Category Archives: thoughts

still not rich

Posted on by

So the Powerball lottery jackpot went up to $555,000,000 this week and I, along with millions of other people, spent $10 on five tickets.  I didn’t win.  I didn’t expect to win.  For my $10, though, I got to spend about three days dreaming of what I’d do if I had.

Hope you’re not looking for anything exciting here, as I’m completely convinced that sudden overwhelming wealth would have very little effect on  me.  Obviously, my lifestyle would change a bit.  For starters, I sure as hell wouldn’t be working at AT&T.  More than likely, I’d look for a part-time gig doing something that I really enjoy – photography, working at a library, mowing lawns…I don’t know.  After paying off all of my debts, I’m pretty sure I’d go shopping for a new vehicle.  Not sure if I’d go the RV route or not, though it would be tempting.  It’d be nice to be able to live out of an RV for the next 10 years or so, but I’m not convinced that I’d like driving something that big very often.  Maybe something like a Hummer would be more to my liking.

The brass band would certainly receive a sizable donation, if the board could give me a good reason for needing it; and the new stadium that’s being built at Furman would have my name on it.

Prominently.

I think there’d also be a new endowed scholarship at that school with my website’s name on it.

After spending on those little things, I’d be left with around $335,000,000 (remember, I had to pay taxes on the original half-billion), so the fun could really begin.  I figured to give about $2,000,000 each to my siblings and Dad (if he wanted it – he certainly wouldn’t have to worry about money at any time, at any rate).  The way I figure it, a gift of $2,000,000 is perfect – you use about half of it to pay the taxes on the gift, and you put the other half into an account that pays 4% interest.  If you’re not a complete goob, you could live off the interest for the rest of your life.  Not in high style, mind you, but not in poverty, either.

So I’m down to $325,000,000 now.

There’s a decent possibility that I’d buy some land in Vermont, but not a lot.  After all, I’d have to pay property taxes on it.  One idea would be to buy the land and put a certain amount – we’ll call it a million bucks – into some sort of vehicle that would automatically pay the taxes out of the interest earned in perpetuity.  Not sure exactly how that’d work, but I’m sure that there are accountants who’d know how to do it.  I wouldn’t mind paying the taxes.  I just wouldn’t want to deal with the hassle if it could be avoided.

So let’s say that I’ve dumped two million on the Vermont deal.  I still have $323,000,000 left.   My renter would get about $500,000, Jenny would get a few million, a very small handful of friends would get one or two million each, and I’d find a cause or two that I think should get some money – a zoo or two, the humane society, maybe a youth sports organization (though I’d have to think REALLY carefully about that one).

And that’d leave me with around three hundred million….with which I’d have absolutely no idea what to do.  Some of it would have to be used to screw people or organizations that I don’t like, but I’m  not entirely sure who or what (or how).  The rest?  I guess I’d open up a few hundred savings accounts or something.  I mean, I’d never be able to spend that much, but I’d want it to be FDIC insured anyway.  When it gets right down to it, I figure that I could live an incredibly full life on about $5,000,000 (face it- that’s 50 years worth of a pretty good salary).  After paying off debt, there’s no reason to have any more than that, and why anyone – ANYONE – wants to have more than that is honestly beyond me.

But, at least for now, I don’t need to think about it anymore; because, as previously noted, I didn’t win the lottery.

Night Lake

I mentioned in my last post that I spent several days in Waukegan last week and had a good time.  There was one slight downside to the trip, and I’m still not entirely sure how it happened.  I got two voice mails on Tuesday afternoon.  The first was from a photography store in Calumet, IL, and the second was from the fraud department at Discover Card.  Apparently, someone managed to steal my Discover Card information during the 20 minutes that I spent paying bills (online) from my hotel room last Wednesday afternoon, and they used the information to buy a $17 e-card (online postcard, I guess) and to attempt to buy $2,500 worth of something at the photography store.  Since I’ve – literally – never charged anything to my Discover card, their fraud department was all over it; and my card was cancelled (and all charges were dismissed) by 8:30 Tuesday night.  On Wednesday, I talked to the photography store, let them know that it was a bogus charge, and learned that whoever stole the card information also learned my correct mailing address, though they were having whatever they tried to buy shipped to Maryland – in my name, apparently.

I’m not thrilled that my mailing address is apparently obtainable from the act of spying on my online bill-paying, but it appears that no harm was done.  While paying the bills, I also paid my mortgage and two other credit cards, and I’m not sure if it would’ve been possible to grab my bank account information from those transactions or not, so I’ve been keeping a close eye on all of those accounts – so far, all seems to be normal.  I’ll continue to watch.

Lesson learned, at any rate.  I will never again pay my bills from a hotel room.  I can do most of the bill paying from my phone, anyway.  I just like to keep a spreadsheet, which is why I normally use the laptop.

Today’s picture is one that I drew with my little paint program (Fresh Paint) on my surface, and I call it something catchy: “Night Lake.”  I’m certain that, at some future date, it will be worth that $5,000,000 that I need.

TWD

random thoughts

Posted on by

The cats are annoyed with each other again.  I had to put an extra litter box downstairs because they’ve divided the house.  Boo stays upstairs except to eat.  Bo stays downstairs except to wake me up to eat.  If history is any indication, this will last for about two weeks.  It’s really much more fun when both of them just follow me around.

The temperature was in the mid-60’s when I went to work this morning.  It’s in the mid-30’s now.  There’s just no way to dress for this weather, much less for success.  I’ve got a space heater running in my room tonight.  Can’t bring myself to move the actual thermostat above 57, and I’m going to be asleep soon anyway.

I don’t like Newt Gingrich.  I mean, I really don’t like Newt Gingrich. I liked him once in about 1993.  It lasted about two days.  Then I learned to despise him. It was not a difficult lesson.

The Animaniacs.  Freakazoid.  Pinky and the Brain.  Earthworm Jim.  Rescue Rovers.  The Tick.  Saturday morning cartoons were never as good when I was little as they were in the 1990’s.  And they’ve never gotten back to the level of the WB since then.

Playing tuba in a couple of caroling gigs on Friday and Sunday.  Looking forward to it.  Should probably polish the tuba before I take it out in public, though.  Sounds like a good project for tomorrow night.  I hope I still know how to play the thing – and how to read bass clef.

It’s December 7th.  Pearl Harbor Day.  Also the day that my favorite cat died in 2001.

Got a new project at work today.  It’s a good thing, because I’ll be able to put it on my year-end A&D (accomplishments and crap that must be discussed with the big boss).  It’s also good because it’s one of those projects that looks really impressive and complex, but actually is rather mundane and simple.  My favorite kind of project.

I went shopping at Target tonight because I needed some varied things.  Mayonnaise.  Bread.  Graphite powder to lubricate a little box.  Socks.  While there, I decided to see if there were any old PS2 games that I could pick up for cheap.  Hey, I don’t have to have the latest games.  Turns out that I’m a total antique.  They don’t even have any PS2 games.  It’s all PS3 and X-box now.  Screw it.  I’ll just play NHL 2004 for a few more years.

The cost to register my car has decreased by $2.67 in the last year.  I’m fairly certain that the resale value has taken a much bigger hit than that.  Life isn’t fair.

TWD

moonshine

Posted on by

Whoa.  Almost forgot to get an update in today.

I didn’t realize it was the 6th today until I checked my bank balances (it’s a habit) and noticed that I’d been paid.  That was a nice surprise to start the day, particularly given the fact that I got my car registration renewal in the mail yesterday.

I know I’ve mentioned how much I hate December from a financial standpoint before….

Worked from home today – did a couple of ad hoc reports and a bit of directory shuffling (part of my group’s December housekeeping project).  Around 5:30, I headed down to the Salvation Army to catalog some more of the band’s music before rehearsal.  Slowly working my way through 5 file cabinets of the stuff.  I’ve got three drawers left to catalog and then I can devote some serious time to building the online library that will help us keep track of everything.  My hope is that I can use the week after Christmas to do that (I’m on vacation that week).

So.  Moonshine.

I’ve been fascinated by the evil libation for a long time.  Not sure if it started before or after we moved from Vermont to South Carolina in 1980, though I’m sure that the move added to whatever interest I had previously because the town that we moved to (Travelers Rest, SC) is right on the edge of SC’s “Dark Corner” – a corner of the state that has a long (and continuing) history of moonshine.  I know that I was a junior in high school (1982) the first time I actually tasted the stuff.  My friend Jon Smith produced a couple of mason jars of it one evening when I was at his house – probably playing Pole Position on his Colecovision.  We had Pole Position marathons that year, during which we’d play the game for about 6 hours at a time.  I think that, were I to sit down at a game console that had Pole Position today, I’d still be able to roll the score about 12 times.

But back to the shine.  Jon had two different types of it – both manufactured by someone in his extended family – and I quickly learned a very important fact about moonshine.  It comes in (basically) two flavors.  One tastes like kerosene and the other tastes like sugar water.  Sure, you can add stuff to it to make it pretend to have other flavors.  Some people that I know today add peaches to it.  Some run it through burned wood chips to mellow it and give it a taste somewhat like bourbon (actually very good).  I’ve been told that running it through charcoal is not uncommon.  But – bottom line – it’s either going to taste like kerosene or it’s going to taste like sugar water.  And the most important lesson I learned hanging out with Jon – a lesson that has been relearned a few times since then – it this:  Stay the hell away from the sugar water moonshine.  It might taste harmless, but it can wipe out a weekend really quickly.  The kerosene stuff, by virtue of its taste, forces you to drink it in extreme moderation (not that it can’t also wipe out a weekend if you’re really determined).

The inebriation factor, however, is not what intrigues me about shine.  Fact is, I can go to a liquor store and get whiskey or bourbon that tastes a lot better for a lot cheaper (and there’s that whole “it’s legal” argument, too).  Moonshine, though, has so much history and adventure associated with it.  It’s been around since before the US was a country.  It was the direct cause of one of the first major challenges to George Washington’s presidency.  It was/is one of the defining characteristics of an entire class of people (hillbillies, mountain men…call them what you will).  It’s distribution system gave rise to the most-watched sporting events in America today (NASCAR).  It can be (and has been) argued that it is a symbol of the “true American spirit:” that attitude that says, “I am free and the government will not infringe upon my freedom.”

So it’s got all that going for it.  The adventure.  The mystique.  The romance.  It’s also got chemistry, and that’s the thing about it that really mesmerizes me.  The idea that some illiterate hick in the middle of a forest can figure out the distillation process – coupled with the fact that I don’t understand it at all – really draws me to the whole operation.  How did somebody figure out that sugar, corn, water and yeast could be heated and cooled in such as way that the end result would be liquor?  And how do those illiterate hicks in the woods manage to control the temperatures and timing to such an extent that they not only make liquor, but also make damned good liquor (in many cases)?

So I want to make some.  Note that I didn’t say, “I want to be a moonshiner.”  I don’t want to run some illicit still out in the middle of the Cohutta Wilderness, distill 500 gallons of shine, lead the revenuers on a 100-mile chase at midnight, and sell mason jars of “Tom;s Tonsil Tickler” for $5 a pop.  I just want to understand the distillation process by – hell, I don’t know – by making a jar of the stuff in my bathtub.

I had a co-worker a few years ago who was licensed to do just that (apparently, you can pay a fee and legally make x-gallons per year for personal consumption), but I don’t want to go to all that trouble (and probably end up on a terrorist watch list) just to experiment.  Maybe I’ll just google the process and see what I can come up with.

I’m obviously not the only person who is enchanted by the whole moonshine experience, by the way.  The thing that made me think of it tonight was the occurrence of my stumbling upon a new series on The Discovery Channel: The Moonshiners.

TWD