This hasn’t been a good month for blogs.  July is almost over and I believe this is just my second.  I have lots of excuses.  The water damage drained me.  We spent ten days on the road visiting loved ones.  I have taken on additional duties in my golf association (doing anything for the first time is time consuming and unnerving).  And, the dog ate my computer.  Now, you have to figure out which of the above statements is not accurate.

This is my hundredth publication and I gave a lot of thought to the subject.  I believe that 100 blogs should qualify me as a grand blogmeister.  I figured at this time on my path to blogtopia, I would be much wiser.  I am not.  But, I have learned some lessons which I would like to pass on.

First, running a website hasn’t made me a computer wizard.  I thought that I would continue to pick up neat things that I would add on to expand the excitement of the site.  I was certain by now I would be posting pictures.  I made myself a promise that it would happen by last March.  It did not.  Go Daddy runs my website and I suspect if I go back to them and tell them I want to be able to post pictures, they will make it happen.  They have been very supportive.

I suspect to get what I want I will have to spend a few bucks.  That won’t be bad.  Right now, the site costs me practically nothing.  No unkind comments please.  The good news is that the site doesn’t run on gas!

I’m a one man marketer and when anyone is foolish enough to ask me what I am doing with my retirement, they get a three-minute pitch on my website.  Then, I give them one of my old business cards with the blog site hand written across it.  I even changed my Virginia vanity license plate to “RICEQPS” (you only get so many letters).  While pumping gas, a fellow asked me about my license plate.  Out comes the cards.

Another lesson I learned is that even good friends who take my card and tell me they will visit my website don’t.  I used to pout.  Some close friends told me they would subscribe, but they didn’t.  I pouted some more.  Then, I realized that these people have a life of their own.  Not visiting RICEQUIPS.COM doesn’t make them evil or even bad.  It just makes them busy.  So, I forgive them in absentia.  Since they aren’t reading this, it will have to be in absentia.

Of the hundred blogs, I think some are really good and some should be deleted.  I don’t plan on deleting any, but I need to develop the site so people are pointed to the better ones.  The three postings that have been read the most are: TV Commercials – Can You Hear Me Now?; My Green Visor; and The Indoor Perfect Storm.  If you have read this far and are not familiar with those three, you might want to check them out.

Tim McGraw had a song out entitled, “My Next Thirty Years.”  The idea was that he would try to do better in his next thirty years.  Well, I plan to do better in my next 100 blogs.

No, it wasn’t a dark and stormy night.  As a matter of fact, last Saturday was a pleasant evening – a little on the warm side, but nothing to complain about.  But, this has been a crazy Spring and Summer.  And like so many other times, a storm cell located itself right over our neighborhood and cut loose.

Where it had been light out, all of a sudden it was dark (and stormy), and it was pouring down rain.  Then, some lightning and thunder and all of a sudden, we lost our power.

This was about the third time this Summer.  I grabbed my flashlight and headed for the big candles.  These are big brass candles that I picked up out of a catalog when I was in Vietnam.  The brass stand is three feet tall and the candles add two additional feet.  They are so tall that you can actually talk to them.  Their wicks are also big and thick and if you are not careful where you place them, you may find a black soot spot on the ceiling.  I always tell them not to leave a black spot.

The last time we used them, Carole suggested I shorten the wicks.  I did, and now I couldn’t get one of them lit.  Too short a wick and/or too much wax on it.  I carried the troublesome candle over to the one that was lit.  I figured I could light it with the large flame from the other candle.  I never got it lit, but I managed to pour hot wax all over my hand (I really talked to that candle).

Whenever we lose our power, I always call our electric company.  You never talk to another human being, but I want the iron lady to acknowledge that they are aware of the fact that I am sitting in the dark.  Finally, after being transferred from one iron lady to another, I was told that there was a “widespread power outage” in my area and that a thing-a-ma-jig had gone out at a substation.  I was informed that our power would be back on by 11:00 PM.  That was only two hours from the time I called so things were looking up.  I was asked if I wanted a call back when the power came back on and I said OK (closing the loop).

Carole dug out a couple of clip-on lights and we both settled down with our books.  My clip-on light kept getting weaker.  I thought my eyes were giving out.  Then, it to went dark (but not stormy).  Using my flashlight – which keeps going and going – I checked out the clip on.  It needed two triple A batteries.  Carole, who some time in her childhood must not have had the battery she needed, has at least 20 of each kind.  I was back in business.

In the past when the power company said 11:00 PM, it really meant 10:30 PM.  I was convinced that they always put in a fudge factor to ensure they would be on time.  Well, 10:30 came and went.  Then, 11:00 came and went.  No power.  At 11:15 PM, I again called the Dominion Power Company to see what went wrong.  I ran the iron lady gauntlet again and was told that my outage had already been reported and they didn’t need anymore information from me.  Me?  I wanted information from them.  None was forthcoming.

At 11:30, we went upstairs to bed.  No air conditioning, no ceiling fan, and it was too hot and muggy to open a window.  Nikki, our eleven-month-old Sheltie knows she is not allowed in bed.  But, with everything so screwed up and under the cover of darkness, she made two attempts to bunk with us.

At two in the morning, the house lit up.  I got up and went downstairs to turn everything off.  And since I was up and Nikki was staring at me, I took her outside.  Finally, I climbed back into bed to get some sleep.  I conked out right away.  Ah, and yes, at 2:30 AM, I got my phone call from Dominion Power advising me we had electricity.  Closing the loop at 11:00 PM works, but at 2:30 AM, I was feeling pretty stupid.

Yesterday, I had a nice chat with both of my candles and they seem to be working just fine.

 
It had been a little over two weeks since all the water damage.  The house was dry (and it didn’t smell funny).  Nothing was growing inside the walls.  A new ceiling has been put on in the kitchen and many of the wall holes have been patched.

I told Carole, putting everything back together would be just like a PCS (permanent change of station).  We had done lots of them and they were no fun, but we got through them.  I wanted to compare it with something she was familiar with.  After a week, she would stare at me and say, “PCS?”  It has been much worse.  Everyday, very early, workers, noise and dust.  Steve’s crew (Donovan and James) have been superb, but its hard to find anything normal when you are dealing with workers, noise and dust.

Last Tuesday, a second crew showed up to rip up the hardwood floor in the kitchen and put down a new one.  I had a 7:30 tee time.  Seemed like a good idea at the time.   I don’t know if it was guilt, but I couldn’t hit the ball worth a damn.  On the 8th hole, I called Carole to make sure things were moving along.  She told me that the house was full of dust and she was having trouble breathing.  This was very inconsiderate of her, because her comments were impacting on my golf game.

I’m just kidding about her comments being inconsiderate.  She has a breathing problem and this was just too much.  I made my excuses to the rest of the players and headed home.  I found more workers, more noise and more dust.  There was a big pile of ripped out hardwood floor in the driveway and the kitchen was a disaster.

I saw a worker coming in the front door and I thought I would kid with him.  Knowing full well they weren’t, I said, “You done yet?”  He pointed at his chest and said, “Jorge, you?”  I decided that “you,” pretty well exhausted his understanding of the English language and pointed at my chest and said, “Jack.”  Then, we smiled and went about our business.  Maybe one of the other workers was named “Doneyet.”

Before the day was over, the new hardwood floor was in place.  We are going to try to be somewhere else when they sand, stain and seal.  I don’t mean a golf course.  I mean out of town.  Perhaps an out-of-town golf course.

We had a wall paper border around the kitchen wall right at the top.  I suspect you know that the border would be right at the top, but just in case.  When the ceiling came out, so did the border.  So, on our own dime, we decided to put up some crown molding.  It was on the floor for a few days before it was put up.  Our eleven-month-old puppy, Nikki, thought it had an interesting taste.  By the time Carole figured out the noise (from all the other noises), a couple of the boards were an inch or so shorter.  As the fan blades for the kitchen ceiling fan were also on the floor, I’m glad her taste ran to crown molding.  I’m glad she couldn’t get to the seasoning.

The idea that adversity makes you stronger is a bunch of crap.  I feel wiped out.

Carole and I have now been married 49 years.  I tried, but I couldn’t find a happy 49th wedding anniversary card.  Wait till next year.  But, each month for the entire marriage, we have prepared a budget.

The first thing we did was purchase a very nice, substantial ledger book.  This adds significance and formality to the drill.  Picking up that formidable book and carrying it to the kitchen table was part of the ritual.  That’s important when you don’t have any money.  A budget is most important when you are managing very little money.

I don’t know anything about accounting.  I took beginners accounting in college and learned to line everything up neatly, but that was about it.  The only thing I know for sure is that debits go in one direction and credits go in the other.  But, I don’t know which is which.  I review my daily activities at Wachovia Securities on line.  Some numbers are in red and some are in black.  Then, some numbers appear twice, both in red and black.  I don’t have a clue.  I haven’t tried too hard, because I can tell that the bottom line is where it should be.

We started off married life with me going to law school.  Carole worked as a secretary, first for the University and then with the law firm of Smith and Lewis in Columbia, Missouri.  I vaguely remember that she cleared somewhere around $180 a month and my dad sent us $50.  So we budgeted $230 a month.

Almost everything in the budget was a necessity – no hair and nails or golf account.  We budgeted for rent, groceries, utilities, the car, household expenses, insurance and $3.50 for each of us for clothing.  After three months, we would have over $10!

For the first few months, I tried to make things add up, but it was too hard.  So, we just went through the process of writing down what we were spending.  Then, we would look and see if we were spending more than we were making.  It’s not very sexy, but I recommend it to anyone trying to live within their means.

Of course, we didn’t have credit cards, so if you didn’t have it, you couldn’t spend it.  I guess life was simpler.  No tickee, no laundry – no money, no spendee.  Our budgetary key was to find at the end of the month as much money in our check book as we had in our budget accounts.

There was no perfection in our system.  I will leave the accounting perfection to the DC Tax Department.  They kept superb books, while they were stealing $50 million!  They  just paid out tax refunds to themselves and to bogus companies they had created.  Fifty million.  That’s a lot of designer purses.  The patients were running the asylum.

In my system, I would move a lot of money among the accounts.  If we took a vacation and exhausted our vacation account, I would take money out of  “car and gas” and “entertainment.”  That’s not much of a stretch, especially if we drove.  But, I also might take money out of the “linen” account.  Why?  Because there was too much money in the linen account.  So sue me.  There is no auditor to keep me honest and Bed, Bath and Beyond will never know.

In the early years, I would run an account in the red for a few months.  But, in some accounts, the red number would just keep getting larger.  We would them have an executive meeting (Carole and me) at the kitchen table and decide to put $10 more in the particular account.  “The ayes have it.”  Then, we would write off the red number and start over.  I think my budget process is more an art form than a science, particularly that portion of the process where I manipulate the numbers.

There is a fine line between being cheap and being frugal.  For most of the early years, we straddled the line.  By doing so, now if we want to, we can go crazy (but of course, we don’t).

It was Saturday morning and I had half a blog written on the exciting subject of keeping a household budget.  It’s kind of neat the sly ways I can manipulate the family budget.  After all, it is our money, so who is going to complain?

We ran out to the commissary, and the house and garden to pick up some roses.  It was a typical Saturday morning.  When we got home, Carole went in the house and I opened the trunk to get the groceries.  We have eleven recessed lights in the kitchen area (don’t tell Mr. Monk), and the first thing Carole saw was water pouring from all of the light fixtures.  It was the morning from Hell.

She screamed.  I thought someone had died and raced into the house.  Then I raced downstairs and shut the water off.  After the water was turned off, it just kept coming.  I went upstairs to locate the problem.  In the master bathroom, I found the toilet tank hose just hanging there.  It turns out that the hose had a sophisticated shut-off device in the line and it ruptured.  The irony and humor are there, but it’s hard to appreciate while standing in two inches of water.  This definitely got me out of my promise to vacuum the downstairs drapes.

We had water on three levels of the house.  We immediately called Steve Norwood, our contractor and friend.  He told us to call the insurance company and then he came right over.  The emergency insurance agent told us to find a water extractor and gave me a list of names for our area.  Unfortunately, the Northern Virginia area had had tremendous storms the week before and no one was available.  Can you imagine sleeping in a house full of water?  Neither could I.  I can’t even stand to watch one of those stupid music videos where it is raining inside the house.  After about three hours, Steve located someone who could come out.  Then, there was an accident on the Wilson Bridge, so it took him forever to get to our house.  I was feeling like Joe Bfstplk, the Li’l Abner character who always had a black cloud over his head and bad luck followed him.

When I was a kid in East St. Louis, our basement was lower that the street sewers.  So when it rained hard enough for the street to flood (which was often), we had to race down stairs and screw a plug into the basement drain hole.  If we were late, water would be gushing into the basement.  With that experience indelibly etched in my skull, I have never purchased a house what wasn’t up quite high.  “I understand that the bathroom is in the back yard, but I want to know how high are we above the century’s worst flood level.”

The next day, Brian Jennings, our water extractor, came out with his sophisticated moisture detector and before we knew it, we had holes in the ceiling and walls.  The holes were like rabbits; they just kept multiplying.  By Thursday, we were in great shape on the floors and rugs, but we hadn’t turned the corner on the walls.  Off came the baseboards and Carole’s good humor.

Now, a week after it happened, I can still hear the professional grade dehumidifiers and super charged blowers grinding away on the first floor.  I’m hiding in my second floor study.  The minute I put down my pen and appear on the first floor, I will be pressed into service returning things to their original spots.

I have now been assured that we have turned the corner.  The house is definitely drying and nothing nasty seems to be growing inside the walls.  All we need to do is replace the ceiling and the hardwood floors.  That won’t cause any dust, will it?

I don’t know if you are familiar with the Beltway (I-495) that encircles Washington, DC, but it is the fastest way to get around DC.  It is at least four lanes in each direction and the speed limit is 55 miles per hour.  Except during rush hour, when it resembles a parking lot, the average speed in somewhere between 65 and 70 mph.  The dangerous speeders are going over 80 mph.  If you drove at 55 mph in one of the center lanes, you would probably cause an accident.

There are certain drivers who treat the beltway like a racetrack (it is an oval).  If you see these nuts racing up behind you, you become very cautious and hope that their accident doesn’t include you (or delay you).  I prefer they run off the road rather than have their accident in the lanes of traffic.  That can really slow things down.

The law enforcement authorities have come up with traffic enforcement cameras that take pictures of these speeders, show the vehicle, the license plate and how fast the vehicle was traveling.  A big old fine arrives in the mail to the speeder.  Now, I am told that this is bad.  It violates our hot shot’s rights.  I get lost just about here.  What rights?  The right to privacy?  Driving a vehicle on an interstate highway seems fairly public to me.  What about the right to see the police car which will give the speeder an opportunity to slow down?  This is not a game.  If there is any due process involved, it is covered by posting the speed limit.

Those who object say it is just a way for the police to make money.  Well, it cost money to operate a police force and the cameras and personally, I would rather it would come from traffic violators than from my taxes.

In downtown areas, the city has posted red light cameras, which catch drivers who run the red lights.  Now who could object to that?  You would be surprised.  Again, you have the arguments about the city making money, privacy, and no opportunity for a violator to confront the accuser.  The inability of the red light runner to confront a police officer may keep him or her from going to jail.  No one will know about the drunk driving and the driver will not have an opportunity to resist arrest.  Can’t beat that.

Running red lights has caused a large number of accidents and injuries.  Statistics show that the red light cameras have reduced the number of accidents.  That’s good news.  However, it is argued that when someone who was going to run a red light sees the camera, he may slam on his brakes and this will cause the car behind him to rear end him.  If that is the case, I guess the car behind him was also going to run the red light.  Now, please remind me, who is it that I am supposed to feel sorry for?

People complain that a red-light-camera ticket can be issued without any police supervision.  I guess that is right and I think there should be police involvement in the process.  But as long as the cameras are calibrated and someone is overseeing the fairness of the system, I think that’s about all we can hope for.  No system is perfect.  Look at the O.J. trial