Today’s mortgage and financial institution mess has me more than a little bit irritated.  Besides being absolutely terrible for those who have been caught up in it, the impact of the financial troubles are affecting people that shouldn’t be touched by it at all.  It’s literally affecting everyone, some more directly than others.

Look out if you want to finance anything.

We’ve always played by the rules that were in play when we first started getting credit back in the early 1970s.  We always paid our bills, we never fianced anything that we couldn’t afford — and we saved.

Our credit rating, except when we first tried to borrow, — and then we had no credit rating at all — has always been stellar.  For the last 30 years, we’ve never had any problem at all getting financing for anything.

So it’s a little galling to get a phone call today from the RV dealership telling us that they are having problems getting money from the bank and that they need proof of income.

Good lord!  We’ve already got the motor home sitting in our driveway.  They’ve got our fifth wheel.  The deal is supposed to be done!

We’ve never been late on anything!  — well there was that time in the late 1970s when the electric bill from Bonneville Power fell behind the couch… it was for $55.

Our house is paid off.  Our one credit card is paid off every month.  Karen’s car will be paid off next month.

I guess the rules have changed and now we’re a credit risk.

A month ago Karen showed me an new RV in a travel magazine ad.  It looked intriquing, so I checked it out online to find out more and see if there were any dealerships relatively close that carried it.

The next day we took a road trip to go check it out and also visited two state parks.

We really fell for it on the first trip.  It’s called a Navion IQ and is different from all of the other campers in its class.

We stopped to look again on our way up to a picnic with Karen’s family on the 4th of July, but the dealership was closed.  There was one IQ outside the fence, and it’s outer compartment doors were unlocked, so we were able to get the answers to a couple of our questions.

A week later, we did another road trip to look at it again.  This time we spent considerable time inside the little coach, even though it was fairly hot.  We looked through every cabinet, nook and crannie we could find. We sat and talked.  We figured out how the swivel seats work, which is pretty important since there isn’t a slide to open up the space and give more room.  Our salesman was off, but another one was able to answer a number of our questions — inside in his office, which was nice and cool.  However, we left without making a decision.

We talked about it over the weekend and, on Monday, called our salesman to tell him that we wanted it.  He took down all our information so that he could talk to his boss and tell us what it would cost us after our trade-in.  We waited all day for him to call back.  He finally did — during supper — with bad news.  We owed so much on the fifth wheel we were wanting to trade in that he didn’t think they would be able to do  the deal.  I told him that we knew that going in and that we were figured we were going to have to include some kind of down payment in order to get the camper.  He said he would take it to the owner of the dealership and that he would get back to us the next day.

We anticipated that it would take all day again before we heard anything and were quite surprised to get an e-mail the next morning letting us know that our offer was accepted.

The rest of the week was full of anxiety for both of us for various reasons, mainly concern that the deal would fall through.

But it didn’t and, on Saturday, we picked up our new camper.

Since we no longer have any cats, we seem to have a lot more critters in our yard. Granted, we do live in the country, but we’ve never had so much wildlife actually in the yard.

Of course, it’s mostly small stuff. There are at least 5 different squirrels, a couple of rabbits and lots of birds — many of them regulars at the feeder. Deer aren’t unusual and, while it’s been a while, sometimes we see wild turkeys.

Today, though, we were sitting on the front porch reading and I thought I saw a small dog heading across the yard. I looked closer — it wasn’t a dog.

It was a fox. It trotted lazily across the yard in front of the house and across the driveway into the woods.

I know that there are foxes in this part of Arkansas. I’ve seen one two or three times over the years on my way to work.

But in our front yard in broad daylight while we’re sitting on the front porch?

What’s the chances of that?

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I’m currently working on a new Woolly Hollow State Park page.

Other than the 7 trees that we lost earlier in the year, we’ve not had any other losses — until this last weekend.

It’s a good thing that I had pre-published some posts in advance. We were off line from Sunday through Wednesday as a result of the storms that blew through here Sunday afternoon.

We noticed that we didn’t have internet access at some point after the storm was past us. It didn’t come back that afternoon and evening and wasn’t back when I got up in the morning. Assuming that it was a problem somewhere down the line in town, I went off to work thinking that it would be back up by the time I got home.

Wrong…

It wasn’t, so I called the phone company’s high speed internet support number and — after waiting forever for a service person to come on line — went through the steps of proving it wasn’t anything I could resolve from this end. At that point I was told that the company would send someone out on a service call the next day, Tuesday.

Didn’t happen…

There was no change in the modem status when I got home. It still wasn’t connecting — no matter what I did. So I called the service center again. This time the wait was very short. They promised someone would be out on Wednesday.

Finally…

The problem was an easy fix. The modem had gone out as a result of a lightning induced power surge.

On Sunday, while I was taking a shower, there had been a loud crash of thunder — close enough and loud enough that I recall feeling the jolt through the floor of the shower!

I hadn’t thought about it after that as we had no obvious damage anywhere. However, the lightning must have struck directly across the highway from us. One family lost a number of electrical components. Another family’s computer crashed and couldn’t be restarted.

We were lucky, only losing the modem.

The new modem is about 1/4 the size of the old one, which we had had for quite a few years.

It’s nice being back on line — although I was able the check some things while on break at work. There is certainly a sense of something missing when you can just go to the computer and access the internet.

I wonder what it would be like just to go without it cold-turkey for a couple of weeks or more.

Might have to try that — take a vacation from all things computer related… 😉

I’m not a scientist. I wanted to be one when I grew up, but, like so many childhood ambitions, it never happened. However, my career — from which I recently retired — was in a fairly technical field that requires knowledge of many scientific principles.

I don’t recall from any of my science classes and courses anything about consensus being a part of any scientific process, unless, of course, one is referring to political science. Science is research. It’s study. It’s going to the ends of the earth and the depths of the sea to find factual information. Science is about taking what is learned and developing hypotheses and theories and proving and disproving them.

Consensus is not science.

A consensus of many scientists and others says that there is a very high probability that global warming is being caused or worsened by the activities of man.

I’ve read a lot of the material associated with their position and some of the conclusions don’t quite add up for me. For instance, carbon dioxide is supposed to be the primary contributor to global warming, yet there is no explanation why it seems to start going up after the temperature rises that it’s supposed to be causing. In my view, it’s more likely that the rise in carbon dioxide is due to gases coming out of solution as the oceans very slowly heat up, which has been occurring for many decades.

Is the climate change that is certainly occurring being caused by man or are we taking credit (blame) for something that is entirely out of our control?

Or is it just consensus?

(more to come on this topic… )

Another rough day and night for parts of Arkansas.

After nothing but weatherman chatter on the local TV stations, we had tuned the sound out.

Then, at about 7:15 P.M. our home phone started ringing. Less than two seconds after that, my cell phone was ringing — I forgot I had it in my pocket. Then we heard Karen’s cell phone ringing in the living room. Off in the distance the sirens were starting to sound.

When I answered my phone, it turned out to be the head meteorologist from the Little Rock TV station we normally watch. They offer a notification service — for a small annual fee — that will call your phones and send you an e-mail for the storm warnings that you select for your local area. We had selected to be notified for tornado warnings — and that’s what this was.

A storm cell with a possible tornado was heading our way and it was forecast to be here at 7:45.

A full 30 minutes advance warning!

I went and checked to storm shelter. It’s located inside the addition that we’ve been working on forever. We have to go outside to access it, though, as we haven’t got an opening between the house and addition, yet.

The storm shelter is in good shape and, 15 minutes before the storm cell was due, we headed to the that way. We took jackets, our laptops, the portable hard-drives with all of my photos, Karen’s purse, my wallet, our budget book and three flashlights. I had already put a couple of camp chairs down there.

About 7:45, it looked like the cell was going north of us, so I went back in the house to check what they were saying on TV. They showed the cell in our area, with the heaviest part of it to the north, but said that the part right over us was showing rotation, so I headed back to the shelter, where we waited for another ten minutes.

It turns out the cell went about 7 miles north of us and then died almost completely away over the next 30 minutes.

This is the first time that we actually used the shelter. Even though nothing came of it, it is comforting to have it available — just in case.

Especially the way things have been going this year!

I’m not looking forward to tomorrow’s news. We already know that Stuttgart, down south and east of Little Rock, was hit and that there are several fatalities from the storm system over in Oklahoma.

I’ve heard more than one person say that they ready for the hot, stagnant days of summer — something that few around here really look forward to.

Yesterday, we learned how much we’re going to have to cough up for taxes this year.

We knew it was going to be bad.

We were hoping it wouldn’t be as bad as we thought it might be.

Unfortunately, we were wrong. It was even worse.

Fortunately, though, being retired now and normally on a relatively fixed income, the taxes for 2007, our transition year to retirement, should be the worst and future years should be relatively painless.

We had an certified public accountant do the taxes for us this year. It was expensive, but worth not having to deal with the tax return anxiety.

This was the first year I haven’t done my taxes myself. There were just too many variables and potential expensive pitfalls.

I’ll probably be back to doing my own taxes next year.

Karen and our oldest daughter went for a hike at the Bona Dea Trails near Russellville Saturday while I stayed home to do some work on the shop. We had heard that there was an alligator in the wildlife refuge that the trails wind through. Karen was always looking, hoping to see it everytime she was there. Of course, I was a bit skeptical that any of us would ever see it.

I was wrong!

Our daughter took these pictures yesterday. Karen estimates that it was 70 to 100 feet away. She has a post about it on her blog, too.

It doesn’t look like this guy — or gal? — needs to go far for a meal!

This abandoned farmstead stands in ruin from blasting winds which
have shifted topsoil from field to cover the house and improvement.
The old turning plow in foreground was left at the end of row in the field.

Date: 1935
Photographer: B. C. McLean
Location: Bacca County, Colorado
Watershed: unknown
(see digital image source)