Scott’s Blog

I just read Ann Coulter’s article (It’s hard out here for a pump) and I have to say I do not agree with it. (BTW, she’s a bit nasty, isn’t she? I guess it sells more books.)

Anyway, even though I am conservative (and generally vote Republican) I happen to agree with raising both the CAFE standards and gasoline taxes. But if gas taxes are raised, I’d like it offset by a decrease in the payroll tax. Why isn’t creating huge tax credits to encourage solar, wind, geothermal, etc. not considered a conservative idea? It makes no sense to me.

To me, energy independence is a matter of national security. But if we keep running our cars on as much oil as we currently do, there’s no earthly way we can EVER achieve energy independence. Nuclear power plants will not help my commute to work one bit. And there is no where near enough oil in the boundaries of the US even if we were to drill in all of Alaska, and all along the coast of Florida and the Gulf coast….. We just consume too much. The only way to stop it is to make it more expensive. Look at what happened to smoking?

Every dollar spent in conservation pays for itself time after time after time- future liabilities decrease over time. Every dollar spent on nuclear energy, will first take 10 years (minimum) to pay off at all, but then future liabilities actually increase with the disposal of waste, decomissioning of plants, cleaning up the site, etc, etc.

What about a market-based approach to CAFE? Like the pollution credits that have stopped acid rain? Perhaps a market could be made such that gasoline-guzzling producers would be charged more than non-guzzlers….. But even Toyota produces gas guzzlers….. Not sure exactly how CAFE works, but I believe it’s an average across one’s fleet. But I bet each fleet offering isn’t weighted. If you sell 100,000 Corollas and 10 Tundras I bet your CAFE rating is the same if you sold 10 Corollas and 100,000 Tundras. So, perhaps CAFE can be weighted. Surely, this will heavily favor Toyota et al, at the expense of GM.

This is fine by me because GM produces nothing I want.

Yes, Anna did throw up last night- many, many times. In fact, the threw up everytime she lay down flat. So, Andi did the 10p-12am shift and I did the rest of sleeping with Anna on the couch, keeping her in a semi-inverted state so as to not trigger the very undesirable response. At one point at around 5am, she was nice and cozy on my stomach/chest, when she got a little too flat and puked all over me. “Dada needs a new shirt” she said.

Of course at the end if the night, there wasn’t much coming out, but early on it was pretty easy to deduce what she’d had for dinner- “Hmmm…. looks like cottage cheese and meatballs.” The crazy thing was how the cottage cheese, after being in her stomach for a few hours, came out smelling like Feta cheese. In fact, her whole room smelled that way. I had to do a quick late night laundry run, and we ended up changing her sheets 3 times.

Don’t know the culprit- Stomach virus? Lead poisoning? Something she ate? Soy chips Lynda fed her?

Who knows?

I just hope it stops. (She’s in Wilton today.)

(I took the morning off and took a nice nap, to catch up on last night’s missed sleep.)

It was so cute this morning when she was eating breakfast. I guess we’d gotten close last night and while she was eating, she wanted to hold my hand. :^)

Update:  Now, Andi’s got the bug.  This might be bad news for Gini, Peter, Lynda…..

With gas hovering around $3/gallon up here in CT (and my 450 mile weekly commute), I really need to ditch my LandRover Freelander with it’s 20 miles/gallon for something with more. I tossed around the idea of a new car like the Honda Fit for $15K that’s sporty and new and gets 38 miles to the gallon. But now, considering the costs I’m about to incur with the new house, I’m thinking of going used.

I’m currently leaning towards a Honda Civic circa 2001/2002. Looks like I can get something with around 40K-75K miles for $8K-$11K. It’s on the lower end if I use CraigsList.com postings, or at the higher end if I buy through a dealer at TraderOnline.com. With a dealer I have the option of trading in my car. But with the private sale, I then have to privately sell my car.

This is a bit of a hassle because if I were selling to a person, I might feel more inclined to fix the blown speaker (which means hassling with the dealer to get this warrantied item fixed). This is a hassle because LandRover Milford’s service hours are from 9 to 5. Since I have to drive 45 minutes to East Hartford to be there at 9am, this is extremely inconvenient. Not to mention leaving work at 3:30 to get there in time before they close. Also, I haven’t been overjoyed with the level of service I’ve had there. I guess I could perhaps use LandRover Guilford…..

Anyway, this is all a bit of a hassle, when I can just trade it in at a dealer and be done with it. I guess that’s what most people do for the same reasons. Edmunds.com says my car is worth about $14,400 if I sell it privately, and $12K if trading in. I owe $11K on it. So, the question is whether the extra hassle of getting it spiffed up, and sold privately is worth $2K- the difference. I guess it might depend on how high I can get the dealer to go for the trade-in. Edmunds.com further says that dealers can charge $16-$17K for this same car.

We just bought a new house. Since it has been raining Vinny has been busy tearing down wallpaper. Almost all of the wallpaper is down. We went over there on Sunday and Andi painted swatches trying to decide what colors to put where. Anna was running all over the place. Last night I went over there and set up some lights on timers to make it look like someone’s there. Also, Andi got panic-stricken yesterday thinking of all of the lead dust that she and Anna may have ingested on Sunday, since that hadn’t occurred to us. Vinny thinks that lead paint is not only on the trim, but also on the walls. So, he’s going to have to encapsulate the walls, too.

When Vinny is done, we bring in the floor guy. We also need to get the kitchen contractor in there to get an estimate, so that we can put all of the jobs onto a CT State Historic Homes Rehabilitation Tax Credit program. We can get 30% cash back on renovations up to a total of $30,000. Cha-ching! Interior paint isn’t covered, but re-doing floors seems to be, as is the kitchen and all outside trim painting. Although I suspect that indoor lead-paint encapsulation might be covered…. need to check that today.

Anyway, busy, busy. Our house was shown last week, one person might come back for a second look tomorrow. Betsey wants to have an open house this Sunday. Hopefully, if that guy wants to come back for a second look, the threat of an open house may push him to make an offer. (That’s how those savvy real-estate types work.)
:^)

(keeping our fingers crossed)

Welcome to my newly designed website. I just implemented a blogging interface for this site, so I’ll be posting comments from time to time here. Readers can also comment on my posts if they want to share their knowledge or whatnot.

– more to come….