Peepers 2018

Arrived on March 29, 2018.

Movies....

4/20 Super Troopers 2
4/27 Infinity War
5/18 Deadpool 2
5/25 Solo
7/6 Ant Man & The Wasp

Damn you Disney (and whoever puts out Super Troopers) for planning to suck my wallet dry with movies over the next few months. Before the Marvel movies started coming out, I could go five years without seeing five movies in the theater.

Super Hero Bowl

https://youtu.be/K9G9lfA8fa8

Periodic Pic Dump...

I love clear, consistent directions. Ugh.





So Connecticut's tax problems, slide #1.

That 1.6% of the income tax returns in Connecticut represent 30% of the income in Connecticut means the income tax is quite volatile (especially since much of the income is in the form of capital gains).


Slide #2

At the same time the folks in this bracket pay a very low percentage of their income in taxes. They can't consume all their income (so very little of it is spent on items subject to sales taxes); their homes and cars in state are only going to be worth so much (so little relatively paid in property taxes), and their income is largely capital gains instead of the higher-taxed earned income.

Meanwhile the folks at the bottom spend all their income, and if they have big assets those will be cars and homes subject to property taxes. So a much larger share of their income goes to the government.


Slide #3

Fair or not, at least those lower income brackets are a *consistent* source of revenue, as the higher you go the more volatile it becomes due to capital gains (and losses) predominating. As lower and middle income brackets decrease and the highest incomes increase, state revenues based on income taxes become more volatile.

Of course Malloy & Company are whining and whinging because what seems to be a "rat" was slipped in by the Democratic (!) co-chair of the General Assembly's budget committee which requires starting this year that the state smooth the receipts from these high income earners over a number of years so we don't get wild swings in the revenue allowed to be counted in any given budget year. So this Fiscal Year we're looking at a $200+M deficit just because we're not allowed to count higher-than-expected, higher-than-average revenue receipts. (A "rat" is a part of bill slipped into it during the wee hours of the morning immediately before passage, that "no one" knows how it got in the final bill voted for minutes later.)
Named storms (real named storms -- like Hurricanes, not those cable TV weather channel named storms) that have hit the U.S.):


I love this photo. I also know enough about dogs and photography to deconstruct it -- and that the Dalmatians belong to four different owners, all of whom are strategically placed to keep the Dals behaved. Who kept the girl behaved, I have no idea :D

Wes' photos, and a few of mine...

Assessors Photo 1999 -- the electrical service had been moved to the house already.

Summer of '16 before I started taking down the old screen porch section. It gets to a point doing cosmetic maintenance and even minor structural maintenance wasn't worth it knowing that at some point I was going to do a major rebuild and that work would just be torn out then.

Of Nor'easters and Paint

Friday was a pretty good nor'easter, with 2+". Started late Thursday and lasted into the early hours of Saturday, with gusts still after daylight. If it was colder it would have been a gobsmacker of a blizzard.

Water is running and up about as high as it gets.




I agree with the Great Whites...surfers off Weekapaug look like seals.

Liz M. came over on Sunday and we finished up the kitchen painting:

Day 150

Left work a little early so I could get a good 45 minutes in grading the driveway some more.

Let's see, need about 60 cubic yards of 3/4" Trap Rock (too start...I could use more up around the garage, too). Probably around $35/cu. yd...that's $2100.

Went and fixed Ed's printer, then a run for dinner -- got some extra fixings from Big Y, and some salad from the bar at Sweet Peas.

I like dong this sometimes, I can get two or three meals out of what I got from Sweat Peas which are the "perishables" and I can have stuff like mandarin oranges, cranberries, croutons, etc. which keep here at home to augment it.



(And one of my punch list items is taking a razor and cleaning up the caulking for the backsplash, then I can edge in paint to the backsplash).

Days 146, 147, and 149

Was a lovely Saturday morning drive, including a stop at Beach Pond...
If only work didn't call which took up most of my morning. :/

After which I was able to at least knock down the ruts:

Eric inspecting the work.

Sunday it was back to painting. I have yet to figure out how I did this...at least it cleaned up easily.

Yeah, I whimped out on cutting in the paint close to the mantle...



Tuesday started off with Mac playing Cube Gopher at work o_O

But then more painting in the evening.


Yes, we'll even do behind the fridge...


At least I'm ready to start moving stuff back into that half of the kitchen tomorrow, once the paint has dried.