idea as any other.

No idea what this is.

No idea what this is either.

Looks like some type of philodendron, maybe? It had been a bit scorched by the sun before we got it. Seems to be perking up nicely.

Ginger that had gotten a bit toasted in direct sun.

We also need to relocate several plants from the small bed on the south side of the trailer to the shady side. The afternoon heat in summer is too much for some of what we stuck there. And I've finally gotten the round tuit I needed to finish pulling out all the random weeds and grass that volunteered in the big dirt patch and sowed wild flower seed. We'll see if that does anything.

So off to get some sleep so I'm ready to be on my feet for twelve hours.

Another One Gone

Another comedian from my younger days is no longer with us.

I'll do a real post here soon. Promise.

O Captain, My Captain

I have no words. A sad day.

...and a Mere Month Later

Sorry for the long pause, but in my defense I was out of internet range for at least half of the time. The other half? Not sure what the story there was. I do know it involved a lot of mowing and weed whacking. That seems to be most of my life anymore.

Anyway. We spent the last couple weeks up in the Great Frozen North, otherwise known as Michigan. We flew into Bishop Airport in Flint, which has several advantages. One, it isn't in Detroit; two, it isn't really in Flint; three, it's small enough to get off the plane, grab the luggage and rental car and be on the road in a half-hour or less; and last-but-certainly-not-least, there's a coney place with Koegel's right down the street. Serve the Curve, baby!! They also shoved that stupid modern art piece-o'-crap paper airplane thing out of the middle of the lobby and brought in a sweet Buick Roadmaster:

The first week we spent with my parents, getting their place ready for our family reunion. We managed to get into Traverse City for the Blue Angels on Sunday:

But after that it was just work, work, work, work, work. We built a swing set:

We trimmed trees:

We sat around hoping that gnomes would pitch in:

We watched other people putting up the tents:

And then we spent Saturday afternoon yakking and eating ourselves silly:

Unfortunately, we got a call Friday that Debbie's mom had been taken into the ER and admitted with possible heart problems. So Saturday, we had to eat-and-run instead of hanging around the reunion, and zip down to Saginaw to relieve Debbie's brother and his family, who had been living at the hospital since Friday.

Now, maybe it's been a long time since I've had someone in the hospital, but I don't seem to recall the necessity of at least one family member being present 24 hours a day just to make sure that the hospital staff doesn't kill the patient, that the patient has the assistance necessary to get from bed to toilet and back, that the patient gets meals and meds when necessary (and not the ones for the patient two doors down the hall), that the floor gets mopped, etc. I seem to recall that there was hospital staff who were paid to do those things and do them correctly. I must be miss-remembering, or maybe it was something I saw on TV about how hospitals are run in one of those First World countries in Europe. Cause it sure ain't how they do it here in 'Merica. Anyway, Debbie's mom is home and everything was more-or-less back to normal by the time we had to fly back to Florida.

And just so I can clear out some of the open tabs that have been accumulating over the last month:

We all know that Facebook manipulates its users for its own personal benefit. Whether you see a post or not, or where in the list it shows up has nothing to do with what you want and everything to do with what will make Mark Zuckerberg more money. But some of what has come to light recently seems to cross a line:

A new Wall Street Journal story probes the frequency and casualness with which Facebook ran experiments with the explicit aim of manipulating users’ emotions. Some commentators pooh poohed the concern about the study, saying that companies try influencing customers all the time. But the difference here is that manipulation usually takes place in a selling context, where the aims of the vendor, to persuade you to buy their product, are clear. Here, the study exposed initially, that of skewing the mix of articles in nearly 700,000 Facebook subscribers’ news feeds, was done in a context where participants would have no reason to question the information they were being given.

Facebook’s conduct fell so far below acceptable standards for conducting research that it would have been criminal if funded by Federal grants.

Emphasis is mine. I'm pretty sure that most people of average intelligence would assume that something that is illegal to do using federal grants, would at least fall on the wrong side of ethical, even when the funding is private. Yes, every ad on TV tries to manipulate your emotions, as does in-store displays, the color, shape and size of the packaging the whatsit comes in, and so on. (That is the greatest disease ever! How d'ya get that?!? That disease comes with a hot chick and a puppy!) But we expect this. Or we should. We know ads are supposed to make us want to buy stuff. We know stores exist to sell us stuff. We probably don't know, nor should we expect, that Facebook is trying to manipulate voter behavior during a congressional election.

One of the commentators pooh poohing concerns about all this is Scott Adams of Dilbert fame:

So I guess if anyone has any concerns about the conduct of Facebook, that make him "knowledge impaired"? You sure are quick to defend a corporation, Mr. Adams, given you've made a rather comfortable living by mocking corporate management for its abuse of both employees and customers. Ah well, I guess it doesn't matter; Mark Zuckerberg could be videotaped feeding puppies into a wood chipper and one-seventh of the world would still log on to Facebook everyday.

Just like I do.

On a lighter note, a couple videos from the Japanese dance troupe, enra:







And that's probably enough for one day.

More Projects

We're still cranking on house projects while dodging the daily thunderstorms. The main one this week was a bit of a redo. When we first moved in, there was a hall closet that was seriously misconfigured. The rods were too close to the wall for a standard hanger to fit, and were so close to the floor that Debbie's long dresses were all puddled up on the carpet. Simple enough to fix, thinks us. We decided we only needed closet rod on one side anyway, so we ripped everything out and put up a rod and shelf on one side and pantry shelving on the other. We've hung hundreds of feet of Closetmaid, so this should be easy, right? Heh. The "walls" are only 2x2's and the thinnest paneling that you can buy. No way the paneling would support the vertical rails once we started loading things up. That meant we had to position the rails on the studs, but that put them too far in from the ends. It worked as long as we were careful to keep things balanced. At the time we had about 100 other things to do, so we just decided to live with it for now and fix it when we got a round tuit.

A mere two years later:

We pulled everything back out, screwed 1/2" B/C plywood right over the paneling, slapped on a bit of paint, et voilà! Now we have a wall sturdy enough to put things together correctly. And while we had everything pulled out, I decided to do something about the nicotine-stained ceiling:

When it's all done, we now have and extra four feet of closet space:

And repeat on the other side:

And rehang the shelves and fill with Stuff:

A neighbor somehow acquired a display rack from the local Sweetbay when it shut down. She thought she would use it for something, but never did. She gave it to us a couple months ago along with a bunch of cuttings from her plants. It fits perfectly on the back wall and makes a great can shelf:

We now have enough space to do mega-Sam's-Club shopping and have a place for everything. Even the super-giant-sized tub of animal crackers!!

Speaking of new plants, the rain is really making everything jump:

Lantana planted a year or so ago.

My parents' hibiscus that we are plant-sitting for the summer.

No clue what this is. Even the googles couldn't help.

One person told us this was angel wing begonia, another said it was dragon wing begonia. What came up on the googles for either of those looked nothing like this until I added the word "spotted". This is a spotted dragon wing begonia.

Variegated kiwi vine? A bit upright for something called a vine. We'll see.

Some random plant from Home Depot. It was stuck in a pot with other plants and wasn't looking too healthy, but we planted it anyway. Now it's going like crazy.

Gardenia.

Variegated philodendron.

Hollyhocks, recently relocated. These should have set flower a long time ago, so I relocated them to a spot with more sun to see if that helps.

Some sort of miniature iris that pops up all over this part of the park.

Coleus

Rose bush of unknown type. 

Ginger, growing a couple inches a day.

Spider plant

Agave, plumeria and aloe.

American beautyberry.

We also managed to kick out a couple outdoor projects as well:

One dumpster-dived rusty wire rack + one can Rustoleum navy blue paint = one serviceable end table-ish dohicky.

More Rustoleum navy blue paint applied to the peeling, multicolored light pole, and it now goes with the siding.

We got a bit of a surprise when we began seriously cleaning up the light pole: the glass was clear, not frosted. It took about a half a bottle of Windex to find that out, but the scum eventually came off. Now I just have to find the little rod with the dingleballs on either end to go through the hole (like this), and the light pole will be good to go.

Well, off to start work on the next project.