Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving. It's noon. Nuria and I are heating a frozen pizza for lunch. It's a beautiful sunny day and the temperature is 60°F. The normal auto traffic on my street is sparse, almost absent. People are in their homes or they've traveled somewhere else. 

I slept late and skipped breakfast. Soon, Nuria and I will be having lunch: pizza. The Walmart pizza is quite good, even though it starts out frozen. Afterward, my plans include chocolate chip cookies for dessert. 

Later, we'll have Thanksgiving dinner. As there are only two of us, Nuria is keeping it simple. We'll eat Smithfield hickory-smoked sliced ham with pineapple, walnut salad (apples with honey and walnuts and celery and mayo), sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, and velvet cake (with cream cheese icing). We'll drink a delicious bottle of alcohol-free champagne—also called  sparkling cider. I call it a simple dinner because I don't have to put it together. But if I were living alone, I'd just make a hamburger. Better yet, I might just drive to Burger King. Their What-a-Burgers are tastier than my homemade burgers.

The aforementioned red velvet cake really does look like red velvet before the icing is put on it. You can't buy red velvet cake at Burger King, so that would be a downside of eating there. I've got ground hamburger in the fridge, and two buns in the bread box, so we'll have home-cooked hamburgers for lunch tomorrow. And, probably, red velvet cake—for the remainder of the week. 

Everyone, I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday, and let's not forget why we celebrate the holiday. Thanksgiving  commemorates the colonial Pilgrims' harvest meal that they shared with Wampanoag Indians in 1621. The Wampanoag Indians had been key to the survival of the colonists during the first year they arrived in 1620. Over 400 years later, that harvest celebration is still going. Nuria informs me that in Costa Rica, the government has announced that the country will celebrate Thanksgiving beginning this year. Most Costa Ricans know nothing about the US holiday and don't know what a turkey is, so I suspect that in Costa Rica the holiday will be less about celebrating a successful harvest that happened 400 years ago, and more about eating yourself into a coma and getting falling-down drunk. Which is fine with me. To each his own.

Store Trip

It is Tuesday morning, two days before Thanksgiving. Nuria and I made a run to Wally World to buy a few items. I had been hearing on the news that prices were going up and things might get scare, but it didn't prepare me for this:

<< This is the egg department at Walmart. The shelves are mostly empty of eggs. Due to reflections in the glass doors, the shelves appear to be filled with something. But actually, only the topmost shelves had items for sale. Normally eggs cost $1 to $1.50, and I've seen them as low as 34 cents per dozen. But the few cartons of eggs that remained were priced—well, see for yourself in the photo below.

The price is $14.80/carton, and if you look closely you can see that that price is for the store brand, "Great Value." However, the eggs in stock are "Eggland's Best," which normally are higher priced. I guess the stocker figured that for $14.80, they might as well give customers the "top shelf" brand rather than the store brand.

Thanksgiving is in two days. I hope everyone has a wonderful day. I know everyone won't, and that's a shame. I've spent many—most—holidays alone, so the shine is long gone from that day. But Nuria and I will be together and I know she'll have something special for Thanksgiving dinner. For one thing, she bought a bottle of rum, which I suspect goes into some kind of cake. I bet it's called "Rum Cake" but that's just a guess. I know little about cooking. What I call cooking involves either a microwave oven or a wok. 

Try to have a nice holiday. If you feel overly lonely, go to an Applebee's and sit at the bar. Have a burger and a beer. You'll probably have company. 

Till next time. 

The Week Is Done

I haven't posted a blog lately. I've been a little busy. Nuria and I had a lot of limbs and leaves to clean out of the yard from the previously mentioned tree-cutting. The limbs had to be cut to fit trash containers. That job took five days plus two 45-gallon trash receptacles plus 15 44-gallon 7-ply construction waste bags. 

The bathroom ceiling was damaged by water from a roof leak. I repaired the damaged plaster with joint compound and then painted the ceiling. The dining room ceiling was also damaged by water from a roof leak. I repaired the damage with joint compound and then painted that portion of the ceiling. I think I've got the roof leaks fixed but I'll know for sure when the next hurricane comes through town.

So the ceiling repairs are done and I've just finished dinner. I'm listening to some mellow jazz music, which Nuria and I do every evening at dinner and sometimes afterward. The music tonight is called "Monday Jazz ❤️ Smooth Jazz Music for Starting Your Week On A High Note" and it's on YouTube here.*

Tomorrow is election day, but it's an off-year election—I think that's what they call it. It's one of those elections where you don't know anyone on the ballot. Somebody is running for dogcatcher. Somebody else is running for school board. I don't know any of them, and I don't have dogs or kids.

*Note: On Tuesday, the day after I posted this blog, the link to the music video now displays the message:  "This Live Stream Recording Is Not Available." Maybe the video is only available on Mondays? I don't know.

The Tree Situation, Part 2

Continued from The Tree Situation.

The weather on the first three days of this week was too miserable (cold and wet) for outdoor work. But on Thursday the sun came out, and Nuria and I got busy. We trimmed the remaining tree in my neighbor's yard (after cutting down the tree growing beside it earlier). I talked with the homeowner and he was okay with us cutting it. In fact, he said he wanted to help us, and suggested we meet on Saturday for a tree-cutting. But I wanted to get a head start so there would be less work on Saturday, so Nuria and I started tree-cutting Thursday. It was chilly but it was sunny, and we both worked up a sweat. We only spent two hours on the tree, cutting limbs off the tree and cutting those limbs into 4-foot pieces to fit in the trash receptacle.

Here's the tree before we started. It's probably about 15 to 20 feet tall. I've already trimmed it back once, about two years ago. I used a ladder to reach limbs hanging over my yard.

Below, the tree after day one. Remember, we cut for just two hours.

On Friday, Nuria and I spent 90 minutes on the tree.  Below, the tree after day two.

On Saturday, we worked about an hour. It was hard work for me, partly because I'm a geezer, and partly because I'm a couch potato. My biggest problem is that I injured my back when I was in my twenties and it never healed properly, so bending over to cut or pick up limbs has my back hurting like hell in no time. Nuria was a huge help. She used lopping shears and she used the chainsaw when I had to rest my back. 

The tree doesn't look as big as it really is when you're cutting it down. I'm not sure my chainsaw is big enough to cut the trunk close to the ground. So I left a stump about 4 feet tall. If someone is parking their car in the backyard, I don't want them to run over a short stump and damage their car, so I left it tall enough that they should be able to see it and avoid it. At the ground, the stump is about 12 to15 inches diameter. The second day (Friday) was cloudy and a bit colder, but we worked for 90 minutes.

Below: Tada! The stump is about four feet tall. The pile of branches we cut off is now five feet tall. We'll have to bundle them into 4-foot long bundles, tied up with string, and set them behind the garage. Or we'll stuff them into the trash receptacle. But the trash receptacle is emptied only once a week, and we have enough limbs and leaves to probably fill up at least a dozen receptacles. The job isn't over until all the leaves and limbs are gone. It's going to take time. But you know what they say about time. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

Below, the what remains after day three.

Just Another Day

On Sunday I sharpened the cutters on my chainsaw. Or rather, my friend Butch sharpened them. He has a couple of chainsaw files of the correct size, and it took him about ten minutes to do the job. Then yesterday, Wednesday, I cut down the stump (see previous blog post if you're confused) of the tree that I had already cut up, and it was ten times easier going through the wood now that the cutters are sharp. What would have taken me at least ten minutes now took only about a half minute. Amazing! I can't wait to tackle that other tree. But it's so large that it will take two or three days to cut it down, working two or three hours per day. I'd get a professional to take it down if I had permission, but because they have to bring their truck into the yard, I'm not going to do that until I have permission. But if the tree gets any larger, I'll probably have to get the professionals involved. That's why I want to cut it down now.

It's 30°F now, but it's going to be 62° later today. And it's going to be sunny. So, it seems that it will be a nice day for lopping branches. But I know Nuria will want to trim some of the bushes in front of my house. I thought I had them trimmed back for the winter, but we've had enough warm weather the last few weeks that they've spouted new leaves and stems. They need another trim. Really, if it was just me living here, I would say screw it and put it off until next spring. But I know Nuria wants the house to look pretty on the outside, and I understand that.

I got my first delivery of heating oil for the winter. It cost $1290 for about 300 gallons. I'll have to buy another delivery in January. When I moved into this house in 2003, I paid about $140 for the same amount of oil. Back then, the cost was about $1.50 per gallon. The price of oil has doubled since then. But everything goes up in price. I guess it's the nature of our economy.

My car is 27 years old. It was 3 years old when I bought it. I tend to stick with things I buy until they break. But it would be cool to have one of those new electric cars. I've looked at some YouTube videos of some electric cars. Last night I checked out the Chevy Bolt. It's not as pretty as the Tesla, and doesn't have all the features of a Tesla, but it's still impressive. And expensive, at almost $40K. My old Jeep still runs well. I don't feel any pressure to replace it soon. I drive it about 500 miles a year. Maybe less, now that Nuria has her car. I woke up one morning last week and there was a note from Nuria stuck on my computer screen. She had gotten up before me and had gone to Walmart to buy groceries. I almost did a little dance of joy. I hate going to Walmart for groceries. It's one of those necessary evils, though.

I don't really have anything to write about this morning. I'm at my computer. Nuria is sitting on the sofa doing something on her laptop. The house is very quiet. I can hear the refrigerator running. At 7AM, the morning news is coming on and the sky is lightening in the East. Sunrise will occur at 7:22AM today in my central Virginia city. I'm going to fix myself something to eat. Probably cereal. Yesterday morning, I heated a frozen sausage-egg-cheese biscuit. I don't eat cheese, so before I heated it, I opened the biscuit to remove the slice of cheese. I found some kind of debris on the cheese. It was about the size and shape of a fruit fly, but I couldn't tell for sure. It went into the garbage can and I heated the biscuit and it was tasty. 

On the TV weather, the weather-person just said that a warm-up is in store and it looks like it will last for the remainder of October. That sounds good to me. Less oil to burn and more good walking weather for Nuria. I hope you all have a good day. See you next time.

The Tree Situation

The weekend was nice—overcast, but with a comfortable temperature and no rain. So I did a chore I've been putting off.

My neighbor's yard (one of my neighbors) has two trees growing near the border with my yard. No one planted them. They may have grown from seeds planted by squirrels or perhaps they sprouted from seeds that drifted there on the wind. The trees are what I call "trash trees" because they have no fruit, no pretty blossoms, nothing at all to make them worthy of being in someone's yard. From examining its leaves, I can see that one of them is identical to a tree in a yard a few doors up the street, but that "parent" tree is now 50 feet tall and very big around. This "offspring" tree in my neighbor's yard is/was about 3 feet from my yard and maybe 10 feet from my garage. I've been watching it grow for a few years and I've been getting concerned about it.

So on Sunday, I went to my garage and grabbed my small electric chainsaw, plugged it into a long power cord, and I went outside and cut that tree into pieces. I left a four foot stump that I still need to take down, but my chainsaw needs sharpening and I don't have a chainsaw file. I'm not even sure what size file to buy, but I think 5/32 (inch) will work. Then I can attack the the remainder of the trunk still jutting from the ground.

After I cut down the tree, Nuria and I spent two hours cutting it into 4-foot long pieces. The trunk and all the limbs, which were relatively small, were cut up. I used the chainsaw and Nuria used lopping shears to remove branches from the trunk. We stuffed my trash receptacle full of tree-trunk and limbs and leaves and had enough small limbs left over for maybe two more receptacles. Which I don't have. So when the trash is picked up, the receptacle will immediately get filled again.

There's another tree in my neighbor's yard, also about three feet from my yard, that really bothers me. It's going to be a big tree, too, and like the tree I cut down, it's just a trash tree. Its winter-naked limbs sprout small pink blossoms for a few weeks in early spring, but that's the only time of year that it's worth looking at. It's too close to the border with my yard, and its limbs hang over my yard, and every autumn it drops several trash receptacles volume of large brown leaves into my yard, which the wind then blows into my outside basement stairwell, whereupon they settle at the bottom of the stairwell and prevent rainwater from going into the stairwell drain. So I'm kept busy shoveling leaves out of the stairwell several times every autumn. It's an extra task I really don't need. So the tree must go.

The previous owner of the house told me he didn't care about the trees. But he sold the house and I can't contact the current owner because he's never at home. But I want to do the courtesy of asking him if it's okay before I cut down that tree, something I didn't do with the first tree. Although, I also have in mind Admiral Grace Hopper's wisdom: "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."

The Truist Transfer Part 3

This story begins two posts ago at "My Current Aggravation."

Yesterday I sent my bank another email about my missing money and I mentioned that I have a personal blog and my readers want to know what Truist is doing about it.

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but a few hours later I received a call from my branch's VP, Ms. Skipper, and she assured me the money that "disappeared" would be restored this weekend. Her word was good, and on Saturday morning I checked my account and the vanished funds had been returned. Amazing! Truist did the right thing, although it did require a bit of nudging. 

One of my readers left a link to the video below, which I find hilarious because it so accurately depicts my feelings about this incident. Hopefully, this post will be my last word on the Truist Transfer.

The Truist Transfer Part 2

This story begins with my previous post, titled "My Current Aggravation: The Truist Transfer Part 1."

To recap, I deposited a bank check at a Truist bank branch, and they mishandled the check. They treated the check as a check drawn on a U.S. bank, when actually it was a check drawn on a foreign bank, which resulted in the check becoming misdirected. (Actually, Truist destroyed the paper check, but it still maintains a digital representation of the check that contains the check's information.) 

So, thinking it was a U.S. bank check, they put the check into the Federal banking system. That didn't work, because there is no National Bank of Costa Rica in the Federal banking system. So the bank reversed the transaction.

When the bank reversed the transaction, they took the check money out of my account ($14,367.36). But they didn't phone me, or send me an email, or do any communication to me to explain why they took the money from my account. The money just disappeared. So Nuria and I went to the bank on a Saturday morning, a few days after the money disappeared, and spoke with a banker named Mr. Graham. He listened and promised to get back to me.

Wednesday came.  At 10AM, Nuria and I went to Truist again. Mr. Graham wasn't in his office. I asked to speak to the lead manager, and they directed me to a woman I'll call Ms. Skipper. Her business card says she is the Vice President of the branch. She seemed nice and competent, but I knew my situation would not be high on the bank's list of priorities. Ms. Skipper said she would look into the matter and get back to me.

Thursday came. I sent Ms. Skipper an email asking if there had been any progress in my case. She responded right away, and said there had been no progress.

Friday came (today). I sent Ms. Skipper another email and suggested that in the interest of good customer service they should immediately deposit the amount of the check into my account. After all, it was the bank's mistake that caused me to lose the money. Then, when they go through the process and do whatever they have to do in order to recover the funds, they can keep the money they get from the check. We'll all be square, I'll be happier, and Truist won't even notice anything went awry.

Wait, did I just suggest that a big corporation would treat its customers fairly and reimburse money that they caused a customer to lose? I have to step outside. I obviously need fresh air.

My Current Aggravation: The Truist Transfer Part 1

Back in July, Nuria wanted to buy a car. She car-shopped and found a nice used Toyota Camry. It was a 2009 model in good condition. She decided to buy it. She had the money in her bank, but her bank was in Costa Rica (a central American country, not to be confused with the American territory of Puerto Rico).

The transfer of funds would require several days, which would probably throw a wrench into the auto buying transaction, so we decided that I would provide most of the cash and then she would reimburse me. So we went to the car dealer and I paid $14,367 on top of the deposit she had already paid. 

In September, Nuria flew back home for two weeks. While she was in Costa Rica, she went to her bank and got a cashier's check payable to me. She came back to the US on September 20, and on September 21 we went to my bank (Truist) and deposited the check. The amount was immediately credited to my account.

Two weeks later, I noticed that the same amount had been debited from my account. This was October 5th. So on October 8, a Saturday morning, we went to my bank and consulted a banker to find out what had happened. The banker said that the National Bank of Costa Rica had not transferred money to Truist.

Nuria called her bank and explained the check situation, and her bank said that the money had been allocated for transfer but that Truist had done nothing to transfer the money. My bank is pointing its finger at Nuria's bank and Nuria's bank is pointing its finger at my bank. Meanwhile, who has the money? It seems that the National Bank of Costa Rica still has it, though I wouldn't bet my life on it.

I trust that if I put enough diligence into this issue, it will be resolved. But I'm not sure. If the money isn't transferred soon, within another couple of weeks, I may have to involve lawyers. Maybe legal papers will get someone's attention at the bank. 

A final note: when I searched the Internet for Truist, I found a lot of problems with the bank. Truist is the result of a merger between Suntrust and BB&T. A lot of people have complained about Truist losing their money. This lost money has made me very wary of Truist and, in fact, wary of banks in general. I took a valid check—a cashier's check—to a bank, and now I don't have the money and I don't have the check. And Truist points the finger anywhere except itself, even though it admits to having problems as a result of the merger. For example, see this article, or Google "Truist bank complaints."

Frankly, Truist has lost my trust, and that's a bad thing for a bank to lose. If you have a problem with a business, here are some resources that might help:

Better Business Bureau

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Your State Attorney General 

Vaccine Misery

Hurricane Ian came and went through central Virginia with not much more than some breezes and a day of very light rain showers. You wouldn't know that it had been a hurricane just a few days earlier. No power outages either.

I went to Walmart Pharmacy and got a Covid (omicron) booster (the new one) and a flu shot and a pneumonia shot. I've had pneumonia shots before, but this was a new one. The pharmacist said it would be the last pneumonia shot I would ever need. I think I had the "last pneumonia shot I would ever need" a few years ago, but I might be wrong. Maybe that shot was the "last shingles shot I would ever need."  I've had so many vaccine shots that they run together into a blur in my head. 

I got the flu shot in the right arm and the Covid and the pneumonia shots in the left arm. Or maybe I got the pneumonia shot in the right arm and the Covid and flu shots in the left arm. Details, details.

The next morning I tried to get out of bed in the dark. I stood up and immediately fell back onto the bed. I tried again, and fell to the bed again. I did this four or five times before I succeeded in standing up. My shoulders hurt and I felt out of whack and off-balance. I knew it was the vaccines, and probably the Covid vaccine. I've never had a reaction to a flu or pneumonia shot. 

I felt crappy all day, and kept going to bed for an hour or two. I was also taking acetaminophen every five to six hours. It helped with the pain. By the end of the day I felt better and I know I'll be back to normal by tomorrow. I guess it's worth feeling crappy for a day if it saves my life. 

I've turned on the central heat. Tomorrow I'll try to order some heating oil. I called the company today but no one answered the phone. Maybe they were out to lunch. The price of gasoline is going up. At the local Sheetz it was $3.03/gal on Saturday, which was four days ago. Today it was $3.19 at Sheetz. WaWa keeps the same price as Sheetz. The price of heating oil goes up and down with the price of gasoline. I think I'm going to pay a lot for my next delivery of oil, but I have to stay warm. If I can't afford heating oil I can always burn the neighbor's trees in my wood stove. 

And that's all the news from the Heights. There's not a lot going on. Nuria still takes her morning walks, but the mornings are getting colder.