Author Archives: billtoner1960

2018 – A New Chapter Begins

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Probably a lot of things happened in 2018, but I can only remember from about July onward.  That was the day that, like Dudley Moore in the movie ’10’ waking up to the sound of Mexican trumpets blaring outside his window, I had an epiphany.  This plan of buying a pied-à-terre downtown was all wrong.  My head leaped up three feet and much to Donna’s surprise I said:

“I’m ready.  I’m ready to sell this house.”

“Wha?”

“I’m ready to sell the house.”

“Okay, give me a minute.”

We had just been furniture shopping for our eventual property addition of a condo downtown.  I think the prospect of adding more furniture to our list of possessions got me to thinking seriously about what we were signing up for.

My original reason for moving to Tualatin had to do with trying to get into a top school district.  Problem is, my youngest graduated 12 years ago.  I no longer have kids going to school in the district.  That reason no longer holds.

There were other reasons to stay.  Great neighbors.  The house was an excellent place to host functions which we did with some frequency.   Tualatin has great parks.  The downside is it’s a long ways to downtown for work and we have a few years left — at least.

So I won’t bore you with all of the details of the move but here’s the summary.

  • Three house transaction.  Donna’s rental, my house + new house
  • Of course we found the home we really wanted before either of our houses had sold.  In fact, it took several weeks before my house was presentable enough to even be up for sale.
  • Donna’s house closed in September
  • Our new home closed in October
  • My house closed at the end of November

It worked out almost perfectly, but not without some drama along the way.  Our realtor, normally a cool, calm and collected character once asserted “You guys are risk takers!”   In retrospect, he had a good point.  Regrets?  Nope.  This time the chips fell our way.

In a move this size everyone has a role.  Mine was head sherpa.  Donna’s was head box packer and painter.  By the end of October we were two exhausted souls.   We had some very timely help from my children who always seemed to come lend a hand at the perfect time.  And these were not easy assignments.   Really heavy stuff being packed out of the attic and basement.

For that help we are very, very grateful.  Thank-you kids and grandkids, one and all.

Our new (to us) place is a 1950’s ranch style home but it has a basement.   The previous owners did a great job of keeping the upstairs updated (the master shower is luxurious) but the garage and downstairs, not so much.  We’ve come up with the term “our 25% fixer-upper.”   In addition, it was a downsize move for us.  Not by a lot, but still.  Several truckloads to the Salvation Army.

After we moved in we realized 3 of the 4 doors to the house didn’t work.  However, they had installed an extremely high-tech chicken coop with solar panels in the back that worked perfectly.  Go figure.  Priorities I guess.

The house sits on close to .5 acres and is ideal for someone who is into gardening (hint, not me).  We’ve had our hands full getting some of the new projects going but it’s progressing along and we’re moving forward and not looking back.  Donna loves her new commute.  15 minutes into work.   We’re also two blocks from Lewis and Clark College so we get a lot of hipsters skate-boarding by the house in ski caps.

The place often reminds me of my younger years.  I always had wood stoves back then and this place has one so I find myself grabbing the old axe and making a trip out to the woodpile to fetch some firewood.  The garage remodel alone will keep me busy for 6 months.  At the moment I’m tearing out brown paneling, green carpet, baseboard heaters and having garage doors installed (not one, but two — front and back).

Oh, and we have leaves and fruit trees.  But lots and lots of leaves.

I would be extremely remiss if I didn’t mention the wonderful news that we are about to welcome not one, but TWO new family members in 2019.  In fact, within a week of each other I learned that Emily and Ari are both expecting.  I believe the due-dates are in the May/June timeframe.

This will double the grandchild count and boy are we looking forward to that!  We have a swing set out back and grandpa’s going to have a tractor so come on over and play on the farm.

I am reminded that we were very privileged to host two final gatherings at the Meier Drive house.  The first was a Fritts/Hellier family reunion in July which was so memorable mainly because people who hadn’t seen each other in decades got a chance to connect.  I met all of Donna’s relatives who could make it and some are now my most frequent “like”ers on my non-stop barrage of #resist political posts.  We see eye-to-eye, me and these #NeverTrumpers.  Oh and we had music on display.  There is music in the family bloodline that is for certain.

Finally, we had one last hurrah at Meier drive with my side of the family when we hosted my sister Donna’s retirement party.  Donna got to retire!  We were so happy we wanted to shout it from the mountaintop — and I think she was too.  It was fun to see the smile on her face connecting with old friends and family.  A very special day indeed.

I’m sure I’m missing a ton of stuff but as I mentioned at the start, the rest of the year is a complete blur.

Let the new chapter begin.  Both of us are all-in and ready for it.

B&D

A lot of hot air

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It wasn’t even a week ago the bloviator in chief promised to die on the hill of $5B for his border wall or shut down the government. Predictably, that was all bullshit. I feel it’s my responsibility to point this out.

With a ballooning deficit because tax receipts are falling short and the Dow Jones down a full 6% since the tax cut for millionaires was enacted, Trump is feeling the heat of the one and only issue he could stand on slipping away: the economy.

Investor psychology is real and at the moment volitility in securities and rising interest rates are driving psychological sentiment negative. And once negative, it takes quite awhile to turn that bus around. And I didn’t even mention the asinine tarrifs that are killing jobs in the auto and farm industries.

Bring on the recession post haste. We’re overdue, so let it happen on Trump’s watch. Let it happen tomorrow. I’m bearish on 2019 and plan to profit off it by betting against companies with high debt who boosted their stock prices in 2018 with stock buy backs fueled by their exorbitant republican tax cut.

An offer he cannot refuse

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Trump is meeting with “Chuck and Nancy” today. The main topic is reportedly to get a deal in the works for funding the border wall. Trump wants $5B unconditionally. Rumor has it that Chuck and Nancy are offering 1.5B in exchange for dealing with the Dreamer’s Act.

Since Trump has zero leverage, I’m thinking Chuck and Nancy should take a page out of The Godfather II when Michael Corleone is “negotiating” with senator Pat Geary over a gaming license in Las Vegas. (Geary wants $250,000 plus a 5% cut from the hotels. The gaming license fee is normally $20,000).

Senator? You can have my offer now if you like. My offer is this: nothing. Not even the fee for the gaming license which I would appreciate if you would put up personally.

Same answer holds true for Kevin McCarthy, Mr. “Benghazi is good for the polls” himself on democrats having restraint on impeachment.

Um, no.

Democrats are 3 weeks away from an impeachment vote. The conversation should go like this:

Mr. President? You can have our answer now if you like. Our offer is this: nothing. Not a red cent for the wall. And we would appreciate your leadership on passing the Dreamers Act by the end of the year.

The Illusion of Prosperity

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Life experience tells me that sometimes before change is possible we have to hit rock bottom. Then and only then do we have that aha moment.

This may sound un american but this is the reason I’m rooting for a recession in 2019. As a collective group of voters, democrat, republican and independent, we need to watch trickledown economics fail spectacularly so that no politician in his or her right mind will ever peddle that canard from the podium ever again.

Trumpism should have died with Charlottesville, but apparently there are more racists among us than we realized. Thankfully enough voters were turned off by the party that decided to “look the other way” at the disgraceful treatment of immigrants and people of color that democrats now control the house of representatives which in turn neuters the Trump agenda for however long he remains in office.

With Trump’s presidency literally hanging by a thread, republicans have one and only one issue they can hang their hats on at the moment and that is economic growth. We’ve seen record low unemployment which usually bodes well for the party in power. What people sometimes fail to realize is that it takes considerable time to know whether economic policies enacted by a party are working or not. I could easily argue that the first year economic results of the Trump presidency were carryover from the Obama administration. This is true for any president.

The problem for republicans now is, the trade deficit is at a 10 year high. Republicans run on a platform of deficit hawks but haven’t addressed the national debt (over 20 trillion and rising). The tax cuts that went largely to the wealthy were supposed to be revenue neutral. That turned out to be more than a slight miscalculation. It was a lie. And they knew it. Tariffs are choking the auto industry and farming. Job growth is slowing. Now the stock market is getting nervous and is below the level it held before the tax cut. To top it off, economics runs in cycles and we’re long overdue for an economic downturn.

1988 Vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentson said it best in his debate with Dan Quayle.

“If you let me write 200 Billion in hot checks every year, I could give you an illusion of prosperity too.”

Take away the “yeah but look at how fabulous your 401k is growing” argument and republicans are left with nothing to stand on as accomplishments. Let me repeat that. Nothing. The scandals outnumber the accomplishments by a triple digit ratio.

George H.W. Bush, (may he rest in peace), got it right in the 1980 republican primaries when he called Reagan’s tax plan “Voodoo economics”

The next recession NEEDS to happen on the republican watch. Let’s get it over with and bury Reaganomics for good. I just hope it’s not as bad as republican strategist Rick Wilson predicted. I don’t have the exact quote but it was something to the effect of “when this is all over it’s going to feel like waking up on a park bench outside Tijuana after a 3 day tequila and stripper club bender.”

Cirque Impressions

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Amazon puts on an annual conference in Las Vegas called re:Invent.  But the conference, which boasts 50,000 engineering geek types is a blog post for another day.

One can only take so much techie talk in a week, no matter how much of a geek we are.  In search of some balance for my week, I discovered my calendar was free Wednesday evening so I scanned for some shows on the strip.  People who know me well know that I’m a Beatles fan.  For me it’s a combination of the Beatles music — which is arguably the best catalog of rock music produced in a decade — and Beatlemania, which is best depicted by videos of screaming girls in the Ed Sullivan Theater.

As luck would have it, the Mirage had a nightly Cirque du Soleil called “Beatles Love” which piqued my interest.  The deciding factor was the Mirage was easily walkable – right across the street from where I was staying.  This was my very first Cirque du Soleil experience so I was looking forward to it, though I was wishing Donna could have come with me on this trip.  She would have really loved it.

Sometimes being a Beatles fan comes at a price.  I think I may have found one of a handful of G rated shows in Las Vegas.  Secretly I was hoping for PG-13 at least, I mean c’mon, this is Las Vegas!

The first thing I noticed was the intimate nature of the stage.  I bought a mid-range priced ticket yet I was in the 2nd row, literally 5 feet from the performers at times.  The stage itself is small.  I was wondering how they’d navigate the show around such a small space.

For those who haven’t seen it and are wondering, think Woodstock meets Fantasia meets Grease meets Ringling Brothers meets a Stanley Kubrick film.  The writers intentionally used Beatles lyrics to tell a story – with dance like you’d see in a musical.  Other times with high-flying acrobatics with actors in costume.

The choreography was colorful as you’d expect for a 60’s based show.  Blues, reds, yellows, bright greens everywhere.  What caught me off guard a little bit was how imaginative it all was.  Nothing was too weird costume-wise for “The Beatles — Love” similar to Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”.  Case in point, the segment they put together around Ringo’s “Octopus’s Garden.”  White octopus ghost like figures, brightly lit, hanging from ropes, and then larger ones that turned out to have humans underneath them getting ready to do some acrobatic moves.

Volkswagen had a noticeable role in the show with multiple VW bugs and vans when it came time to reminisce about Woodstock and the hippie movement.

As you probably guessed, there were high trapeze type acts with ropes, platforms, ladders, and long bungee chords.  The athleticism itself is impressive.  These are people with about 3-4% body fat.  Sometimes in the moment there’s so much going on above you with the acrobatics and straight ahead with the dance choreography that you’re not sure what to focus on.

As an infrastructure geek, I’m continually amazed at the stage design and what it must take to move all those parts and pieces around to fit so perfectly for different segments of the show.  Now that would be an interesting engineering project to work on.

The show covered many Beatles favorites so think super imaginative story telling and choreography around Here Comes the Sun, Penny Lane, Twist and Shout, Help!, Blackbird, and Hey Jude.   My favorite though was Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.  A female trapeze artist in a white dress with shiny lights on it everywhere soared across the landscape to that song, twisting, turning and doing acrobatic moves that catch you off guard.

I’d recommend the show for families or if you’re super Beatles curious like I am.

 

 

Midterm footnote

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One of the underreported stories of the week is 15 congressional seats where members had A+ ratings with the NRA were replaced with members with an F rating. I give some credit to Parkland survivor David Hogg for this. Parkland…. Parkland…. Oh right. The was 6 mass shootings ago I almost forgot.

Hogg has been relentless on Twitter with his anti NRA / “young people will win” message, taking on people in positions of power like Dana Loesch and vitriol spewing Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham Angle, whose show is barely afloat since Hogg’s efforts to boycott her advertisers have been largely successful. 24 advertisers have left so far.

Hogg, along with fellow Stoneman Douglas classmates, were organizers of the March for our Lives which drew 1.2 million protesters.

Most conservatives read as far as “gun measures” and make the leap that it’s an article about some left wing loon who wants to confiscate all guns, so let’s be clear about who David Hogg is.

The fact is he’s a strong supporter of the second amendment. His father is a federal agent and carries. His official positions include strong support for the right to bear arms, but with some common sense restrictions. Background checks, banning bump stocks, raising the minimum age to 21, prohibitions on people with mental illness, a criminal history and domestic violence. All very reasonable suggestions, worthy of public discussion but the mear mention of any gun law changes somehow causes the NRA to start the tyranny messaging.

Indeed we did see a spike in the 18-25 voting block. Many of those races changed hands by close margins 51/49. All I can say is, thank you David Hogg.