Entry 559: Things Ain't Going Like You Think They Should

It's so frustrating when things don't work out the way you think they should, isn't it?  It ain't all good.

I have two examples of that in my life right now.  The first is our plumbing.  We have a clogged pipe somewhere that we can’t seem to get unclogged.  We had people come out four times to work on it—twice to snake it, once to look at it with a camera, and then to hydro-jet clean it, finally... or not finally.  Two days ago I was in the basement and I thought I heard a little blub, blub, blub—the telltale sign of trouble.  It wasn’t super loud, and I didn't want it to be true, so I ignored it, but I heard it.  And then later, S’s sister, who’s staying with us for a while, heard it too, and this time, she said, it was really big and loud.

I had the plumber come back again—the third time the same dude has been here (he reminds me of Craig from Friday)—but I knew what was going to happen.  I knew that we weren’t going to be able to get it to make the sound while he was here, and, lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened.  So, he didn’t know what to do, which is understandable—as far as he could tell everything was fine.  But I don't think it is.  He said sometimes air can get trapped and make that noise, so it doesn’t necessarily mean that the clog is still there, but I dunno.  That doesn't sound right to me.  I want to believe him, but I’m dubious.  If I were a betting man, I'd put money on the clog reemerging in the next few months, if not the next few weeks.  We shall see.

The second thing is my tooth.  The one I had a second root canal on about a month ago.  It’s bothering me again.  It’s not super painful, but it’s causing a sort of constant low-grade throbbing irritation.  It’s like, if a divine being told me it would go away in a month, and all I had to do is live with it, I could live with it, no problem.  But that’s not the case.  On the contrary, the endodontist told me it’s unlikely to go away and will probably get worse, if anything (likely cause: a root fracture).  The only real remedy is to get it extracted.

So, it’s looking like another round of mouth surgery for me.  Yay.  The tooth isn’t in the front, but it’s not in the back either (it's #5, if you're hip to the dental numbering system), so I will have to get a prosthetic tooth (or tell everybody I play hockey), and then eventually another implant.  Implants are great once they’re put in place (I haven’t had any trouble with the two I’ve had for the past twenty years), but they cause a lot of pain—in the mouth and the wallet—before that.

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In other news, Derek Chauvin was found guilty earlier this week on all charges for his murder of George Floyd.  I thought that that's what was going to happen but was still very nervous about it.  I watched the announcement live and was kinda surprised at how cathartic a moment it was for me.  I wasn't surprised by the jury's decision, but I was so very relieved.  My relief was threefold: It means justice was served (in this particular instance); it means the bar for police accountability is at least low enough that an officer can't asphyxiate a defenseless man on video for nearly ten minutes and get away with it; it means a potentially ugly spate of violent protest and rioting was averted.

I've talked about policing many times on this blog before, and I don't really have anything new to say on it.  I'll just reiterate that the main problem with policing in this country, in my opinion, is that too many officers are too willing to use deadly force instead of other alternatives.  Too many police officers are just too violent, and they have too violent a mindset.  They see themselves as soldiers in the unwinnable "war on crime," instead of public servants with a duty to keep the peace.  It's all this "thin blue line" bullshit, where police see themselves as the line protecting the good guys from the bad guys, and the line must be held at all costs.  But in actuality who the good guys and bad guys are is rarely clear-cut, and the people police protect us from are us.  There is no blue line or any sort, just a whole lot of gray.

It's not even necessarily a racial thing.  I mean, it is because black people bear the brunt of police violence, but they certainly don't do so exclusively.  A lot of white people get killed by police too.  Put it this way, if you gave me two options—a) The amount of racism among police officers stays the same, but the willingness to use lethal force decreases a little bit; b) the amount of racism among police officers decreases a lot, but the willingness to use lethal force stays the same—I would pick a) every time.

The flip-side of this, however, is that liberals (like me) have to get real about the consequences of changing policing, especially in the short/medium-term.  There seems to be some fantastical thinking that scaling back policing won't affect crime rates, but the evidence is to the contrary—more police mean less crime.  (I mean, that's kinda common sense, no?)  The point is, however, that crime rate is not the only metric when considering public safety policy.  If it was, we could live in a police state and have a crime rate of almost zero.

The problem is that conceding crime rates could rise is a tough sell.  Telling comfortable people they have to be less safe, even just marginally speaking, so that other people, they don't know and rarely interact with, can be less oppressed is a difficult political argument.  So, it's not an argument police reform advocates often make.  But it's probably the one that most reflects reality.

Okay, until next time...

Entry 558: 'Cause I'm The Tax Man, Y-e-ah, I'm The Tax Man

Very little time to blog this weekend.  I allocated some time to blog this afternoon, but I spent it filing our taxes instead.  It was long and frustrating, but I got it done.  We owe a little less than we were thinking too, which is a could-be-good-or-bad thing.  On the one hand, paying less money is good; on the other, it makes me wonder if I messed up somehow.  Oh well.  Whatever.  I entered everything as honestly and accurately as possible.  Nothing I can do other than that.

It's all such a racket.  I'm obviously not the first person to complain about our Byzantine tax code, but it's like -- to what end?  To what end is all this 1099-INT, Box B, Line 3 stuff?  Do we need it as a society?  I understand there are benefits to giving people tax breaks on certain things.  It's an easy way to incentivize things we like.  But if we just trashed it all and said, it's x% across the board, or something close to it, would we be any worse off?  Remember Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan?  If we did something like that, only with a higher value, wouldn't that be better?  I think it would.  It would be easier and less expensive to calculate, much less stressful on everybody, and harder to cheat -- no loopholes, no deductions, just x.

Actually, come to think of it, I'd change the percentage based on how much you make.  So, I'd keep the tax brackets but still make it an easy percentage.  Something like, your first $25,000 is not taxed, $25K-$50K is taxed at 15%, $50K-$75 at 20%, so on and so forth, until you get into the multimillions and then everything is taxed at like 75%.  (I'm a soak the rich proponent.)  Something Paul Ryan (remember him?) used to advocate for were tax laws that allow your to file your taxes on a 3 x 5 note card.  I'm totally down with that.  But I suspect we would have different opinions about the magnitude of the numbers that would be on the card.

Anyway, Tax Day got extended this year to May 17, so we still have a month to go, but S got really antsy about it.  Usually she does the taxes, but this year it was a calamity of errors.  She bought TurboTax on her personal computer because her work computer (her preferred computer) has all this firewall protection software on it.  But her personal computer has an outdated operating system and can't run this year's version of TurboTax.  So then she bought the new OS... and realized she doesn't have enough space on her computer to install it.  [Sad trombone sound.]

And that's how I got tasked with it.  I haven't seen S that annoyed with anything in a long time, and so I figured for the sake of matrimonial harmony I should take care of it sooner rather later.  That's how today ended up as tax day, and that's why I have to go now.

Until next time...

Entry 557: Vaccine Appointment Booked!

Finally booked my vaccine appointment.  I say "finally" because I had grown really impatient over the past few weeks, as just about everybody I know has gotten their first shot, at least, or has an appointment to do so.  My number just wasn't coming up.  I am definitely in a low-priority tier -- not elderly, no underlying health conditions, not in a priority zip code, can work from home, etc. -- but others in this tier (like S) are getting their registration emails.  Why not me?

Luck of the draw, most likely, and also I'm not willing to lie on my registration form.  I don't begrudge anybody for "cutting the line" by being savvy online, or knowing somebody who has an in, or just showing up at a vaccine site on stand-by, or what have you -- moving quickly is much more important than moving perfectly fairly in this situation -- but I don't think it's right to say things that aren't true to get priority.  And I know people who have done that.  One person I know, who lives in a condo by himself, answered "yes" to the question, "Do you live in group house?"  Another person I know, of normal weight, said she is obese.  I just can't bring myself to do that.  We need a baseline of courtesy and honesty for society to function.  (Also, there is the small chance of getting caught and called for it, which, to me, is just about the most embarrassing thing imaginable.)

Luckily, S heard about these mass-vaccination centers they've opened in Maryland, even to DC residents, and I was able to book an appointment for tomorrow afternoon.  Initially I was going to drive to Salisbury, which is five hours round-trip from my house, but I was able to find a closer facility, under three hours.  That's not too bad -- about an hour-twenty up and an hour-twenty back.  Plus, it's the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, so it's one-and-done.

It also might be less effective.  It certainly has a worse reputation, which is perhaps why it's available at these mass vax sites, but from what I can gather, its bum rap is mostly unwarranted.  It prevents infection for a significant majority of its recipients (almost 75% in the U.S.), and, most importantly, the number of people who've needed to be hospitalized or died from Covid after taking it is effectively 0.  Here's a quote from AMA Chief Health and Science Officer Mira Irons, MD:

"Don’t get caught up necessarily on the numbers game, because it’s a safe and effective vaccine and what we need is to have as many effective vaccines as possible.  Accept the fact that now you have three highly effective vaccines...  These vaccines have not been tested head to head, so it’s impossible to do a really accurate comparison.  What matters most is … they are all effective at preventing the most severe Covid outcomes, including hospitalization and death."

So, despite the alarmist headlines about J&J, count me in.

One of my trivia friend's wife is also going to get vaccinated at this site tomorrow, and they don't have a car, so I'm giving her a ride.  I don't know her super well, so it might be a little awkward.  Also, I'm not sure if we will wear our masks the whole way there or not.  I didn't even think about that when I offered the ride.  It would be pretty ironic if one of us gave the other Covid on the way to get vaccinated.  We should probably keep our masks on.  (I don't really mind the mask that much, truth be told.)  Also, driving is usually a chance for me to listen to podcasts, and it would be weird if I did that with her in the car.  And now I have to clean the car, which I should have done a long time ago regardless, so I guess that's okay.  It'll be fine.  I need to rebuild my friend group here in DC, anyway.  It's been decimated through people moving out of the city and atrophy from quarantine, so I should probably take every chance I get to bond with people.

In other news, S's whole family -- parents, sister, sister's dog -- are in town for an extended visit.  They all got vaccinated and headed up.  (They are also all still very Covid cautious despite this.)  It's nice -- we hadn't seen her parents in over a year -- but it's a mad house now, especially with everybody being inside most of the time.  Maybe it's a good thing the vaccination site is kinda far away.

Alright, that's all I got for today.  Until next time...

Entry 556: Big Maple

When it comes to home ownership, it’s always something, especially with this house.  I’ve been thinking about why we’ve had to do so much more basic maintenance in our first few years of this house compared to our last house, and I think I know the answer.  We purchased this house from developers who renovated and flipped it.  The incentive for them is to do the renovations as cheaply as possible without hurting the asking price.  This means outwardly things are probably going to look quite nice – beautiful floors, quality tiling, well-kept yard, new paint jobs, etc.  But there are probably going to be corners cut in other, less obvious areas that reveal themselves over time – cheap light fixtures and ceiling fans, slow drains, closet doors that are put on backwards, etc.  A potential buyer will probably catch some of these during inspection (we caught a few), but not all of them, and the DC housing market is so tilted toward sellers that a lot of buyers waive their inspections or don’t much stock in them, because they are so scared of scuttling the deal.  It’s better for the seller to go cheap wherever they can get away with it, because they won’t be living the house they're selling.

Our previous house, on the other hand, we purchased from a woman who had lived there for almost 20 years before she sold it to us.  So, it was the reverse.  Outwardly it didn’t look as nice, but all the little practical quality-of-life things were better, because she had been consistently upgrading and fixing them.  Her incentive was to make the house as livable as possible, since she was the one living in it.  It wasn’t to her benefit to go cheap.

Although, now that I think about it, we did spend thousands of dollars in renovations and fixes while we lived there.  We spent almost $10K alone on a new radiator because our old one was leaking carbon monoxide (which is very bad), and we completely remodeled one of the bathrooms, the basement, and extended a bedroom.  We also leveled out our backyard and replaced a rotting deck with a nice stone patio.  I don’t remember exactly how much all that cost, but it must have been pretty expensive.  So, maybe our old house wasn’t any cheaper to maintain.  Maybe it was just less annoying because it wasn’t the constant drip, drip, drip of repairs – or maybe it was, and I’m just falling victim to recency bias, and you can basically ignore everything I’ve written thus far.

 

Whatever the case, this time it’s a tree.  We have a big tree in our back yard – a maple of some sort, I think – and it’s kind of a nuisance.  It blocks a lot of light and it litters our yard with sticks, especially after a strong wind.  But it’s a tree, and I’m loathe to mess with trees, because they are important to the ecosystem and a big part of the neighborhood aesthetic.  S, however, wants to do something about it.  Her main fear is that the bigger branches are going to snap off during a storm and damage our house... or worse.  

So, she’s called a few tree people out to look at it and see what could be done.  In DC, apparently you can only cut down a tree if you have a good reason, and the first guy who came out told us that we wouldn’t be able to attain the permit to do so.  He suggested we do some extensive pruning.

But then we had somebody else come out, and she took a long look at the tree, picked up a long stick stuck it through a knothole, smelled it (for some reason), and shook her head.

Her: You see that.
Me: Uh... I don't know?  No?
Her: You don't see that?
Me: It's a stick?
Her: Look at how deep it goes.
Me: What does that mean?  Is that bad?
Her: It means you have hollow growth.
Me: You're going to have to elaborate.
Her: This entire limb is at risk of snapping off.

The "limb" to which she was referring is basically a whole separate tree in and of itself.  If it snapped off it would complete cave in the roof of our family room.  This was in direct contrast to what the other guy told us, who said the tree was perfectly healthy and structurally sound.  I don't know whom to believe.  It looks healthy to me, but what do I know?  I'm no arborist.  Also, the second person's assessment got me a bit spooked, as we do have some powerful wind storms come through here from time to time.

As I mentioned above, S has long been fearful that this tree would cause damage, so she's all in on getting it cut down.  I ultimately agreed.  My thinking is this: Since we're required to get a permit from the city, anyway, there is no harm in starting that process.  If they tell us that it is healthy and strong and can't be cut down then that's that.  But if they tell us it does pose a risk and that we are allowed to cut it down, then we should do that.  Really, it's an easy decision for us, because it's not our decision.

Also, if we cut it down, it will make it easier for us to get solar panels, which has been a dream of mine for a while, so it would probably be a net positive for the environment overall.

Alright, time to what some college basketball.  I could win hundreds of dollars if Houston pulls off an upset of Baylor.  Let's check the score -- shit, it's already 19-11 Baylor.  Oh well, is all a mess of corruption, anyway.

Until next time...