funny

The other day Five-Cent Nickel sent an alert to the effect that he was posting a very interesting graphic on the changes you’ll be seeing in your credit-card statements now that the new law has gone into effect. It’s quite a creation, built on information from the federal government.

My AMEX bill came a few days ago. It took me a minute to figure it out—Nickel’s graphic with its mouse-over captions could be very helpful to the complication-impaired among us. But right up at the top is the “Minimum Payment Warning,” explaining in no uncertain terms what will happen if you just let your balance float.

If I made only the minimum payment on the $864.17 due and never charged up another penny, it would take eight years to pay this month’s bill! And the privilege would cost me about $1,456 in interest. The annual percentage rate for this loan is a  usurious 15.24%, and an even more criminal 25.24% for a cash advance.

Well, if that doesn’t get your attention, nothing will.

Those of us who are long in the tooth have known these factoids for a long time. But maybe forcing the credit companies to explain, quite literally up front, what a credit-card balance really means will forestall having so many young people end up in debt they can’t handle.

Because I pay my bill in full every month, not only do I not owe AMEX anything, it owes me $77.17 toward this year’s annual rebate.

Interestingly, the busy design of the statement makes it difficult to follow. AMEX has installed a ditzy, squirrelly background inside textboxes that present this information. The account summary, for example, is typed directly against this hectic pattern, small black figures against a dizzying gray background. The law must require credit-card issuers to print the minimum payment warning clearly, because that section lacks the eyeball-spinning textbox fill. But many other key pieces of information are obscured by this graphic device: the amount of the late fee, the account summary,  the credit limit, available credit, cash advance limit and available credit, the days in the billing period. And, most tellingly, the customer service number.

At least now the customer service number, hard to read though it may be, is on the front page of the darned statement. Before this you had to sift through the fine print on the backs of several pages to find a number to call.

This is an improvement. The fact that the credit card company is doing its best to make it difficult to figure out suggests just how big an improvement it is for me and you.

Related posts:

• How long will it take to pay off that credit-card debt?
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So this afternoon I drove up to Home Depot to pick up the gas grill, which that worthy big-box store had assembled for free.

M’hijito allowed himself to be put up to helping me wrestle it out of the van and set it up in the backyard, in exchange for a share of the first dinner cooked on it. Yesterday I’d picked up some steaks at Costco, but today I wanted to acquire a few salad items and also some frozen veggies, to fit into the new scheme to eat better and live better.

My fevered little brain thought I could go up to the HD at Cave Creek and Cactus and then double back down to the Safeway at 7th Street and Glendale, it being far too hot to leave food in the car for the indefinite period required to stand at the service desk and then wait for someone to come forward with the grill. (You can tell I’ve done business with HD before, eh?)

But then I realize, nooooo. I bought the darn thing at the HD at Thunderbird and the I-17. Damn.

Drive across Thunderbird to the I-17, an extra two-mile drive. No problem (quite) getting the grill. But this left me a long, long, long way from a decent grocery store. Or, as far as I could tell, from any grocery store. Truly I didn’t want to drive all the way back down to the Safeway at 7th Street and Glendale, seven miles out of my way, as the crow doesn’t fly.

Cruising back toward 7th Street from the HD on the I-17, I decided to drop into the AJ’s at 7th Street and Thunderbird. How overpriced could they be, anyway? This was directly on my way and would obviate having to drive an extra 5.8 miles to the south. A dollar or two to avoid having to fight my way through more of the homicidal traffic…so worth it!

Once inside the store, though, I could not believe the prices of the most ordinary vegetables: $3.69 for a small package of plain peas or corn. Holy mackerel! I could grow the stuff myself for less than that!

Moving on…and on, and on, and on.  At the Safeway, the same veggies—and even some so-called “organic” varieties of the same—were selling for $1.59 a package!

LOL! I was glad I’d made the extra drive. At a savings of $1.86 a package, the three bags of frozen veggetables cost something over $6 at AJ’s than at Safeway. Almost a dollar a mile! That’s how much the extra trip out of my way saved me today.

Sometimes it’s worth it to go the extra mile (or seven) to save a few pennies.

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Arizona State Governor Jan Brewer

It’s true, sometimes—these days, often—the inner character of my state’s leaders shows forth in their faces, and too many of my fellow citizens reflect that inner character like dark mirrors, still…before humans came here this was a beautiful place, and despite the worst that the European variant of humanity has managed to inflict, it still is beautiful.

Last night Cassie the Corgi and I went for a stroll in the early evening, as the monsoon storms struggled to overcome the heat island effect of our fair city, whose beauty rivals that of the state’s governor. All around us mountains of clouds reached toward the stratosphere, the setting sun lighting them like absurd neon paintings. Truly. If you tried to paint it, no one would believe you. Here’s what we saw, only much, much bigger and much more spectacular.

Jan Brewer, image by Krantzstone. Link to Photobucket.

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Be afraid, my friends. Be very afraid. If you have no fear, click on the image above for a larger, clearer picture of what’s slouching toward Bethlehem.

That thing came in a report from my money managers today. It tracks the value of a dollar invested in my portfolio from June 30, 2000 forward.

Now, if you take a ruler and lay it horizontally across the page so that it passes through the start point on the left-hand side of the page and stays parallel to the x-axis, you will see something alarming. In all that long, eventful decade, only a tiny little nubbin pokes up above the top of your ruler.

That’s right. A dollar invested in my vast holdings was worth a dollar or more for two out of ten years, between third-quarter 2005 and third-quarter 2007. For the other eight years, it was worth less than a dollar. Sometimes significantly less. In third-quarter 2001 it was worth about 68 cents. At the end of June 2010, when this report was generated, that year-2000 dollar was worth about 85 cents.

Suspicions confirmed. Some time ago, it occurred to me that the amount in my investment account was about the same as the amount I recalled coming away with from the divorce, some 20 years ago. Statements from those days have been packed away, and offhand I couldn’t say where they are. They may even have been discarded. But the figure that sticks in my mind is…well, just about the figure on the bottom line of the statement that comes in the mail once a month.

Still think long-term investment in the stock market is the way to grow your savings? Read on…

On the phone with the investment guru:

“Is there a reason to believe keeping money I will need to live on for the rest of my life (which we may sincerely hope will be short) in the stock market is a good thing to do? Unless these funds grow or at least quit losing money, there won’t be enough for me to live on. I can’t keep on forever putting in 16-hour days, 7 days a week to scrabble together $15,000 a year, which is what happens when  you’re ’self-employed.’

“Should we be considering some other investment strategy? Maybe we should take a chunk of dough and pay off that damn mortgage on the downtown house, so I don’t have to worry about where 10 grand a year is going to come from to pay for it. If M’hijito pays rent to me, then about $600+ a month would come from him to me, instead of me having to fork over $800 a month. After the kid moves on, I could probably rent that place for $1,000 a month. Or sell my house and move into it, banking $235,000 in the exchange.”

Well, of course, the very idea is anathema to an investment manager. Put your money in real estate, and he doesn’t have anything left to manage!

The conversation that ensued was eye-opening. The firm has moved large amounts of funds into income-producing instruments, which my guy says are returning 7 percent just now. So even though the apparent value of the securities appears to drop, they’re still bringing in cash.

Couldn’t prove that by me, but then you can’t prove much by me.

He then said that the consensus among his partners is that the future of investing is off-shore; that effectively the U.S. economy is done, and smart money is going to emerging economies. He believes China’s economy will surpass America’s within ten years. The jobs we have lost in construction and manufacturing—where the bulk of job losses have been—will never come back. Jobs in the service sector, which is where most of the remaining employment resides, are poorly paid and will never be anything but poorly paid.

If you thought the middle class in this country is disappearing, you thought right. A young person, he suggested, would do well to look for employment overseas. Americans are in demand in Hong Kong, he said, although given Americans’ reluctance to learn languages other than English, Canada or Australia is probably a better bet. He would, he added, seriously consider moving to Canada if he were younger (and hadn’t yet started his family and career) or older.

Not scared enough? Well, put on your 3-D glasses and look up your address on Zillow. For jacking up your adrenalin level, that beats any chainsaw movie.

My house, whose value held steady through the bubble-burst at $235,000, has suddenly dropped to around $200,000. The downtown house house is between $50,000 and $60,000 underwater. Real estate values have not stabilized; they continue to drop steadily. When I mentioned this to Investment Dude, he said yeah, his place also had fallen in value even more than it already had, which was plenty; he and his wife managed to get a refinance, but only because no appraisal was required—the lender accepted a recent valuation. If they’d had to have the house appraised, they could never have gotten a new loan.

So…how has your investment dollar been doing? Dollar, heck… Can you spare a dime?

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Do you believe there’s such a thing as an addiction to the Web? Personally, it’s the kind of nonsense I discount as pop-psych woo-woo. These folks, for example, claim Internet addiction is “a growing epidemic,” pretty alarming considering the whole concept stems from a satire. Dubious as the idea seems, sometimes I wonder. There’s no question I’m spending way too much time blogging and way too little time living real life.

It can’t all be blamed on blogging. About 99 percent of my work is done online, whether it’s editing or teaching. Last night I worked until 12:30 a.m. trying to finish the course prep for the English 101 class that starts next month. Got to bed around 1:00 and then, naturally, awoke at 5:30.

I’m getting fat because I’m not getting enough exercise, and I’m not getting enough exercise because I’m parked in front of the computer from dawn until the middle of the night. Day after day after day. To some extent that’s abetted by the heat: it’s just too darned hot to go out trotting around the park or the desert. But the truth is, this was going on a long time before summer arrived.

Normally I stumble into the office and start blogging the minute I roll out of the sack. This means starting some time between 3:30 and 5:30 a.m. Write from one to three hours. Then get up, feed the dog, feed myself, in summertime water the outdoor potted plants. Then it’s right straight back to the computer for editing, teaching tasks, Internet cruising, or more blogging. Stuck there till around 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. Get up, grab a snack, sit back down in front of the computer. Come 8:00 or so, realize the dog hasn’t eaten. Feed the dog. Maybe grab another snack; rarely fix a real dinner. Back to the computer until I can’t hold my eyes open, a state that usually occurs around 10:00 or 11:00 p.m.  Sometimes when I get up I’m so stiff from having sat in one position for so long, I can barely walk.

Socializing with my friend KJG for a day and a half, I learned that she spends most of her at-home time on her feet. Her house is spotless and her acre of land is immaculate because she’s busy attending to it. My house—the parts you can see around the clutter—is awash in dust and dog-hair dunes because I’m too preoccupied with the computer to clean, and my yard is overgrown and tired-looking because I never bother to trim the plants and my idea of weeding is dribbling a few drops of Round-up here and there.

This. has. gotta. stop.

As I reflected a while back, too much of my supposedly entrepreneurial time is being spent on highly unprofitable endeavors. The teaching makes the most consistent return on time invested, but it’s not returning much. Blogging? Today I made $3 and change; that works out to about a dollar an hour. Editing pays $30 to $60 an hour, but only when there’s some work coming in, which just now is not the case because I’ve been too busy sitting in front of the computer to market myself.

This morning I decided to get up and do something instead of padding into the office. Even though the four-hour nap (these cannot be called “a night’s sleep”) left me struggling to keep my eyes open, I started in on the neglected yardwork. Repotted the long-suffering hibiscus and lashed it to a standpipe so it won’t blow over in the next monsoon wind. Dragged a bunch of pots whose plants have fried in the heat back to the yard-gear storage. Dragged the hose to various plants. Stuck a number of succulent cuttings into the pockets of the murderous giant strawberry pot, probably to be pulled out soon by The Yanker, a curved-bill thrasher with a fetish for small, juicy plants. Washed down the deck, after a fashion.

Then it was back to work on the 101 class, whose “couple” of remaining small tasks expanded to fill all available space. Midafternoon, I fell asleep on the sofa and stayed out till 5:30. Back to the computer; remembered to feed the dog around 8:30. Finally finished—finished!—the course prep and got the entire, endlessly time-consuming BlackBoard lash-up ready to go.

So it is that I write this at 11:19 p.m.

It’s time to consider whether this blog should continue at all, and if so, in what form. Next semester is going to be hectic. Each of my classes is just eight weeks long, and so students will be turning in stuff in every class meeting. Even if I succeed in controlling the time spent reading student papers—which you can be sure I will not—the schedule does not lend itself to spending two, three, or more hours a day writing and cruising the Web.

One option is to demonetize the site, so it no longer feels like a job, and so it doesn’t really matter much whether something gets posted every day.

Another is to change my work habits so as to spend evenings sitting in a more comfortable chair in front of the TV and writing on a laptop, instead of in a bone-crushing desk chair in front of a desktop. This is how Funny started: it was an idle hobby to cut the boredom of the awful, violent and mind-numbing fodder that is prime-time television. After shifting the blog-writing time to early morning, I stopped watching television altogether (because I’m now working into the night, every evening).

And is a third is to stop blogging altogether.

I’d be sorry to do that. Funny about Money has become part of my life (obviously) and part of my identity. But I’ve got to get up from in front of the computer. If I can’t find a way to do that in the very near future, some major changes will have to take place.

What do you do to keep this occupation, such as it is, from becoming a preoccupation?

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Frugal Scholar has announced a new start-up: College Cooking Crash Course. It’s a collaborative project with her young adult kids, to build a cookbook for dorm dwellers. Recently they’ve been exploring the multifarious uses of the rice cooker, a device that appears to be about to take its place as the queen of the dorm kitchen. Check it out!

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Last April my friend KJG’s almost-new RAV-4 was totaled when a speeding chucklehead ran the signal at an intersection as she turned left. Fortunately she was not gravely injured, although she spent a couple of nights in the hospital.

The police found witnesses who said the other driver had run the red light, and KJG was exonerated of any fault in the wreck. Her insurer proceeded to go after the perp.

So she was surprised to receive a subpoena for a court hearing in Peoria municipal court. The perp, it appeared, was contesting the ticket!

Because she was a bit unnerved by this, I volunteered to go with her to provide moral support. Meanwhile, she reported the development to her claims adjuster at USAA, who, upon looking into the matter, discovered that the guy who got the ticket for running the red was appealing on the grounds that he was not the driver, but that his brother had been behind the wheel. KJG already knew that the car’s owner had not reported the accident to his insurer, but this new twist was as surprise.

It turned out to be a pretty entertaining afternoon.

A witness to the accident was also subpoenaed, and the cop who wrote the report, a razor-sharp woman who reminded me vividly of Deputy Jo Lupo on Eureka, showed up. She was startled to learn, in the course of KJG’s testimony, that the witness got the story wrong and had her driving in a different direction from where she was coming from, but fortunately that proved to be neither here nor there.

The defendant alleged that his brother was driving the car, which belonged to his father, and that he—defendant—had not seen a police report and didn’t even know where the accident had occurred. When KJG and the witness said that despite a strong family resemblance they didn’t think he was the driver, the judge gleefully dismissed the charges against him.

Deputy Lupo The officer, with evident relish, announced she was going after the real perp, this time for the felonies of misleading an officer of the law and stealing his identity.

So a good time was had by all (except, presumably, for the brother, believed to be on the lam). KJG was not challenged on the issue of her innocence in the accident. The alleged driver was proven not to be the driver at all. The judge was grinning like a Cheshire cat at the details of this little drama. And Deputy Lupo got a new perp to chase.

Aren’t you glad he’s not your brother?

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Not, one could argue, when the Splurger is supposed to be pinching pennies to get through a ridiculously tight time.

That bit of logic notwithstanding, today I blew $400 out of my monthly diddle-it-away fund, reducing the balance to just over a thousand bucks. After the glasses and the clothes episodes, this might (one could argue), just might not represent the highest pinnacle of wisdom to which I have ever aspired.

But it’s not bothering me. Here’s why:

Today’s purchase is a new gas grill, a Weber Spirit E-210, which sells here, there, and everywhere for $399. It’s small—only two burners—but it comes highly recommended by reviewers on several sites.

I love my charcoal grill, which replaced the last gas grill. But…it’s just enough extra work to make me not want to fire it up for dinner. Even when I feel like hassling with it and then scrubbing charcoal dust out from under my fingernails, at this time of year it feels unsafe. During monsoon, a stiff wind can come up with no warning; the hardwood charcoal I favor shoots out hot sparks and cinders with the élan of a magnesium sparkler. In a stiff breeze, they blow into the shrubbery and trees, and frankly I’m concerned about starting a fire in these hot, dry conditions.

Meanwhile, cooking in the kitchen also creates a hassle. Every time I get that darn stove clean, I end up splattering more grease all over it. Last night I cooked a piece of steak and, craving a little enhancement, poured in a few drops of wine to deglaze the pan. Even though I’d turned the heat off under the pan, the wine and hot grease exploded all over the kitchen!

So with dinner congealing on the plate, I got to break out the de-greasers and scrub down the walls, counters, floor, and even the counter all the way across the kitchen from the stove. That was fun.

When I’m tired, which is most of the time, I just don’t feel like making another mess to have to clean up, like having to scrub a frying pan and at least one or two other pans if I make side dishes.

The result is, I’m not eating well. Sometimes I’m not eating at all. I just don’t want to be bothered with the mess.

Half the time I snack on cheese and crackers, often washed down with a beer or two. If I feel energetic enough to cook, it’ll be a pot of pasta, because I can prepare the pasta and a quick sauce in the same pan. As a result, despite not eating much, I’m getting even fatter than I was.

This isn’t healthy.

When I had the gas grill, I usually tossed meat and vegetables onto the grill to cook. All that had to be washed was a dinner plate, a glass, a knife, and a fork. The stove never needed to be scrubbed more than once a month, if that often. I ate well because it was easy to eat well.

Now I’m eating badly—when I eat at all—and I’m getting fatter and fatter.

You see where this is going? I regard that $400 as an investment in my health, not an extravagance. I have got to get back to eating properly!

This little grill, which actually cost a bit more than I planned, is just about the right size to cook one or two portions. The big charcoal grill can be reserved for when guests come over or when I have enough ambition to cook up something that tastes smokey and good.

I think I got a pretty good deal on it: commenters at Amazon revealed that the version sold at Home Depot comes with cast-iron grates; most Weber Spirit models have sheet metal grills, far less desirable. Went over to Lowe’s and found the Weber Spirit there, and sure enough, theirs had the chintzy grates. Lowe’s was having a sale on a larger, fancier model, but the $500 asking price was more than I could afford. On to Home Depot: yea verily, for the same price, their Weber Spirit 210 has nice, heavy cast-iron grates. Not only that, but the Depot will assemble the thing for free.

So I think this is a case where a splurge is not a splurge.

♦ Did I already have a charcoal grill? Yes. But because it’s charcoal and not gas, I use it less and less.
♦ Did I need a gas grill? Probably not, given that a perfectly fine charcoal grill is standing out there in the backyard.
♦ But really, do I need a gas grill? Sure, if I’m going to get back to eating healthy again. Or eating at all.

Cheese & crackers vs. meat and veggies? No contest. I really do think this is not a splurge but a wise move, in spite of the bad timing.

Have you ever had a splurge that was not a splurge? What did you not-a-splurge on?

This morning I was pretty entertained to find that the ineffable Evan, my favorite conservative PF blogger at My Journey to Millions, created a lively stir with a provocative post, “Why Teachers Anger Me.” He got quite a rise out of Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, another of my fave PF bloggers, who replied with verve in a whole post at her own site. Both posts elicited a terrific series of reader comments—33 comments at BFS and 56 at Journey, for a healthy total of 89 responses between the two writers.

Both are members of the Yakezie Challenge. Evan has risen to the 55th slot in Wisebread’s Top 100, with a current Alexa ranking of 89,759, and BFS’s ranking of 85,392 puts her in the 49th place.

Not bad, folks! Keep up the good work.

Meanwhile, Financial Samurai, the instigator of the Yakezie Challenge, has risen to the 19th spot with an Alexa ranking of 40,237. His most recent post will will give you something to think about: he reflects on some startling figures about the ratio of elderly to teenage workers.

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The Yarnell Frog at the base of Yarnell Hill, where the road begins its steep two-lane climb up the rim.

Yesterday my friend KJG and I decided to pile our dogs in the car and drive up to Yarnell, the quaint old mining town and wide spot in the road that I covet as a weekend getaway. Perched on the edge of the Mogollon Rim, it’s up out of the Valley’s heat, which at this time of year becomes oppressive with monsoon humidity.

Naturally, we picked the only day of the summer when it decided to rain in the morning. But that was fine: we welcome rain. It cuts the heat.

When we got up there, we went straight to the shady, peaceful Shrine of St. Joseph, retreat center with a religious diorama sculptured into the granite boulders at the top end of the town’s most picturesque road. This provided a place to park so we could stretch our legs and walk the dogs through the adjacent residential area.

Interestingly, the house that I think is absolutely the prettiest little dwelling in town is for sale. Here it is in more halcyon times. Isn’t that the sweetest and best little stone cottage? Probably assembled and mortared, rock by rock, by some miner back in the late 1800s.

It’s abandoned and gone to seed now, but still standing. If I wanted it, it’s there for the asking. In today’s market, the bank or whoever owns it would probably give it away.

Before long we got rained on and had to run uphill to return to the car. Soaked to the skin, we started back down toward the main drag, passing the coveted cottage. A Salt River Project lineman was parked in front—we had waved at him as we were walking around and so stopped to say hello. A Wickenburg resident, he also coveted the little house as a weekend cabin.

I asked him what he thought of the electric service; he said it looked OK to him, probably safe. The panel was relatively new, he said, and the air conditioning system on the roof was new. He remarked that it was a gas pack.

There’s no natural gas service in Yarnell. “Gas” is trucked-in propane.

“So that means the thing runs on propane?” said I.

“Hm,” said he. “Propane’s pretty expensive.” You can tell a native Arizonan by his gift for understatement.

The cottage has only two bedrooms; one of them, KJG noted, is about large enough to accommodate a camper’s cot. I suppose a single person could convert it to a walk-in closet, though.

The big problem with the house, though—other than the fact that it is a house, a white elephant to be renovated, maintained, cleaned, and gardened—is a large structural crack running from the roofline down to the ground. Whoever installed electric service (no doubt as a retrofit) cut a small nook into the stonework near an opening to the low crawl space beneath the structure, evidently to accommodate an outdoor electrical outlet. Though they spanned the opening with a short steel lintel, evidently this did not suffice to bear the weight above it.

So whoever buys the little house will purchase not only a great deal of charm but an expensive repair job. Assuming a repair can be made at all.

Moving on, we dried out over hot coffee (surprisingly good!) and home-made sweets at the Cornerstone Bakery, a favorite of locals up on the main drag. Residents like to pass the time in the charmingly decorated old shop, where everyone knows the proprietors and the proprietors know everyone.  I had a peach strudel wrapped in what tasted like real puff pastry and KJG said her cinnamon roll was the best she’d ever tasted.

Strung mid-town along route 89A are clusters of antique shops, galleries, and gift stores. I happened to know that the next-door Yarnell Emporium carries some interesting hand-designed T-shirts, among many other things. Although my clothes were no longer soaked thr0ugh, I craved a dry shirt and so steered us in that direction. On the way, though, we were waylaid by Behind the Door, a sweet little consignment gallery occupying an old house. Proprietor Carrie Brandenburg carries everything from original oils, acrylics, and watercolors to hippy-dippy bead jewelry of the kind I make myself.

There are some pretty interesting pieces in this store, among them a clever found-art sculpture, a lamp (of sorts) fashioned from old bicycle handlebars. Being the sort with a taste for the near-representational, I enjoyed the only slightly abstract  pictured images here, of pueblos and more recent Southwestern architecture. Click on the photo for a larger view.

We weren’t in the market for big-ticket items, though—or even for mid-ticket items. However, there was no chance either of us could get out of there without at least one of the attractively priced artsy-craftsy jewelry pieces. I picked up these; I couldn’t have made them myself for the amount the crafter asked, and they’re ideal for casual everyday wear.

KJG was in the market for yard art a cut or two or three above the painted plaster campesino slumbering beneath his umbrella in the shade of a saguaro. So she was delighted when we made our way to Yarnell Emporium, which among many other things specializes in some very entertaining and often charming outdoor decor. Just now owner Ed Williams is carrying a lot of metal designs.

I coveted the sunflowers:

KJG, having raised goats at one point in her misspent youth, was drawn to this little guy:

Frugality being the better part of valor, he’s not peeking out from under the shrubbery in her yard this morning. Alas. Inside the shop we spotted a monumental cast bell hung in a circular frame, very Asian in appearance. That was more like what she had in mind. At $500+, the price was pretty good compared to what you’d pay for it in a design shop or at an artist’s foundry in the city. She took it under advisement and is considering how it might fit in her and DH’s carefully landscaped backyard.

We hit it off with the sales rep, who had no one else to socialize with. Kathleen proved to be a discreet but effective shopper’s assistant. Before long we’d stocked up on hats, shirts, skirts…oh my! KJG found a wide-brimmed hat that looked terrific on her; so taken by it was she that she bought another one for her mother. The shop has a nice collection of broomstick skirts, a fashion long out of date but one that I happen to yearn for because it nicely disguises certain unstylish curves on my body. Fabric colors, which appear to be custom-dyed, are too gorgeous:

The little jacket on the right has turquoised-lined plackets that, when you have it on, open out like a shawl. The effect is surprisingly elegant—it’ll be perfect for church as well as for teaching this winter. Got the whole outfit for 30 percent off.

In the course of chatting, Kathleen unveiled a small revelation: the Emporium’s proprietor, Ed Williams, renovated an upstairs apartment and is renting it to the tourists.

“That so?” said we.

“So!” said she.

Since no other customers were braving the rain, she kindly gave us a tour. What we found was an amazing little gem, a beautifully decorated one-bedroom apartment hidden away on the second floor of the rustic store Ed has built on the ground floor. It has, among other things, a luxuriant leather sofa, a beautifully decorated bedroom, and a full kitchen with brand-new, top-of-the-line appliances. Rustic, this is not. And one of the things you should know about Yarnell: it occupies one of the most spectacular venues you can imagine. Step out on the apartment’s balcony, and you have a view of mountains and wide-open spaces in all directions.

Apparently he only wants about $70 night for this place.

Well. Hallelujah sisters and brothers! I might be able to afford that, especially if the Landlord will allow me to bring Cassie the Corgi. May not manage it during this financially nightmarish summer, but I certainly could do it after classes start. And if my scheme for next summer works, I probably could go up there a couple of times a month.

You could rent a lot of $70 rooms for what it would cost to buy that stone cottage in Yarnell.

§ § § §

We learned something else from the locals: The ranch my ex- and I used to own with a bunch of his law partners is now being operated as a bed and breakfast. Nothing would do, of course, but what we had to drive up there and see what was what. That exploration led to an interesting adventure, which I’ll soon tell you about in a new Entrpreneurs post.

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