Good Morning All. Clear and 44° here in North Central Texas. Last night of temperatures in the 40's, and today will be 75°. Then mid to upper 80's for at least another week. Maybe rain next week but I won't be here.
Yesterday's car alignment fiasco, while successful was more screwed up than expected. At the last minute my wife told me that they offered rides back and forth while they were working on the car, so I took advantage of that instead of wasting $7 worth of my gasoline. They didn't really know how far they were going to have to go! The issue was not with our car, they had another on the alignment machine since Saturday because they needed a part and they got the wrong one and couldn't move it off; so our car had to wait. They finally got to it in the late afternoon and called to come and get me at home around 4:00 pm. The issue with me was that I had to carry the damn phone around all day waiting for the call!
I hate that intrusive thing and I only intentionally carry it when I am in the car. Even then, it sits in the console. I did get a $20 discount on the alignment though.
The rest of the day didn't go as planned either. I intended to put a new mower deck belt on the tractor, it isn't as easy as the old one. Things moved along until reassembly, I couldn't get a certain pin into a hole because I couldn't get the holes to align, not enough hands. After an hour of trying, I went up the road and recruited my neighbor to come down and assist. Took less than two minutes from there. Meanwhile I ached the rest of the day from laying on the ground, getting up and moving to the other side and laying back down, repeatedly. Feel no aches this morning though.
Regarding federal income taxes; I have only had to write a check once in over 50 years. As I posted the other day, I do not like them using my money interest-free, even if it is just a minuscule amount to the IRS. I always tried to keep my withholding as close to just the needed amount as possible and generally got refunds of less than $50. One year it was $0.96! The one year that I had to write them a check was because my wife received more unemployment payments than expected. For 2022, I paid $0.00 for the first time ever, because we supplemented Social Security with savings and money market funds which are not taxable income. Now that I am going to have to take RMD's from retirement accounts, I will have taxable income. Note that Texas has no state income tax.
Out in the train shed yesterday, I once again mostly ran trains. Layout cleaning and fence project were on hold for one day. I did do some work on the blank space behind the two townhouses. On one, I mostly completed it except for needing/wanting to add flowers/vines to it. It got a small grassy area, a fence, a couple of occupied chairs and a doggie.
Next door has so far just gotten a fence.
Note the giant red ant near the right rear bumper of the VW bus. It is no more.
There won't be a lot going on there since it represents a townhouse that had a small fire on the upper floors and is currently unoccupied except for clean-up.
Troy - Fortunately my HOA has only one member, ME! I am the president, treasurer and only voting member. It covers 15 acres and there's just one house, a barn and a train shed.
Patrick - Take in all of the green tomatoes before a frost, almost all, large or small will ripen.
Todd - That's too bad about all of the items that you were interested in were sold when you returned. I get "too good to be true" items the first go-around.
Sherrel - There are some things that HOA's are good for, others are a real PIA. A buddy of mine got written up for having a classic Mustang on blocks
inside his rear entry garage. It was only because he had left the door open and was only visible from the alley. One of my brothers who lived in the same neighborhood got written up because he parked his pick up truck in the same spot two nights in a row. He had to move it around after that.
Everybody have a great day.
