What did you do today? - 2020 version

[LRDave]

I opened my online checking app to note that my first pension payment had hit.

It's a mega-corp micro-pension - I now have tree-fitty per month for the rest of my days that DW says I can spend on anything I want (but I have to cover my monthly liquor tab with it first....)

 

[Souschef]

DIL came over for me to do their taxes with TT. All went well until I entered the sale of their house.
I triple checked my entries, then went on line to check the exclusion. In desperation, I called TT, and finally got to speak to a real person.
Bottom line is you have to use TT Premier to handle the exclusion. I had to upgrade from Deluxe to get it fixed.I had to clear and reenter the data and Bingo! there it was.

 

[Hermit]

DS got the plow truck stuck today. He got it in a side road about a block. I got my Jeep in about 5 feet and decided that was not going to work. We dug out about 5 feet behind the tires and raised the plow so it cleared the snow. Got it to back up a ways but it started to slide to the side. The snow was 4 feet or better on both sides. We had to get the road grade out to pull the truck back up the hill.

 

[ckelly78z]

DW, and I cleaned out/repainted/redecorated the kids bedrooms today for our use (empty nest as of 3 weeks ago). She will have a craft room where she can knit, do designs on her cricut, and do other stitch work. I will have a nice padded rocking chair in a sunny corner near the window to read books.

 

[Venturer]

DW and I got the rebate check from our Costco cc in today as we were leaving to go to Costco! (-: We decided to go by and eat "lupper" before hand. Then she saw where one of her favorite stores was having a leaping sale,so we went in there. We left there at 6:45 and got to Costco at 7:00. Parked in left field walked up to get a buggy and then we saw it---saturday hours closed at 7:00 pm. M-F is 8:00 pm LOL. We will have to make another trip next week. To top it off we got on I75 to go home and went 1/2 mile past the next exit and brake lights!!!!! 1 hr later we got to the next exit and were able to turn left while most of the other traffic was turning right and backtracked thru some country roads we made it home in 10 min. It normally takes us 20 to 25 min. to go to Costco, but we found out later on the news that it was a big wreck just past the next exit from where we got off that had things snarled. I feel for the families involved as I saw on tv that fatalities were involved.

 

[Winemaker]

Using my turkey fryer burner, I toasted the inside of a 60 gallon French Oak barrel that I acquired from an old friend. It was a gift from his kids, but he never used it. So this winter I disassembled it, sanded it inside and out, and partially assembled it. After toasting it today, I will toast the heads with a propane torch and assemble, then hopefully begin to hydrate the barrel to see if it is going to be water(wine) tight. I've done two smaller barrels with great success, and hoping for a third. It will save me about $1500 if I include shipping.

 

[braumeister]

Updated my avatar for March, the month of St. Patrick's Day.

 

[Walt34]

Flew a small (very small) helicopter around in the family room.

 

[ls99]

Cleared trails, dragged som fallen trees closer to the woodpiles, at the camp. A nice sunny day 45F the high, it was 22F at 0530. Most of the snow melted.

 

[MRG]

I sent and received a couple emails from an attorney. I was surprised to hear from him on a Sunday then I remembered his occupation.

When I left Megacorp in 2013 I intentionally left one of two investment accounts under their control, so I had a backup to my taxable. I moved the risky account loaded with Megacorp stock in 2010 and started scaling out of it leaving the "safe" money behind. It was in a version of a fund that Megacorp's management tilted to various directions. Historically it had performed well for 45 years and continued to until the end of 2015. I moved it, as planned, in the summer of 2016 when the balance had dropped ~30%. Turns out the tilt resulted in a very, very irresponsibly large position in Valeant shares owned when Valeant did its big beautiful swan dive.

The case has progressed in the court with over 400 plaintiffs. So far 100 arbitrations are scheduled so it may be a long time, or they may choose to settle. I'd already mentally written the money off so anything recovered is a blessing.

 

[Nemo2]

A little background: For a couple years, on our rear deck rail, we had planter boxes, and hosted nesting Mourning Doves. Then, either last year or the year before, two show up - we presumed it was one of the previous chicks showing his mate potential sites, but she apparently wasn't totally convinced and they took off.

Looked out the window this a.m., (the planters have been removed for the winter and there's still some snow), and there's a bemused Dove pacing the rail, (and this may well just be anthropomorphism ), with an air of "WT? I'm sure I used to live here!" about him.

Maybe this Spring we'll try again.

 

[doneat54]

Replaced a noisy blower/fan in our Harman pellet stove, made breakfast for lunch, did a 2 mile hike with the pups at one of the conservation land parcels, enjoying a warm New England March day and noting that most of the ice and snow is gone now (hope it stays that way!). Ran errands to the Post Office, a tombstone/monument place that I buy blasting media at and to the eye doc to pick up some drops. Of to do some drywall work on the bathroom reno now.

 

[Gumby]

We went out to lunch in Guilford, at a nice place on the harbor there. Then we strolled around an antique mall place (didn't find any treasures we couldn't live without), went to the grocery and came home. I has been a warm, sunny day, and quite enjoyable.

 

[Walt34]

Went to the barbershop to get a haircut but he'd called in sick. It's a one-man shop attached to a beauty salon. Oh well, I'll try again in a few days.

Then went to Home Depot to return a set of deep 1/2" drive impact sockets that I'd ordered online. Five of the sockets were missing from the box, and half of the remaining sockets were only half finished. It looked like someone had grabbed a couple handfuls of "seconds", threw them in the box and called it a day. Kind of surprised me - HD doesn't normally do stuff like that or I wouldn't buy things there. No hassle on the return though.

Played in the back yard flying the UMX Turbo Timber airplane until it got too windy. I'm thinking of buying another one to keep a set of floats on. Then the next time the creek down the road floods I can do some float flying there. With full flaps on this airplane slows to a walk which makes it easy to land in tight spots.

 

[Hermit]

Replaced a noisy blower/fan in our Harman pellet stove, made breakfast for lunch, did a 2 mile hike with the pups at one of the conservation land parcels, enjoying a warm New England March day and noting that most of the ice and snow is gone now (hope it stays that way!). Ran errands to the Post Office, a tombstone/monument place that I buy blasting media at and to the eye doc to pick up some drops. Of to do some drywall work on the bathroom reno now.

An interesting approach to bathroom renovation!

 

[Walt34]

Made a grocery store run with DW and just did our regular shopping, nothing extra. That included TP (plenty in stock) and a case of bottled water. That I picked up off the floor because the shelves were too full to hold any more. There was no sign of anything being other than completely normal. Not a bare shelf in sight.

Came home, made big salad, took a nap, and woke up in time for the mailman to deliver the Amazon order that included a couple more toys for the grandnephew's birthday party this weekend.

 

[MBAustin]

Went to a taping of Overheard with Evan Smith which originates at AustinPBS. Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post were the guests and it was a fascinating hour (the show itself is 30 minutes then they do 30 minutes of unfilmed audience Q&A afterwards). Evan is a fabulous interviewer and has very interesting guests - I highly recommend checking the show out on your local PBS station. Upcoming guests include Jim Belushi and Noam Chomsky just to give you an idea.

 

[braumeister]

And it's nice to see that not everything is gloom and doom these days.

The price of gas went down below $2/gallon here today for the first time in years.

And tangentially related, I saw this remarkable report of a dramatic decrease in air pollution in the coronavirus-affected areas. Satellite sensors picked up an unprecedented drop in nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere due to drastically reduced vehicle emissions and factory output.

You can see in the top row from last year how the NO2 levels around Wuhan went down during the Chinese New Year period and then bounced back afterward.
In the lower row it was already very low from the lockdown and went even lower and stayed there.

 

[Gumby]

Went to an organ concert at noon. Then picked up my cat from the vet. She had surgery yesterday for Hodgkins lyphoma.

 

[Venturer]

Tried to move our Verizon phone service over to Visible. After nearly 3 hrs. I gave up. They have an awesome sounding plan but if you have any problem they have no phones for help. You can only chat and the period between question and answer is slooow. I then called Verizon and after telling the rep about my problems she pulled up my files and noticed how long I've been a customer and thanked me. She then proceeded to look for every discount she could and ended up getting me 2 new phones with a 1 yr. contract for only 35.oo more a month, That was only 10. more than Visible would have been. Sometimes it is just the luck of a caring CSR to make a differance.

 

[Moemg]

Today I weighed myself and I have gained three pounds . I lost over 20 pounds with a bacterial pneumonia so gaining three pounds is a good thing . I now realize that it is as hard to gain weight as it is to lose it .My goal is to get back fifteen of the lost pounds .Most of my life was spent maintaining or losing weight so this is a new thing .

 

[Ronstar]

Deep cleaned my truck. Did some woodworking. Took a walk in the 60 degree + afternoon.

 

[Walt34]

Went with DW to a combined birthday party for two grandnephews, one turns 6 and the other 4 this month. Hey, anything for a family party!

Gave some thought to draining the fuel and prepping the snow blower for storage because of the warm weather and lack of snow this entire winter. It didn't quite hit 60° today, but close. Decided that would be foolish and all but guarantee a record March blizzard and I'd better wait as I usually do until mid April.

 

[NW-Bound]

Have a lamb shank cooking in the Instant Pot now. My wife does not like lamb, so this is for me only.

Life is so doggone good, even if my stocks are going to crash tomorrow when the market opens. It could be worse, like getting caught in a quarantine or something.

After dinner, I am going to pour myself a big shot of XO Cognac, while surfin' the Web some more for news on the virus.


PS. The weather is getting mild, and there's no need to run the mini-slit for heating. So, I have solar power to spare, the battery gets full, and the solar charge controllers go to sleep a bit past noon. Even the water heater turns itself off. So much solar power wasted.

I rewired the panel to route the solar power to the outlets that power some lighting and electronics such as router, ADSL modem, WiFi, Ooma, NAS, etc... Altogether, the electronics draw 80W as the baseload. It's a lot higher than I thought.

 

[Souschef]

Called thr trip insurance co. early this AM. Found out i can transfer the insurance to our new cruise next year. We were scheduled to sail to Hawaii next Friday. We were concerned about the virus, but the tipping point was when the Royal Princess coming from Hawaii was not allowed to dock in San Francisco.
Fortunately Princess allowed us to cancel and rebook the same cruise next year, and threw in some more perks.