What a day! The heat and humidity returned with full force and showed absolutely no mercy on anyone venturing outdoors. I did have appointments out of the office, and thank goodness the homes I was in had air conditioning. As I mentioned before, it’s not the heat so much as the humidity zapping our energy levels.
I did stop for a few minutes and watered the two baby oak trees I planted last week. I’m pretty sure if I keep them watered, they should make it thru the winter and then be on their way to many years of healthy growth. I noticed a few baby red oak trees growing in a different spot, so if I have time over the weekend, I’ll have to dig them up and plant them somewhere more appropriate. The only thing I don’t like about red oaks, is they don’t freely release their leaves in the fall, so there’s always leaves dropping during the winter and early Spring.
The more expensive listings I have seem to be back in favor again. There were two showings on 40 Lakeview Drive today, and both prospective buyers are showing good interest. One thing about owning a residence on Lake Cona Toma, is that more likely those living on the water, entertain and relax more at home instead of elsewhere. There’d be no reason for to go on vacation when there’s a constant change of scenery out on that lake. And of course anyone that’s into fishing would be in seventh heaven after discovering how well stocked that lake is. I’ve recently heard many delightful stories from people who’ve fished on it. Forget about fishing up North when you have one of the best fishing holes in North Iowa right out your back door.
I read something on the financial news today that was quite disturbing. It is estimated that there’ll be 800 billion dollars worth of corporate share buy-backs for the year 2018. It may look good on the surface, but when you think about it, the multi-millionaires are the ones that’ll be getting the real benefit from it. Most average investors don’t have hundreds of thousands of shares in companies like the equity funds and super-rich who are plugged into wealth management services. Like one of my teachers once said, “The rich get richer, while our poor grow all the greater in numbers.” I should have added another disease to last night’s article–greed disease.
My phone call to Alliant Energy today should have been made on a cooler day because by the time I got off the phone with their weak and condescending customer service department, I was all the more hot under the collar. Most people take everything they say for face value, but I don’t. As far as I’m concerned, Alliant Energy’s proposed rate hike is unwarranted. Just look around and see how they waste money. They drive around in almost brand new trucks, they sub-contract all their heavy work out to other companies, and their linemen sit in break room likely for hours on end waiting for an outage when they could be busy doing other things. As far as I’m concerned, they’re no longer a hard working public utility company, but rather more a service industry administered by robots.
As chance would have it, one of my clients called today to tell me about a huge jump in his budget billing with Alliant. He said he called customer service and got the same canned responses I normally get. I should have mentioned to him that before hanging up on that snooty customer service person today, I said, “It sounds like the great and omnipotent OZ has spoken again.” She didn’t get my jab at her because as we all know, The Great OZ was a normal human being hiding behind smoke and mirrors. If those rate hikes do get approved, the price of our electricity is going to go thru the roof.
Do try to stay cool and hope that the north wind will bring us some cooling breezes.
Tonight’s one-liner is: The best time to repair a roof is when the sun is shining.
