Children of the Night

Wow, no new post since the move. Privacy concerns really kicked in, I think.

You know, we really aren't all that far from town. A small town, yes, but 2 miles of driving gets us in to enough traffic to be a hassle. On the other hand, it is quite a bit more wild and wooly than we have been used to. A wilder and woolier home than any was when I was a kid, too. Signs of deer and turkey out back, a place to fish and canoe/kayak as well. The river is way downhill, though, turns out only one fishing hole so far is practical, I think.

The birds are different here. Cardinals, bluejays, crows and robins like Arlington, but I'm not sure I've seen an English sparrow yet; nor a finch.  Brown thrashers instead of mockingbirds mostly; a catbird or two. We had phoebes when we first got here, but they seem to have moved on. Currently there is a bird that has taken its place somewhat with the calls that I haven't identified. You almost never saw the phoebes either, but that 'fee-bee' call is hard to miss.

The 'wildest' development so far: we have coyotes. First inkling I got was spotting one in a field while walking back from a path to the river. It let me walk up on it pretty close, which worried me a bit about its health. I had no gun with me. It soon spotted me and then took off in 'yikes!' fashion; I guess I was being just quiet enough and downwind too. I was kind of thinking then, though, maybe a guy should have a gun with him around here.

Well, I didn't think this was a good development. Sure enough the next night or so we hear some howling. Wolf-like; but you could tell it wasn't wolves. I have seen no more coyotes, but the rain we have been getting has kept me indoors too. The howling we still hear once in a while, maybe 2 out of 3 nights. I'm a little embarrassed to report that Sue is not the only one to find it creepy. Or maybe eerie is the right word. 

We joke that they are "the children of the night", using a creepy voice. If you are up to date with Dracula movies, there often is the scene where the guy is trying to visit Count Dracula in Transylvania, and on the way has a harrowing experience with wolves. But on complaining to Dracula later when safe, the Count can't seem to see the problem. "What sweet music they make". 

Check it out on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UYtBlxVD8Y

Sometimes the Truth

I agree. Just saying.

WSJ - usually short-lived as free to view

Whew! or Uh-Oh?

I don't have to tell you that there have been stressful episodes in our move. Overall, no biggies maybe. But all of us have stories, no?

Accidentally came across an internet radio/podcast program that lists activities to avoid if you want to stay out of the emergency room. It's an interview with an ER doctor. Well, #9 out of twelve things he lists to avoid is "Retiring and building your dream house".

Tune in at 34:45 in the program. 

http://www.philosophyinaction.com/archive/2013-05-08.html 

#12 is interesting too. 

When I realized what we are doing is not exactly "building your dream house" [it's an existing house] or really retiring either [I plan to still work, Sue will probably too or at least stay busy ] I let out a "whew"! Should I have gone Uh-Oh instead?

Spring Turkey 2013

Also go to the next post.

All pictures uploaded now.

Here is Russell and Buddy with the Tom. The beard shows better here. 

So no pics of the beast coming out of the oven *sigh* but here is the carved bird and somebody's plate with all the fixings.  
 

My luck now that I spend less time turkey hunting in the Spring seems to have meant that my luck has been better. This makes two years in a row getting a Spring Tom.

No pictures from times past. Sometimes someone would take a picture, but I never saw most of them. This time I intended to take a picture with my cell phone of the whole bit. And I did get a picture of the hunters, me with the bird, the bird plucked, and the bird on the plate. I was determined to get a picture of the turkey coming out of the oven, a pretty sight. I reviewed my determination all day long. When it was time, a cocktail or so later, I just could only think of the task ahead of carving the bird. I'm afraid our dinner guests were treated to an explosion when I realized I had forgotten the key picture! My apologies to Sue's brother and his wife, Dennis and Ellen, who were quite surprised at how good the turkey was. Hopefully I was forgiven. 

Below: The lucky hunter with his bird, and Russell and Buddy [who called it up again] with the Tom as well [this pick in the above post]. The idea is to fan out the tail and show the beard, about 11 inches.

Russell and Buddy listening for a gobble.

The turkey mostly plucked. Further plucking was required before handing it to the cook [Sue] who did another fantastic job.

The carved bird etc. were intended to be shown next, but due to the nature of blogger dot com, I have to show them out of turn, perhaps some time later. Allowed file size I guess.

The House as an Investment

Interesting link at bottom shows the return you have on your house. Yes, Louise, it can do negative numbers. [vbg] At least we have to assume no return yet for Louise!

In our case, I added in roughly what we put into it and also other costs, going by the escrow payment and trying to average that a bit. 

Nothing exact here, but the result with all that shows a bit less than 2% per year. 

It has to be said that it isn't as simple as that. The alternative is paying rent, so you could flip that around and claim the entire equity of the house came nearly free, an astronomical rate of return. In some cases rent would cost more than a house payment, how do you crunch those numbers?

The site doesn't help you with any of that. If we leave out the escrow as a modifier, and leave in what we put in to it, the rate of return is about 3% for us. It's hard to say what insight to gain from this. 

One thing for sure, under certain other easier to figure out situations, real estate is not that great an investment, such as having so-called income property. On the other hand,  that can be good to have in periods of high inflation. Nothing about real estate seems simple, and there are large costs involved to make it complicated. But you hear people say, "my home was the best investment I ever had.". Well, no, it shouldn't have been anyway, but such a person benefited greatly probably from not renting, at least at not renting something equal to what he lived in. What can be said for sure is it was the best leverage that person ever got on an investment. That meaning buying it with a mortgage of course. Completely unavailable to the average guy on anything else.

http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/home-rate-of-return/?iid=SF_PF_Highlight

Your Mountain

It always seems like you learn your lesson from the last time, and quit being a pack-rat. But I have found I am guilty again. 

Packing up things has been as much as anything just throwing stuff out. I go to do a certain area and wind up with a small box packed and a giant bag to go out with the garbage. 

Ever wonder what your Legacy will be? Perhaps quite unimpressive for most of us, but one thing can be said for sure in the age of the landfill: a lifetime leaves a giant mountain of trash behind. 

The Light's Too Bright!

Wealth

A video has "gone viral" that examines the distribution of wealth in the United States. "Viral" suggests you may have to search for it, but that should be easily done. Meantime I have provided a link below.

It's pretty astonishing, alright, if we accept the numbers. We don't know who is speaking and we arent told how to access the Harvard study. Just saying. Snopes dot com has nothing I could find. 

I don't doubt what is being shown is factual however.Make of it what you will.

I guess if you could quiz this gentleman you'd find the cure for the problem is to be higher taxation of the 1%. Problem is, what he is showing is not income, but wealth. That means the cure actually is confiscation; redistributing income would have an incomplete effect.

Myself, I do not begrudge people for what they have. Certainly confiscation of property to provide equality of wealth is out of the question IMO. Redistribution of income is Socialism. Redistribution of property is totally Commie. It has a certain appeal, though, I don't deny it. There are times when I wonder if I would have made a good Communist. Just because "it ain't me" doesnt mean it couldnt have been me or you. Just saying.

People with grotesque incomes do get my goat. Maybe most of us feel the same way, after all we do have redistribution of income. But for me, it is when it is somebody who just has a job like the rest of us. I won't include highly paid sports figures and such, seeing as how they negotiate it fairly. But overpaid CEOs in particular send me to the moon. They really just have a job like the rest of us but can make hundreds of millions of dollars.

Getting back to the video, I think one reason we are all shocked is the way Class is being presented today. In most cases, it seems, it benefits whomever for the public to think they are higher in social status than they are. Everybody seems to think they are middle class, I have been going on about this for a long time. One reason for my problem is that the first time I ever saw facts and figures on the matter, it showed the upper class/middle class/lower class distinctions as a pyramid. Where did I see that? Might have been in the old encyclopedias of my younger years. The upper class was at the tip top only and the lower class was monumentally the greatest number of people down in the fat part of the pyramid. This is wealth distribution pretty much as shown in the video. I wouldn't want to get into who is middle class and who isn't, but I will say that for the vast majority with this opinion a case can be made they are perhaps in the upper lower class.

Looking in to this, the confusion seems to come when classes are divided not into a pyramid but a cylinder. The various classes are all huge because it is an arbitrary distribution of numbers of people. The maker of this video does the same thing. When he shows midway how America is the lower class, the middle class, the rich, and the wealthy - his terms and divisions -  they are not even all equal numbers of people! The middle class is shown as the group with the greatest numbers. And why wouldnt he? We all think we are middle class. 

Fact is, it may be new that it is getting worse in this country, but [as he admits] it has always been this way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

The Wild Wild East

That meteor that exploded over somewhere in Russia was caught by a "dash-cam". I'm sure everyone saw it.

Check out below a good article about driving in Russia.  Braver types can check out the videos the article links to, they are really good.

Russia and Dash Cams