Yesterday was a real nice productive day. We spent the morning messing around online with all the usual suspects. Next we organized our basement workshop in the best manner it's ever been since we converted the old coalroom to a mid-winter man cave. Then we went out and half-heartedly messed around with some of our remaining leaves. That's when we noticed our neighbor, Chuck, attempting to do his leaves all by himself. Talk about a truly insurmountable task! I went in and asked Susun to come help and we both went over and took charge of Chuck's impossible challenge. Within a couple of hours, all his leaves were out in the street and his yard looked like new again. It was a huge amount of work both of us hoped we wouldn't have to do but, hey, a neighbor in need calls for a good deed to be done. One thing that made it somewhat easier was all the snow mixed in with the leaves. We could use our snow shovels to move the leaves. The snow made each shovel heavier, of course, but it also kept the leaves together. Ying-yang kinda stuff.
Our weather here has been flatlined for days. It doesn't seem like the temp has varied at all between the upper 20's and the low 30's and today appears to be no exception.
Here's a typical "good news, bad news" story. First, the bad news: We pay truly exorbitant property taxes on our place at Montezuma Well. We need a defibrillator standing by when we open the envelope containing each year's damage. This isn't a political statement--it's a simple fact. Anyway, sixty percent of our property taxes are billed by only two organizations: the school and the fire department. Each year, they shoot up by leaps and bounds, usually double digit increases. You'd think in these tight economic times that the school would be hunkered down simply trying to educate kids. (Old-fashioned idea, eh?) But nooooo.....you'd be WRONG! Our tiny little school is now building a genuine Taj Mahal Community Center for what surely must be hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's it's architect's rendition atop this blog post. Buildings like that don't come cheap. Now wonder our school property taxes just went through the roof this year. WOW.
OK, now the good news. It's another ying-yang thing. This new building will contain a full-fledged community library run by the awesome Yavapai County library system! Now, that's really, really GOOD news in a major way. Most of you know that we are Big Time Library Fans. This is about the best news we've heard for our little community in 25+ years. Right off the bat, it suddenly makes me happy to pay the school property taxes. There's FINALLY something in it for us! WOW! Let's put this in even better terms: it means that we will be able to actually WALK to the library from our home at Montezuma Well. In a county where the proximity of stuff is measured in multiple miles or driving times that are rounded to the nearest half hour, this is intergalactic news. Walk to a real library from our home? Surely you jest. But, nope, by the time we go back down next year it will be true. Amazing Good News.
Have a Great Saturday and Many Cheers! jp
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