Market conditions drive pricing. I mean, I’m not an economist, but I feel confident in making this statement. So when I dropped a chunk of change on a water heater replacement/installation last year, I didn’t think much of the exorbitant price. They have the skill set, and while I could probably figure it out myself, I would have had to have contended with numerous auxiliary activities beyond the unit itself: draining, plumbing, water, gas, disposal, permits, etc.. Skills and convenience are why contractors exist, but you pay more, obviously. This is why I had calculated the Blue Collar Cost, to set this expectation:
Using this, I could predict the cost of a professional solution and compare that to what I was willing to learn and attempt on my own. If the final cost of the professional route didn’t invoke vomiting and weeping on my part, then I’d entertain the idea. It has proven to be somewhat reliable.
So when the water heater needed immediate attention, I made an assumption that the cost was in alignment with this formula (due to a lack of puking and weeping), and so I didn’t shop around. But recently I researched the cost of the unit, out of curiosity, and came to the sudden realization that my calculations were out of date, and more in my favor. Pre-COVID, labor costs appear to have been much higher, and despite the years of companies justifying price hikes due to “supply chain issues”, the product markups have dropped as well. Here are the new coefficients:
Materials Upcharge = 1.34
Labor Cost = 2
I admit, I am surprised. It leaves me to ponder the reasoning. Maybe the labor pool in trades has increased in the last 7 years due to skyrocketing tuition, driving down wages. Maybe COVID beefed up factory production and supply chains in response to the disruptions. Maybe more trades business have opened shop, increasing competition. There’s certainly a litany of speculation that I could dive into, but for now, I’m just happy that the skilled labor and appliances I need are dropping in price.
It’s a sad year for prize tomatoes. What should have been the flagship brandywine ended up stunted from a heatwave that hit while I was in Wisconsin and unable to attend to its needs. Here’s a recap of prior champions:
This nefarious condition arises when a tomato fruit receives insufficient calcium during its growth. My soil is not deficient in this micronutrient, as my tests have confirmed. In my case, it’s simply another consequence of hot weather fluctuations. Sudden heat spells interfere with nutrient uptake. I lost a few tomatoes, but the plants always stabilize and recover. It just happened to coincide with the prize tomato’s development. Inconvenient timing.
This is not the year of the prize tomato, but it is looking like the year of tomato quantity. I made some strategy and soil amendment changes this year that are showing much promise. Photos of harvests forthcoming.
…we returned to the cottage this year. The building itself aside, the general area has taken on a new vibe. The “you can’t go home again” phrase is applicable here. The combination of time and place with its distinct parameters is simply now non-existent. There are no longer cellular dead zones. Getaway nooks on the lake have been replaced with AirBnBs and permanent residences whose gauche edifices offend the very essence of what a small lake neighborhood in Wisconsin should be, and once was. Family-owned and operated supper clubs still exist, but are losing ground to the invasion of chain restaurants. The area isn’t becoming gentrified, but rather being ground slowly into sameness by the inevitable march of investment capitalism. The cottage resists the onslaught for the time being, though as a result it now also exists out of time – the present one. It has a future, but it will be vastly different from the memories of Liz’s childhood.
However, that’s not to say such a fate is all necessarily bad. I have great hopes for its future, even if its present state is a work in progress. It needs more manpower, but I myself am too far away to regularly contribute, and when I am there I hesitate to make any executive decisions out of fear that I lack the background knowledge to do so safely, e.g. the electrical.
Oh well. I’ll do what I can. This year was pulling Romex and ductwork through the ceiling.
How old is that switch?
This is partly why I’m afraid to touch the electrical.
I hate fiberglass insulation soooo much.
But there’s a bathroom duct at long last! Just waiting for a fan to be wired.
And a kid’s old enough to do the needed yardwork! Just don’t let her touch a hedge trimmer.
Sadly, events conspired against enjoying any outdoor activities. Even if the stairs to the waterfront were completed to allow safe transit, which they aren’t yet (that’s my sister-in-law’s project), the heat index for the week hit triple-digits. And even if I were willing to tolerate that level of discomfort, fish wouldn’t be biting in those conditions either. So I paid the Wisconsin DNR $45 for nothing. You’re welcome, Wisconsin.
Then Canada started burning again.
I had never before been under “Hazardous” AQI conditions. I also haven’t been near an erupting volcano. I imagine the experiences are similar, with the exception that Wisconsin’s flatness precludes any incidences of pyroclastic flows. We didn’t auto-ignite and get buried under ash for future archaeologists to discover with plaster molds, but that fate would have seemed kind compared to the omnipresent suffocation we endured.
Look at that haze
But any day not working beats…any day working. There were some highlights. Relaxing, some sightseeing:
And yes – a genuine supper club.
To try a new place, the girls decided on Sky Club. The claim of this place, which I found to be an odd bragging point posted on the signage, was that they had the first salad bar. Even if that were true, I would still be indifferent because it’s a frigging salad bar. Whenever a restaurant offers a salad bar, I decline, because I didn’t go out to eat to have someone send me off to a counter with chopped lettuce next to a bowl of ranch on ice and make me mix the two myself. It’s very similar to my disdain for breakfast restaurants: 3000% markup on eggs and pancakes (water, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, buttermilk, butter, syrup). But, when in Rome, right? Or Wisconsin, rather.
In terms of salad bars, it wasn’t too bad. Different greens mixes, their own greasy bacon dressing for the spinach, cheese sauce (which didn’t make much sense aside from it being Wisconsin), and a quivering gelatinous bunt-pan mold of unknown ingredients. The latter itself made the experience worthwhile, just for the novelty. It turned out to be a quiche with chicken organs. It certainly gave us a good laugh. But even by my standards…why?
The kid, bravely giving it a try – chicken organ quiche in center bottom.
Then there was a trivia night at some other random place. We did reasonable. I hate sports.
Any place with food in Wisconsin, if not a chain, is a supper club.
And there were deer, for which every driver should watch out for. The deer we passed were noticeably more street-wise than their Ohio counterparts, I’ll note. One in particular repeatedly looked both ways before crossing. Apparently it had been paying attention in gradeschool. It probably knows about stranger danger too.
And they’d have to be street-wise when albino! We have albino squirrels in Ohio and they don’t last long, and there were several deer up there still kickin’.
Is it difficult at all to hunt deer in Wisconsin?
Wisconsin just didn’t seem to like us this year. And the sky agreed, as we passed out of smoke and into Illinois’ clear air, with the universal symbol of positivity:
God’s promise to never again burn Canada to the ground?
But Wisconsin didn’t stop there. As a lingering reminder that we weren’t welcome there, the night we got home Liz suffered an allergic reaction to the air and had to spend the night in the ER.
She has an epi-pen now.
There’s good family up there, but without an emotional attachment to the place itself, it’s only a symbol now. And having been denied the outdoor activities that I’d normally partake in, combined with the kid’s increasing reluctance for any activities with her parents, the primary assets of the cottage’s location were, for me at least, rendered moot. Once the kid leaves home, it may have renewed purpose for Liz and I, but that’s down the road and, unfortunately, an unknown.
To the attentive traveler with a curiosity for such things, there’s always an old cemetery tucked away in unsuspecting places. There’s one down the street from the Dayton mall, by I-675. There’s one in Toledo on Central, by a BP gas station. They blend into the background, because we have the space for them here. In more populated areas, the grave sites are exhumed for reuse, with the prior tenant relocated to a mass crypt.
Yet despite the differences in space, while I never see anyone landscaping, cemeteries are always properly mowed, no matter how dilapidated the gravestones.
My former dogs posses such a plot, and with plenty of room. They are properly cared for, but have also sustained years worth of environmental damage, it was time to restore their graves.
Their markers had sunken beneath the sod, and squirrels had toppled the shrine. So this time, I employed construction adhesive and firmly cemented everything in place.
May it last another 9 years, properly prepared to receive the next round of canine souls who, unlike their predecessors, always enjoyed the benefits of a mowed whippet patch.
No, not a concealed carry license, although that would be appropriate. I speak instead of America’s 250th anniversary.
Outside a momentary “oh that’s neat” thought, I didn’t see much in the way of gushing over this momentous occasion. Unlike the Bicentennial, which Boomers constantly talked about in a way that compared it to Woodstock, this event went by as more or less a standard holiday. I assume this is because younger generations are alive for it, which removes the “I was there for it and you weren’t” retro-FOMOism bit. Still, a few found the time to complain about events being more drone-heavy, with tech starting to supplant explosives. Remember when more people were killing themselves with fireworks and causing massive property damage? Those were the days. We were a tougher generation.
A lack of skin grafts notwithstanding, here’s some photos of the Easement Acres celebration:
Product stickers I’ve received, place on my cooler. Capitalism! America!
Burgers!
Family!
Drones!
Not a firework, but a road flare. Because I never lit one before and it seemed like a good excuse to use one.
