09:41 – It was 42.7F (6C) when when I took Colin out this morning, with light winds. Barbara is off to the gym this morning, followed by a Friends of the Library meeting this afternoon.
I just read an interesting article on Business Insider about how suburbia is dying. Big anchor stores like Sears, JCP, and Macy’s are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and closing scads of under-performing stores. That hurts suburban malls, many/most of which are dead or dying. And even those that still have an anchor store are suffering because they draw much less foot traffic than they used to. Kids don’t gather at the mall any more. They’re too busy staying home, interacting with their friends via Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat instead of meeting at the mall.
Suburban casual dining establishments are closing right and left because people are eating at home more. People who used to dine out three or four times a week now do so once or twice. People who used to dine out once a week are now doing so once a month. Even golf courses, which used to epitomize the suburban experience, are closing in droves; 800 of them in the last decade. Millennials don’t play golf. Big businesses are relocating headquarters from suburbia back to large cities. The infrastructure is inadequate and wearing out, making long commutes between suburbia and the cities increasingly impractical. Suburbs are increasingly trying to reinvent themselves as self-sustaining cities rather than just bedroom communities, but that’s very difficult because they lack real jobs. As this trend continues and accelerates, it’s going to be interesting to watch, but not in a good way.
I’m really glad that Barbara and I moved to a small town/rural environment. Areas like ours have problems, but nothing like what cities are becoming. The kettle is already at a boil. It’s not a question of if but when the lid is going to blow off. It may be years or even decades, but it also may be tomorrow.
* * * * *
EVERYWHERE lacks real jobs….
Our malls were taken over by feral youth, and white people don’t go there anymore. My neighborhood is 40, 40, 10,10 white hispanic black asian, like most of houston (roughly.)
Guess what the public schools look like? 90% hispanic. Guess what the malls look like?
The only people I see at the malls, other than old folks getting out of the heat and gangs of black youths, are fairly recent immigrants. In my area, mostly hispanic, but also lots of middle easterners and indians/pakis. Our local mall is in a very upscale area, with very nice facilities. There is a play area for kids, a carousel, theaters, food court, etc, and some higher end stores. Still, not a lot of shoppers….
The upper middle and upper classes will pop into Target, and shop, but leave thru the Target too, never entering the mall.
I’d love to see the demographics of amazon shoppers vs bricks and mortar stores. Certainly the last time I was in Sears, or JCPenney, I was the only white shopper.
There are other factors at play here too. Suburban kids now have very heavily scheduled lives. No one has free time to just go to the mall and hang out. There are practices, teams, performances, extracurricular activities, group events, etc. And as you pointed out, they socialize virtually between and during these activities.
n
BTW the fall off in casual dining is related to the poor economy. It used to be one of the widely reported leading (true) indicators. If the article didn’t point that out, the authors were either young, or have an agenda.
n
Well, of course it is. Everything ultimately is because of the poor and still declining economy.
Despite the supposed recovery. we still have something like one out of six Americans on food stamps, with some states exceeding one in five, and a couple approaching one in four. Alleghany County and Sparta are around the national average. The difference is, up here it’s still considered shameful by most people. They wouldn’t take it if the alternative weren’t not being able to feed their families, and I suspect some people who are eligible don’t take it anyway.
Regarding the state of suburbia, I think the story oversimplifies reality. In my home town of Indianapolis, there are three big suburban malls. All three are outside the I-465 loop, so I’d say all three are in suburbia. The Castleton Square and Greenwood Park malls are surviving if not quite thriving. I think the third mall, Washington Square was open the last time I was there, but the traffic was so low, it was hard to tell. I went there because I was on that side of town and had time to kill. This trend has been building for some time, so it isn’t new. The last new anchor store at Washington Square was Target. There is nothing wrong with Target, just that it’s the kind of place that usually anchors a strip mall, not an enclosed mall.
My analysis could be wrong, as the areas around the two active malls may have grown to be urban. Also I’m looking at just one smaller city and its suburbs. Still there is clearly an economic contraction going on. The last Joe’s Crab shack is in the area not too far from Castleton area, and when I ate there I spoke with another dad while our kids were playing on the playground who was pleasantly surprised it was still there.
Guys, both of you spelled the (UN)Affordable Care Act wrong.
Ah so grasshopper….
n
Also stealth inflation (thru decreasing sizes) and devaluation of the currency.
n
“Oh, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ’t!”
We shall see anon.
I remember Joel Garreau’s book “Edge City” some years ago, too, where these were gonna be the future. Guess not.
I keep coming back to that map of the Clinton Archipelago.
As it regards golf courses, one very large problem is oversupply. When Mr. Woods came onto the seen ~ 20 years ago, the game’s popularity exploded. A lot of courses were built on the assumption that all of the players who took up the game would consider to play for the rest of their lives, get their kids interested, et cetera. The majority of those courses were built with borrowed money, and those debt loads can be overwhelming. When the fad died, the underwriting banks were left holding the bag on an asset that couldn’t be re-sold for anything like their book value. The courses that survived were (a) ones that were already in place, and had small / zero debt or (b) the ones that were more modest, and therefore less expensive to own & operate. The economic purge of 2008 was the death blow, as even a lot of previously wealthier folks gave up their hard to justify memberships. The place where I play is close to 50 years old, has minimal debt, well financed owners, affordable prices, and is booming. But we are one of two courses in the county where that’s true, the others are hurting to one degree or another.
Since my neighborhood is very hot real estate wise, the course up the street just sold to developers to build housing and mixed retail. What was way out in the country 40 years ago is now the population center of Houston metro.
n
The sister outdoor sport of golf: tennis. Same thing, 40 years ago all public parks were built with courts and we had about 6 private clubs built within 10 miles of my house and only one remains today.
Also 40 years ago, a huge enclosed shopping mall nearby. It had a Sears, some mid-scale dept stores and two more upscale stores and my daughter and her friends used to hang there. Now, the upscale stores replaced with JCP and Target, a large indoor play area facility with jumping and other similar stuff and the Sears and mid-scale dept stores suffering. The mall eateries also declined.
But wait…..we now have Starbucks at all strip malls!
Our rec association couldn’t afford to maintain the tennis courts, so leased them to a local futsol club. They put down sportcourt and set up nets. Good reuse of the fenced in flat space.
Almost no one plays tennis anymore….
n
There is only one mall on the “Strip” here, the Fashion Show Mall. The big casinos have their “shops” which are mall size. More popular are the “Town Square” style mall. Everything is laid out like a mini-city. You can’t cross from store to store. Just like small towns 20 years ago. I visit two when I need something quick. One has a Fry’s, so I go there most often.
My youngest kids, The Twins (22 in June) were never mall rats. They had no inclination to even go to a mall to hang. The older kids did a little ’cause that was the cool thing to do.
I started playing serious tennis when I was 14, fifty years ago. I stopped playing 32 years ago. The problem was I’d moved to Winston, and there wasn’t a grass court or even a fast concrete court to be found. Only slow Har-Tru courts, which are really clay, and the even worse red-clay courts.
I actually remember the last shots I made on a tennis court. I’d met my brother over at his girl friend’s condo and we played on one of the condo courts. We were at 2 sets all and my brother was serving at match point, 30-40 and 4-5 down. He hit a kick serve to my backhand, which I returned hard and flat to his backhand as he charged the net. I came in behind my return, and he hit a shot off of his shoelaces that I’ve only ever seen him and Nastasi hit, a backhand topspin lob half-volley. Just over my head, and gone. 40-all. He hit a hard flat first serve down the middle, and I hit a flat backhand into his backhand corner, out of reach. Add out. He double faulted to lose the match.
His girlfriend had been watching, and as we walked off the court he said, “Thanks. Way to make me look good.” Heh.
Our closest mall closed their movie theater to make way for an H&M before suddenly reversing course in the last month or so and recruiting (begging, probably) AMC to take over the space.
Until the new theater opens, we take the kids to the next closest multiplex in the H1B rental ghetto near Dell. Half the screens are Bollywood features on weekends, but the theater is nice and relatively safe.
One thing nice about Vegas is there is no lack of movie theaters. The big casinos off the strip usually house one, so there are plenty of options for cushy seats, XD, IMAX, etc.
“There is only one mall on the “Strip” here, the Fashion Show Mall. ….”
IIRC, my wife and I went browsing there about 30 years ago.
Then about 15 years ago, an outlet mall; maybe around I15 and Fremont?
Yep, the north end of the Strip has the “Premium Outlet” mall now. There is another on the far south of the Strip which has lower end outlet stores.
And, just for you Mr. CowboySlim, close by is the new Boot Barn (they made the old store next to it as an outlet)! I bought a selection of Western Wear shirts (snap closures, snazzy emroidery) to wear as biz attire. I’m off to CA and FL for a week with MrsAtoz, but will be boot shopping at BB when I get back. Their hat sales and maintenance section looks awesome.
10-4, I go to the Boot Barn in Cerritos, CA.
The mall as such has the problem that the anchor stores like Sears, Montgomery Wards, Macy’s, etc. are dying. What has replaced it in central cities are the old style shopping centers with outward facing stores along smaller streets. The stores tend to be smaller and are more suited for retail – clothes, jewelry, etc.
Stinking, stone age primitives. Only saving grace is, they’re 8000 miles away. Let’s make sure they stay there.
Couple of quick updates.
The organic variety pack of Mac N Cheese that costco sells, (Aunt Bunny or some nonsense) is still edible 1 1/2 years past expiration, but the cheese mix is a bit grainy and tastes “old”. The noodles can still be used with other cheese mix though.
Pro Mags in 30rnd for AR-15 — don’t buy ’em. They are cheap for a reason. I just moved some ammo from one cabinet to my new fire proof filing cabinet.* Some of what I moved was my “ready to go” loads which included about half a dozen AR mags fully loaded. Every one had rounds pop out when jostled, and most had rounds popped out just from storage. The lips seem to have spread under spring pressure. Maybe these would have been alright loaded to 25, but dang it, they are sold as 30 rnd mags…they’ve been loaded for a year, maybe two.
nick
*since I lost all my guns in that boating accident, I don’t need the ammo handy, right?
One of the malls sorta near here lost its anchor stores. The new owners put an aquarium in where one was. A good one, according to people who’ve gone, including my daughter on a field trip.
@steveF- too late, their distant cousins are here, 10 miles from my house. As posted 2 days ago.
n
added- which is no reason to let more in, or to slow down on kicking out those who already snuck in.
I read since President tRump’s first ban was KO’d by libturd fukstik judges, 10,000+ miscreant refugees have arrived. They should have a GPS tracker injected into their butts. When it goes offline, so do they.
Since my neighborhood is very hot real estate wise, the course up the street just sold to developers to build housing and mixed retail. What was way out in the country 40 years ago is now the population center of Houston metro.
Golf courses are just the first stage in a land holding plan to eventually subdivide and sell for really big bucks.
Or so I am told.
Generator is fixed. As expected, blowing compressed air did nothing. The screen on the fuel valve screws on, not snaps on (I learned that tidbit from an Amazon review). Removing the screen and drilling right through the valve body has fixed the problem of dribbling fuel.
Next trip to Tractor Supply is for a Briggs and Stratton in-line shut off valve plus a B&S fuel filter to finish the project.
Yeah, I can get a new valve on eBay, from Hong Kong for under $7 in a couple of weeks. Or from someone in Texas for $12 in a few days. But it’s not a fix to replace the bad valve with the same piece of junk…. just buys me a couple of years.
I am trying to figure out where the “Trump Boom” is happening other than the stock market. Here in the oil patch, life would be good if we did not have slow payers and no payers. My business accounts receivable is the highest that it has ever been. We have already written off $20K this year and it looks like we have another $100K in bad receivables. Knocks head against the office door, “Idiot ! Invoices are not cash, invoices are not cash !”. Today was a bad day.
I actually have a customer threatening to sue my business for enticement of signing a contract if we sue him for nonpayment of said contract. What ???
Everyone that I know in the oil patch in the USA is hurting. Used to be three million direct employees in the USA and twelve million employees of suppliers. I have no idea what the employment is now as a friend told me two weeks ago that Halliburton has now laid off 40% of their workforce.
I have two more friends working for a supplier for Schlumberger. They are looking for new jobs as their employer only pays them for billable hours which are driving towards zero. One of my friends has already used all of his vacation this year.
A relative is looking for a C++ developer job in Houston. He has 15 years of experience. He looked at a job in San Francisco over the weekend that he eventually found out only paid $90K. No freaking way as he would be living in “nice” cardboard box behind Target. He is now looking at job in Denver that reputedly pays $100K.
As Concerned American at the WRS says, the Deep State and its minions are winning and tRump is kinda losing about now. Can’t get chit done anywhere and every move and utterance is a major target immediately. We all knew this was coming and still they act gobsmacked and poleaxed at the White House. All we’ve got out here is US out here and it’s been like that for a very long time.
Malls: I hung out and ended up working various jobs at one of the country’s very first shopping malls, Shoppers World, in Framingham, MA, just a ten-minute bike ride from my house. Situated on Route 9, the old Boston-Worcester Turnpike, and even older Native Murkan trail from Boston Hahbuh out past all the lakes to the New York border. It was an outdoor mall, with fountains, Christmas village at that time of year with real reindeer, and just a ten-minute walk through woods to the Natick Mall. I worked as a Stop & Shop bag boy there, a movie theater usher, Christmas help stock boy at Jordan Marsh, sales clerk in the Campus Department at JM, and later a store detective there.
There’s a couple of hokey indoor malls down in Burlap but only strip malls up this way.
@Mr. Nick; don’t go cheap on rifle mags, you’ll get burned eventually. There are three or four name brands that go thousands of rounds with zero mishaps, MagPul being one. SGM Lamb sez he rolls with them fully loaded w/30 and I’ve also done that for a long time, but some folks would prefer doing the 28; to each his own. Whatever works.
WRT Stone Age barbarians already here with more coming; watch and wait. They do some amazing chit and get clean away with it. My siblings down in MA have seen their females squatting and eliminating on railroad tracks and streets, and the railroad guys have found Santeria flotsam and jetsam at various sites along the tracks out in the sticks. Y’all who like hiking or snowshoeing or x-c skiing along rail beds? Be very careful and observant; some of them have become the haunts of the contemporary generations of so-called hobos. They’re not like the old guys riding the rails in days of yore.
Back from VA appointment w/primary care MD. She’s stepping up the Albuterol med to a once-a-day deal that fixes me up for the whole day; renewing the Gabapentin and the BP med and the potassium. Got a flu shot and a potassium level test done. Might go back for another shot to the spine if this chit gets worse, but meanwhile I need to lose 20 pounds off my gut and get outdoors much more often. She recommended a bicycle, and I was already thinking along those lines anyway.
What a kick in the ass, though, having chronic lower back pain and sciatica, for a guy who ran track with the 440 and 880 and the high jump and played soccer and football, plus fast-pitch softball in the military, and ran around the jungles in SEA and MA cities and towns. Fuck. It’s also being only 63 and getting shut out of jobs I know I could do for another 10-15 years.
Do I want some cheese with that whine? Yeah. Grafton Village Two-Year-Old Cheddar.
Made an ass-kicking tuner salad earlier, including chopped walnuts, craisins, bacon bits and blue-cheese dressing. Lay it on some rye bread with cheese and saute both sides until golden brown and the cheese is melted.
Well I’ve shed 14 pounds since Jan 8 on a very casual Atkins plan. Mainly cut out all the extra sugar, and the bread, double up on the meat, half the veg.
Pretty stable pound drop every few days for a while now. Supposed to help the back and knees both…
n
Started doing some stomach muscle rebuilding too, mainly isometrics while laying on my back. Soon I’ll be doing modified crunches. No situps, those suck.
@lynn, if you don’t like the customers, sell their receivables to a factor. Take the discount and let them take the hassle. At this point anything is better than nothing, right? There’s a factor who advertises on billboards in town, so he’s probably easy to find.
n
Soon I’ll be doing modified crunches. No situps, those suck.
Add some plank moves. They really help the core.
Nah, skip those crunches and planks. If you want to build up your gut muscles, you want to drink beer. Lots of beer. And not that pissy little baby “lite” beer. Real beer. You’ll see those muscles bulging out in no time.
I’m currently at about 240, down from 270, and I’d like to get to about 220-225. Waist is 38 inches; I want that back down to 34 inches. Dire need to get flexibility back in the knees and waist. And CV/stamina.
Not planning to have to hump a ruck plus rifle and pistol and ammo and radio across a hostile winter landscape, but you never know. I should at least be able to walk a post around the village here with that stuff. You know, if the S really does hit the F in a big way at some point.
It seems like a lot of factors could be converging for that Perfect Shitstorm.
“Real beer. You’ll see those muscles bulging out in no time.”
Guinness Stout.
Work up to it gradually with Black-and-Tans.
I saw GS on drugstore shelves in Thailand; they had a brewery in Bangkok.
A relative is looking for a C++ developer job in Houston. He has 15 years of experience. He looked at a job in San Francisco over the weekend that he eventually found out only paid $90K. No freaking way as he would be living in “nice” cardboard box behind Target. He is now looking at job in Denver that reputedly pays $100K.
I wish him luck, but, if he wants to do C++, I suggest not letting too much time lapse between jobs, even if it means living in a box. After six months being unemployed in Vantucky, the calls pretty much dried up, and, seven years later, I’m pretty sure my career damage from the Northwest is permanent.
Beer is food and Guinness is Your Daily Bread.
BTW, breakfast at the tavern after working all night, eggs and bacon with toast, and a pint of Guinness instead of coffee– that’s living.
n
Esp at The Waterfront Tavern in downtown San Diego, the oldest continuously operating tavern in SD…
Are H1B visas a rort? I said they were to an Aussie FB friend who is living and working in San Jose, and she hasn’t spoken to me since. (I get the impression that H1B customers are good for her real estate business…)
Washington Square seems to still be up and running…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Square_(Indianapolis)
A raucous party? That definition, the only one I found, doesn’t seem to fit.
If you mean “a total scam”, then yes, pretty much.
If you mean “a scam that’s about to be killed”, we may hope so.
The law doesn’t need to be changed (though I think it should be). Enforcing it as written would suffice to bring the abuses in check. Big-ass fines for employers who bring in foreign workers at less than prevailing wage would put an end to a lot of nonsense.
Twenty years ago, the H1-B programmers and engineers I worked with were very sharp and usually had some special expertise and were paid well. That has not been the case for ten years or more.
A relative is looking for a C++ developer job in Houston. He has 15 years of experience. He looked at a job in San Francisco over the weekend that he eventually found out only paid $90K. No freaking way as he would be living in “nice” cardboard box behind Target. He is now looking at job in Denver that reputedly pays $100K.
I wish him luck, but, if he wants to do C++, I suggest not letting too much time lapse between jobs, even if it means living in a box. After six months being unemployed in Vantucky, the calls pretty much dried up, and, seven years later, I’m pretty sure my career damage from the Northwest is permanent.
He is employed at the moment but his job may go away soon. I have encouraged him to look in Austin if nothing in Houston plays out. One of his friends just left Id Software in Dallas to go back to LA for the game scene (he is an illustrator).
Never leave a good/bad/horrible job until you have secured a new job. If you have a job, employers love you. If you don’t have a job, people suspect that you have three eyes and a tail.
And, it is weird out there. I would hate to be looking for a job right now. A 56 year old mechanical engineer with a PE license who has spent over half of his life developing engineering software in F77, C++, Basic, Pascal, Smalltalk, and many miscellaneous languages that I can not remember. With a bad heart. And grumpy. I’m sure that they would be lining up for me. Not.
He is employed at the moment but his job may go away soon. I have encouraged him to look in Austin if nothing in Houston plays out. One of his friends just left Id Software in Dallas to go back to LA for the game scene (he is an illustrator).
Id/ZeniMax ccould take home a pretty big payday from Facebook/Occulus, but the whole VR thing seems like a crock to me.
Cough … Magic Leap … cough.
Never leave a good/bad/horrible job until you have secured a new job. If you have a job, employers love you. If you don’t have a job, people suspect that you have three eyes and a tail.
We rolled the dice in 2010 with the move to Vantucky. I went without a job in hand. Lesson learned.
Are H1B visas a rort? I said they were to an Aussie FB friend who is living and working in San Jose, and she hasn’t spoken to me since. (I get the impression that H1B customers are good for her real estate business…)
When they buy houses, the H1Bs use family money from home. This is very good for the real estate brokers.
Based on what I’ve observed living in Austin and around my wife’s family in the Northwest, my rule is to never underestimate how much money a Chinese or Indian family will come up with if they have a chance to buy into a desirable tech area in the US.
I just read an interesting article on Business Insider about how suburbia is dying. Big anchor stores like Sears, JCP, and Macy’s are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and closing scads of under-performing stores.
BTW, in that Suburban Death article, the real problem is that millennials are just not making the income that their parents did. It is always about money. And the last of the baby boomers are scared to retire since their retirement is in a 401K, IRA, or just plain old social security. Very few baby boomers working now have a pension plan.
http://www.businessinsider.com/death-of-suburbia-series-overview-2017-3
But, Houston is bucking the suburban trend, at the moment. Very large companies such as Exxon and Shell are deserting their towers in downtown and moving to sprawling campuses in the suburbs. I think that five downtown towers have been vacated in the last two years.
” I would hate to be looking for a job right now. A 56 year old mechanical engineer with a PE license who has spent over half of his life developing engineering software in F77, C++, Basic, Pascal, Smalltalk, and many miscellaneous languages that I can not remember. With a bad heart. And grumpy. I’m sure that they would be lining up for me. Not.”
Hahaha. No chit, hermano. Try a 63-year-old systems administrator with a background covering VAX/VMS, OpenVMS, Microslop Winblows from DOS and 3.1 through 8.1 and Servers 2003-2012R2, Exchange Server, RHEL from 4.5 through 7.3, and several other Linux distros plus all the ad-hoc networking skillz from DECnet through various Cisco and Broadcom hardware and some IT security stuff. With PTSD (chronic and severe, lol), tinnitus, hair and teeth falling out, lower back pain and sciatica, a short fuse sometimes, and crazier than a shithouse rat. Also armed to the teeth. Would YOU hire me??
“Very few baby boomers working now have a pension plan.”
What is this “pension plan” you speak of, Grasshopper? Yeah, we’ve blown through three or four of ours over the past twenty years, just to pay bills or for emergencies. Living expenses and taxes took care of the rest, with damn few luxuries. Just keeping the cars running is a drain. And now they’ve got us all over a barrel with the med insurance scams they’re running, too. Costs more per month than the mortgage!
We may end up, if we’re deuced lucky, that is, being the last generation to be able to collect SS, VA disability, Medicare, Medicaid, etc., before it all disappears and/or is looted RUTHLESSLY by the usual suspects.
Mrs. OFD off to Moh-ree-all in the AM to swap cars; third (or is it the fourth) time is a charm, eh? I predict another Princess-generated monkey wrench and bet her mom ten bucks that would be the case. What was supposed to be a “a couple of days” of borrowing my car has now become ten days. Funny how that works out every single time.
I’ll be doing laundry, voting for Town Meeting Day stuff, and running a couple of short errands. Wednesday Mrs. OFD is traveling to Manchester, NH to get her hair done. (don’t ask). That night I’ll be at the gun club’s monthly meeting.
Meatspace, ladies and germs. We can’t fight the power all by our lonesomes. Make friends and influence people.
“Russian hacking of the DNC is a problem, not a scandal. The scandal is this: Who inside the government of the United States is trying to discredit, damage or destroy the President of the United States? For these are the real subversives.”
http://buchanan.org/blog/beltway-conspiracy-break-trump-126646
Mr. Z:
http://takimag.com/article/what_the_zuck_taki/print#axzz4ac8LJjVZ
Forwarded this to some FaceCrack users I know; they’ll ignore it, blow it off completely, or throw a hissy fit. Several of them apparently get most, if not all, of their nooz from this plague on humanity. Amazing.
And for your early morning coffee, tea or Guinness:
From the White Men Don’t Suck Department:
http://takimag.com/article/10_things_i_like_about_white_guys_gavin_mcinnes/print#axzz4ac8LJjVZ
I just killed an 18 inch (0.5 m) copperhead in front of the elementary school behind my house. I was walking along and suddenly the wife, behind me, yelled “snake !”. I turned around and she had jumped off the sidewalk, pulling the dog with her. I had just stepped over it. I had one job and I failed. Kind of the story of my life lately. And, my flashlight was off since we did not need it at the moment (or so I thought).
So the wife brought me a stick and I killed it. Left it out in the middle of the four lane so plenty of cars run over it before the kids get to school.
What is this “pension plan” you speak of, Grasshopper? Yeah, we’ve blown through three or four of ours over the past twenty years, just to pay bills or for emergencies. Living expenses and taxes took care of the rest, with damn few luxuries. Just keeping the cars running is a drain. And now they’ve got us all over a barrel with the med insurance scams they’re running, too. Costs more per month than the mortgage!
My BIL is turning 62 this month. If he can hang in at UPS until August then he will get a check from SS and a check from the UPS pension plan (that they thankfully seized back from the teamsters many years ago). He is ready and says that many of the 5,000 people working at his facility are part of the walking wounded. Then he and my SIL are going to sell their home in northwest Dallas and move to Groesbeck, Texas.
And cars are bloody expensive. Actually, they are much better than they used to be, my 2005 Ford Expedition has over 178K miles on it and is running strong. I am fascinated by all of the little problems that it has but it still starts and runs. I drove it on a 980 mile round trip to Norman, OK last week. I am not so nearly fascinated by the cost of a new Expedition though.
And if I were Princess, I would enjoy driving your nearly new SUV over her ten+ year old piece of junk that smells like old sweat socks. I am betting that she still “needs” it also.
You lucked out that time, amigo. You guys wearing snake boots on your walks? You got all four venomous snakes down there; only kind we have up here have two legs and generally frequent the Snake House down in Montpeculiar, and lawyers’ offices. Also easily killed with a stick.
Reminds me of my various sentences served in east TX near Lackland and the Army’s sites out in the bush. Copperheads, rattlers, coral snakes and water moccasins. Yep. All four. A coral snake one time about three feet in front of me.
I thought that sucked and then I got to ‘Nam, and the rest of SEA.
“And if I were Princess, I would enjoy driving your nearly new SUV over her ten+ year old piece of junk that smells like old sweat socks. I am betting that she still “needs” it also.”
We’ve put over $3k into the 2007 Matrix since her brother gave it to her. I spent nearly all of my most recent VA disability check getting the scheduled maintenance done, along with a new windshield (previous one broken by ice in Moh-ree-all, allegedly) and new wipers and a new inspection sticker, plus I put on all four wheel covers using my right fist as a hammer and they’ve stayed on this time. It’s full of all her junk, rubbish, and other crap still; neither wife nor I are gonna clean it out, and I’ll probably get mine back with more rubbish in it, the SiriusXM wires pulled out so she can shove in her iPod or whatever, and running on fumes. I’m telling them both she doesn’t get it anymore unless it’s a real bonafide emergency. Wife said the Matrix can stay up there with her in the city for the duration; no more permission slips for border crossings from either of us, either.
But we’ll see how this all plays out, starting today, and over the next few months. Supposedly looking for a job up there but to me it’s beginning to look like yet another spring and summer of grifting and chiseling off family so she can have fun, travel, and entertain herself. I’ll start yanking cash out of the account and stowing it here. Need to start doing that again, anyway. Alternate months of cash, and then ammo/food.
Would YOU hire me??
Only as a suicide bomber. Hoping you don’t cash that last pay check.
The Alps grew a bit last night: we had a minor earthquake with magnitude 4.6. Got to keep them ready for the tourists, after all. Actually, there are hundreds of earthquakes every year, but one big enough to feel happens only every year or two.
“I would hate to be looking for a job right now. A 56 year old mechanical engineer”
Yeah, job hunting as an older guy sucks, at least in tech fields. I landed my current position just before that first digit turned to a 5. After that, it gets tougher. Somehow people have this idea that older folks don’t keep up on tech, but the truth is different: We’ve seen the wheel turn before, so we don’t get caught up in the latest hype. I suppose we are less willing to work 70 hour weeks, and put up with general BS. “Grumpy”, Lynn calls it.
“Meatspace, ladies and germs. We can’t fight the power all by our lonesomes. Make friends and influence people.”
Wherever I am on the spectrum I swear, it’s getting worse. I’ve always been terrible with socializing, chit-chat, names and stuff. If it’s really important, I can pretend otherwise, but nowadays I rarely bother. Thankfully, the wife is the same (how did we ever meet? There’s a wonder!) There is a guy who comes over to brew beer with me a couple of times a year. We have tentative plans to invite a couple over for dinner; last time we did that was…um…geez…maybe 5 years ago.
Lynn wrote:
“He looked at a job in San Francisco over the weekend that he eventually found out only paid $90K. No freaking way as he would be living in “nice” cardboard box behind Target.”
Real estate prices in SF/SJ are just nuts. How can people afford to live there?
Lynn wrote:
“Never leave a good/bad/horrible job until you have secured a new job.”
One of my nephews just did that. Started his own civil and structural engineering firm. His previous employers were driving him nuts.
SteveF wrote:
“If you mean “a total scam”, then yes, pretty much.”
Yes. Americans never seem to have heard of the word. Weird.
Lynn wrote:
“A 56 year old mechanical engineer with a PE license who has spent over half of his life developing engineering software in F77, C++, Basic, Pascal, Smalltalk, and many miscellaneous languages that I can not remember.”
Mate, once your over 50 you’re invisible. No, make that over 40. Although I didn’t know you were familiar with Pascal – the high level language of heaven. That’s a plus.
I made a post after the last one of yesterday and it vanished into the ether. When I tried to repost it the error message was something like “Looks like you’ve said that before.” Is it trapped somewhere?
It was flagged as spam . I approved it.
Ah thanks. I wonder why it was flagged…