Tabulating Expenses

While an Osher Institute course on Excel did not materially advance my skills, its basic addition and searching capacity have enabled me to get control of my finances.  Good fortune has left me very comfortable on the resources side.  Still, I watch what I spend, though pay a financial advisor to watch what my wife and I invest.

Every month on or about the 20th, I go through bank and credit card statements.  Each expense has a category, though for individual outlays, the best classification can be debated.  If I eat out at home, it's Eat Out.  If I eat out on a trip, it's Travel.  Gas fill ups at home are Gas, while staying at a hotel away, it is Travel, whether I drove my car or a rental.  Tolls are Travel irrespective of where they occur.   Comcast's monthly fee gets called entertainment, even though the internet does not often amuse, the land line gets paid in that bill, and we get TV service.  It makes it appear that I entertain myself more than I really do.  Health insurance gets logged separately from auto and home and life.  I do my best to keep the compromises consistent.  

As I log each individual expense each month, I note which are on autopay.  It's quite a lot.  No insurance premium or utility bill will get overlooked that way.  Credit card payments also get taken out of my checking account automatically, though each card's carrier gives me a heads up a few days before.  My Medicare supplemental premium does not.

At the end of each quarter, I tabulate quarterly expenses by category.  The wizardry of Excel allows me to total the groceries column, the by dragging, the same formula calculates each other category.  I do this at the half year and as an annual summary.

I spent a lot of money.  Biggest chunk by far, taxes.  My investments did so well, at least on paper, that the financial managers silently cashed out periodically, leaving me with big bill to settle with the IRS.  I never saw much of this as income, just as an appreciation of my holdings, but one that required a transfer to my checking account.  Living expenses don't seem that extravagant.  Average $90 a week at the supermarket, purchases of Stuff from retailers or e-tailers totalled less than groceries.  My auto payments ended.  Maintaining my house ran $17K for the year.  Some big ticket items, a plumbing revision, heating repair, landscaping.  And cumulative smaller expenses from lawn mowing to biweekly house cleaning crew, an expense that essentially replaced the car payments that had reached conclusion.

We are pretty generous with donations.  Mostly small ones.  The larger ones come from my IRA mandatory distribution.  We try to share what we have and make a statement about what we value.  Travel came well below our means, maybe about half of what we should spend.  And dining out locally does not amount to much.  Like many others, the cost of each evening has crept upwards.  It will not affect our financial position if we went out more, but it's not worth the cost or the shlep back and forth.

So the numbers tell me that I live sensibly.  Could spend more on myself, but don't really feel a need for any more stuff.  Need to reassess the value of the biweekly housecleaning, some $5K over a year.  No need to rejoin the JCC, though reducing the cleaners by half would more than pay the annual fee.  Some kind of household repair becomes periodically inevitable.  And maybe take a major trip in the coming year.  And hopefully a much reduced tax liability.

Old Cartoons

As a grade schooler, 1957-1963 or thereabouts, my early mornings started with cartoons on days without pressure to dress for school.  Looney Tunes stood out.  Everyone knew Bugs Bunny and his associates, who eventually found their way to a US Postal Service series of stamps and swag.  My home TV for that entire era only delivered black and white, so the color Looney Tunes had to wait for matinée shorts at the movies or occasional reels run in school.  They weren't my favorites.  I took more of a liking to Flip the Frog and Farmer Gray aka Farmer Alfalfa.  To the best of my knowledge, those were never colorized.  Later, I would turn on Crusader Rabbit at 7AM every Saturday morning.  Farmer Gray had no audio dialogue, though occasional subtitles.  Flip the Frog spanned the entry to talkies but the skits remained mostly silent.  Music accompanied each, often the finest classics ever composed, though unknown to me as a grade schooler.

Democratization of cyberspace and YouTube enterprises have reconnected me to my old favorites.  When I watched them as a child I did not know when they had first been produced.  It turns out that Farmer Gray and Flip came to the cinemas in the pre TV era, early 1930s.  They each ran about seven minutes, making them suitable for a movie theater prelude to a main matinée.  On TV, they stood alone.  At the time I watched them, they were already about 30 years old, though my parents may have seen some in the original.  They seemed remote, already part of an obsolete screen history at the time I sought them out on television.  For perspective, my daughter watched She-Ra Princess of Power and my son the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Each series is older now than Flip and Farmer Gray were when I watched them, but neither registers as obsolete.  Neither do Looney Tunes of a slightly later time than Flip or Farmer Alfalfa.

Absence of dialogue posed a challenge for the cartoonists.  They had to make the pictures memorable.  Looking now, I find the plots and diversions witty.  Heads lopped off but easily replaced.  Emotions between a loving feline couple conveyed without words.  Modern cartoonists have become too dependent on accompanying audio to tell the story.

By the time of Crusader Rabbit, also initially in black and white, the stories became serialized.  Each episode lasted about five minutes, just right for selling sugared cereal to youngsters of my age, followed by another five-minute clip that resumed the story.  The cartoons stopped being stand-alone.  Their creators eventually moved on to Rocky and His Friends.  The Rocky/Bullwinkle tales also had brief cartoon installments of a longer story.  The Fractured Fairy Tales, Aesop, and Mr. Peabody took a standalone format.

As I reconnect to Flip and Farmer Gray, there seems to be something timeless, though both series lasted only a few years each.  They remain entertaining today.  They also leave me with admiration for the wit needed to produce them in the absence of words.

Under the Bed

Some semi-annual projects carry over.  Progress without completion in the first cycle but visions on an end point with just another six months.  Repurposing my son's bedroom to another use twenty years after he vacated it has gotten my attention.  It's a big project, though one that probably could go to completion with some professional input.  It would not be fair to call him a hoarder.  He accumulated stuff gradually over a long time.  I had tried to make his room function for him, providing him a desk, workable chair, adding shelving to his closet.  But organization never captured his attention.  My father transported my dresser, nightstand and bed when he moved south in 1988, his grandson reaching the transition from crib to bed at the time.  Now I find myself not only with the furniture but a cluttered floor.  Over six months I hacked away at surfaces.  Thrift agencies got generous donations of clothing, though I separated things my son might find sentimental.  Those went in a drawer.  Paper got recycled.  Awards and correspondence from people and agencies important to him went into a secure case with a zipper.  Some drawers got purged.  Nothing has yet been relocated to a different part of my house, nor has anything been transported to his rather spacious home some five hours away.

His bed served as a flat surface to put things as I worked.  Eventually, though, that would become the centerpiece of the room, even if nobody else ever sleeps on that bed again.  Its mattress was my mattress, now 70 years old.  The mattress and box spring probably would not be sold today as too shoddy for a good night's sleep.  As a teenager, my father had to place a sheet of plywood between the mattress and box spring for support.  The bed frame had moved from its wall, needing to be repositioned.  The plywood and box spring had also shifted from their best sleeping position.  And what might have come to rest beneath them challenged my imagination.

Moving everything seemed a two-person job, though perhaps a younger, more muscular he-man could have managed it.  I made a date with my wife to do this.  Mattress moved into an adjacent hall. Slight slit in my left pinkie but no splinter moving the plywood.  Box spring had a plastic coating on its upper surface, a wise addition for the two year old who slept on it.  Its lower surface had a gauze covering stapled to the wood frame, now mostly separated making the inner coils of that box spring readily visible.  They seemed intact.  That ant the plywood also took their place in the adjacent hall.  Then I removed the three supporting slats, screwed their by my father after many episodes of my childhood where they dislodged. leaving one side of the mattress and box spring to slide off the frame.

With the floor exposed, likely for the first time in 38 years, I could see what accumulated.  My son had a feather comforter.  Earlier in the project I had harvested this.  Its duvet cover removed for washing, I could see considerable feather shedding from the blanket.  After washing the cover, I inserted the comforter back in with some difficulty, not noting any torn areas that might allow feathers to escape.  The floor beneath the mattress, though, looked something like a white bird mixed with a lot of other things.  I separated the objects into three basic categories:  paper, cloth, other.  The following day, I went through the paper, recycling most, tossing some, saving the photographs, letters from dear people, greeting cards.  Textiles mostly went into the trash with a few items harvested.  I found water and soda bottles suitable for recycling, writing instruments, an obsolete disposable film camera, coins, two light bulbs, a plastic cup from a casino, and a CD Walkman that probably still works.  Some to trash, others put in a plastic bin for later sorting.

Now the vacuum.  The upright Shark worked fine, though it sucked up its share of coins hidden within the feathers.  This machine does not do edges well.  I could not find the vacuuming toools but my wife did, so I can finish the job shortly.  The bed frame now sits flush against a far wall and a side wall.  Replacing the slats, box spring, plywood, and mattress remains a two-person job.  Then install the new mattress cover, make the bed with one of several twin sets that I came across.  The feather blanket should be tossed.  I have extra pillows.  Then buy a new bedspread.  Finally, declare that surface off limits for piling stuff upon it.  I probably have twin blankets somewhere, but if not, I can buy one of fiberfill.  Better to just discard the feathers.

Some projects need an inflection point.  My son's bed, inherited from me, provides that key element of his room's restoration.  It is unlikely anyone will sleep there, as my daughter's old room has remained tidy.  It contains a much more functional mattress, though no headboard.  My son's bed in position and declared off limits for clutter, the remaining contents of the floor's surface, less that feather-shedding comforter, should organize more easily.  

That's Who We Are

Often I attend Shabbos morning services out of a sense of obligation.  It is not unusual for people of my era.  The Protestants and possibly the Catholics share this legacy.  Synagogue or Church is the place you go on your weekend morning.  Blue laws existed to my young adulthood.  Stores remained closed, though Kosher butchers and Jewish stores in the states where I lived could choose to remain closed on Saturday in lieu of Sunday.  There were places to get breakfast on Sunday, coffee shops, bakeries.  Some eating places, though, did not open until after noon when church let out.  Recreational facilities opened at noon.  Place of worship served as a default.  Sunday served as a communal time out, at least for the morning.  The NFL still played in the afternoon.

Fractures began in my university years of the 1970s.  Shabbos services were readily available wherever I lived.  Social pressure to attend in a population that had escaped parental mandates disappeared.  Still, regular student worshipers kept services adequately attended.  Thirty years later, in my children's student years, I had occasion to attend their Hillel.  People of their generation still filled two small sanctuaries, one Orthodox, the other Conservative, each time I visited, combining themselves to partake of Kiddush when both services had concluded.  Still, the attendance represents a small subset of the University's Jewish students.  

My own congregation, where I have maintained membership for 28 years, did fairly well, adding my generation to the one that preceded us.  Young families entered at early career, raising children, staying indefinitely.  The generation ahead of mine also had children, though few settled in the community.  Perhaps we had elements of a Jewish Ponzi scheme where new players from the outside had to replace those who cashed out for Florida or relocated to be near their own kids or became actuarial statistics.  Still, that system functioned.  It no longer does.

How can we restore ourselves to multi-generational, if not intergenerational?  For the last year, our Board and Membership Committee, with the Rabbi's professional and self-interest, embarked on a membership enhancement effort.  And newcomers have added themselves to our rolls.  You can only improve what you can measure, something that our people avoid doing in any depth.  Coming to services out of perceived obligation yesterday, I sat up front, first row, taking the required two books along with a plastic bin to stash them and my tallis bag under my seat.  The choreography of the Saturday morning services forces me to gaze from my seat at the very front to the back wall periodically.  I did this enough times to survey who came.  It seemed much like other Saturday mornings.  One person I did not recognize, another the son of the man being honored at the remote anniversary of his Bar Mitzvah.  Everyone else I could name.  Our two sets of fathers of young children, who each attend as half-couples with much less frequency than they once did, did not join us yesterday.

Total attendance, about thirty individuals, more men than women, but not our most lop-sided attendance.  Often, I count half-couples and full couples.  Yesterday I did not, but no unusual drift from our usual pattern.  How many under age 70?  I didn't know who among us had reached their threescore and ten.  How many under 60?  That I could make a reasonable estimate.  The Rabbi, son of man being honored, and likely the one person I did not know who drove into the parking lot at the same time as me, took a seat in the last row, and left before the service ended.  So three for sure.  And three other could be's.  A doctor who comes about half the time, a fellow who participates regularly, and a new person who comes with increasing frequency, whom I've met a few times.  So of thirty people, that leaves us at between 10 and 20%, with two of the for-sures being transient.  Our internet allows us to retrieve publicly available information quickly, including people's ages if you know a few other things about them.  The doctor and the regular participant go into the over 70 slot.  The other woman is likely a contemporary of mine, likely past 60.  So of the people in frequent attendance, the Rabbi is junior to the next youngest by at least ten years.  I checked some new members not present.  A couple in their 60s.  Another doctor in her 70s.  And another doctor in his early 70s with his wife in her 60's.  And one real young adult, the grand-daughter and daughter of members traceable to the World War II era.  I've not seen her at worship.

My own activities put me on a second tier.  Bimah skills get me invited to the sanctuary's center table with some frequency.  I attend Board Meetings as a member.  I attend the meetings of one committee.  I'm probably also their most inquisitive observer.  Wanting to keep our synagogue from actuarial collapse seems a laudable initiative.  Trying to do this without exploring how others succeeded, or failed, without tapping into those with expertise or experience on a project this important seems a form of folly.  And should this be our goal, especially one that has not explored a system to do it?  

A young woman I had a chance to interview suggested an answer.  To enhance membership, the Rabbi and High Holy Day Committee designed an experiment.  We would offer a sweetheart deal to attend our High Holy Day worship, one in which our synagogue invested heavily.  For a nominal sum, about 4% of dues, people not affiliated elsewhere could join us.  Only two takers.  One, a couple in their 60s, already contemplated joining and did soon after.  The third person came primarily wanting a place to worship without commitment, a woman who had her Bat Mitzvah with us when we had a more robust collection of families who still had children in their houses.  I interviewed her afterwards in my capacity of Membership Committee member.  This poised rising thirty-something, a product of our congregation, very familiar with us, assessed her experience at the Holy Days.  My position required me to discuss membership, knowing that her past experience had many downsides.  Rather than telling me she did not want to risk reliving any of that, she responded differently.  She told me her impression.  Our congregation was not a place that young adult Jews would seek out as a path to their growth.  It is not who we are.  We are a Medicare Club, seeking new people to protect our financial future and the Rabbi's professional future.  That is our goal.  Advancing a new generation to take the place of a declining one serves as a byproduct, if it happens at all, not our incentive for the membership enhancement that we seek.  We might do better by accepting what we are.

I do not know which is the better path.  For now, looking around, counting our successes, we've not done badly as a place where Jews in their later years come together.  Worship, governance, events, even the rhythms of congregational life.  What we are has emerged as our default.  The challenge may not be in recruiting a new generation but in giving those with us the most fulfilling experience we can offer until the generational reality expresses itself.  

Defined Tasks

Returned from a brief vacation, three nights at a ski resort quickly defined as a sacral injury while snow tubing.  I had my laptop and cell phone with me, along with a list of what I hoped to accomplish for the week, created a few hours before leaving home.  I did some, including a few important things.

Once home, partly on the mend, other activities await.  Part of the purpose of this vacation was to defer doing those items.  Now back at home, my Daily Task List has returned to its excessive length, though with priorities defined by importance and designated as three Musts.  Many things don't have clear endpoints, do them and they are done.  Those that do got my attention as I return to My Space.  

My home had some minor water damage noted a few weeks ago.  Call the home repair expert.  Done.  Shabbos approaching.  Defrost what I need for dinner.  Cooking mostly done before I left.  Just defrost and heat before candle lighting.  Frozen items thawing in fridge.  My indoor plant watering protocol got modified.  Water them, keeping them outside if the temperature will not freeze them.  Done.  Unpack.  Almost done.  Read an NEJM Case of the Week and claim CME Credit.  Done.  Review things I will need to do for an MRI scheduled next week.  The Radiology Office sent me a list.  Read and understood.  Normally I make a video every Monday.  Postponed by travel, now completed and watched.  Return to my stretching and treadmill sessions.  Modified by injury by done.  Review commentaries for Torah portion that will be recited on Shabbos.  All four read.  Take BP and record it.  Done.  Select an e-book or audiobook from the library.  Done and briefly started.  Submit my course selections for Osher Institute.  Done and tuition paid.  Make sure my Medicare Plan F premium autopay went through.  It did.  Make sure a snafu with a restaurant credit care purchase got resolved.  It did. Register for an upcoming synagogue event.  Done.

It seems like a very productive time my first day home.  It's deceptive.  My Daily Task List runs two columns in four categories.  I cannot do everything on the list.  Sometimes choosing what not to do matters more.  For my first day home, I performed things that require no analytical thought other than mastering the Journal article and making my weekly video.  They are otherwise well defined tasks.  Make a call.  Send in a registration list.  Walk on a treadmill. Take my blood pressure.  Water plants.

Lurking on the list, with some hope of at least starting before bed time remain the challenging items.  Creative writing, reading the ebook that I just selected, restoring my violin case from a recent infestation, doing some of the mulit-step home upgrades.  End points for those have less clarity.  They should take priority, but some days, like today, dispatching the nudgy items that won't crop up on tomorrow's list seem's the best path forward.  It makes for a good day.

Snow Tubing

Had been looking forward to a brief winter getaway.  I've never stayed at a ski resort, nor have I gone skiing or snowboarding.  I have visited a ski resort one time, early season.  For financial reasons, I stayed at a much less expensive place, paying a day fee for an afternoon's snow tubing and an afternoon in their indoor water park.  Had a good time.  This time I reserved a three night stay at a different resort.  Arriving on Sunday afternoon, parking seemed at a premium, though without additional fee.  Skiers everywhere, coming down the slopes, riding the lift chairs.  None included with my daily resort fee, but for a nominal amount as a 70-something I qualified for a season pass.  A similar season pass to the regional Level 1 Trauma Center far exceeds that.  My wife and I opted for snow tubing, a Second Act for me, a premiere for my wife.  Day fee of $45 each, paid in advance and signed waiver of liability.

The resort allots these sessions to two hours three times daily.  Since we arrived 90 minutes before our assigned time, we started our vacation at a winery ten minutes away, then returned to check into our room.  I brought the suitcases to the sixth floor.  Next, I retrieved my wife from the car, settled in a valuable space to be relinquished only for a very good reason.  

Snow tubing next.  The main desk directed the two of us to their registration station, a fairly significant hike across the breadth of the facility, past the main dining area, down a flight of stairs, and into a dedicated ski services desk.  Once payment confirmed, we received admission passes with instruction to go outside, turn left an follow the path across the breadth of the hotel again, this time outdoors.  And also mostly uphill.  Despite my faithfulness with a home treadmill schedule, I found the upgrade physically taxing.  Then walking on some snow, figuring out with assistance from an attendant the method for crossing the turnstile, and securing a tube.  Its navy neoprene surface and other safety features made it heavier than anticipated.  Eventually, past a few steps and upslope, a conveyor belt appeared.  I placed this torus to rest on the conveyor in front of me, round side up while I balanced myself and the tube together.  Another attendant got me off the conveyor in the right place.  I picked a lane, while waiting for my wife.  She seemed even more frazzled than me.  I thought we had the same start position in different lanes, but her tube abutted the one in front of her.  To avoid the two of them going together, a big safety hazard.  I moved my wife and the tube she occupied back a little.  The kid behind me moved into my place.  When the attendant gave the go, I nudged my wife who seemed to make it all the way to the rubber braking mats without injury.  

My turn came.  I pushed off the starting ridge.  It went slowly, then accelerated to the thrill part.  Unfortunately, the seat of the tube offered little cushion from the surface.  I could feel jolts of ice pellets or maybe stones displacing my sacrum.  With my hands in the stirrups on the tube's upper surface, I elevated my buttocks for the rest of the ride.  It detracted from the thrill.  We understood after one downhill excursion why all other ticket holders appeared at least fifty years our junior.  No grandparents on that slope with their grandchildren.  The last time, I returned to the course two more times.  This time no more for me, no more for my wife.  

Returning to the hotel went a lot better sloping downward.

Bow Mites

Every so often, I consider playing my violin.  The instrument was given to me by my great-aunt, who had bought it for her son.  At the time, I was in the 8th grade.  My town had a renowned violin restorer who not only serviced instruments of local students as a home business, but received commissions from orchestral musicians.  My mother took this violin for his assessment.  About $60 later, a significant amount in the mid-1960s, I had a refinished instrument with strings and sturdy case.  In the ensuing 60 years, that instrument, now probably nearing a hundred years old, has never had additional service.  In high school, I played in the orchestra but lacked the talent to continue at my college.  Periodically, I would take it from its case and play, usually simple stuff like Mary Had a Little Lamb or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  I replaced strings once, I think.  

This past year, I thought of playing it again.  I knew the bow had become thin.  With an internet search for luthiers near me, the online estimates for restoration did not pay.  For being a research subject, though, I received a $50 Amazon Card.  Unlike monetary honoraria, this has to be redeemed for stuff.  I searched for bows, purchasing a suitable student bow and had a little left over for some other petty indulgence.  It arrived a few days later in a long cardboard box.  I opened it, then took it upstairs to where I keep my violin.  When I opened the case, all the remaining hair from the current bow had split.  I removed the hair.  With a little rosin, I played a tune or two, then put the new bow back into its case, as the case had clips for two bows.

I did not play it again.  With another research project, one which paid subjects like me a much higher amount for a more intense ordeal, I needed to perform part of what the researchers needed at a large regional mall.  It's a place that once enabled people to gather, but its peak has passed.  On a summer weekday afternoon, not many shoppers shared the space with me.  Coming early, I walked around.  That afternoon, the mall hosted a craft fair, including a table with a lady selling violins and supplies.  We chatted about my not very accomplished violin history.  I looked at the display of pre-owned bows, telling her I would return to buy one after I performed my assignment for the university researchers.  As I completed my brisk walking session and related exercises for the school's Gait Mechanics study, I returned to the table.  For a small sum, paid in cash, I now had another bow.  This one I left in its plastic sleeve outside the case after returning home.  The violin with a new bow and bald bow sat in its case with the instrument another few months, under a bedroom window.  The mall bow remained in its plastic sleeve next to it.

Months elapsed.  Every Sunday, when I fill out my weekly agenda, I invariably include Violin on this too cluttered list.  My Daily Task List, done every night for the next day, transfers that Violin notation.  Daily Tasks get prioritized.  That violin session never gets implemented. Until mid-December.  One afternoon, I went to the case, brought it to my bed, and opened it.  The new bow, less than a year old, stored properly slack, had already shed about a quarter of its strands.  Weather, humidity.  Probably not.  That spare used bow, still in its sleeve since bringing it home from the mall, remained unaffected.

What might have taken weeks and consultation in another era now comes to resolution in minutes with a search engine and by tapping into the mavens who lurk on reddit/violin.  The problem has a differential diagnosis, helped by the unaffected nature of another bow stored adjacent to the case but not in it.  Same environment.  Same slack.  Must be a problem within the case, as the original bow met the same fate.  Unknown to me, but very familiar to dedicated violinists, there are mites that seek their nutrition from a form of protein necessary for bow hair to remain intact.  That would explain why the two bows in the case shed, though placed there years apart.  These insects, in their larval phase, also consume portions of strings made of catgut but not made of metal.  And the wooden parts of a violin remain unaffected.

I took the case to another room where I have good light.  Larval shells strewn along the edges of the case.  The internet also outlines solutions.  Some come as articles, other advice from Reddit/violin subscribers.  Fortunately, most of these I can do myself.  Remove everything from the case.  The bow was placed with the mall bow in the plastic sleeve as soon as I detected this.  Probably discard the original bow as unsalvageable.  Then vacuum the case, with attention to the crevices using an edge attachment to a hand vacuum.  I have that.  Next, there are several recommendations.  The most common involves leaving the case outdoors in bright sunlight for two days, then disinfecting chemically with one of several options.  Then prevention by adding a special treated sachet.  Then return the violin, bow from amazon.com, rosin, and pitchpipe to the case.  All within my capacity, though two consecutive days of bright sunlight without precipitation need daily anticipation from a winter weather report.  Once the weather cooperates, I will begin the vacuuming.

I first played a violin with school lessons in third grade.  Now, past retirement, I've never encountered this, not even heard about it, but enough other people have to offer realistic solutions.  As the new calendar year begins, one where expressing gratitude frames the year ahead, appreciation to many experts seems in order.  Information wizards who made searching for anything easy.  Violin experts who post summaries of how to address my problem, so I can find it in minutes.  Some very generous lurkers on Reddit who share expertise that I lack.  Should be bowing my instrument again before long.