Reflections about Blogging from A to Z April 2022 Challenge ~ 5/5/22

The world is burning while Nero fiddles … I mean Rome burned while Nero fiddles. Boy what a rough start. I’m sure I’ll be mixing messages and spewing nonsense but feels like we are living in nonsensical times. Orwellian as my buddy KR said this morning. I just could not get up my gumption to reflect before now. Trivial … everything seems trivial. Oy vey!

I truly enjoyed the challenge this year because I mixed haiku with music, two of my most favorite things. Writing those posts was like free therapy. I didn’t get around to reading as much as I had hoped with life intervening, even before this more recent terrible awful, but I plan to take a very in depth road trip pretty soon.

Please pretend my feature image says 2022. I know it doesn’t but my media is about topped off. I wanted the Winner badge and felt like I didn’t have room for two. Of course now I need to figure out what to do with the coveted Winner badge. I figured it out once upon a time and hope to do so again. In the meantime, I’ll add this gem right here.

Thursday Thoughts ~ 5/5/22

Cinco de Mayo is a holiday celebrated in parts of Mexico and the United States in honor of a military victory in 1862 over the French forces of Napoleon III. After two year hiatus events are back on here in good ole SAT. I’m still laying low and will not participate this year as I have not participated every other year … hiatus or not. I’m sounding pretty curmudgeonly. Because I am but not for why you may think.

Right now I am focused on finding out what the hay-de-hi-de-ho is going on with our property taxes. After hours and online of course not during peak business hours when I myself am working. They still have face to face protest by appointment only. They figured out you could get more done faster online. Out with the old and in with the new.

I’ve been blogging about my saga since 2017 but for some reason in 2021 I skipped my usual post tirade which meant I had to dig into my actual records to piece together what happened. My memory was fuzzy, surely I protested! Thank goodness I have a paper file because the online version is messed up. I submitted my protest 4/10/21 and they agreed without any fanfare or evidence. Online shows N/A for all the values in 2022 but the roll history has us 20K higher in 2021 than the “negotiated” agreed upon amount. At least we paid taxes on the lower amount.

I called and was given an option for a hold my place in line call back which the recording said would take approximately 1 hour and 42 minutes. Sure enough, that’s what happened almost to the exact minute. The clerk told me that despite a big ole banner across the website saying 5/16/22 is the last day to protest, all of us N/As will have 30 days from the date our statement is generated. So I sit here waiting with bated breath (whatever the hell that means) checking daily (when I remember) because the 30 day clock starts when the statement is generated not when we get it.

I already predict that I will have to fight these mofo’s. Haha. I’m prepping for battle as usual. Things I know, they cannot raise us more than 10% a year. I have already calculated the 10%. Anything above that will cause me to lose my ever lovin mind. And this whole when your selling you want the value up but when your not selling you want the value down is not the case with us. We want fair. How hard is that? The value is what the value is by a tried, true, consistent methodology. I often wonder about the folks who don’t protest. Values must go up, up, and away. Subsidizing perhaps the remainder. Ugh!

And with that, I am FIN. For now. I may report back a final outcome or I may just forget.

Regardless, as always, more of something is to come.