Transplanting a Seattleite

And it was made even MORE beautiful because I got a phone call from Not Son. He has indeed been at nuke school this whole time and is wrapping up A school with his comp coming up soon. I knew what absolutely none of this meant, and Not Son is a man of few words but I looked it all up later. He’s mildly nervous, which seems perfect, and he’s been doing fine so I have high confidence he will get through this hurdle and then it is on to Power School, I guess? I learn so much from all the wonderful people whose lives touch mine. Some friends he made while in Basic are on base where he is, so he’s got friends, he’s thriving, he’s healthy and he sounds calm and focused. It was soooo good hearing his voice and knowing in my whole body that he’s thriving. I could not be more proud of him. I keep tearing up thinking about how happy I am that he is doing so well. This is not a metaphor, and this is so not how I react to anything emotionally. I let JC know in a text, because I knew that she and the kids really cared about him and wanted him to find a place that really valued him.

I hope he calls and tells me he passed comp, and wants a lego set. I’d love to send him one, but I don’t know if that’s possible where he is. In the meantime, I told him I’d love to have him visit whenever he has the ability to go somewhere and the inclination to come visit, so hopefully some day he’ll come out and see the house, not as a construction site like he did last year, but as a comfortable place to hang out.

M. is off to B&N and The Sheep Detectives, so I’ll be walking by myself a bit later.

T. is off to hang out with a friend, so I’ll be hosting family zoom.

A very long time ago, when I bought a nice stereo because I had money, the stereo was going into a room which was quite wide, but the sofa in the sweet spot for listening had a wall right behind it because the other dimension was not so wide. I contemplated options for sound treatments, and bought a very nice rug to put on the wall and it worked beautifully. The rug has followed me around in subsequent moves, and has been in my walk in closet for some years now, on the floor. The rug merchant — as rug merchants are wont to do — told me that the rug would last a long time, and I’d play with my grandchildren on it. At the time, I was on the fence about having kids at all, so I was more than a little skeptical. I don’t anticipate grandbabies of my own, but I am looking forward to hanging out with other people’s babies, which is, from a found family and community perspective, more than good enough for me.

I have subsequently bought a variety of other rugs, sometimes in a flaming hurry, such as when we thought we’d take our time moving into our current house but other circumstances required us to move in immediately. And more recently, I have been buying rugs for the new house, mostly online. Oh, and I also bought a new rug for the living room here with the possibility of moving it to the new house, but we really needed a better rug here because the deterioration of the old rug was stressing out A. and, if we are being honest, me.

Anyway.

People who remember the cavelike condo decorating scheme (you know the one, with the mantel painted in metallic gold paint — and yes, I made that decision and I still have such fond memories of it and I’m probably the only person who can say that), likely do not recall that the fabric on the wing chair (the chair I have since reupholstered 3 times. I think.) and the fabric on the curtains (currently hanging in my bedroom) clashed. But boy was I aware of it. I wasn’t getting rid of either of them, because I loved them both, and I put a lot of effort into making it so that it was not obvious just how poorly those two fabrics looked like together. It’s literally been a quarter of a century, and I still remember how hard that was.

I’ve been waffling on the upholstery for the living room couch and finally settled on something absolutely gorgeous … but it does not play nicely with the rug in the currently living room, which I intended to move to the new living room (maybe)(that was the theory when I bought it, but it is honestly a nice but probably not nice enough rug for that room). Also, I ordered a Stressless Adam, and the Batik upholstery doesn’t look fantastic with the rug, either. I have since been debating how to resolve this. Different upholstery on the couch? Different location for the rug (there probably isn’t one, unless I give up on my multi rug dining room, which I worked really hard on and love very very much but if it is a gigantic fail, this is a great backup option). But since I don’t love the rug that much (it’s not even that great in our current room, but let’s just not get into that right now), I am now shopping for a different rug that might make the upholstery of the chair (kind of not modifiable at this point) and the couch (I don’t WANT to change it, altho I haven’t ordered it so I could) play well with each other and the rest of the space.

I should mention that the rug from days of yore is a Persian, and the rugs for the multi-table, multi-rug living room are Oushaks. And today I learned about Sivas. Ahhhhhh. I have a candidate, but honestly, if this one doesn’t work, a different one almost certainly will. It’ll bridge that gap and make it look like It Was All Meant to Be. Mmmmmmm.

So, there is a weird category of luggage that involves a garment bag doing garment bag stuff, but that folds / rolls / zips up to form an additional compartment that will not hold very much, and which has various straps in addition to the handles of an otherwise more ordinary garment bag. I believe the best known example of this is a Halfday. I had absolutely no intention of buying one of these, ever, in much the same way I never intended to buy wood look tile.

Anyway. I bought one, because of some complicated travel plans T. has, and that required us to transport some items to DC for him. I figured the easiest way to do this involved handing it over to my sister who lives just outside DC, in advance of his arrival, and then she could deliver it to him relatively easily. Some of it got handed off in April when T. joined them at Busch Gardens (sheets, blanket). Some of it will be loaned to him by my sister (towels and pillows, mostly). And I’m on the hook to get his suit, shirts, tie and two pairs of dress shoes. I figured if I brought them on the train with me to Balticon, I could hand them over to my sister, and she could bring them back home on the train. But that left the puzzle of what luggage could I put his suit etc. in that I could easily add to my luggage and A.’s. Hence the Halfday knockoff by Modoker.

It arrived today. I took his suit out of the garment bag the Joseph Banks sold it to him in. He’s already worn it some number of times. I started by buttoning the top buttons of the two shirts and a lower button on each so they would hang straighter. Then I took the pants off the hanger, where… look, I trouser fold pj bottoms. I don’t know what the hell he did putting those pants on the hanger, but I was offended. I corrected it, got the creases lined up right and hang the pants to balance correctly. Then I put the jacket back on and put the result plus the shirts in the new bag, and folded the arms over in front, which is the only part of this process I’m not totally sure of. Oh, and I pulled the wadded up tie out of the shirt pocket, and rolled it correctly. I mean.

It all fits very nicely in the Modoker. It doesn’t zip well lying flat, but zips perfectly when hanging, so no real complaints there. The side pockets are generously sized. My son wears something like a size 11 (and for my family, that’s small) XW, so I was happy not to have to find separate bags for them. Technically I should probably individually bag each shoe within the pocket, but I’m not going to that much trouble for someone who wads up a tie and does whatever it was that happened to the pants on the hanger when I opened the other garment bag up. (T.: I am not at all upset with you or what you did. If you want help learning how to hang pants on a hanger so they don’t wrinkle, I can try to help, or your dad can help. But it truly does not matter. It’s just a hang up from my past.)

All in all, I’m pretty pleased with the setup. I’m leaving it hanging without the shoes in it until it’s time to go.

ETA: There’s only one shoe pocket, so I put the other shoes in the “duffel” compartment once the thing was zipped on the sides. It zips up a little awkwardly, but unzips great and the liner is really nice and sturdy. It’s heavy with a suit, shirts, two shoes in it, but sits fine on a Travelpro rollaboard. Part of why I bought this was the luggage sleeve, and part was the shoulder strap. I figured I’d bring A.’s rollabord, my backpack and park this on top of her rollaboard, which should let me wrangle it all effectively on and off the train and taxi/rideshare from the station to the hotel (I could walk it, I have, but I’m not doing that again).

Of course, you couldn’t actually bring this on a plane with a rollaboard, because it’s too big to be a personal item, but it would ride nicely on top of a rolling checked bag until you checked it, and then you can sling it over a shoulder. But all legs planned with this thing are train / car, so I’m feeling cautious optimism.

For under $50, this was absolutely worthwhile. Obviously, if you are transporting an actual suit for actual work and traveling light, you don’t put it in a garment bag, you wear it and you fold your shirts, and if it’s a problem you have the hotel fix it for you overnight, and if you are staying in cheap digs that won’t do that for you, you hang it in the bathroom after running some hot water in the shower. I grew up in a time warp, but I remember a few things. I would imagine, however, that most people traveling with a garment bag these days are headed to a destination wedding and wearing the fancy togs is not actually an option. If you find yourself in such a situation, getting a Halfday or a knockoff such as the Modoker might be genuinely helpful.

I drove out to the construction site today. There are some issues (with an HF Bento that shipped with a wrong part / missing part, and with some vanities) that are in process of trying to get resolution (and still working on the gap in the front LED light on the lighted mirrors). But in general, everything is looking really, really nice. C. came out to the site and it was nice to chat with him. It’ll be fun working with him, and he’s clearly very diligent and motivated and he’s worked on visualizations for the house so he has some familiarity.

It is sad to see NM leave (after his 100th OAC meeting!), but I really like M. who will be stepping up into that role, and I wish NM all the best on his new job over at Smith. He was great to work with. Also, hug! Yay!

JB is off to vacation adventures, so I’ll miss her for a couple weeks.

I got a text from Ngrid saying I had an overdue bill, which was surprising, because I have everything paperless and have redirected all paper mail to my current address. Indeed, a bill for the gate service arrived in paper form AFTER I called Ngrid and collected not one but two new account numbers. Neither of which is overdue, but one of which makes zero sense. Gate one is fine — the “solar” one is mysterious, and has months of charges on it before that meter was even turned on on site? I’ll have to call them and ask them an innocent question about what that canceled electric charge means and why is the number so high and exactly the same as the canceled charge and should they have canceled out? *blink* Perhaps it will disappear overnight; some billing systems are still pretty batch oriented.

We went out to sushi in Ayer at Osawa. We’ve been there once before and it was fine but I’d sort of forgotten because I think we were aiming for a different restaurant but it wasn’t open. In any event, really, really good sushi today, and a Blood Orange Cosmo that was fantastic. Also, the name of the sushi roll was “Fantastic Roll”, and try to remember to order it again. Mmmmm.

I have a hard and fast rule against going out to eat on Mother’s Day because restaurants are, on the old-fashioned term — cray-cray on Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day and I 100% go out to eat plenty, I do not need to participate in the madness.

I walked with M. I looked at tons of patio furniture online (or, as R. refers to it, “Paddy O Furniture” and further makes dad jokes about it).

T. came over with his suit shirts and shoes for me to deliver to Washington DC for his internship this summer. I ordered a Halfday. [ETA: Actually a dupe by Modoker on Amazon] I’m going to bring it on the train with me to Baltimore and hand it over to my sister while we are at Balticon and she’ll bring it back home with her and get it to him when he gets there. As One Does. She’s going to hand over a couple pillows that A. and I bought in Richmond a year or so ago and didn’t care to bring home on the plane, and some of the towels that we sent her way when we decided to change a color scheme in one of the bathrooms. This is a pleasing solution to getting him set up for the two months he is in DC while not buying more stuff AND not shipping a bunch of stuff all over the place.

We arranged this late last night, while we were also making other schemes and plans and researching the impact on one’s Medicare Premiums for Parts B and D of selling a house. Because this is apparently a point of concern for someone who may or may not be moving into the new house with us. I had previously been unaware of this corner of the tax code / entitlement law, so I had to look up the information, but it doesn’t look like the damage could possibly be worse than $10K, and honestly, if you manage to hit the max or exceed it, didn’t you get enough money out of the avoided capital gains (on the exemption amount)? (Answer, oh yes you definitely did! THAT is a part of the tax code I am aware of.)

We already have a few taxes that are based on valuation of property. I believe all of the 50 states have property taxes that apply to real estate. And about half the states have valuation taxes on registered automobiles. You could argue forever about whether these are or are not “wealth” taxes, and we could further engage in pedantry around payments in lieu of taxes, however, for them moment, as a rough measure, let’s just consider real estate taxes as wealth taxes _and then look at the rate_, which is generally referred to as “millage”, which refers to 1 in 1000 (per mille), in much the same way that percent means 1 in 100 (per 100).

Asking price can be anything; what the sales price was is a much more useful comparator. Similarly, what a proposal on a ballot says is not a fair comparator for a law that is passed, implemented, and has been adjusted over time by case law and administrative rule making. But I do want to point out that both the California wealth tax on billionaires as proposed, is a single digit _per cent_. It is not millage. And that’s fine, because sometimes millage for real estate taxes reaches two digits, which would be single digit percent. ON THE OTHER HAND I have yet to see a functional jurisdiction (housing vacancy is not an evergreen local political topic, city emergency services response times are not an evergreen local political topic) where the millage exceeds 25, which would be half the proposed California wealth tax. Taxes in absolute dollar amounts in cities with very high millage tend to be very, very low, and you hear things like the city is selling houses for a $1, which usually means, you pay the back taxes owing and a $1 and you own the property now (there’s some variability — sometimes you don’t have to pay all or even any of the back taxes).

The California proposal has numerous problems, but mostly looks like a straightforward “belling the cat” situation, another reason to not consider it a real basis for discussing an functional wealth tax

Taxes in our country are generally paid willingly (and believe me when I say, I do know about tax evasion, and I also know how things have worked in other times and places and taxes in our country are generally paid willingly, even, at times enthusiastically) for three main reasons, the reasons which should be the goal and constraints of every tax policy: they are perceived as fair, the proceeds are perceived as generally going to worthy causes, and they are relatively straightforward to calculate and collect.

While there continue to be an astonishing number of people in our country who do not understand progressive taxes, we do have them, and people who understand them and are not horrible human beings generally support them, while finding plenty of room to debate things like exemption amounts, brackets, highest rate, credits, deductions, etc. Similarly, people who understand property taxes and the inherent difficulties of evaluation, and the tradeoffs between perfect accuracy and privacy, understand that property tax valuation is not going to be the same as market price, and they are fine with that unless they believe there is unfair variation within the population of taxed properties. Fancy way of saying, as long as everyone’s valuation is low, no one cares. As long as everyone’s valuation is high, no one cares. If mine is low compared to others, I will be expected to guard my privilege but not be an ass about it. If mine is high compared to others, I will be expected to argue to get it regularized, and also not use that as the basis to go at anyone else while I’m at it, unless there really is a corrupt pattern, in which case we all know it’s about to get ugly in this town and after the dust settles we’ll avoid getting into it quite that hard again for a while.

In times of inflation, whether a general rise in prices, or a rise specifically in housing prices, associated rises in nominal property taxes paid will generally trigger resistance (I mean come on humans gonna human) and this can lead to real issues in which people limit millage increases, or valuation increases or something in order to keep at least ONE of their unavoidable bills from going up. This is worth remembering as a phenomenon; you’ll see it at least a couple of times in a long life, more depending on how much you move around.

Property taxes are generally accepted because property owners know that their houses cannot be readily picked up and moved, and if the neighborhood goes to shit they will not get their money back. Property owners know that the value of their property is defined at least in part by road quality, emergency services, local school system and similar infrastructure (honestly, this is part of the reason we go hard against corruption — corruption makes an entire community worth less because we don’t like that shit). Even if you “only” pay rent, your rent is going to go pay all the costs associated with whatever you are renting in terms of property, so you are paying property tax one way or another. Schools are often funded by a combination of property taxes and sales taxes, and this can become extremely regressive extremely quickly, but property owners are well-positioned to fight back against efforts to shift the balance away from sales taxes and towards property taxes.

With all that in mind, I decided to take a crack at how we could devise a wealth tax that might be collectible, perceived as fair, perceived as going to worthy causes, and relatively straightforward to implement and collect. Washington State recently added a capital gains tax to their revenue streams, and they went to considerable effort to do carve outs for all the really contentious stuff. So with that in mind (no wealth tax on 401ks and other protected retirement accounts), I think if you put together a wealth tax that focused on stocks and bonds, and you kept the rate down at the low millage level, I think you could probably collect way more overall then a “belling the cat” scenario (even if you successfully pulled off the California one time). A low single digit millage on brokerage accounts should be very easy to implement, because we already have tons of KYC laws to deal with money laundering and so forth. Administrative rule making could cope with all the But Different Places Tax My Money situations (which Washington State is grappling with now) by defining credits / deductions for taxes paid in other locations.

All the people who do NOT have investment accounts outside of retirement accounts could probably be convinced to support this measure — the downside here is that this demographic votes less, and can be swayed by promises that one day they WILL have such accounts and would they really want to pay that tax then? OTOH, if the exemption amount if high enough (not billionaire, but, say, somewhere between 1 and 10 million dollars), and if you created a structure that recognized that Age and Dependents Matter (you do not want to be taking all the money needed for an aged person or dependents with expensive health needs, for example — if they are willing and able to pay for their health care, let them! Everyone else will spend down to access Medicaid), you may be able to push back on that argument. But maybe not — liars gonna lie and it is hard to keep up.

For those WITH those investment accounts, it’s worth really looking at fee structures on investment accounts. There’s a range! Beeps are Millage. And that’s one of the reasons why I want to stay in low millage territory for this tax. This crowd _already pays_ fees on their accounts every year in the form of beeps, and they _used_ to pay in low digits percentage (which would be comparable to higher end of property tax).

You _could_ argue that people would dodge paying taxes with overseas accounts, and I would not argue but I would also argue that they already try and some of them are fined and go to jail for it.

You _could_ argue that people would dodge paying taxes by buying art or jewelry or whatever, but remember I was exempting the lower end of rich. They could also dodge by buying houses — but they’ll be paying property tax on those houses.

PILOT is always available for other situations, as are deductions and credits for things that seem relevant. I don’t know what those would be, but I’m sure someone would be persuasive. That’s how simple taxes become complex taxes — by sapping the motivation for eliminating the tax by absorbing the impact of the motivated minorities with exceptions and accommodations.

I don’t really know if I am interested in anyone else’s opinion on any of this. This is mostly just me writing down what I started thinking when I quit thinking of the California ballot measure as “belling the cat” or a waste of time and energy. When I started thinking in terms of, But That Rate Is Just Wrong, and realized that the ballot measure and Warren’s proposals are hamfisted attempts to create an Overton window for taxing stocks and bonds, I had a Lot of Thoughts and didn’t want to instantly forget them. Which I for sure otherwise will.

Oh, and if you are thinking, But What About Private Credit / Equity. I keep trying to write what I’m thinking, but I mostly can’t seem to get it down in words that compare just how hilarious I think it would be to do this. Totally worthy, and an absolute MAD scramble to arbitrage the fuck out of all of it. So. Much. Material. for much funnier writers than I will ever be.

I decided that my multi-year game of chicken (vis a vis paying for the house I am building and where the money for it is coming from) should come to an end. The stock market is especially frisky, so Big Sale Today. I feel eerily calm now and I have no idea what, if anything, that might mean. The last time I had a feeling like this was when I paid off my condo. And just look at all the shenanigans I’ve gotten up to since then.

I got a call from C. at Fusion about A. and we had a chat, and I’m going to meet with her in person tomorrow and we’ll continue the chat.

We had the last therapy appointment for a month today (therapist is going to Europe). It was good. I explained a lot of what we’ve been talking about and trying and how it is going, and she doesn’t seem to have any reservations about what we are exploring, which is nice.

I didn’t walk with M., because rain, but we had a highly interrupted visit.

I did walk this morning with AS up in Mayberry. That was fun! It always is.

I analyzed how the pattern of Forbo’s Harlekino by Memdini is put together (alternating lines of 6 colors that repeats every couple dozen diamonds, with an offset that I haven’t fully figured out yet). I was going to ask for a change so that the tiling would have no matching neighbors, however, I decided that this was considerably more complex even than I had feared and it’s actually kind of cool the way it’s laid out so other than asking for some color swaps, I’m leaving it alone. O. at M. is going to recreate the design because Forbo won’t just mod the colors in the artist’s design. Not sure if O. plans to leave the lines in or not — I don’t really care either way. I’m feeling pretty good about this for the bar face.

I’m thinking I’m going to call JB at the builder and ask what the status is on the wallpaper behind the bar shelving. I _think_ that no action has been taken on this yet, and I _think_ I’m going to pull the plug on it. But we’ll see. ETA: Looks like it has sold out in the color I wanted anyway, so if they haven’t already bought it, it’s not happening either way. Hmmm.

Today, we were late getting out of the house and we forgot A.’s backpack, but R. rode to the rescue and brought it in maybe 15 minutes late. Teamwork!

I picked A. up and google maps routed us via 62 thus driving right past West Village Tavern at 5 pm. Lots of street parking. I asked her if she’d like to have dinner there and she said yes. No wings on the current menu, so we got a fish and chips and they split it for us. This is so exciting, because she’s been wanting to try fish and she liked it! It was haddock, in case this becomes a likes some white fish but not others thing. I had the $10 Tavern Marg which was fine, but too sweet for me to order again. Not insanely overpowering, which was nice. She ate some of my fries, and would have liked a bit more fish, but it worked out well for us and was obviously an inexpensive dinner. And we saw B.! Which was really nice. I love her so much.

I’m making blondies. I already started granola and it is cooling right now. A. does not like Yasso Cookies and Cream frozen yogurt.

ETA: I’ve been going over the depths of my Note where I try to remember things. I’m so far behind, but today, I thought I’d take a look at what I could delete. Restaurants that closed before I got to them. A bitters shop ditto. A shrubs shop ditto. A few things I actually did accomplish, and today I took A. out for fish and chips which took care of another. Also on the list: Russell Howard comedy special. I tried watching Lubricant on Netflix. I smiled at one joke, and noticed a real misogynistic trend and opted out after about 7 minutes.

But I tried, and it’s another thing to delete from the really long Note, so there’s that.

JetBlue attempted to acquire / merge with Spirit not long ago, and it was nixed on competitive reasons. At the time, I was pretty sure Spirit would wind up going under, altho I sure didn’t expect it to happen quite this fast. I mean, predicting an airline will go under (or be acquired/merged but generally cease to conduct business in its current form) is largely like just waiting long enough; it feels like cheating to predict it.

So today’s the day! No more Spirit. I’m not sad, because Spirit, like RyanAir, is an airline I bought tickets on that never got used. Always feels like the gym club model — people who buy tix and don’t use them subsidize those who buy tix and use them. Other airlines are offering to sell tickets at prices higher than Spirit’s but lower than their own normal prices, in order to get people where they are going. Normal capitalism, basically. JetBlue’s announcement is moderately amusing and can be found here:

https://news.jetblue.com/latest-news/press-release-details/2026/JetBlue-Steps-in-to-Help-Stranded-Spirit-Customers-with-99-Rescue-Fares-Announces-Plans-to-Add-11-Destinations-From-Fort-Lauderdale/default.aspx

I have to ask, tho, is this what we will be seeing going forward? A merger or acquisition nixed because it is anticompetitive, followed by the target going under, and the would-be acquirer Magnanimously picking through the wreckage, Saving the Stranded, and interviewing the abruptly unemployed?

Obviously, I’m primarily interested in what we can do so that there’s just less flying in general, because flying is a real climate issue (I say this entirely hypocritically, as I continue to fly across continent and across ocean) (I can’t even use the drive to Richmond and back as a virtuous avoidance of flying because I was going to fly I just didn’t like the seats / flight times coming home when I went to book it and decided to drive instead). And also, I feel like this might not be limited to airlines.

ETA: I guess another possible way to think about this is how Borders’ rapid collapse enabled B&N to survive until today-ish. Super different situations on so many ways (with Borders’ being the expensive end of things rather than the cheap end, and it all being triggered by competitive pressure from Elsewhere rather than fuel prices jumping as a result of an unexpected war), but perhaps it enables a clearer way of imagining the immediate future.

ML and I finally met up and had a grand time chatting.

I have a lovely phone call with KC.

FwF was very enjoyable. EW pointed me at Gladiator Garageworks products as possible stainless steel pantry items. I saw their shelf liner and was like, hey, someone did it! I had been discussing this earlier in the day with someone else (KC? Husband? Not sure?), as a way to make wire shelving work for small objects but had not actually tracked any down yet. After seeing the Gladiator black ones, I went looking and sure enough, the Regency shelving that I like at webstaurant has clear acrylic liners available. Very, very cool!

Today’s sticky buns were exceptional.