For some reason when I woke up this morning a reminder popped into my head that a quarterly tax payment to the United States Treasury is due on Tuesday. Normally my income tax preparer sends me a reminder by email well ahead of time. I didn’t hear from her last week. Perhaps she thinks I’m trained and no longer need one.
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Quarterly Taxes Due
Posted in Government
10 Books I Read in 2012
At the end of last year I wrote a post titled 10 Books I Read in 2011. This post does the same thing for 2012.
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Posted in Books & Movies
Just One Dragon
2012 is the Year of the Dragon.
The 2012 Year of the Dragon coins (see photo), produced by Australia’s Perth Mint, are gorgeous. Available in both gold and silver and in several denominations, they are part of the Australian Lunar Series, which issues a coin each year for one of the 12 animal symbols in the Chinese astrology chart.
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Posted in Friends & Family
Heron Gates
Unusual security gates
I don’t have a security gate because my driveway is too steep and I also don’t want to discourage the few visitors I do get. But if I did I would want it to be a heron gate (see photos). At least I think the birds are herons, although they might be cranes. I’m going by the crooked necks and long bills.
Great blue herons are regular residents of Mud Bay. By day you see them stalking the mudflats, patiently spearing fish in the shallow water when the tide is out. At night you hear their painful-sounding squawks in response to some threat real or imagined.
The owners of the gates in the photos must also feel that herons are symbolic of their waterfront properties. The top gate is from a home on Rich Passage off Beach Drive in Port Orchard. The exquisite bottom gate secures the driveway to a home on Erland Point in Dyes Inlet. I see the gates frequently as both locations are on regular bike rides. The photos were taken last weekend.
Free Parking
A story in yesterday’s Seattle Times detailed how the Port of Seattle missed out on collecting almost $400,000 in revenue from the SeaTac Airport parking garage because of credit-card charges that were never processed. So far some 10,500 people have parked there for free. Buried in the article’s online comments was a nugget about how to continue to get free parking.
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Tying the Knot with Comcast
In a post last December, I joked that because I bought a customer-owned modem I was “Married to Comcast.” I should have called it a pre-nuptial agreement. The real wedding took place today. We just tied the knot for at least two years.
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Posted in Business Beat
Light Rain
What exactly is light rain?
Light rain is forecast for Bremerton for four of the next five days (see Seattle Times weather graphic). We get that forecast a lot. I wonder if the humans (or computer) who created the forecast can define what light rain is.
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Cindy’s Chevy
Too rainy for a good look
Cindy has been cutting my hair for more than 10 years. You would think that her collector car (see photo) would have been mentioned at least once during the dozens of conversations we’ve had. It hasn’t. That changed today.
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Posted in Cars
Betting on the State
My friend R. B. and I rarely make a bet that isn’t full of loopholes. Even so, the bets always get paid off. This time the bet seems solid. I think I have a winner although I’m depending on the State of Washington to make it so.
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No Bike Ride Today
Lots of reasons to stay inside
Not too many things keep me from taking a bike ride every day. Today’s rain (see photo) will. And I’m writing this post before noon.
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