Monday Meanderings - 2.18.2019

Something new at our house!



Okay, the clock is not new. In fact the clock is older than I am. I posted about it before, and my efforts to get this family heirloom running reliably. After a lot of research, I took a chance on a clock repair service in Illinois that entailed removing the works from the clock proper, carefully packing it for shipping and sending it off to be rebuilt.

The repair took about twice as long as advertised, but this week the clock returned home, and I was able to re-install it in the case and once again our house is filled with the Westminster chimes every fifteen minutes.

It's a lot quieter than it was; before, the gears would grind and the mechanism would whir and the parts would click while pealing out the time. Now it just goes ding, dong, ding dong at the appointed intervals. You can't even hear the ticking of the clock - which I rather miss, actually.

Good news. The inter-neighbor war appears to have ended peacefully. The stakes in the ground that we mistook for a possible battlement (or at least a fence) is to mark the positioning of a hedge and a scattering of trees. Not ominous at all.

Saw an item in SXSW news about about some company introducing a mobile Alexis. This robot-like device is designed to follow you about and act as your personal AI assistant. I commented to Barb, "Why would anyone want Alexia following you around?" Her response was, "Well, maybe she could tell you what you went in there for."

And speaking of SXSW - that annual event that requires Austin residents to detour by way of Oklahoma City if our destination is south of downtown - what do you get when you combine thousands of electric scooters and thousands of event-goers who end up at the same event? A Bird nest.

And how do locals feel about the 100,000 visitors to SXSW?

Monday Meanderings - 3.11.2019

Tax Tales

For the first time since Barb and I married and began filing joint tax returns, it appears that the best deal for us will be to take the standard deduction. The itemized deductions, thanks to a delusional tax overhaul that began changing the landscape in 2018, just aren't what they used to be.

I prided myself in my diligence for scraping up every deduction that we were entitled to. We kept logs of charitable mileage; every trip to Learning Ally, every trip to teach an ESL class. We logged every item that went to Goodwill, church pantry and Coats for Kids, among others, along with the dollars contributed, of course.

We recorded all medical mileage. Every. Last. Trip. We even kept up with the parking garage charges. Who does that? I faithfully took the 15% depletion allowance for our oil bidness - along with the Stephens County tax assessment, of course. We were thorough. And it was for naught.

Oh, I know that the Individual Standard Deductions were raised substantially, off-setting the loss of other deductions. And keeping up with all those details was a pain. But it was a good pain, knowing that I was squeezing every penny I could from the IRS.

So can I stop recording all that detail? Will the tax reform be reformed and re-reformed? Probably. And it is a lot of trouble. But...

Figuring out this years taxes reminded me that I went through a lot of old, old tax returns a while back. Returns that we as far back as 1965, 3 years after we married.

We were living in the house we bought from the suddenly unemployed HSU football coach. I had been working for Fidelity, but in the summer went to work for a film company that split off (and quickly went broke). Barb worked for AISD, subbing and as a teacher. We made $9,713 between us. We paid Dr Steckler (in advance) $175 for "complete OB care." We borrowed the money.And, we got a much-needed $295 back from the IRS.

1966 - Back at Fidelity, I made $8,300 and listed Rob as a dependent for the first time. Big expense that year was Hendrick Hospital - $258.85!  Got a whopping $419 refund.

1967 - Barb is listed as a homemaker, but income is up to $9,846. Expenses included payments to Sears and to repay government loans. First Schedule C for a side-line tape duplicating business that grossed  $2,738; got $269 back from IRS.

1968 - Two dependents, $400 back. Schedule C showed $2,628 gross, $782 profit,

1969 - Fidelity has become Hallmark, salary up to $10,800. Profit from tape duplication up to $1,131. $286 refund

1970 - Big year. Address change to Kamar Lane in Austin. $794 profit on Schedule C. Still paying off government loans. $400 refund.

1971 - Living on Dryfield. Owed IRS $115 (only $175 duplicating business) but got a notice of an error in our favor and got back whopping $47. A note said there was a $50 Christmas bonus.

1972 - Barbara is teaching with Mrs. Streety at North West Child Development. Total income $12,900; got back 184.95 (and, after filing 1040X to account for a missed loan origination fee, another $51). Doctor bills indicate that this was the year of my appendectomy.

1973 - Living on August Dr; $15,365 income. $21 profit from tape duplicating. Why bother? Barb got a 1099 from Sweet Publishing for editing work. Expenses include Capitol Medical Clinic, which is still our primary physician's office. $237 return.

1974 - $16,528 wages include Brentwood Christian School, Sweet Co, and NW Child Development for Barb. Schedule C had a $112 loss.

1975 - $398 refund on income of 17,500. No schedule C. Got $150 for expenses representing Sweet Company at ACU Bible Teacher's Workshop (our vacation). Drove 262 miles delivering Meals on Wheels and 331 miles "driving volunteers to do yard work for sick church worker." Hmmm.

1976 - $286 refund on $18,000 income; includes Barb teaching at Brentwood and working at Sweet.

1977 - Owed $283 on $24,500 income. That's what happens when you make the big bucks.

1978 - $385 refund on $26,000 income. Phew! Barb had income both from Brentwood Christian School and from Sweet.

1979 - $833 refund on $25,800 income; expenses include allergy shots.

1980 - Big year - $865 return on $32,600 income. Deductions include UT classes and Austin Public Library card fee (we weren't in the city limits yet).

1981 - Owed $137 on $34,321; W2s from 1st Presbyterian Day School and NPC. Expenses include Spanish lessons and UT classes. New schedule C for "DP Consulting" grossing $1,944.

1982 - At bedtime on April 14, Barbara casually remarked, "Oh by the way. We owe the IRS $2,300," whereupon she turned off the light and promptly went to sleep. I, however, did not. Where, oh where was I going to come up with $2,300? In the morning!

It was a big year - $48,600 income, including $11,300 for my consulting and a W2 from UT for a class Barb taught. Expenses included mileage, etc. for soccer coaching.

And that's the 1040 story of the first 20 years of our filing jointly.

Monday Meanderings - 3.4.10`9

Random bits and pieces

The car wars - the neighbor parking his car in front of the other neighbor's house (and our driveway) seems to have taken a strange twist. The parked car has been absent for more than a week now, so I wondered if there had been a truce.

Then this weekend we saw a series of stakes and markers placed every few feet in a line between the two houses. A fence? But then we saw that the stakes were also placed in a row across the car-parker's front lawn, Fencing in the house from the street? Who does that? A barricade? A moat? Gun turrets? This is getting weird.

I'm not even going to talk about the weird weather. OK, I'll just say it's weird. They say the bluebonnets - which are showing up in abundance now will survive this freeze, but the Fredricksburg peaches may not. Bummer.

I was searching old blog posts foe a specific item yesterday, and after opening up a series of posts to see if I had found what I was looking for, I was struck by how many items I have written and completely forgotten about. Sort of like not having to buy new books because after a few months I can just reread the old books, having completely forgotten what happened. Makes me wonder if I need to continue writing new posts. I'll just start again from the beginning and hope that your memory is as bad as mine!

And I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did run across a YouTube video of Elvis, along with Scotty and Bill, performing in the high school auditorium on April 13, 1955. I was there - and backstage during the concert, so maybe you can pick me out of the folks that get shown for a fraction of a second. If you can, let me know which one I am.

 

Monday Meandering - 2;25.2019

May have to consider renaming this blog segment, in that I don't do much actual meandering as of late. Unless you count trips to the doctor, the dentist, and Central Market. Oh, and there's Chuy's, but that all has a certain sameness to it. No adventure.

Re-retiring from sound-desk activities has made a big difference; turns out that kept me a lot busier than I realized. So, I'm happy to stick around the house and record books and watch Longhorn sports, but it really lowers the Meandering quotient blog-wise.

That's not to say that people and critters have not meandered our way. Possums are regular visitors to our patio, as is the occasional raccoon. A couple of weeks ago 4 young  gray foxes made themselves quite at home on the patio and in the back yard. I got a bit of video of their visit and Rob's vet friend made a positive ID.

And then the cops come by fairly often.

Several days ago I saw that the Ring video doorbell had texted (in the middle of the night)  that "Someone is at your door." When I checked the video, it showed 3 police officers and a K9 dog walking through the front yard! Nothing seemed amiss when I checked the neighbor hood, and nothing ever showed up on the police report website.

Then Thursday night - no, make that 4am Friday morning - while up for other purposes, I noticed that there were a lot of blue and red lights flashing in front of the house. There were 3 patrol cats and a half-dozen cops in front of our house, and a big flat-bed towing rig in the middle of the street, loading an auto (that I did not recognize - not the one that the dude is parking across from our driveway, unfortunately).

Auto loaded, the tow truck drove off, as did the 3 patrol cars. A repo? With 3 patrol cars in attendance? Don't know. Didn't get any photos, but somebody will probably post about it on Nextdoor.  I'll let you know.

And then these guys dropped by Sunday morning.

Monday Meanderings - 2.18.2019

Did I ever tell you about my bear-skin rug?

Seriously. An honest-to-goodness, fresh-off-the-bear rug. You know, like the photo lay-outs of the rug in front of a fireplace with someone lounging on it? Well, maybe that's not the most appropriate way to describe it, since I didn't have a fireplace then, and certainly no one lounged on it.

Plus, it was rather small. At best 4 feet long. Perhaps better suited as a bathmat than a lounging rug.

I came to possess this rug as a gift from my Great-Uncle Jess - my Grandmother Anderson's brother. I have blogged about Uncle Jess before. He's the relative who went off to Canada with his daddy to seek fame and fortune in the gold fields of Canada. He found neither, but liked the place. married a nice Norwegian girl and settled down to live a back-country life in some of the more remote places of British Columbia, Canada.

The best story about Uncle Jess and his wife, Mariene concerns the killing of the moose. Here's a link to that story.

In Jess's later years, he and Mariene would venture down into the lower 48 during the winter months, avoiding BC's brutal cold. They always drove, visiting interesting places and people during their travels. After one trip south, they invited Grandmother Anderson to join them on the return trip and visit Washington state (her childhood home) and British Columbia.

When Grandmother returned, she brought me the bear skin as a gift from Uncle Jess. He  had shot the bear at some point, and tanned the skin, and it was an amazing link to an amazing relative. I proudly placed it beside my bed, so that on chilly mornings I could step out of bed onto my own, warm bear skin rug.

The was just one problem. It stank. It was odoriferous. Pungent. Malodorous. Rank. As a friend used to say, "It would gag a maggot."

I don't know if the odor was a result of a faulty or incomplete tanning process, or was unique to small black bears from British Columbia, or just what the deal was, but it certainly made me wonder about all the western novels and movies about the noble Indians clad in their bear skins and buffalo hides. I'm pretty sure there was no way a hide-wearing Indian could sneak up on an unsuspecting settler, so I'm not sure the history books are totally accurate.

As I recall, the bear-skin was quickly re-gifted to Grandmother Anderson. Where it went from there, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it did not end up in front of a fireplace. In a fireplace, more likely.