Good Meat Store

I like the local meat/deli/liquor/specialty store (Nick's of Clinton).   They offer good specials each week.

For example, this week they are offerring Filet Mignon for $12.99/pound.  That may seem a lot, but they trim the membrane off and slice it to choice for free.  And I have them save the trimmings to grind up for The Mews (they love it).

But more importantly, I cut the steaks into 4 oz sections, which is all I need for a meal about 2x a week.  Which means my Filet Mignon steak is only $3.75. Try to beat that at any restaurant, and I cook it just as well, LOL!  And rib-eye and delmonico is often cheaper.

Yeah, chicken and pork is cheaper (and my routine meats) but a small steak is good sometimes.  

And they special order my favorite wine when I order 4 cases at a time.  And discount the price.  4 cases does last a while for me.  So a couple days ago, the manager actually called me to say that my favorite wine was going on sale this week and did I want to delay pickup until it was "officially" on sale?

Well, I normally order the 1.5 L bottles as being a little bit less expensive at $16.49.  But the smaller ones at 750 were going to be $6.99, so like $14 per 1.5L.  $2.50 less per volume for the same amount!    So I said to order 6 cases.  No point in passing up a good sale.  It's not like the wine will go bad sitting in my cool basement!

Don't get me wrong.  I drink 2 glasses of wine with dinner and I'm not worried about that.

There are other good things about the place.  For one, it is the only place I can routinely find eggroll wrappers.  And some of their produce is usually cheaper than the local grocery stores.  And they actually have ripe Golden Delicious apples.  The local Safeway thinks they should be green.

I love Nick's...

Taxes

I filed for a tax filing extension back in April.   My H&R Block software did my Federal return, but the State software kept saying "network connection not found".  I couldn't solve that.  And there was no way I was going to call the H&R Help Center 2 days before the April filing deadline!

So I filed for an extension and sent the IRS $5,000 to cover possible extra tax required.  Every month after, I tried to solve the "network connection lost" problem.  It was baffling.  But by early September, I could put it off any longer and I decided it was safe to call the H&R Block Help Center without being on a 2 hour waiting list.

An agent come online in about 20 minutes later.  The agent said network problems were not really their problem.  I pointed out that the Federal return software did not show that problem, nor did I have that problem anywhere else.  I pointed out that we were both looking at my account over the internet, so there was obviously a "working network connection".

So she agreed there had to be an H&R Block problem.  After 20 minutes of trying various solutions, she said, why not try re-installing our software?  I was worried I would lose the Federal return.  She said that the Federal return was saved under a different name (which I knew but hadn't thought about) and that the re-installed software would know what file to look for.

So I did.  And the Federal return was still there and the State return form seemed suddenly perfectly happy with my network connection.  I thanked her and hung up.

So I proceeded with the State return.  This is where things get bad...

I won't go into details about my taxes, but I have stocks, bonds, and a Government Savings Account (called the TSP if you know what that is).  My stocks and bonds are all Index Funds and some portion of those have some foreign investments, which complicate things.  I have no control over the Index Fund investment choices.  Plus, the TSP requires that I withdraw a portion of my savings from it each year now that I'm older than 72.

I hadn't known that in 2023, so they forcibly sent me 2 checks since then.  I had included one on my Federal return, forgetting about the 2nd.  So I had to adjust my Federal return in the software.  Did that, and shut down for the night.

The next day, my Federal return was blank!  Nowhere to be found.  I have no idea why.  Even my backup program (Time Machine) is acting weird.  I tried to recover the Federal return using that, but failed.  Each time I open a date, it sends me back to "choose a date". 

ARGHHH!

If I was 50, I could probably solve this.  I think I have to just redo the Federal return.  Fortunately, I have all the previously-printed tax forms, so it won't be like starting from scratch.  And then I can do the State return.  I have until October 15, so I will sort out the 3 different versions of the Federal return (as I said, I found errors before I mailed them) tomorrow and go from there.

But I think this is my last year using tax software (unless the Govt provides a better one).  Next year, early March, I will just take all my forms to a tax-preparer and say "tell me what I owe" and have them file the returns!  

This has finally become just too hard!

Old Basement Refrigerator

 I had an old refrigerator in the kitchen.  It wasn't the original one, but it was probably about 15 years old.  I decided it was sucking up too much electricity.  And it was a bit small.  And it was the only white appliance in the kitchen.

So I bought a newer more energy-efficient one about 5-6 years ago (maybe longer, time is fuzzy sometimes).  I liked it.  And it probably paid for itself in energy-saving.

And had them move the old one to the basement as a sort of root cellar.  Set it to 45F for storing garden and bird seeds, sodas, potatoes, bulk stuff like that which didn't have to be seriously chilled.  Since it was seldom opened, the energy-inefficiency wasn't much of a problem.  

But I did keep the freezer portion at 0F because I stored bulk meat there.  Individual meal portions of cooked chicken, pork, and shrimp; raw beef, all in individual zip-lock bags and each in its own larger shoebox-size plastic container.

Well, the shrimp come frozen, chicken and pork seem to come out fine (and safer) pre-cooked, but I want to cook the steaks rather individually at dinnertime.  And the old fridge had a top freezer which was convenient for seeing all the large container labels.

But I got tired of the newer kitchen freezer being at the bottom.  When I prepare bulk stuff like stews, spaghetti sauce, soups, etc, there were all these small one-meal containers loose in the bottom and it was awkward to find anything specific.  So on days when I didn't feel like making something new, I would just reach in and pull out a leftover.

I was willing to be surprised.  It was "Oh, I'm having hot sausage/cannelini bean/onion/tomato stew tonight.  Sometimes, you can't really tell what something is until you thaw it out, LOL!  But the small containers kept falling around when I pulled the bottom freezer drawer out and I had to keep re-stacking them.

So I decided the old basement refrigerator had to go.  My electric co-op offered a fee pickup of old appliances and offerred a $50 rebate.  So earlier this year I called them about that.  They said they had ended the rebate program.  So I figured I would have to pay to get it hauled away and moved it out of the way.

Meanwhile I bought a newer even more energy-efficient top freezer fridge.  But just before delivery, I realized it was too tall for the kitchen.  By 1/4"...  So it ended up as the new basement fridge.  Which actually works out.

I moved all the large basement top fridge meat containers to the bottom kitchen freezer.  The sliding drawer makes it easy to open the front of the large containers to pull out a frozen bag from the labelled containers.  And all the loose small containers went to the top fridge basement freezer.  No drawers there, so they don't fall over when stacked now.

And I mentioned all that to say that I discovered my electric co-op re-started their appliance pickup and rebate program!

They came and took away the really old fridge on Sept 5...

Goodbye old fridge, I am glad to see you go!  And good news is that it will be taken apart and recycled.

9-11 Day

 

Kitchen

A kitchen I would love...

But that's half the size of my house.  And unclutterred.  And clean...

The kitchen I have...

There seems to be a slight difference, LOL!  The difference, I suppose, is that I live in mine and everything is right at hand, and the top one is staged.  But wouldn't it be nice to have one like that?

Maybe.  But I had a long-time former friend who renovated his house and tripled the size of his kitchen.  And the only thing he did in it was cook steaks every night.  He wanted it to look impressive.

Mine functions well for me. But wow on the way a kitchen can "look"!

Neat Computer Thing

I can't touch-type, and my hunt&peck is very "poundy".  So my keys wear out fast.  I had about a dozen that were impossible to read anymore.  Well, maybe I can't touch-type, but I do basically know where each letter is.   

But out of curiousity, I went looking for replacement keys.  A bit expensive.  But what I also found were press-on decals.  

They seem to be very good.  The print matches most black keyboards (there might be white/cream/gray decals too), the vinyl backing is sturdy, and they seem to stick well.   I got mine at Amazon ($6), and there are 2 full sets of key decals.

It looks like a new keyboard!