Saturday posts

Saturday Posts . . .

If this article is right, there is one thing Kanye West and I agree on – – – ALL lives matter.

https://collegedissident.com/ye-wrong/

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Saturday Posts . . .

This is both a fraud alert and an update.

First, the fraud alert. Someone is sending out bogus collection notices that claim to be from the US Small Business Administration. Everything on the letters looks legit, down to the email addresses and phone numbers – but they are being faked. I know this for a fact because they made one fatal mistake. They sent a collection notice to my wife about a loan so small that we could have paid it off from what we have in savings – except that we never applied for the loan in the first place. Even worse for them, for 22 years neither of us has ever signed any piece of legal paperwork without the other – and on the SBA loan application my name is nowhere to be seen. So, if you get anything from the Small Business Administration attempting to collect on a loan that you don’t recognize, the first thing you need to do is contact a lawyer. Contacting the local police, FBI, and posting fraud alerts on your credit reporting agencies are also smart moves.

Now for an update.

My wife and I have owned this property for slightly more than 12 years. During that whole time, we’ve known that the huge south-facing yard on our property was ripe for installing solar power. We even found a local company that we asked for an installation estimate from – but the guy they sent to do the estimate disappeared after talking to us, and nobody ever followed up.

About two months ago my wife found another company that does solar installations. After a few conversations with them, we got all the estimates, including the discount for the US Government’s “Green Energy” tax credit. Looking it all over, we realized that we could afford the loans, and signed the paperwork. Depending on weather (both here and wherever they already had pending installation appointments) we should be able to begin the install of our solar power system within about 2 months. The completion of that project will make us about 97% off-grid for electrical power – on a yearly average.

What’s wrong? . . .

Once upon a time I could hold my breath for up to 6 minutes underwater. I panicked several professional life guards by diving off of the high dive at our local swimming pool and sitting on the bottom of the pool until they freaked out and dove in to “rescue” me. I thought it was quite a fun game, at the time.

I could get dismissed from school at 1530 hrs (the normal time) and start jogging, going from Lebo, to Emporia, (both in Kansas, USA) and get there before my mom got off from work at 1700 hrs. It was a 22 mile run, and I was still in high school.

When my physical conditioning coach convinced the school board to buy a “Universal Gym” I set records for leg presses and bench presses. I was the only person in my school who could leg press more than 4x his own weight.

And when my home team competed in baseball, I was one of three persons on the team who could consistently knock that baseball out of the park for a home run.

So, why is it that 45 years later I can’t even take out our trash without getting winded? I’m in serious pain all day, every day. The pain even compromises my ability to sleep.

My brother-in-law accuses me of being lazy. He thinks I should be sucking down pain meds and continuing to go to work. Never mind the fact that I’d already been doing that for 10 years before he joined the US Army and became my (philosophical) brother in uniform. It didn’t even matter that years later his younger sister would choose me to be her husband.

In some ways, I was better off with my first wife’s family. The only person in that family who didn’t like me was her father. But, that relationship didn’t survive, and eventually I met my second wife. The one who’s older brother thinks I’m lazy.

Here’s the weird part – he admits that he thinks his own mother (my mother-in-law) is either crazy or has dementia. Even so, he accepts her counsel on whether or not I’m a good partner for his sister. Never mind the fact that I was already an Army veteran before he enlisted., or that his mother was married twice, and both marriages together didn’t survive for 25 years. Never mind the fact that he himself has never managed a marriage that lasted more than 15 years. Still – his sister and I have been a couple for nearly 24 years, and in 1.5 years will celebrate our silver wedding anniversary.