Financial Wheeling and Dealing, Tax Division

The deadline for renewing my car's registration is here . . . so I bought a couple bottles of wine.

It's not that the re-registration process is something that could drive someone to drink. I have mentioned before that it's actually very quick, simple and relatively painless. Bring the registration notice to the county building, pick up a number, stand in the shortest imaginable line (there was one couple ahead of me), hand the notice to the clerk, pay the fee, receive the sticker and off you go. Fifteen minutes, including travel time (we live pretty near the county building).

No, the wine, or at least some purchase (I also bought dates, figs, tomatoes, onions, a wedge of brie and a pomegranate), is necessary because the county insists on tacking on a surcharge to all payments made with debit/credit cards and, since I still use my bank back in Salt Lake City, meaning all ATMs out here are out-of-market and charge fees for extracting cash, therefor getting said money requires going to the grocery store and adding on the cash-back option to my purchase.

Theoretically, I could just buy a pack of gum and still get the $60 cash back but that seems lame and Thanksgiving is here so we're going to indulge anyway.

And the car's legal for another year.

Miscellanea, Garden Variety

My brother brought home a huge semi-ripe papaya yesterday. It was a gift. It's sitting on the kitchen counter on the theory and expectation that it, like mangoes, will continue to ripen on its own. When he deems it ready, he intends to plant the seeds. I have no idea what his criteria are, but if he manages it, we'll have fresh papaya.

Meanwhile, our inconsistent lawn mowing has paid off in the sprouting of three new mango trees. Unfortunately, they are either directly under the current mango or off in the property line and need to be transplanted. Neighbor Mike, who ran out and bought his own mango based on how good ours taste only to discover he had gotten a different, and not nearly as sweet, species, has already claimed one sapling. My brother intends to give one of the others away. The third will be transplanted to an appropriate spot.

Meanwhile, the coconut palm has had a good year. A full dozen and a half have dropped so far with at least that many more still tucked up under the fronds. Of those that have fallen maybe seven are basically dead. Most of the rest slosh when shaken, meaning they are full of milk, and will be harvested for both milk and meat as soon as I can find where my brother hid the machete. The remaining two have sprouted. One will be planted as soon as we can find an open space far enough away from power lines so the electric crews wont feel threatened and trim it to death. The other will be given away.

The orange tree has grown at least a foot since planting and its top has opened up. My brother continues to feed and water it.

The last of the cherry tomatoes and sweet peppers are long gone. The banana tree is still in its tub and needs to be planted.

If we ever decide to go full Fruitarian, we could be pretty well self-sufficient. (Ain't gonna happen. My brother's a full-bore carnivore and I'll never survive without bacon.)

Job Security

The town work crews have started putting in the sidewalks they warned us about months ago.

I could tell because the local police set up a two car speed trap right in front of our house, which is still a couple of miles from where the crews are working, to try and slow people approaching the construction zone from our direction. The police station itself is only about half a mile from the construction in the other direction and there's a controlled intersection right there so not many folks are up to speed yet when approaching that way.

The construction is only on the southbound side of the street, at least so far, and considering where they are, the size of the work crew I saw and the necessary surveying, staking, grading, cutting, clearing, digging, forming, pouring, curing and clean up involved, I don't expect to see them down our way until well after the first of the year. Of course, now that we're safely out of Rainy Season and almost out of Hurricane Season, they can only be slowed down by Holiday Season. That's Thanksgiving/Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year in the next six weeks, more than enough to grind any public project to a standstill.

At least the cops can make their quotas without having to drive all over town.

Call of Duty

So it seems, between voting and donating blood, two weeks ago was my voluntary good citizenship week. My involuntary good citizenship week is next month.

I received a summons for jury duty.

It came with my exclusive juror number, directions and a map to the courthouse including exclusive juror parking lot, notification of food and beverage availability, warnings about punctuality and attendance . . . and a warning to bring a jacket because the courthouse is apparently hyper-air-conditioned and nobody can do anything about it.

I was called to jury duty once in Utah and was fairly impressed by the efficiency of the system. The light rail Courthouse stop is one block from the actual courthouse so I didn't have to drive to downtown Salt Lake City. After registering with the clerk so they knew I existed and was available all I had to do each evening for a week was call the special juror phone number and see if my number was called for the next day. When the week was up, so was my exposure. Turns out I had a very high number (or it was a slow week jurisprudentially). I never was called.

This most recent notice doesn't say anything about a weeklong obligation, only my presence requested on December 10. I don't know if the system here lets you go after one day if you're not selected or if they keep you once they've got you.

Either way, I know I've got a jacket around here somewhere.

When the Air Went Out

I was driving home yesterday evening when my left front tire suddenly went flat. Fortunately, I was just starting up from a stop sign so my speed was negligible. I pulled over into the next side street and up onto the verge, although the left front of the car where I was going to have to work was still partially on the street. My "spare" was a donut and the jack that comes with the car is obnoxiously inefficient but I got down to the task.

This is one of the ways you can tell you're in the South:

In the fifteen minutes it took me to change the tire, four people (out of maybe eight passing vehicles) pulled over to ask if they could help. One actually passed me and backed up. One was a woman in an SUV who's idea of help, I suspect, would have been to call AAA or a towing company since she was not dressed to get on her knees in the street with me, but her heart was in the right place, bless her. The last one was the owner of the property in front of which I was parked who had just come home from work and, although I was nearly done, insisted on handing the nuts to me while I was screwing them back on and putting the hubcap back in the trunk with the flat for me.

Today I replaced both front tires. I'll probably have to do the rear ones after the first of the year. But, at least I know I won't be alone.

When Things Go Well

"Enjoyed" an exceptionally good platelet donation today.

I was in and out in an hour with hardly a protest from the machine except for a couple of minutes when the tubes connecting my vein to it suddenly started vibrating randomly, a sensation I could feel all the way into my arm. The phlebotomist (not my regular who runs the office but someone who has been there and worked on me before) assured me it was not me but the machine at fault and jiggled the plumbing around until it stopped which made me a little nervous seeing as one end of said plumbing was stuck in my vein but she was careful and everything worked out in the end.

At the start of each donation they run a test tube of whole blood down to the lab and in about ten minutes they're back with a detailed breakdown the one part with which they are concerned being, obviously, the quantity of platelets per given volume of blood. They let me see the test results, too. I was surprised to see two categories marked "high" and we spent a few minutes trying to figure out what they were and whether they were important.

It turns out the lab can measure not just the number of platelets and red and white blood cells but also the size (width) of the red cells and a slightly elevated number of mine were outside the standard deviation which is an indicator for anemia a problem which I do not, and have never, had. The other out-of-range reading was for monocytes as a percentage of total white cells, but nobody had any idea what that indicated.

I took a T-shirt, in addition to the usual cookies, as my reward mostly because it was humorously illustrated with a cowardly Thanksgiving turkey running away from donating. I stay away from the serious, especially the patriotic, shirts because they're not only preachy and propagandistic but tend to be maudlin and sappy. My favorite is still the giant mosquitoes chasing after the mobile donation bus. I have two of those.

For some reason, they wrapped the donation site with a leopard print bandage which is neither inconspicuous nor retro enough to be cool and can not be passed off as camo, either. That's definitely coming off ASAP.

We're Bombing in New Haven

In American theater, there are several degrees of importance. There is, of course, "Broadway." Major venues that are not literally on Broadway but still within the theater district are, logically enough, "Off Broadway." Those even further out but still in Manhattan (or at least New York City), and frequently experimental, are "Off Off-Broadway." And then there is "Off Off-Off-Broadway, sometimes also known as "New Haven."

We have the same thing with elections. We have elections around here every year for something or other. The big ones, of course, are the even-numbered year quadrennial presidential elections when we enjoy months of vicious mudslinging advertisements, day-long lines in the hot sun, eight-page ballots crammed with ridiculous proposed constitutional amendments the legislature was too craven to pass on their own, hanging chads, miscounts, recounts and court challenges. And the unrelenting attention of the national news media. This is our political "Broadway."

Two years later, in the intervening even years, we have our off-year elections when the federal House of Representatives, the state legislature, governor and the rest of the elected state officials, and the occasional U.S. Senator all stand for office. Fewer people show up for this one than the presidential elections but the governorship is important enough to attract a fairly decent turnout most years.

Then there are the off off-year elections. The odd-numbered year elections. The local races for mayor and city council and county commission and other even more obscure positions. The offices that generate the largest volume of most passionate, florid, ill-considered, barely literate and unintentionally hilarious letters to the editor of the local newspaper. This year.

Today.

And no one shows. I voted today. I went to my precinct just before noon. I thought I saw someone leaving as I entered but it could easily have been a poll worker taking some air. I was the only voter there during the time it took me to cast my ballot. There was a "guard" at the door, three people at the table where I showed my ID and received my number, another to trade me my number for a blank ballot, still one more to stand by and instruct me how to insert the completed ballot into the machine if I didn't know how or had forgotten since last time and two sitting attentively at another table watching the whole process. And that doesn't count the three people at the refreshment table on the way out offering to reward me with coffee and pastries.

I was outnumbered eleven-to-one.

People will bitch and moan about the president and blame him for things over which he has no control and are the Congress' responsibility. But they don't bother to vote for representative or senator. They complain about the governor but never vote against their state legislator. And for the politicians and offices that have the most effect on their taxes and day-to-day lives, the people who determine the property tax rates and manage the police and fire services, who run the sewer and water department and repair the roads? They don't even bother to vote.

But the letters will still be in the paper tomorrow.

The Night In Question

(The Wedding Party)

So, it turns out twenty (20!) bags of candy weren't enough, after all, and we needed to borrow one from Neighbor Dan who only bought 9 bags but his were three times the size of ours so it balanced out pretty evenly in the end.

Despite the last-minute nature of our decorating due to my brother's bout of the plague followed by his trip to the Bahamas and delayed return from spending an extra day with his girlfriend, we looked pretty good. A little sparse compared to previous years, but the trick-or-treaters didn't seem to notice.

(A Wedding Crasher)

The wedding party went over nicely. Several people even crashed it to have their pictures taken with the bride. Later in the evening, my brother joined them and sat very quietly until unsuspecting visitors came up close enough to collect their treats.

(Spot the Living Guest)

Reactions ranged from glorious screams to comments of, "Really?" (but only following a sideways jump of at least three feet), to one woman who got into a snit and just stomped off. Generally, though the responses were great, especially from the kids and foreigners. The kids, in particular, showed no fear. They posed with zombies and in front of the hearse and danced with the skeletons.

(Spiderman Does a Turn With the Singing Skeleton)

One German gentleman came up and, explaining that it was his first time here, asked me when the holiday normally occurred and how long it lasted. I told him it was always the evening before All Saints' Day and, although the decorations went up a few days earlier, the kids came by only on this one night. He seemed intrigued, yet bemused, by the whole concept. He especially didn't seem to understand the gorilla chasing the six-foot banana down the street.

Another German family came by later in the evening. They were relative veterans, it seems, as they were all dressed as pumpkins. I informed them they made a very sincere pumpkin patch but I don't think they got the reference. And the only beagle that showed up was dressed as a lobster. 

The giant banana came back later in the evening all out of breath. He took a couple of candy bars and said, "Thanks. That monkey's been after me all night long."

(Giant Lawn Cat Is Watching You Trick-or-Treat)

Final tally: 200+ kids of various ages and sizes plus almost as many parents/guardians (many themselves in costume), three dogs (one disguised as a crustacean) and the equivalent of 23 bags of candy. And lots of appreciative compliments. Guess we'll do it again.

(Y'all come Back Next Year, Y'hear?)