I just noticed I haven’t put anything up here in the month of April (damn near two months), so even though I haven’t actually got anything to write home about, I figured I’d better get to it. It’s either that, or admit I’ve given up, and I’m too stubborn to do that. So, what’s new?

Let’s see, the weather around here mostly sucks. Sure, we’ve had a few nice days, but it’s mostly been shitty even by my not exactly lofty standards. Maybe May will be better – I sure hope so anyway. As for me, when I took a serious look at my finances and realized retirement was, at best, another 4+ years away, I went on a spending diet, limiting myself to paying the mandatory bills, and limiting my extravagant expenditures to buying dog food, dog medicine, dog treats, bus passes, and the occasional gallon of gas, and the odd bit of people food. Nothing makes me want to spend money more than saving money, though, so I started seriously pursuing the purchase of solar panels for my roof.

I was pretty much all-in on the idea – got three preliminary quotes and even had one place come out to do measurements, shade assessments, and work up a final quote while I investigated finance options vs. paying for it upfront. They were out on a Friday, and I expected to hear from them early the next week. That was about 10 days or so ago, and I haven’t heard from them again. Maybe I didn’t look high-class enough for them, I dunno. All I do know is I was basically ready to jam fistfuls of cash into their pockets. But they made a big mistake – they gave me time to really think things through.

See, I was looking at a theoretical 10-11 year payback on the investment at best (relying on the sun to shine, which isn’t necessarily a good bet in my neck of the woods), which means by the time I’d break even on these things, I’d be about five years younger than my dad was when he died. I didn’t especially want to take out a loan, but dipping into my savings would mean having a lot less cash in the bank if (when) something shitty happened that I needed to fix. As the days passed without hearing anything, I started to ponder the possibility that maybe this wasn’t a great idea after all.

Plus, if I can’t get somebody to pay attention to me BEFORE I give them my money, what are the odds of getting anything out of them once they’ve got it?

So instead I decided to sign up for a Community Solar project, which isn’t quite the same as having my own little solar farm, but it’ll help alleviate my liberal guilt and offset my carbon footprint a bit (lord knows, trying to use less electricity isn’t getting anywhere). Plus it’s supposed to save me 10% on my electric bill (we’ll see – I’m trying to figure out how I’m getting fucked here. I know I must be, but I haven’t figured out how just yet).

My only hope is that the solar dude will finally come back with a quote so I can tell him, “oh, sorry, when you blew me off I decided to go in a different direction, but thanks so much for wasting my fucking time anyway). Unfortunately, it appears he’s decided to fuck me before I can fuck him.

Well, I guess if I want to get this out there before the end of the month, I’d better go ahead and end this. I was going to write something about the Mueller thing and all the suckers I’ve heard for months saying how Trump was sooooo screwed and Mueller was playing 3 dimensional chess while everybody was playing checkers and William Barr is Trumps’ boy but he’s an “instituionalist” who respects the law and DOJ and all that. And I was thinking about how the Democrats are gonna tear each other to shreds before nominating some piece of shit candidate in the fine tradition of Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, and Clinton (not the first one – say what you want about him, he was excellent at running).

But I’m too tired for all that.

So let’s just get through April, and maybe next month won’t suck so bad.