My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on September 20, 2022

After helping Taylor move a few larger things over to his new condominium last weekend, he sent a photo of his still bare living room, but it is coming together. The TV is working so he could watch the 2022 losing Cincinnati Bengals (now 0-2) on Sunday afternoon. He has been slowing moving boxes of things from his 2015 move back to Cincinnati apartment a few minutes away, but is waiting on a couple of moving guys to haul his sectional couch, buffet, dressers and bed. It is a good call considering the two stories down from his apartment and 3 stories up a VERY narrow staircase into his condo. It was even a challenge getting a couple of items like the TV and headboard I made for him up to his new place. All in all though, I think he will be pretty happy with his new place since it currently fits his urban lifestyle (we are definitely different people).

It also feels as if autumn is here. No more swimming, the grass is greening back up and the squirrels are working overtime gathering mouthfuls of acorns. The oak leaves have ladybugs which I hope are eating the wasp larva (?) that show up as orange galls on the oak leaves (read this).

As for chores around the house last weekend, I was irritated to have received the wrong gasket kit to rebuild our older Sta-Rite swimming pool pump (hopefully this will be the correct one?)

There are too many models and they are not well listed when trying to shop for them … but the good news is that the new bearing are into my rebuilt electric motor and it purrs smoothly … I now have a spare 1-1/2 HP pool pump motor when the new one starts chattering (and from experience, it will in about 5 years). 

Category: Archive, Nature, Personal, Photos, Tidbits | No Comments »
Tags: bearings, bengals, chores, condominium, galls, ladybug, motor, moving, oak, pool, pump, rebuild, swimming, taylor, trees, walnut hills

Posted By RichC on September 19, 2022

Power is out in Puerto Rico with two-feet of rainfall after Hurricane Fiona came ashore. The Dominican Republic was saturated as well with flash flooding and mudslides as the category 2 hurricane slowly moved off the norther shore. As it moves over open water, it is forecast to strengthen as it passes Turks and Caicos on Tuesday to become the season’s first major hurricane in the Atlantic for 2022. Forecasters have it curving northeast out to sea and perhaps threatening Bermuda later this week.

Category: News, Weather | No Comments »
Tags: bermuda, dominican republic, fiona, forecast, hurricane, puerto rico

Posted By RichC on September 19, 2022

The trigger for today’s Jackson 5 song “ABC” was due to hearing it as segment music on Fox Business last week. It triggered a memory of the choreographed “five-some” dancing and singing back on 1970’s TV, although I don’t recall watching them very much.

Nevertheless, hearing them and watching a young Michael Jackson had me remembering why they were popular … and particularly why “he” became a superstar. So for today’s Music Monday, here’s  a live recording of “ABC” from YouTube.

Category: Music, Video | No Comments »
Tags: abc, jackson 5, michael jackson, music monday, musicmonday, youtube

Posted By RichC on September 18, 2022

Who hasn’t needed to repair, or re-repair, a broken piece of furniture? In today’s world, most furniture, as well as other items, are throw-away after they break, but there are still a few of us who enjoy getting the last few useable years out of a well worn piece of furniture.

My like-minded son-in-law showed me the once repaired and broken again coffee table leg used in a basement play area while we were up visiting our granddaughters last weekend. I was reminded by Brenda that this was the table that fell out of the back of her RAV4 years ago while she was moving it. In other words, it has seen some serious abuse.

The broken leg was glue repaired once before, but without the strength of the wood, broke again. This time I brought it home to add three dowels and then clamped and glued again with a favorite waterproof glue – Titebond III … not that it needs to be waterproof. Hopefully adding the three dowel pins will give it nearly original strength and take the abuse of a basement play area? We shall see?

Category: Advice, How-To, Misc, Photos, Woodworking | No Comments »
Tags: dowels, furniture, glue, project, Rav4, repair, repairs, table, titebond, workshop

Posted By RichC on September 17, 2022

Having initially enjoyed the weekly meal offering from Hello Fresh, the menu started to get a little stale as new items began to resemble previous meals. With inflation at the grocery store (and the fuel and time cost), the price was somewhat less of a gripe, but both of us started to notice fewer and a cheapening of the included ingredients; also less freshness of the produce. I am hoping that this is just a shipping issue or summer heat related???

After several enticements to come back after we canceled in August, we accepted a recent subscription discount to rejoin again. Unfortunately the last couple of meals were still repetitive. Top that off with last nights wilted cilantro used to garnish the top the “One-Pan Sweet & Spicy Cashew Pork Tacos” … and I continued to be a bit disappointed (but the meal was still tasty).

We will give the subscription a little longer, but they need to show some improvement if we are continue in the face of tightening our budget in the face of a recession. BTW, send me a message if you want a discount code  for a free meal. 

Category: Business, Financial, Food, Personal, Shopping | No Comments »
Tags: eating, enticement, food, hellofresh.com, meals, online, plans, subscription, tacos

Posted By RichC on September 16, 2022

Besides noticing that a new school bus driver has decided to use our driveway as a turn around spot (should not be “the norm”) … I took apart the old 2017 pool pump motor. Last week I replaced the old motor with a new one (again) suspecting the shortened life (in my opinion) is due to a leaking pump. But before rebuilding the pump with new gaskets, etc, I was curious if I could save the $250 electric motor rebuild cost by tackling myself.

First was trying to figure out how to get the Century Centurian Chinese version of the AO Smith motor properly disassembled; I still do not know the face bearing setup? The corrosion is substantial on the failed bearing and so I’ll probably need a few of the washer and parts to fit/pack the bearing into the housing. Thankfully the electric motor parts (rotor and stator) looks ok. 

Also … I added this week’s “Owl hoots” to my August post about Great Horned Owls.

Category: How-To, Misc, Photos, To-Do | No Comments »
Tags: bearings, Cam, corrosion, electric, motor, pool, pump, rebuild, repair, repairs, school bus, security, wyze

Posted By RichC on September 15, 2022

As we face another recession (some believe we are already in one – see February 2022 part 1 and part 2), I couldn’t help but notice a post from about this time of the year in 2008 (see chart at left) when we faced a previous self-inflicted recession (banking crisis).

The 2007-2008 Financial Crisis was the most serious since the Great Depression in 1929 … and was due to a perfect storm of lending to low-income Americans, zero down loans, excessive overall risk-taking by banks, poorly valued mortgage back securities and derivatives and finally the predictable bursting of the United States housing bubble. In hindsight, we could all see it coming, yet just as with cryptocurrency and the current excessive government spending, along with the ballooning debt and deficits these days, we still do little to fix our personal or national financial health.

Dow and Nasdaq chart from Tuesday 9/13/2022

Who really wants this kind of Throwback Thursday #TBT post or to acknowledge that politicians, and those of us who elect them, continue to run our nation down such self-destructive paths?

Category: Business, Financial, History, Politics, TBT | No Comments »
Tags: banking, deficit, financial markets, great depression, great recession, inflation, national debt, recession, stock market, TBT

Posted By RichC on September 14, 2022

Read an interesting Washington Post article (PDF ReaderView archive) this past week discussing Southwest Airlines “open seating policy” and challenges in landing preferred seating without paying a premium – although, “the only way to guarantee an early boarding position is to pay,” wrote James Bikales.

Still some of us make a game of trying to land the A and B groupings without paying the premium ticket price (yes, that would be me). Recently though, I had a conversation with a Rapid Rewards customer service representative suggesting that I try to use the Chase Business Rapid Rewards credit card to upgrade my position at the gate. She suggested that the credit card should reimburse me the EarlyBird fee “IF” there is a better seat available even when at the gate. The documentation doesn’t state this … nor could I get confirmation from the author or a couple of the quoted travel experts if this works.

The only thing the documentation says (below) is that RR Business members will be reimbursed for two EarlyBird upgrades per year (Personal Priority credit card holders are permitted 4 per year) and that Chase will reimburse those fees. I suspected the reimbursement was “only for booking online” and requesting preferred boarding positions ”before the 24-hour check-in?”  The Customer Service person seemed convinced that it could also be done in person at the gate … so as long as there were positions available (and most of the time there are A1-15 slots vacant). Since I’m usually at the gate early, it might be a way to kill time and see if it works? Stay tuned.

Back to the article, another tip was to have only one member of a party pay the EarlyBird fee and “save seats” … if you really like doing that kind of thing … I don’t.

Category: Advice, Aviation, Travel | No Comments »
Tags: air travel, airlines, booking, flights, open seating, southwest, southwestair, washington post

Posted By RichC on September 13, 2022

If you believe the number 13 makes for an unlucky day, you’ll probably point to that as an omen … but the deep, nearly 1300 points, drop in the Dow came as investors and economists were expecting an easing pace of inflation … not continued high inflation. 

The CPI report indicated a 8.3% rate compared with July’s 8.5% and June’s 9.1% rates … which means we are still at four-decade inflation high. It is reminiscent of living with inflation in my early 20’s. Thankfully back then I new little about how the economy worked and owned very little, except my junkyard car and the clothes on my back. We did buy a first house, but own very little of it and assumed a 12% mortgage … which was better than the going 18% rate. It is hard to imagine financing anything at those rates?

(more…)

Category: Financial, News, Politics | No Comments »
Tags: economy, energy, government, inflation, money printing, recession, stock market

Posted By RichC on September 13, 2022

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Category: Archive, Friends, Personal, Photos, Sports, Video | No Comments »
Tags: annalyn, baseball, building, drew, ellerie, family, house, katelyn, mud hens, ohio, oostras, toledo, whitehouse