Yeah, it’s been a hot minute.
On the international scene, it appears that we’re going to declare victory in the latest Middle East fracas. Honestly, it probably was. Iran has been slapped down in terms of their nuclear aspirations, and a wedge has been driven between the Persians and the Arabs. Europe is finding out that they will indeed have to step up their internal and external security game. Russia has seen one of its weapons suppliers lose both production capacity and existing supply. Best of all, West China has been dealt a setback in their quest to absorb East China. All of these are Good Things.
Nationally, the Left is getting more dangerous and more insane as we approach the 2026 midterm elections. If you live in a major metro area, or like me, have to travel to one, best to have your head on a swivel. I’ll probably start taking something other than my Trump bumper sticker-wearing pickup on my visits to Charlotte. No need to get into an argument that could escalate to something far worse if I can avoid it.
Locally is where most of my attention has been directed for months. This has been a deliberate decision for a couple of reasons. First, locally is where I can have any impact. Sure, I write here for an international audience (well, sometimes someone visits from over the pond), but realistically locally is where I can have a real impact. Second, I have needed a break from the news. I’m strictly limiting my intake of all legacy and new media. The damn stuff is harshing my mellow, and I’m tired of it. Mrs. Freeholder has noted that I seem to be easier to get along with and I know that I feel better. Interestingly enough, the number of migraines as decreased substantially. I’m pushing up on 2 months without one and that feels like a miracle.
So locally…gas prices are around $4.10/gallon for 87 octane. Diesel is $5.49 the last I noticed it, which has been a few days. Obviously, the prices are having an impact on our collective wallets. Gas prices have an immediate impact, and diesel will be causing goods prices, including food, to increase soon. Services will be increasing as well. We had to have the septic tank pumped a couple of weeks ago, and the guy who runs the operation had to stop in the middle to have a discussion with his wife, the office manager, on refilling their gas and diesel tanks. He was fortunate enough to have filled them just before the spike and was hoping to hold off on the next fill until things settled down. It’s looking like that was a vain hope. An interesting inflation note is that it cost $250 to have the same folks pump the tank something like 7 years ago. This time it was $400.
Grocery stores have good availability of their goods and have had for some months now. But the prices–ouch! While there have been some reductions, such as the price of eggs, most things simply remain high, and inflation, while reduced, is still with us, slowly driving them higher. I’ve noticed is that you see fewer “full to the brim” grocery carts these days. I wonder why?
Rents seem to have stabilized and more rental units are staying vacant and vacant for longer. Son noted the other day that his rent will not go up this year, and that’s never happed since he moved out. He was looking for a less expensive place, but that wasn’t happening. For the moment, he’s decided to stay where he is, even though it’s not an ideal solution for him.
Single family homes in general have gone crazy. Prices on existing homes are up. We’re seeing several of the big national home builders moving into the county and building subdivisions of 200+ units. I’ve seen five of those recently on my trips, and I have no doubt there are more I don’t know about. Local homebuilders are building strips of new homes along various roads and infill housing everywhere. We’ve also just gotten our property tax reevaluations and those are eye-watering. Our property taxes can concievably go up by a third if the tax rates aren’t adjusted down. There is a move on in both the NC General Assembly and various counties to reign in these taxes, possibly including a revamped homestead exemption for us old folks. We’ll see.
I also expect we’ll see yet another push for a county-wide sewer system fairly soon. This county has crappy soil for septic systems. I expect we’ll see at least some of these new houses experience septic system failures within a few years with nothing to be done for it. Then the screaming and finger-pointing will start and the “reasonable voices/cooler heads” will trot out the newly dusted-off county-wide sewer plans, and this time it’ll pass. Once that’s built, we’ll start turning into a huge bedroom for the surrounding urbanized counties, with all the problems that comes with it. Merde.
Utilities are also going up. The local electric co-op has instituted “time of day” rates, which people like me warned were coming when they started installing those lovely “smart meters”. As we’ve always been fairly frugal, we’re not going to be able to do much to pare down our use no matter what time of day it is. We’ll shift things like dishwashing and laundry to off hours as much as possible, but that will only help so much.
Internet is another utility that is getting expensive. Windstrean/Kinetic has reached nearly $100/month for 600 mbps service, which is more than we need in terms of price and speed. And no, we didn’t ever get 600 mbps–try not to look shocked. Spectrum is even more expensive and problematic. Again, try not to look shocked.
T-Mobile offers a 5G Internet service. Since we are already T-Mobile customers for our cell phones, I decided to give it a try. Setup is simple. Current download speed is 421 mbps–they advertise 300 or so. It’s $50/month for the top tier service. Yeah, I think we’re changing Internet service providers. No, it won’t be a perfect solution, but none of them are.
The RV is now paid off. This is the first time this has ever happened around here. I figure it will fall apart in a heap on the next trip, especially since we just put new tires on it.
Speaking of vehicles, it seems that the scarcity of new and used cars is over around here. Every new car dealer has a lot full. Every highend used dealer has a lot full. The small mom-and-pop’s are also full. Got to wonder what’s up with that, huh?
Let’s talk Windows 11 for a bit. If you’re using it and it works for you, thank your lucky stars. Even though it seems to have stabilized after Microsoft found out the peasants were revolting, it’s pretty much toast in this house. I finally found a Linux distro that I can live with–Zorin. I’ve changed over the PC that does my ham radio stuff already. It’s been slow, but I’m figuring it out one issue at a time. Most of the issues are simply learning how to do something on a mostly unfamiliar operating system. The machine I’m working on now will be next, and probably soon. I expect my laptop will stay a Windows machine, because I have some software that only runs under Windows. But if it starts giving me issues, I may start looking at virtualizing things.
On the personal level, I’m old and have fallen into the clutches of doctors. However, their interventions have reduced my weight by 30-something pounds, gotten my cholesterol under control and the Type 2 diabetes is about a non-concern. Now if they had something for “Grumpy Old Man Syndrome”.
Out here.
