An Agent or No Agent

Squirrel left a question about people who try to sell their homes without a real estate agent. These are called "For Sale By Owner" (FSBO). It has been my experience that FSBO is usually not worth the trouble. Real Estate law varies from state to state, so some closing expenses cannot be cut through FSBO anyway. The chief thing that people are trying to accomplish through FSBO is a savings in the commission costs, by eliminating the agent. This is almost always penny-wise and pound foolish. The problem is that the sellers hope to save as much as seven or eight percent by eliminating the agents and the buyers are usually looking for a discount because they realize that the seller will have that savings in the deal. Buyers selling on their own and sellers looking to buy a FSBO, are both trying to save the same seven percent. In practical terms a $300,000 sale with a 7% commission will cost the seller $21,000 in commissions. They want that $21,000 for themselves, but the buyers look at the deal and think to themselves that they should only have to pay $279,000 since the buyer isn't paying the $21,000. Less obvious is that an agent is a professional at recognizing what makes a home attractive or unattractive. A good agent might sell a few dozen homes a year, FBSO sellers, sell one a decade. Sellers usually think that their home looks fine as is, but a motivated agent will point out the warts that need addressing in order to make the home sell quickly. FSBO sellers also tend to try to sell at the top of the market. A good agent will help you set a price that is realistic. It may be higher than you think, but could be lower. Having a home on the market for a year because a naive home seller is married to a hyped price is a hassle. Lastly, an agent acts as a sort of impartial intermediary and a reality checker. Often in home deals buyer and seller will have differences over relatively minor stuff. Since this is an emotionally charged transaction, having someone or two someones, to act as go betweens can really move things along. Lastly, lastly, real estate agents have access to ninety-nine percent of the buyers. It doesn't cost the buyer anything to hire an agent, so they almost always do. It is the rare buyer trying to buy on their own and when they do, they are almost always looking for the upper hand. So that's my opinion. P.s. Many times FSBO sellers are approached by people who have bought "get rich through real estate" type tapes on late-night cable television. They are usually bozos trying to make a quick buck and can get sellers into real messes. That is all, I think. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

I Hate The Government

Sneedlet One (the dark-haired one) is here for the weekend because his mother is in Yuma, AZ, visiting her soon-to-be-husband's parents. They will be back on Sunday evening. I took Sneedlet to have lunch with my friends, Lonnie and Chuck. It was like taking a baboon to lunch. Everyone thought he was cute at first, but then the cuteness wore off and the simian behavior set in. The problem is that he thinks that his misbehavior is funny and there is no way to get him to understand that it isn't. Short of smacking him, that is, which would get me in a heap of trouble. If he was at home I could put him in his room, but at a restaurant, that's not an option, so we left and went home. I hope that this is just four-year-old misbehavior and not pre-serial killer behavior. We had to take Son Sneed to a doctor's appointment today and it is raining heavily here, so traffic was bumper-to-bumper and moving at glacial speed. Evidently, we don't have any real traffic engineering here in our fair city. The traffic engineering department should be redesignated the Neighborhood Appeasement Department, because their engineering decisions have more to do with pleasing the neighborhood honchos than moving traffic smoothly. That and maximizing traffic fine revenue by setting unreasonably low speed limits. It is possible that we are the largest city in the United States without any local freeways. With the exception of Interstate 10 and 19, which pass through our city, we rely exclusively on surface street. This is because our local government is afraid of angering anyone by building an actual crosstown freeway. The State of Arizona built something called a limited-access roadway along the Union Pacific right-of-way, from midtown to downtown and the first thing that the idiots at city traffic engineering did was to set the speed limit at thirty-five mph. The second thing that happened was that the police started handing out speeding tickets by the bushel basket. It took a law student to discover that the city cannot set speed limits for a state roadway under Arizona law and get most of the tickets dismissed. The State has reset the speed limit to fifty-five. A six lane, divided, limited access roadway and the buffoons from the city try to set the limit at thirty-five. Apparently, reducing traffic to a crawl isn't enough for the brain trust at traffic engineering, so they are installing something called High Intensity Activated Signals to slow it down even more. They have given these signals the acronym HAWK. Someone should really explain to these bozos that the acronym for High Intensity Activated Crosswalk, is HIAc, not HAWK, but that is the least of the problems with these things. HAWK signals stop traffic to allow pedestrians to cross busy street. They are not replacements for stop lights at intersections, they are in addition to them. The problems with HAWKs include high cost, questionable pedestrian safety results and of course, the disruption of traffic flow. As you can see in the video I linked, all it takes is a single pedestrian to stop all traffic in both directions. Once the button is pushed, the signals stops traffic immediately. And it doesn't matter how often it is pushed, it stops traffic every time. Ten pedestrians can line up and each push the button as soon as the previous one has crossed and the signal will activate ten times. An interesting thing about the video is that a single pedestrian approaches the light, but in the middle there are two guys at the light and then when it activates, there is only one again. When the camera pulls back, two guys are crossing the street and finally it shows only the first guy again. The guy in the white shirt might be a ghost or something. So this afternoon, we headed to the doctor in the pouring rain, rush hour traffic was heavier than usual and we got stopped at every HAWK light we passed, we got stopped for a single pedestrian. In fact, there is one outside a Circle K convenience store that seems to exist entirely to keep the winos from being hit trying to stagger across the street. I can truthfully say that I cannot ever remember passing this light without being stopped. I think that I am turning into an anti-government crank. But they brought this on, not me. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Well, we are having winter weather today. Of course, our winter weather is often mistaken for early fall weather by people who don't live here. It is in the middle fifties and is raining. That is close enough for us. You might think that a guy suffering from the Hacking Bird Flu would have the good sense to stay in on a day like today. But when dealing with me, all the rules of normal behavior have to be loosened up or ignored altogether. I went out to play golf with the Seafood King, Seafood Jr. and Some Guy Named Bob today. Everyone but Bob has the same crud that has me down. What a sorry lot we were, hacking and complaining for eighteen holes. While I was at the golf course, I saw a guy that looked familiar to me and after a moment or two of thinking about it, I realized that he was a teacher at my high school in the 1960s. I stopped him and talked to him for a minute. He didn't have any idea who I was, but he seemed happy to be remembered. On the seventeenth hole, he and the other guys he was with, came over to talk to me. They all turned out to be on the old high school staff, although none recalled me. My graduating class was over a thousand and my high school had about five thousand students my senior year, so it would have been unexpected that I would be anything but a stranger to them. So long as former teachers are alive, I'm not too old. I seem to be the target of some sort of eBay scam. I bid on something yesterday and and even though I was the high bidder, I did not met the reserve price that the buyer had set. So, the item went unsold. The seller had a good eBay rating and was in Canada, which will be important in just a minute. Shortly after the end of the auction, I got an email from someone purporting to be the seller, asking how much I would be willing to pay? Assuming that it was a legitimate inquiry, I told him that my final bid was all I could pay for his item. Today I have received two emails, one purporting to be from eBay, asking me to send the amount of my last bid to the alleged seller and he would sell the item to me. The second email claimed to be from the seller and asked the same. Neither email appears to me to be from a native English speaker. You decide. Hello, Thank you for your e-mail. I must tell you that now I'm in Europe ( Romania) with UNICEF to help the people, but this is not a problem because you will receive the item in maximum 24 hours.I will pay for the shipping and insurance and I will provide you 10 days money back guarantee, no questions asked. That means within 10 working days you decide if you don't want to keep the item.The payment you will do via western union,because here the paypal is no't aviable!!! So, if you are really interested, now all you have to do is to send me exactly those info: First name: Last name: Address: City: Country: Zip: eBay ID : Item # Total Amount:75$ with shipping included! need the details exactly like i have requested , because i have to forward the email to eBay.In short time, they will send you the invoice with all the details you need to complete the deal safe and fast for both of us,under ebay protection!I am dealing only thru eBay. Thank you! I vote for a fake. The supposed communication directly from eBay was also filled with grammatical and spelling errors. Since it had a link in it, I deleted it before it could cause any real trouble. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

More About Home Foreclosures

We all have heard someone say that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. What makes me think about that is a post I wrote a few days ago about a couple of desperate homeowners here in our city, who are losing their homes. From Steve's and Ched's comments I must have come off sounding like I was blaming the homeowners entirely for their plight. I don't. Homeowners caught in the current mortgage crisis are there because something seemed too good to be true and they ignored the fact that it probably was. They are victims to the extent that no one protected them from themselves. The checks and balances that should have kept them from financial calamity were broken down by the greedy and the dishonest. Which brings me to: Sneed Financial Rule #2 - Just because you can borrow that much, doesn't mean it's a good idea. When it comes to personal finance, you will find very few people pulling for you to win. Credit cards, new cars, home loans, you name it. Everyone wants your money. I happen to think it isn't a good idea to help them get it away from you. Life deals us enough crap, why sign up for more? Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Hail, Hail to Old Ched U.

First of all, I may have the Hacking Bird Flu (HBF) or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), so I have missed the opening of Chedwick University. It seems I may have been appointed Dean of Student. I'm honored and astonished.

Ched U. is evidently located in Catskill, NY, which is south of Albany, along the Hudson River. Coincidently, this area is the ancestral home in America of the family Sneed. I think that I may have mentioned before that I am in the first generation of Sneeds not to call the Hudson Valley home. The Sneeds have lived along the Hudson since about 1700.




The man on the far left in this photo is my great-grandfather, who's name was Lawrence. He was born in Catskill in 1867 and died in Peeksill in 1947. His father was also born in Catskill in 1837. The woman on the far right is my great-grandmother Clara, who was his second wife. I'm not sure what Peeksill High was call in 1893, but my grandmother Clara was in that graduating class. The old woman to his right is my great-great grandmother, Lawrence's mother, Joanna.

My grandfather, Wallace Sr., was born in Peekskill in 1902 and married my grandmother Madeline, there in 1923. Because she was "with child" at the time of their marriage, they were sent to relatives in Holland, Michigan to hide the disgrace of my father's birth. They returned to Peeksill in the 1930's.

My dad, Wallace Jr. graduated from Peeksill High School, in the class of 1942 and his brother would have been in the class of 1943, but the family had to leave Peeksill suddenly for reasons that my grandfather would never divulge. My uncle said he came home from school and was told they were moving right now. My grandfather was a lot of trouble. Drama, thy name is Sneed.

My grandparents moved to and lived in Miami, Florida until their deaths.

My father joined the Navy December 15th, 1942 and served in the military until January 18, 1968. He was stationed in Tampa, Florida where he met and married my mother in February, 1949. My dad fell in love with Tucson, during his two tours of duty here and chose to make it his retirement home. My mother died in August 1988 and my dad in August, 2005.

My father never returned to Peekskill that I know of. After he left the military in 1968, he never again left Arizona, except to make two trips to Miami to attend to the funerals of his parents. In 1992 he received an invitation to the 50th reunion of his high school class, but declined to attend. The same for the 60th reunion.

I have never set foot in either Catskill or Peekskill, although I would like to. My brother, the family historian, made a pilgrimage a couple of years ago and I have to wait for the people he pissed off by barging up to their doors uninvited, to cool off, before I give it a go.

My brother wandered into a library in Peekskill (I think) and asked the librarian for some family history information. She told him to wait while she called a guy who had a lot of information. The guy turned out to be some distant relative, who looked eerily similar to my Dad. Must be those powerful Sneed genes.

Anyway, I proudly accept the appointment as Dean of Student (there's only one) at Ched U. and await the details of my duties.

















Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Cyber Monday

This is sort of a late post today. Son Sneed and I had to be at the hospital today at 6:15 am, so it has been a long day. I had to leave Son Sneed at the hospital long enough for me to go to the dermatologist. According to the doctor, my leprosy is nearly cleared up. It has been a long year and a half of cortisone injections. Apparently, Sneedlet Two is worried about my skin condition. He asked his dad if I died a little bit? His dad told him that I wasn't going to die until I'm old. Sneedlet said that I am already old. I guess when you are four, everyone is old. To make matters worse for me today, I had insomnia last night. I hate it when I can't fall asleep. When I worked for Tedious Systems I frequently wasn't able to sleep well, especially on Sunday nights. Sometimes I would stay awake for two or three days. I dreaded going to work that much. During my second stint working for them, it was a little easier for me not to let the pressures get to me. I think my nap yesterday afternoon messed up my sleep pattern. Usually, naps don't keep me awake at night. The Lovely Mrs. Sneed put me in charge of finding something online today for her. The retailers have started this Cyber Monday nonsense and hold out the promise of good deals. I didn't see much in the way of deals, but I did find what she needed on the Circuit City website. I ordered it for pickup at their store a mile or so from here. When I went to pick the item up, it was absolute mayhem at the store. It was staffed like a Saturday night in July and customers were backed up everywhere. Circuit City has a policy that if your order isn't ready for pick up in twenty-four minutes, you get twenty-four bucks. I was able to score a Circuit City gift card, which is always nice. The best part is that Mrs. Sneed pronounced the item to be perfect. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Sunday

Today was a birthday celebration for Son Sneed. His actual birthday isn't until next Saturday, but his sister and her significant other, Mr. Peterson, will be visiting his folks next weekend, so today was the day. All the Sneeds, even Cletus Sneed, were here for the festivities. The morning was not without the usual drama. Mr. Peterson received a call from one of his daughters reporting that when she went to get in her car this morning, there was an empty spot where the car should have been. Car theft is a big deal here. Our proximity to the border makes car theft a lucrative business. The government can't keep illegals out, or stolen cars in, it would seem. The headline on the front page of our local paper this morning was, Foreclosure surge hits every corner of Tucson. I guess this is supposed to remind us that there are financially ignorant people in all income categories or something. I was pretty sure about that already. Actually, our paper did a pretty good job of not portraying these folks as victims of anything but their own enthusiastic idiocy. One poor fellow bought a house with a $3000 monthly payment and freely admits that he had no plan to deal with financial setbacks like, I don't know, losing his job. Here's a clue, if every dollar that comes in, goes out, you're are a disaster waiting to happen. The second hapless soul bought her house with an adjustable mortgage and was taken by surprise when it adjusted upward. Who saw that coming? Apparently not her. In an effort to compound her misery, she filed for bankruptcy. Now she says she is looking for a rent-to-own scheme to keep her house. Apparently foreclosure and bankruptcy weren't enough financial calamity to teach her a lesson. Rich people, regular people and poor people all get into financial trouble for the more or less the same reasons. They buy crap they can't afford, with money they don't have. Simple. Rich people have the capacity to create bigger messes, but beyond that it the principle is the same. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Spend Damn You, Spend!

Apparently I am not in anyone's target demographic. I get phone calls from time to time from companies conducting surveys and after a few, often just one question, they tell me that I'm not in their demographic and hang up. This is really too bad for them, because I have some very fine opinions just looking for a place to land. The A.C. Neilson Company called this evening wanting to survey me about movies in current release. The interviewer asked my age and ethnicity, how often I go to the movies and then asked if I had children four to seven years of age. When I said no to the children question, the interviewer thanked me and said that they we only interviewing parents of four to seven year-olds. Shouldn't that have been the first question? Weird. The Lovely Mrs. Sneed and I ventured out for some shopping today. Things seem to be humming along for the Christmas shopping season, based upon the number of cars on the road anyway. Our shopping was at the Costco and the grocery store, not the mall. Don't ask me how I know this, but at one o'clock in the morning Friday, there were imbeciles lined up at the Circuit City and Toys-R-Us stores near our home. I can't think of anything I would wait in line overnight to get. This may be why no one wants my opinion. Associated Press ran a story today with this paragraph in it. According to ShopperTrak RCT Corp., which tracks sales at more than 50,000 retail outlets, total sales rose 8.3 percent to about $10.3 billion on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, compared with $9.5 billion on the same day a year ago. ShopperTrak had expected an increase of no more than 4 percent to 5 percent. I'm as pleased as punch that people are out spending their money, but I will guarantee you that within a week or so we will begin to read stories about how disappointing Christmas sales are after all, because there is no satisfying these people. It's the same every year. A friend told me recently that he spends five thousand bucks on Christmas gifts and the rest of the year paying it off. That's a sad commentary on something. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was pretty darned swell for the Lovely Mrs. Sneed and me. Even winding up bruised and bleeding in my neighbor's yard couldn't put a total damper on the day.

(He waits an appropriate period to explain...anticipation builds)

Okay, I'll tell you, but those who think that I mouthed off one time too many and finally got the beating I deserved, will be disappointed.

Older Son Sneed and family, came over yesterday afternoon to visit a bit, on their way to Daughter-in-Law Sneed's parents for dinner. Unfortunately for me, they brought along a Nerf football and who can resist a Nerf football? Certainly not me.

We were out throwing the ball around in the street. As it will happen, we started trying to throw the ball farther and farther to one another, by backing up in opposite directions. Two guys cannot play catch without seeing who can throw farther and harder. Even when one guy is twenty-two years older than the other guy. You think a younger guy would try to protect his father from getting hurt by not...well, you know the rest.

In fairness to me, I had just been watching Brett Favre of the Green Bay Packers on television. Brett is old, at least by football standards. I may have overestimated the effect the ravages of time have had on me. They need to put a warning sign crawling across the bottom of the television screen during games involving Brett Favre.

Warning! Brett Favre is a professional. Old jackasses at home should not assume that they can still play football safely, just because Brett does.

Or something to that effect.

My neighbor Tim and his wife, who were just leaving for their Thanksgiving celebration, stopped their car near me to warn me not to hurt myself.

Tim - "Don't get hurt."

Me - "Ha! I'm still a young and strapping fellow."

Tim - "Except for the young part."

Tim's wife - "And the strapping."

Such kidders. Why can't I remember Tim's wife's name?

On the very next throw from Son Sneed, who was standing far down the cul-de-sac, I tripped over the curb and wound up sprawled in my neighbor Joyce's front yard, stunned and bleeding from the arm and leg. I also hurt my foot and ribs. I'm not blaming it on the throw, but it was way off the mark.

I was spared the indignity of having to be helped up like some guy who's walker collapsed, since no one actually came to my aid. Son Sneed did administer "guy first aid", which involves shouting, "Hey are you okay?" from down the street.

I layed there for a moment, taking stock of my various parts and then struggled to my feet Game over.

Luckily, I was able to pull myself together in time to make it to Daughter Sneed's big Thanksgiving bash. Everyone who was anyone, was there.


Sneedlet One thought plastic fish would add some spice to the Thanksgiving dinner and did his best to provide them. No one knew how to prepare his catch, so we didn't get a taste, but I'll bet they would have been great.


Poor little Koryn confused smile at the camera with stare at the flowers. She's only two so these misunderstandings will happen.


As I mentioned the other day, we release balloons to remember our Christian's birthday. Sneedlet is letting this one go in honor of his brother's twelfth birthday, which would have been today.


You can glimpse just the top of Mrs. Sneed's lovely hair in the bottom right-hand corner as she lets her balloon go.

In all, our thanksgiving dinner was wonderful and I hope yours was too.







Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

I Need Pie!

Pumpkin pie is the pie of choice among those who know anything about pies. Even though pumpkin pie filling is usually made with seasoned butternut squash, it is still wonderfully delicious.


Well the holiday season is off to a great start. I declared the holiday season open, because today was the first day that I have been pissed off about a holiday-related matter. Between now and the first of the year, people will conspire to mess with me.

We will be going to Daughter Sneed's home tomorrow for dinner, so our Thanksgiving preparations are minimal. There are a few things that needed to be done in preparation, though.

Son Sneed and I had to be at his treatment this morning at the crack o'dawn, so by the time I got home this morning I was tired and grumpy. I was operating on less than five hours sleep.

Mrs. Sneed left me list of things that she needed me to pick up at Costco, chiefly pies for the dinner tomorrow, and some other things for Son Sneed's birthday bash which will be at our home on Sunday. After all, you can't have too many reasons to eat yourself sick, can you?

I found myself faced with a dilemma. Do I go to Costco at ten when they open, or do I wait until this afternoon? Go early and I assure myself that they will still have pies, but if I go later, the crowd might have diminished some. the issue was also do I nap now or later? What to do?

I decided to go at ten and get it over with, which worked out okay except for the million other people with the same idea. The joint was so packed that I had to park in the gravel auxiliary parking lot. In a city of about a million people, we only have two Costco stores. This is clearly not enough, especially when we have the entire state of Sonora, Mexico crammed into Chevy Surburbans and headed this way. No one told them that Thanksgiving is an American holiday.

Normally, I am a pretty nice guy and I don't go out of my way to make trouble, but idiots really push my buttons, and this was an idiot-rich environment. Way too often, trouble finds me and I am powerless to stop it.

After I got into the store, I went to the area where they had stacked the pies. I found a crush of people also trying to get to the pies. It was cart gridlock. I merged into the flow to Pieland and it just stopped. I couldn't go forward or backward. Me and my dreams of pumpkin pie were stuck, blocked by two women, carts side by side, who were not moving because they were trying to talk on their cell phones. Talking and trying to steer their cart with one hand. Can you imagine how mad that made me? Mad enough to say in my loudest voice, "Stop talking on your phone and move your damn cart." They were unmoved.

Call me a sexist if you wish, but it has been my observation that a large segment of the female population believes that if you own a cell phone, you have to talk on it. Driving, standing in line, shopping and doing God knows what else, they are on the phone.

Then, as if I wasn't ticked off enough, some guy decided that his two-foot-wide cart could fit in a one-foot space between me and someone coming the other way. This guy just came around me and crashed into the side of my cart. And I mean he crashed hard into me. I looked right at him and asked him if I had become invisible again? He just kept pushing until he got past.

My second chore was to go to the balloon store. Thanksgiving is a bittersweet holiday for us because our grandson Christian was born on November 23rd. Christian died five years ago. We remember his birthday each year at Thanksgiving by releasing one green balloon, his favorite color, for each year since his birth. This year it will be twelve.

I had to pick up the balloons and a helium tank today. We tried getting inflated balloons one year, but they are hard to transport. We also get a mylar character balloon, I got Buzz Lightyear. I had to get two extra mylars for the Sneedlet and Corrine, the granddaughter of Mr. Peterson, Daughter Sneed's significant other, who will be here tomorrow.

Me, the groceries, the balloons and helium made it home safe and sound, only to discover that one of the mylar balloons had a hole in it and was deflating fast. I broke open the helium tank and refilled it hoping that it hadn't closed properly at the store, but a half hour later it was deflated again.

I had to go back to the store, in the midst of the last-minute shoppers, to get another balloon. There was so much bumper-to-bumper traffic, that I had to keep cutting through neighborhoods in hopes of avoiding the traffic jams. I think I drove about fifteen miles out of my way and made at least two u-turns getting home.

Mission accomplished, as a guy once said. I hope I'm more right than he.

Happy Thanksgiving! (I really mean it).













Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

The Job Of The Future

Tom Brokaw said something yesterday that made it into the papers today. Brokaw predicts that in ten years, printed newspapers will have vanished and will have been replaced by online editions. I'm guessing that this is bad news for a lot of people in the hard copy production of newspapers. This got me to thinking about jobs that are destined to vanish, the victims of technology. Take cashiers for instance. Right now they are under assault from these self-service scanners and people who skip them altogether by shopping online. The next thing will be radio frequency id chips that will allow you to simply pick up an item and a computer will know you have it. Add to it the chips that are creeping into bank card and before long all that will be left to do is to bag your stuff. The growth in retail cashiers is not promising. I think anyone who has a job selling to the public in a way that requires face-to-face sales is doomed, unless they have some added value or knowledge. Daughter Sneed, one of the foremost online shoppers in the country, almost never leaves her house to shop. Sneedlet One doesn't know that not every kid gets his underwear from the USP guy, or as he calls him, The King of Queens man. It seems to me that one of the great things the internet does is to provide information that we previously had to rely on sales people to give us. Using the internet, we can instantly make price comparisons and get consumer information. In the past we had to rely on sales people to provide this information. This makes insurance sales people, travel agents, car salesman and a host of others largely irrelevant. I haven't had an actual insurance agent in years and years and I'm no worse for the experience. In fact, I am better off because my premiums are lower by eliminating the middleman. Same with travel agents, they used to be vital, now they are mostly unnecessary. Of course, there are jobs that will thrive in the future. Healthcare workers, package delivery folks, skilled computer workers, content developers and creative folks, engineers, scientists, teachers, restaurant workers and lawyers just to name a few. There is one job that seems to have particularly strong job growth. I didn't really know much about it until I started looking at my spam folder in my Google Mail. A lot of people are involved in the business of penis enlargement. Judging by the twenty or so emails it get each day offering these fine products, I have to conclude that it is a growing field. Pun intended. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

There is a debate raging in the population about issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Most people are opposed to the idea, at least according to the polls. Among our elected officials the matter is mostly split along party lines. Me, I don't care one way or the other. I was struck about something that I read in the Washington Post yesterday on the subject of licenses for illegals. The Post says in an editorial in their November 18, 2007 edition, that giving licenses to illegals is good public policy, which the Post defines as fewer uninsured drivers, fewer fatal accidents and fewer drunken drivers on the road. The Post cites Gov. Bill Richardson's observation that in his home state of New Mexico, the number of uninsured drivers on the road has declined from 31% to 11% since they began to license illegals. That seems compelling to me and good public policy. However the Post seems to confuse correlation with causation in this paragraph; A report prepared for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety gives a sobering assessment of those consequences. The report, based on data collected in the 1990s, says that unlicensed drivers are almost five times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than drivers with valid licenses and that 20 percent of all fatal accidents involve at least one driver without a valid license. Such drivers are also more likely to operate vehicles under the influence of alcohol. Licensing drivers does not in and of itself make them safer or more likely to obey the traffic laws. In fact, an alternative explanation for the high number of unlicensed drivers involved in fatal motor vehicle accidents is that they have no license because of a history of driving unsafely. The same is far more likely for drunken drivers. The only safety statistics that seem relevant when talking about licensing illegals, is the safety record of unlicensed illegals. Anyway, as I said, I don't really care too much one way or the other. Generally, I am on the side of people trying to earn a decent living and to better themselves. In other news, Son Sneed and I went to his ECT procedure this morning at the crack of dawn. The poor guy is having to have a series of six procedures, three this week and three the next, because his depression has returned. Hopefully, he will feel better as a result of this series of treatments. There was an article in the paper here yesterday morning about the State of Arizona paying people to care for their disabled spouses at home. At first blush, it seems like a ridiculous idea. Daughter Sneed was astonished that the state was doing it. Her thinking is that people should take care of their own. My first take was similar, but the State is going to pay someone in most of these cases anyway and probably far more to boot. so, I guess from a strictly pragmatic point of view, it makes sense. But it does leave an uneasy feeling. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Have It Your Way---If the Manager Says Okay

I've been contemplating getting a part time job. I applied at Ace Hardware, but they haven't contacted me yet. this is another happy-happy situation for me. If the call me, I'm happy and if they don't I'm equally happy. When I was threatening, but had not yet quit Tedious Systems, I longed for a part time job where I had no responsibility, like Ace Hardware. The lovely Mrs. Sneed pointed out to me that I was unlikely to be happy in a menial job, because I don't like being told what to do, especially by a moron who thinks he's smarter than me. She is, of course correct, I hate being told what to do. One of my all time favorite movies is, Lost In America, the Albert Brooks film about two hard-charging yuppies that chuck their corporate jobs and hit the road in a Winnebago, to find inner peace. It turns out to be a disaster, as you might expect in an Albert Brooks movie. There is a great scene in the movie where Julie Hagerity brings her "boss" home from the Der Weinerschnitzel, where she is working. He is an 18-year-old guy named Skippy who confuses being manager at Der Weinerschnitzel with an actual accomplishment. It is at this moment that it finally sinks in on Brooks that he has screwed up big-time. It has been my experience that managers in general and managers in retail in particular, are often insecure thugs. That's why Ace Hardware, at least the location near me, appeals to me. The place is full of old people like me. When someone is managing an Ace Hardware at sixty, he or she has no aspirations to move up the corporate ladder. When you think of the people you supervise as humans rather than stepping stones, you treat them a lot better. I asked around at the store over the past few months and the people working there have had nothing but good things to say about their jobs. Of course, when I contemplate a part time job, I think of a dozen things that conflict with working, so I may never actually do it. In the same vein, I took Mr. Sneedlet One to the McDonald's around the corner from the house for lunch today. As I posted once before, I can't buy him a Happy Meal unless he is the only one eating. If I eat, I have to get him the same as me or he demands mine. Sneedlet has either gone nuts or is in a hideous behavioral phase, because he is a monster a lot of the time. Today I ordered us both the chicken strip combo meal and after we found a seat and got settled, he discovered to his dismay, that the adult meals don't come with a toy. This is a crisis in the life of a four-year-old, especially this four-year-old. Being the resourceful guy that I am, I figured that I would just go to the counter and explain the situation and ask for a toy. After all I reasoned, I spent more than the cost of a Happy Meal on the kid anyway. At the counter, I was waited on by a nice young woman named Paloma, Shift Manager, according to her badge. I was thinking that this was good because she was the manager and wouldn't feel constrained by some McDonald's Happy Meal-only toy rule. I presebted my case to her and after a minute of thinking about it, she went to where they had a giant box of Happy Meal toys, plucked one out and dropped it into a Happy Meal box. Trying to be helpful, I told her I didn't need the box. I swear that a look of panic crossed her face and she motioned with her head at another woman standing nearby. In an instant I realized that the shift manager at McDonald's doesn't have the power to hand out a Happy Meal toy, so she has to disguise it as an actual Happy Meal. Unbelievable. Poor Paloma brought the box to me and whispered conspiratorially that the "manager" would bust her if she found out. I gotta wonder what the shift manager is empowered to do? I'm of the school that thinks that if you intend to call someone a manager, you should let them manage. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Friday

Well, I was just so busy yesterday that I didn't get around to posting anything. Being retired is a full-time job. The big news in my life is that I have been notified that I passed my gardening final test and am now an official Master Gardener trainee. This means that I am fit to work with the community through the garden center. The Seafood King, Seafood Jr. and I played golf yesterday. Some Guy Named Bob was away in a famous American city, where he was annoying his relatives. He will be back soon. Two things worth noting happened yesterday at the golf course. More correctly, didn't happen. I didn't start any trouble and I didn't suck. Our weather has turned cool, so we had a fabulous time. Of course, by cool I mean the high temperature was in the seventies, which most wouldn't think of as cool by November standards. Our coldest month is January, when the daytime high averages sixty-three degrees and the highest is June, when the average daytime high is ninety-nine. You have to take the good with the bad. My friend Greg and I went to the University of Arizona football game last night. It was played on a Thursday to accommodate ESPN, which really means to make a boatload of extra cash. The game time weather was cool and breezy and our team beat one of our arch-rivals, the University of Oregon, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Nike Corporation. Former University of Oregon athlete and Nike founder, Phil Knight pours millions into Oregon's athletic programs. In the end it was a joyous victory for our team, but a mini-tragedy for the quarterback for the Oregon team. The kid suffered a serious knee injury early in the game and may be out for the balance of the year. This development casts doubts on his future in the pros, as well as winning college footballs' highest award, the Heisman Trophy. This player, Dennis Dixon, is so good that after he went out the Oregon team never had a chance to win the game. It is rare to see one player affect his team's play so much. It takes away a bit from our hometown team's effort, to know that without this injury, the outcome probably would have been different. But, if one team had to get a horrible break, better Oregon than Arizona. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Pantless

I'm betting that most of the country isn't getting flowers this time of the year. This is a Hibiscus flower on one of my plants. Hibiscus does very well here so long as it gets a little respite from the full sun and is watered appropriately in summer. It also needs some protection against our occasionally freeze in winter.

Our high today was eighty-seven, I'm fairly sure that is about ten degrees above normal. The weather geeks continue to predict a cooling trend, also know as winter in most places, but they keep getting it wrong. No wonder my Hibiscus continues to flower.

Man, today was a near total bust. I decided to go to the store this morning to buy some long pants. I own long pants but I have blazed a new trail fashion-wise. I call it vagrant chic, and I needed something in keeping with that look. Who knows, any month now it may get too cold for shorts and I need to be ready.

I have a problem buying pants. I am too tall and kind of chunky around the middle. Evidently, in the land where buyers live, all the chunky guys are short. My choice are limited to too short or too tight.

I went to Kohl's first. Maybe you have Kohl's where you live. They are a mid-range department store. I think that they must be having a big sale because the joint was crawling with harried women, carrying loads of clothes. There were also a respectable collection of old guys milling around while their wives shopped. That was a total bust.

I went and met my friend Greg for some tea and we sat around and shot the breeze for a bit. Then I was off to the mall.

We have an upscale store called Dillards in the mall by our house, so I checked their men's department. That was no go. Who spends fifty bucks on pants? Okay, so most men spend way more, but Merle Sneed is not most men.

Macy's had three types of pants in the men's department, gangsta, executive or executive on the weekend. Okay that is a bit of a stretch, but their choices seem to be for guys who are climbing the corporate ladder or young men with very slim waists. I am neither, in case you missed it. In the end I came home empty-handed.

I also went to the barbershop. I have written about the shop I go to, an odd place with a ever-changing cast of characters. There was no one there and the sign taped to the door said, "back at two." It was four-fifteen. Total bust again.

On the way home a guy on the corner had cut down some buffelgrass and piled it at the curb. I stopped and filled a trash bag with the clippings and put it in the compost heap. I envisioned someone looking out the window and saying, "Bufford, some guy is stealing the grass".

Buffelgrass is an invasive plant that some jackass planted here decades ago and it has become a big problem. An African native, it crowds out native plants and is a real range fire threat.








Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Today was the big test day for the gardening program. I tried my best to get up the energy to study for it, but I just couldn't do it. As I suspected, the World's Foremost Expert and her apprentice, spent considerable time over the weekend preparing. They had a study group. I just can't get that excited about the whole business anyway. If you pass the test, you get to be a community gardening volunteer. If you fail the test, you don't have to be a community volunteer. What can possibly go wrong? I'm pretty sure I passed okay, which may or may not be a good thing. My boy Cletus is at it again. I know you get tired of me bitching about the bonehead, but it's cheap therapy, so cut me some slack. He came pounding on the door last night at about ten last night. He seems to be both homeless, jobless and definitely clueless. He must be doing drugs becausse he speaks but it doesn't make sense. I gave him a ride to where he was staying last night, a small church a few miles away, to reinforce the point that mi casa no es su casa. At seven this morning he was back. He just wanted to hang around and use the phone to bother everyone he knows. I had to leave and Son Sneed took up the challenge of trying to get him out of the house. By the time I got back from taking my test, he was gone, but he called this afternoon wanting to drop by. I told him no. I'm pretty sure he will show up this evening. No amount of telling him no seems to work. To make matters worse, he ate all of my Pop Tarts. Bastard. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Compost

You may be thinking, "Why does he have pictures of dirt on his blog?"




The top picture is of a handful of the compost from my compost heap and the bottom picture is looking down into the compost container.

Son Sneed and I have recently started composting in earnest and our compost pile is really taking off. In the spring this will be an excellent source of soil amendment for flowers and vegetables.

I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I opened the lid on the compost container and steam rose out of it. That is exactly what you want the pile to do. It confirms that the microorganisms are hard at work breaking the organic matter down.

I have found that composting is an art as much as a science. If you want compost in a reasonable time frame, it takes a bit of care. Nature can take her sweet time in composting, but I don't have years to wait for the results.

We compost leaves, fruits and vegetables and coffee grounds that I get from Starbucks. It is important to have a mix of brown (carbon) and green materials (nitrogen) in the pile in order for the composting process to work correctly. It has to be kept moist and turned periodically. A well-maintained compost heap should smell a lot like soil.

In other news, I saw in the paper that Greyhound has spent millions to spruce up their bus operation. I'm reminded of the times that I took long-distance bus trips. They were uniformly unpleasant.

My old man was a career Air Force man, so we moved around. In addition, he drank a lot. Since cars cost money and anything costing money cuts in to the drinking funds, he always bought the cheapest, oldest car he could get.

This meant that when we moved from one duty station to the next, it was done by public transport, not private car. And by public transport, I mean the cheapest he could arrange, usually the bus.

In 1963 we moved from Omaha, Nebraska to Tucson, AZ via the Greyhound. According to Yahoo Maps it is a distance of 1271 miles and the driving time is about nineteen hours. Of course, on the bus, it takes twice that long.

We left Omaha on a Saturday afternoon around three o'clock. The bus broke down near Lincoln, NE, about sixty miles into the trip. We sat on the bus for hours in the middle of nowhere waiting for someone to come and fix it.

Once we were on the road again, the driver told us that he would have to skip the dinner stop in order to make up for lost time. We finally stopped at Pratt, Kansas at sometime after midnight, where we changed drivers. The diner was closed, but the owner was there and gave us some apples. Then it was back on the road.

We stopped for breakfast at a place called Texoma, Oklahoma, which like the name implies, is on the Texas and Oklahoma border in the panhandle of Oklahoma. By then we were about seventeen hours into the trip and had gone less that six hundred miles.

After Texoma, the day was a series of stops in tiny, tiny in the middle of nowhere, where the driver would tell us that we could not get off the bus or if we were allowed off, it was for five minutes. By the time we got to Albuquerque in the late afternoon, all four of us kids were tired, hungry and cranky and my old man was on the verge of a major explosion. The fact that he hadn't had a drink in twenty-four hours didn't help his demeanor.

At the Albuquerque terminal, he blew. The driver told us that rather than having a dinner stop, we had to board another bus and head out for Tucson right away because we were hopelessly behind schedule. My father began to scream at the driver and was quickly joined by other pissed off passengers.

We all got tossed off the bus in Albuquerque, but we enjoyed a a hot meal and old Dad had a few beers to calm him down. We also got to enjoy the Albuquerque bus terminal until the next bus to Tucson left the next morning.

The trip from Albuquerque to Tucson is about eight hours by car and should have been about twelve hours by bus. That is unless the bus breaks down and you have to wait for repairs in the middle of New Mexico, which we did. Then later after the sun went down, a dust storm flared up and our driver made a scheduled stop in a small town in New Mexico. He stood up in the aisle of the bus and gave us a speech about how lousy the bus company was and how his bus didn't even have power steering. He urged all the passengers to write nasty letters and then he quit leaving us high and dry.

By the time a new driver arrived from God-know-where and we reached beautiful Tucson, we had been on the bus for about thirty-eight hours and it was five in the morning. We sat in the bus terminal for two hours until we could get a ride to the base and check in to our temporary housing.

The sad part is that this didn't even cure us of riding the bus.















Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Saturday

Here's a sure sign that you are old. I just saw a commercial for The American Music Awards and of the ten performers and groups that they featured in the commercial, I have only heard of three. I couldn't name a single song by any of the three. Speaking of music, the lovely Mrs. Sneed and I go to a local Mexican restaurant in our neighborhood many Saturday evenings. It is called El Charro Cafe. The Cafe is an offspring of the most famous of Tucson Mexican Restaurants, El Charro, which has operated downtown since 1922. Purists turn their noses up at the El Charro Cafe, insisting upon the original restaurant or nothing. We like either one, but the El Charro Cafe is more convenient. Charro is the traditional cowboy of Mexico. They are noted horseman and wear ornate clothing. Think Duncan Renaldo, in the Cisco Kid, if you happen to be a million years old, like me. Mexican cowboys are also sometimes called caballeros or vaqueros. An interesting fact about Duncan Renaldo is that he live in the country illegally and was actually convicted of illegal immigration. FDR pardoned him. The El Charro Cafe has a strolling musician, who plays acoustic guitar and sings Mexican songs. He always comes up to our table and asks what we want to hear. Since I don't know the name of a single Mexican song, I always tell him to play anything. Having him stand at our table and sing to us kind of makes Mrs. Sneed uncomfortable, because she doesn't like to be the object of attention. It used to make me uneasy, but I've gotten accustomed to it since he has kind of adopted us. I am amazed that so many people don't have the grace to tip the guy though. I can't help but notice that people mostly pretend that he isn't standing there singing or seem to have the attitude that they didn't ask him to sing. Seems very tacky to me. The few dollars that I spend tipping mean a lot to people making their living through service. In fact, the down payment for our first home was from change that Mrs. Sneed saved from her waitressing job, as I recall. And speaking of tacky, the lovely Mrs. Sneed had to run into a store this evening and I decided to wait in the car with Sneedlet, rather than taking him out of his car seat and then having to buckle him back in. While we were waiting, some people came out of the store and got into a truck parked close to us. Apparently, the wife had lost an important receipt and the man was going ape-sh*t about it. They sat in the truck while she looked everywhere for the receipt and he shouted at her at the top of his lungs. They had their windows down and so I put mine down to get a good listen. After awhile the angry guy ran out of steam and Mrs. Angry Guy gave up looking. I heard him say that he would "just go over there and if they gave him a hard time, he would kick the door down". I'm glad I wouldn't be there to see that. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

I May Be Nuts

If you click on the picture, you may recognize that it is a Ficus Benjamina or Weeping Fig, a common houseplant. This particular specimen graced my super-deluxe cubicle when I was employed at Tedious Systems. This little guy was my faithful companion for several years and when I left Tedious, so did the plant.

Ficus can be a tough plant to grow. It loses leaves easily, leaving the branches bare. This is usually a result of over-watering, I think. It should be watered when it is moderately dry and fed regularly during the growing season. It likes light. My plant has been in low light since I brought it home and seems a bit leggy.

Ficus Benjamina is actually a tree in tropical climates, but it is too big for use in the typical home landscape. It has invasive roots which can be damaging to walls and walks. It is also the national tree of Thailand, where it is sometimes called the Yul Brenner tree. Okay, so I made up that last part, but if you're old you will figure out the connection.

This morning, out of the blue, the lovely Mrs. Sneed kicked my Ficus out of the house. I have had it on a side table in the dining room, but now it is out scout because, and I'm quoting her here, "it's hideous". I was stunned, such venom towards a poor little plant.

Here's something else. At the risk of having you discover that I am even nuttier than you think, I will tell you about something that I do habitually. I add up sequences of numbers that I see around me.

For instance, if I am behind a car with the license plate number 989-CDW, I automatically think of the number eight. 9 + 8 + 9 = 26 and 2 + 6 = 8. See? I don't know when or why I started doing this, but it might have something to do with having kept baseball statistics in the days before the calculator. I have discovered that most numbering schemes have a pattern to them.

For instance, I was sitting out front of the house this evening and I noticed my neighbor's house number, which 1004. I reduced to 5. Then I glanced at the house next to that one, 1012 (our house numbers are incremented in intervals of eight) and reduced it to 4. I thought to myself, 5 and 4, is that a coincidence?

The next house down the block is 1020 or 3, followed by 1028, which is 1 + 0 + 2 + 8 or 11, which can be further reduced to 1 + 1 = 2. The next house is 1036, which becomes 10 and then 1. Once I get to 1044, I am at 9, 1052 is 8. That's the end of the odd side. My side of the street is even numbers and my house is 1005 or 6 and we go down in the same pattern, 1013 is 5, etc.

This got me to thinking about whether this only works with intervals of eight, so I tested intervals of six. With an interval of 6 the pattern is 5,2,8,5,2,8, on the odd side of the street and 6,3,9,6,3,9 on the even. Weird.

Tens work just like eights, but nines always result in the same number. If you begin with a five, you get all fives. A four, is always all fours.

During my two-year ill-fated experiment in teaching, I tried to get the idea of repeating patterns in numbers across to my students. They were mostly unimpressed, as I suspect readers of this blog will be.

By the way, I always get my boxer shorts at Kmart, in Cincinnati.















Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Thursday

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.---Thomas Jefferson The art of governing is in eroding the rights of the citizenry in the name of public safety.---Me When the government comes up with new and improved ways to protect me from myself, I reflexively resist. I don't like being told what to do. I generally think I can figure it out myself. It is human nature for those with power to seek more power. Not usually because they are bad people, although sometimes they are, but because they get seduced into thinking that the power vested in them, makes them wiser than the rest of us. A few weeks ago I was entering a public venue and a security guard told me to "pat my pockets", so that she could see that I wasn't carrying any prohibited items. Apart from the absurdity of the request, I deeply resented the intrusion. Since when am I subject to search on the whim of a minimum-wage security guard? If you have ever been a member of a neighborhood association or a tenant board you have seen this in action. People who would otherwise go about their business, suddenly develop a penchant for making up rules and finding transgressors. Technology has unleashed a whole new set of tools for people in power to lord over the people who put them in power and I don't like it one bit. I never got used to the crazy idea that God watched my every move, so I sure can't get behind the government doing it. The point of all that blather is that our fair city has contracted with an outfit called American Traffic Solutions to catch traffic violators though the use of mobile camera vans and cameras at stop lights. There is an article in the evening paper today reporting that the police are just as pleased as punch about the preliminary results of this "tool". It is for our safety, don't you know. Only a cynic would suggest that there is a barrel of cash for the vendor and our city to divvy up. This creeps me out. A bunch of people, who have no law enforcement power under the city charter or state law are being paid to be snitches for the police. The more they snitch, the more they get paid. I don't have a personal ax to grind with traffic enforcement, since my one and only speeding violation occurred in 1970. I do have serious concerns about expanding the ability of the government and their enforcement arms to monitor my life. As Mrs. Sneed reminds me, I just don't like being told what to do, especially by snitches hiding in a van beside the road. Speaking of bad behavior, I may have accidentally called two guys dumb asses at the golf course today. They were a hole ahead of us. The accidental part was that one of them heard me. The course was very crowded and we spent considerable time waiting for these two fellows. They in turn, spent considerable time waiting on the guys in front of them. It was slow all around and the last thing I needed was two old buzzards inventing ways to be even slower. On the twelfth hole, we were standing on the tee box and the two guys were putting on the green. One guy, the dumb ass in question, putted once and missed. Then he putted again and missed, leaving his ball about a foot from the hole, as near as we could see. Rather than tapping it in, he marked his spot and picked up the ball. then he replaced it and crouched down to eye the putt. This is the moment when I said, "Just putt the ball dumb ass." After all, this is amateur recreational golf, not the Masters. At the sixteenth hole, the other guy, not dumb ass, came over to the Seafood King and told him that they had been waiting on the guys in front of them all day. Seafood, told the guy that he knew that. The guy then wanted to know why someone in our group called them dumb asses? Seafood offered the lamest response ever, which was something like, the offender (me) was talking to himself (me) and not them. First of all, this guy must have super sensitive hearing because he heard me from a distance of 150 yards. Secondly, I didn't call them both dumb asses, just the other guy, so he shouldn't make accusations based on faulty evidence. Beyond that though, I told Seafood that he should have told the guy to ask me, since I am the one who said it, instead of offering a transparent, embarrassing excuses, that just made him look like he's lying, which he was. He is convinced that he saved me from a lot of grief. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Another Day In Our Fair City

Yesterday was election day here in our fair city and about three-quarters of the registered voters didn't care. At least I assume they didn't care because only twenty-six percent showed up to vote. I voted because they sent me a ballot in the mail. If I had to actually put on my shoes and find my polling place, I might have skipped it too. When you think about it, the number of disinterested citizens is much higher, since not all of them even register to vote. A lot of people find this troubling, but I figure if you are too lazy to even register, then I don't want you voting anyway. We elected a bunch of Democrats to the City Council. Our Council is now all Democrats, and yet we have a Republican Mayor. This doesn't matter that much since our City Council doesn't really accomplish much. The City is actually run by our City Manager. The Council mostly sits around moaning about downtown redevelopment, which has been stalled by governmental bungling for years now. At the end of the day, we could elect seven mannequins to the Council and it wouldn't matter much. The only thing they seem to get done is to hand out free rent to people who promise to bring life back to downtown. It never works out. Our big issue this election, was some crazy initiative that a well-known local crackpot got on the ballot to prohibit a whole bunch of unrelated stuff. It was so complex that it scared the bejeezus out of everyone who wasn't insane, and it went down to a flaming defeat. One thing the initiative would have done was to repeal a fee we pay to have the City pick up our trash. Yes, that's right, in addition to paying sales taxes and property taxes to the City, we pay them a monthly fee to pick up the garbage. Two of our Council members were elected in the last election on the promise to repeal this fee. Now they both think repealing it would be the end of life as we know it. We tend to elect people who are unashamed hypocrites. We also had quite an immigration dust up here in our fair city. As always, it pit the civil libertarians and immigrant rights folks against the throw the bums out crowd. Illegal immigration is a very contentious subject in these parts. According to the authorities, a kid at one of our high schools was observed to be acting high and I don't mean he was performing Hamlet from the roof of the school gym. This observation was later bolstered by the discovery of a small amount of pot on his person. The kid also happened to be an illegal immigrant, who along with his parents and siblings, has been living in the United States for six years. As our state law requires, school authorities called the local police because it is a crime to have drugs on school property. They also called the boy's parents, who hurried right down to the school, as you would expect concerned parents to do. School authorities later explained to the press that they had no choice but to call the cops and what happened afterward is not their fault. For reasons that I don't understand, somewhere in the course of their investigation, the police demanded to see the parent's drivers licenses. Of course, they don't have drivers licenses since they have been laying low for the last six years. Under expert police interrogation, they cracked and admitted that they are in this country illegally. So the cops called in the Border Patrol. A police spokesman later explained to the press that they had no choice but to call the Border Patrol and what happened afterward is not their fault. The Border Patrol rounded up the entire family. Mom and the children, including another child, in another school were taken to the Mexican border and escorted out of the country. Dad was held for a deportation hearing because he has been tossed out of the country on other occasions. A spokesman for the Border Patrol later explained to the press that they had no choice but to roundup the family since the cops called them and what happened afterward, while unfortunate, is not their fault. This is very troubling for a couple of reasons. Number one, I disagree with the notion that I or anyone else should have to provide identification to the police simply because they ask for it. In fact, without probable cause they can't. These parents should not have had to present identification simply because their kid got busted for pot at school. Secondly, it doesn't seem like a good idea for the Border Patrol to be able to go into a school to apprehend illegal aliens. There are better ways to go about this, if you must. This was more or less a public relations debacle for the local police and school officials. So, first thing this morning the local cops announced that they are not going to call the Border Patrol anymore to come to schools or churches to apprehend suspected illegals. The school district says that they will bar the Border Patrol from their campuses. You know, I get that we have to control immigration, but it is already out of control and no one in our very inefficient government has the smarts or the stomach to fix it. Tossing out one family doesn't solve our immigration problems, it just screws up their lives. Our local morning paper had an online poll asking people if the Border Patrol should be able to come into schools and churches to find illegals. Eighty-three percent of people said yes. I guess when I can disagree with eighty-three percent of folks, I am on solid ground. Lastly, a student at the school was quoted in the paper this morning and I was stuck by his quote. "I still think the Police Department shouldn't be allowed to ask someone about their citizenship," xxxxxx said. "That's not their job. Their job is to keep us safe and ensure our rights." If this kid is waiting for the police to ensue his rights he has a long wait coming, as my mother used to say. He will soon learn that our rights as citizens depend on our efforts to keep the authorities from taking them from us. On a different subject, I went out to play golf this morning. I suck at golf, I don't know what else to say. I thought I was getting better, but it seems I was wrong. I think I'm depressed. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Last Day of Class

Today was our last day of classroom work for the gardening program I have been attending. We have to take a test next week on the material we have learned these past nine weeks in order to pass the course. The point of the whole process is to train people to promote gardening in our community and to be a resource for home gardeners. Before we are allowed to start the next phase of the program, we have to demonstrate an understanding of the classroom training, by passing a test.

There is a sizable portion of the class, lead by The World's Foremost Expert (TWFE), that is seriously worried about their ability to pass the thing. TWFE isn't personally worried about passing, mind you, but she is worried for all the little people. I'm pretty sure that they have planned some type of study group this week. Sounds like fun.

My attitude about tests in general and this one in particular, is that I either learned the important points by listening and reading the material or I didn't. If that isn't good enough to pass the test, oh well. Besides, you only need a 70% to pass. I got a 75% on the pre-course test, so I think I will be okay.

I've already had the opportunity to learn a lot about gardening from real live experts in the field, so pass or fail, I've benefited. Worse case, I am deemed unfit for public interaction and am out of my obligation to give back to the program. Guys who negotiate for a living call this a happy-happy scenario. No matter how it turns out, I'm happy.

The only downside to this whole deal is that I found out today that they expect me to work at the garden center every Thursday morning for a couple of hours. My golf day is Thursday, so I'm not sure how this will play out. Maybe I will be able to talk the Seafood King and Some Guy Named Bob into playing golf at 11:00 am or so and I can work on my assignment at the gardens until ten-ish.

I posted something about my ne'er-do-well son Cletus yesterday. In the course of talking to him the other night I asked if his cell phone had been shut off, because he quit calling me on it. Usually, he gets shut off for non-payment. He swore it hadn't been turned off, but that the phone itself was broken. He told me to call his voice mail if I didn't believe him. Of course, I did.

When I called his phone, it went to voice mail immediately and was answered by the most interesting message. His message says that he will be gone from our fair city for several weeks and will not be available to return calls. Oh, that it was true.

I suspect that the little jack-a-loon is hiding out from someone and that his broken phone story is simply a ruse to avoid being found.






Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Monday

Reaction to my having posted my photo is pouring in and it has been totally positive. Comments are up an astounding 150% over my daily average of two. Anonymous, one of my favorite commenters, said that he or she was surprised that I am younger, thinner and less slovenly than he or she imagined. His or her exact words were, "I pictured you as fat and old(er). (Oh, and slovenly.)" Same thing. A guy always enjoys a compliment. I know that I vowed not to work, but I have been toying with the idea of asking for a part time job at garden center near my house. I almost asked the manager when I was in there this morning, but I was kind of afraid that he might say yes. This place is a huge operation with a lot of employees. It is one of those places that people really want to work at. Speaking of working, I haven't mentioned our youngest son lately. The guy that I refer to as Cletus. Cletus called me a couple of weeks ago to tell me that he had been fired from the job that he has had for a number of months now. Cletus has kind of a niche career field. He is a lot man and mechanic for shady car lots. The buy-here, pay-here, weekly payment joints. He gets fired from one and seems to find the next one pretty quickly. You can never get a straight story out of Cletus, but according to him it is never his fault that he gets fired. The boy is a victim of bad luck. Over and over again, nothing but bad breaks. According to Cletus the latest firing involved a car battery and an unhappy customer. The manger blamed him for the unhappy customer and the rest is history. Within a week he had landed another gig at an equally shady car lot on the south side of town. Unfortunately, about the same time, he also lost his apartment, a hole-in-the-wall he was sharing with another miscreant. Cletus has been evicted, asked to move or skipped out of every apartment that he has ever had. Every one. He has never left an apartment or a house on good terms. But it is never his fault, he has had the misfortune of meeting a string of crappy landlords. When it wasn't the landlords, it was his roommates that caused the trouble. As astonishing as it might seem, he left the last two places he was living because his roommates were bringing undesirable people home. That is Cletus-speak for he didn't pay the rent and got kicked out. So, I wasn't a bit surprised when I heard from him a few nights ago. He wanted to come over and spend the night here. He claims to have been staying in a fleabag motel since he left or was kicked out of his last flophouse, uh, I mean left his last apartment rather than associate with undesirables. He said that he was out of money and needed a place for the night. The last time we took Cletus in under these circumstances, we couldn't get him to leave. He stayed about eight months and paid no rent. As it turned out our free living arrangement allowed him to devote all his money to his drug use. We practically had to call for the jaws of life to get him out. I had to tell him that he couldn't stay here, even for one night, even if he promised to leave, even if he wouldn't be a pain-in-the-ass. Last night he called wanting me to give him forty bucks. Forty bucks is Cletus-speak for drug money, although he claimed it was to pay for a night in the roach motel. We got into a heated discussion about his inability to live like a real citizen. According to Cletus, he is doing just fine. Except for having no home and calling his father for money. It bothers me to be put in a position where I have to tell him no. I wish he wouldn't ask. Actually, I wish he would disappear. Of course, this is exactly why he asks me and not his mother. He knows that I am the easier mark. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Football

Here we are in our football attire getting ready to go to the game. I don't think that I've ever posted my picture before, but since I am out of witness protection, what the heck.


Here's another tip for good living from me. Don't take a four-year-old to a college football game, unless you plan to leave early. Oh yeah, and you bring plenty of cash for snacks.

The University of Arizona, our hometown team, played a game against UCLA today at 12:30 pm. Normally, they play in the evening, but they scheduled it at 12:30 to accommodate ABC Television. Since the lovely Mrs. Sneed was working at the counseling center today, I had to take the little knucklehead with me.

Sneedlet woke up a bit late this morning. He said that he had trouble sleeping. What does he know about trouble sleeping?

I put on PBS Kid's Sprout for him to watch while I read the paper. He watched for a few minutes and turned to me and asked what I wanted to do today? Just like we were an old married couple. I asked him what he wanted to do and he said, "Go to football". I guess he was testing me. The badgering to leave began immediately.

Sneedlet and I stopped at McDonald's to get lunch before the game. He stole my lunch and gave me his. I was smart enough not to order him a Happy meal because I sort of anticipated this maneuver. He likes the idea of a Happy Meal, but likes the regular chicken strips better than McNuggets. So we both got chicken strips.

Sneedlet noticed that I had the five strip order and he only had three, so I had to give him one to even things up. We enjoyed our lunch, except for the part where he knocked his Sprite into my lap, leaving me looking like an incontinent old clown. Not that far from the truth.

We wandered around for about an hour with passersby staring at my slowly drying pants and probably wondering why I am allowed out on my own. There was a jumping castle outside the stadium, so that kept Sneedlet busy for a while. By the time he grew tired of the jumping castle, it was time to head into the stadium.

We stopped for refreshments and then found our seats. At exactly, three minutes and ten seconds into the game, Sneedlet announced that he was ready to go home. And he just kept announcing it. So much so, that fans around us started to bribe him with stuff to distract him. He eventually resigned himself to staying.

At halftime of the game, we went down to the tunnel under the stadium and got some more snacks. Sneedlet said that he had to use the bathroom, but once in the bathroom he wouldn't go because "it was dirty".

We trudged back up thirty-eight rows and squeezed past all the people sitting in our row to get to our seats. After just a minute he announced in his loudest voice that he had to go to the bathroom. I knew he was lying, but that is a bluff I can't call. We left in the third quarter and got home in time to watch the last few minutes on television. Our team won, which is always good.



Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

Winter Visitors

My blog friend Kurt asked if would explain the last sentence of yesterday's post which read, Golf will be kind of a struggle until about May, when all the knuckleheads will load up their motor homes and head back to the Quad-Cities or wherever. I can never tell if Kurt is asking a serious question or messing with me, but I'll take a chance and answer the question. Our fair city reaches its peak tourist season during the January to May time period. Tourism begins to pick up in October, but doesn't really kick in until after the holidays. This is not hard to figure since we enjoy very mild, often warm winter weather. Visitors from cold climes take the opportunity to come here in winter. Our winter visitors fall primarily into two groups. Some come for a week or so and stay in the resorts or other hotels. They tend to be families or couples looking for a mid-winter vacation break. The second type of visitor spend several months here. they come before it get too cold back home and stays until the weather in Iowa or Illinois warms up in the spring. They are called snowbirds by the locals and visitors themselves. Often they arrive in giant motor homes and spend the winter among their own in one of our many fine RV parks. The typical snowbird spends about 67 days here in the winter according to our tourism bureau. I don't think we get quite as many of these visitors as we used to because of warmer winters in the cold parts of the country and because of the rising gas prices, but we still get a lot. There has even been a segment of home marketing devoted toward convincing well-to-do Midwesterners and people living in the Eastern US, to buy second homes here, just to have them available for their winter stays. Also, they are an easy bunch to piss off and if provoked, will take their tourism dollars elsewhere. A few years ago some boneheads in county government tacked a couple of dollars a day tax on space rentals in RV parks to pay for a baseball stadium and many winter visitors retaliated by going elsewhere the following winter. Winter visitors are quick to let you know how much you need them and their discretionary dollars. Golf is one area in which the winter visitors make their presence apparent. In many parts of the country, you cannot golf during the winter, so one thing that draws visitors here is year around golf. Our fair city charges significantly more for golf during the November to May period because the golf-starved visitors will pay a premium to play. Guys like me struggle to get playing time in winter due to the crush of players from out of state. Our municipal golf operation sells an all-you-can-play deal good from May through December to get locals to play in the off-season. In the winter months they couldn't care less about the locals because old guys from out of town show up in droves. When I asked a guy at one of the local courses why they didn't have an year around pass program, his frank response was that they didn't need to. So there you go. Our fair city doesn't really have that much going on economically speaking, so tourism is a big deal here. Winter visitors can create long waits for service at restaurants and local attractions, but you have to take the good with the bad. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

More Tricks Than Treats

I hope your Halloween was fun and uneventful. We had the usual number of trick-or-treaters. Actually, we had one too many it seems.

Perhaps one of the little bastards was dissatisfied with the selection of candies that the Lovely Mrs. Sneed provided, although that seems unlikely since she only bought named brands of candy, such as M&Ms and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. What's not to like about that?

As you can see from the pictures above some little hooligan decided to pull up one of my low-voltage yard lights and smash it in the street, a fact I discovered when I went out this morning to bring in the trash cans. I was kind of pissed off about it.

Ironically, I just replaced one of the the lights yesterday. It had inadvertently been run over by a car backing out of the driveway. Now I need to get another one. Little A-holes.

I went out with the regular guys today and played golf. Our weather is very nice, highs in the eighties and no humidity. It was a lot of fun, except that at this time of the year a lot of old people show up in our fair city for the winter. They are good for our economy, but not so good for speed on the golf course.

On one hole today, I was sitting with the Seafood King, waiting for three women playing in front of us, when someone yelled "fore" and a ball landed two feet from where I sat. Instinctively, I toppled over backwards off the bench as though it had hit me. The poor sap who hit the errant ball came sheepishly up to where we were sitting and started profusely apologizing to me. I felt kind of bad because I never thought he would think he actually knocked me off the bench.

A couple of holes later, some yahoo hit Seafood Jr. right in the head with a shot from an adjacent hole. Luckily, it was a glancing blow. Golf will be kind of a struggle until about May, when all the knuckleheads will load up the motorhomes and head back to the Quad-cities or wherever.





Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky