Going seasonal with the new Home Page pic. Hope they get some snow at Tahoe this year.
Busy week at this end. A couple of Christmas functions and your typical end-of-the-year action with clients here at the office. These next couple of weeks will be more of the same.
1 tweeted and alert yesterday that there was a couple of "flyovers" at the Army-Navy game. I didn't watch the game, and Youtube hasn't posted anything for the 2014 game. I'm all for the flyovers, of course. I'm guessing that the training schedules for the planes/choppers can be adjusted to nominalized the frivolous spending criticisms. But I'm sure that there will be those who see these displays as government money just thrown to the breeze. Whatever.
I was doing some math this weekend in anticipation of Monday being the 15th of the month. My vision of my professional career "glide path" had etched a line in the sand on April 15, 2012 and projecting forward for 60 months. On that timeline, December 15, 2014 is well past half way...a disturbing thought. With the months more or less flying by these days, some serious planning needs to be done.
Without changing that 60 month scenario, a more realistic picture might be to consider the extension period for those returns that have a normal due date of April 15, 2017. Meaning that September 15th and October 15th 2017 come into play. Going out to October 2017, the number that kind of comes to the fore is 1000 days.
If you consider that each year has 104 weekend days, and that I also schedule myself on the road an estimated 20-25 additional days per year, we're talking in the neighborhood of 650 work days. That doesn't seem like that many days, eh?
A Thousand Days is a non-fiction book written by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in the mid-60's on the abbreviated presidency of John F. Kennedy.
Anne of a Thousand Days is a historical movie (based on a Broadway production of the same name) released in the late '60's starring Richard Burton as King Henry VIII. Not sure if
A Thousand Days with LtPC will make the best seller's lists.
Today is also the one-month mark before our golf trip to Scottsdale. I've put my pal Ron in charge of the golf course reservations. The economy in The Valley of the Sun must be on the upswing. Rates at Grayhawk Golf Club where we have played their two courses each of the last several years have doubled from five years ago. We paid like $99 per round back then, and didn't have to shop very hard to get that rate. The rack rate today for Thursday through Sunday rounds at either Grayhawk course is $255! Yikes! We'll end up at some lesser-known courses and likely average $150 for the three rounds.
(For historical reference, we paid at least $200 per round 15 years ago when we went to Cabo. And one course was over $300. That's why we stopped going to Cabo. Ron says that he and Jane did not play Pebble Beach in 2012 when they went to California after 3 and 3.1's wedding due to the $499/each charge for one round. But he does say that it would have been cheaper to play golf than it was for the wine that they ended up buying in Napa Valley!)
Another frightening example of Big Brother is Watching: I did a Google search on my iPad while at home one night last week regarding the income earned per-episode by Pat and Vanna on WofF. The next day at work, I was doing a Google search on my desktop, and the query words for whatever I was looking for started with a "wh" word. The auto finish-the-query function,
on my desktop, offered up "What does Vanna Make?" Electronic tracking is
way too much in-play.
The Salvation Army bell-ringing is very annoying. I get that it is their primary fund-raiser. But enough already.
Adding some gratuitous pics from home later.
Hope it is a good week in your neighborhood.
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The Lt.'s back on Maplecrest. Great visit with the fam in NYC. They are the Family Branch of the Day! This first pic is a shot taken yesterday morning in front of 4's work place. She had to work all of the days that I was in town...and for the next six as well. Lots of hours to fill for others who are out on vacation.
The culture portion of my visit was a stop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Friday afternoon. Busy place. 4 got in with a corporate admission through work, plus one, so we only had to pay for my Senior ticket...$17, which I rounded to $20. There was a special El Greco exhibit, and another display of some Degas' sculptures of the Little Dancer's. We got separated in the Egyptian galleries/temples/tomb's. But enough was enough. (My favorite on this visit was a Renoir painting of a country road scene.)
Not sure how I got the designation this time, but my return ticket boarding pass was TSA pre-approved. Suite! No issues getting out of LGA, but the plane was packed, and I had the person in front of me crank her seat back as soon as we were in the air...ouch! Double Bloodies at ORD to decompress. My pal Ron was my ride home. I owe him and @bcbison a bottle of The Good Stuff for their transportation services.
My pal Doug and I had beers from the vendor between games rather than wait the lines at the concession stand. 25-ounce cans from Budweiser! (My Coors Light was only a 24-ounce can.) The economics weren't bad...$8.50 each. But that's a lot of beer for a wine guy! The inflated prices were for the other stuff; $7.50 hotdog, $5 water and $5 popcorn at half of the second game. Welcome to the Big Show.
A piece of unfinished business. My absence from the blog lead to an omission of recognition for 1.02. He was three years old on Saturday. So here is a belated Happy Birthday, Kiddo!. You are Grandson of the Day!
The new car is different. It is definitely an upgrade from the Lucerne, but it has the feel of a Hertz rental. Nice. Low mileage. But not all that distinguished from others. The electronics will take some time to fully understand. I'm sure that an engineering team came up with the "improvements" over the older models. Old Dog (that's for you, 4!), new tricks, and all that. But glad to have reliable transportation for future trips to Harvest Path.
Not proud of that rat-packing. But fear not. After the good feeling from last weekend's purge of keepsake-boxes in the back closet, I see the clouds of worthless possessions easing. You make not have a lot of gratuitous LtPC possessions to kick to the curb when that time comes.
Here we are, the last day of November. The 2014 vapor trail continues.
And speaking of the Buick, it's days are numbered. It needs a new set of tires ($1200 or so), some front-end work (another grand), and its now seven years old. Blue Book value is down to $5-6K, and those repairs noted, if completed, won't increase that value. I've contacted my car dealer client to find as good of a low-mileage Buick LaCrosse as he can find as my next vehicle. They don't make the Lucerne anymore...or any 8-cylinder Buicks. So a 6-cylinder LaCrosse is the best available substitute. The color won't be black or white, but all others are okay if the car checks out on mileage and options.
