J. Jason Lazarus Blog

I’ve been putting off writing about the 2008 election for quite a while at this point due to the fact that I remain convinced, less than a week before the election, that either major candidate deserves my vote. I come from a family that is traditionally Republican by nature and when it comes to many policies, I tend to lean to the right a bit. What’s gotten my goat so much this political season is how some (note, I did say some, not “most” or even “all”) liberals and republicans tend to be ignoring the issues altogether and attacking the candidates with vague assumptions and repetitious, senseless banter that has nothing at all to do with the issues at hand. I’ve been desperately trying to compile these issues in blog format, but have failed miserably to keep track of all of them. I completely presume that as I recall them, I’ll update and post them to this entry - more past the break.

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It’s been a busy weekend here at the Lazarus household.  Friday, after a full day of Rage-Against-the-Minivan, my tempers flared and I finally gave up on hoping that our ‘92 Oldsmobile Transport would be a reliable car.  Between our horrendous treatment at Phillips Field Truck & Auto (never ever go there unless you want your car in more pieces than you brought it there), our persistent breakdowns and the occasional breakdown of both vehicles at the same time - we were done - even with me constantly giving the Transport second (and third…and forth) tries.  For about the past three months, Deanna and I have been discussing getting a new car - hoping to use some of the generously-sized 2008 PFD toward it.  I’ve been hesitant on rushing into the thing, being that it is a large purchase and yet another bill to place onto our finances - but we have been considering anything from Toyota’s Yaris, Honda’s Fit and Chevy’s Aveo - all sub-compacts, all relatively cheap and all (pretty much) strictly utilitarian as the standard to-and-from work type of car.

Come Friday, we finally had the chance to test drive a Yaris, being that they are a relative rarity due to their huge popularity - and at that, the new 5-door Yaris (apparently the first in Fairbanks).  We ended up calling it a tie between the Fit and the Yaris - and partially because of my constant frustrations with the van, the endlessness of being stranded with Aidan this summer with it and the events that occurred even on Friday itself, we bought what was there - the Yaris.  Going for the Fit would have forced us to special order one with the prospect of waiting another three months with a unreliable vehicle - as well would have cost us easily another $1000.  This way, we managed to even drive off the lot with the car that night - and the entire weekend was full of magical trips to Freds and Wal-mart.

Yes, I said Magical.  The Yaris is actually fun to drive - revitalizing a long-latent lust hidden deep within me - a desire to simply drive and enjoy it.  Sure, years ago, “Arby’s Runs” to Anchorage were mainstays of my undergrad at UAF - nowadays they no longer hold what painfully limited practicality they had back then but they haven’t been fun in the Cavalier in years - the Yaris has made even the shortest jaunts down the street refreshing.  Crazy, yes, but true.  The picture to the side, stripped off of the Toyota Website, is a representation of our particular model - color included.

This car also manages to satisfy my ever-present urge to be more environmental.  At 35 highway / 29 city, apparently a good portion of Yaris drivers come back with 41mpg.  We’ll see - even the first tank through it (when we first drove it, it had 12 miles on it) it’s already looking promising.

Stumbled upon this great App for my iPhone today that’s right up my alley - as well a lot of those that read the blog here: a great little camera App called CameraBag. There are currently dozens upon dozens of photo apps in iTunes but this is the first one that actually makes this 2 megapixel camera worth using - it’ll take your photos and apply unique filters to them - something that, yes, with Photoshop, you could do the same - but this is spontaneous and on-the-go kitsch! From Holgafying your pictures to Infrared, 50’s cinema style, 70’s soft focus and colors as well as Lomo’s stylistic brillantly bright colors - too many awesome filters to talk about - and at $2.99 currently, it’s plain cheap fun.

Don’t I ever look grumpy in this photo?  Maybe if I pitched the camera down a bit you’d see why - three inches of snow.  Stupid snow not only makes me grumpy but it makes me squint crazy bad.

Although the graph shows a slight increase in monthly kwh in the last month, it’s actually a decrease of per day consumption - and although it’s not much of a decrease (0.5kwh/day) it still is a decrease. We’ve been shoring up what we can and doing our best to eliminate power consumption. With winter upon us, we’re looking at now having to be more concerned about heating oil costs than electricity costs.

As it is, two weeks ago we spent right at $1300 on filling up our fuel tank, which, admittedly, was far short of my expectations and what we had saved up for. Our heating fuel not only heats the entire house but, in some way that I’m not too sure of, also heats our water partially. Fuel consumption for April-September seemed to average out to a modest 50-60 gallons per month. Seeing that first snow has already hit and we’re now only getting into the low 30s during the day, I’m certain that usage will ramp up - but we’ve got 7 years of data that points to this house being pretty sound - with only 80-90 gallons being burnt on average per month throughout the year. We’re going to shore up a few things by sliding blueboard inside the basement windows (as well as a few upstairs) and start looking into other potentials (some windows need caulking and more weather stripping) to drive down the costs. We’ve also been keeping the basement at 64°F (only when we’re down there) and upstairs at 66°F - while we’re not at home, thermostats drop to 57°F. Hopefully this’ll keep us well below the yearly estimate for the house’s track record - but if it doesn’t, we’ve got the money for more fuel. I am happy, though, to see that my efforts have shown results.

As a reference, national average, according to a <DOE study> from 2006 (2007’s will be released next month), is hovering right at 920kwh/m, with Alaska averaging 676kwh/m (which isn’t really fair seeing how much of our population are virtually off-the-grid cabin dwellers) - at my 409kwh/m, I’m comfortably below both averages - still with some room to improve.

Being that this is the political season, I’m entitled at least a few rants about the current state of things - I’ve been holding off on broadcasting my thoughts on the Presidential race until later as I’m still gaining enough information to make a truly informed decision. Until then - my take on this whole Bailout situation and exactly who we need to blame:

The American People.

Seriously. I saw one of those witty, normally pun-driven church signs today that said simply, “Stay out of Debt - Act your Wage” - and it couldn’t be a more perfect example of why we’re in this bailout situation right now. As mentioned in my previous post, Americans, in general, have this nasty habit of passing off the blame for their own flaws and mistakes onto anyone or anything they can - and we have easily reached the halfway point on our slippery slide towards becoming a society totally dependent on passing the blame off onto someone else. And so enters the current bailout issue and, as expected, the news media is quick to point the finger in the opposite direction - toward those money-hungry capitalistic pigs that run our mortgage firms and banks. Of coarse, when has the basic tenant of capitalism, which no doubt is “to profit”, ever been followed by the word “prudently” or “cautiously”? And furthermore, if those two words fail to be part of our vocabulary, as borrowers, how can we simply pass the blame when we are guilty of the same vices: greed and gluttony?

In simple terms, why are we blaming the lenders for giving us loans far greater than our income could withstand? Should we not turn that ugly finger of blame back onto itself? Sure, I gave an evil glare to the bank when I came in for my home loan and they offered far larger a loan than I could handle - but as an adult, it is my responsibility to understand my fiscal situation and make mature, reasonable decisions based on it. I’m sure anyone reading this could point out the fact that people have loss jobs because of the souring economy and that is the reason for so many defaulted loans - but that’s the rare case in these times (that admittedly gets much media play) - jobless rates may be bad, but they’re not THAT bad. It’s a simple case that Americans have become more and more irresponsible with their money; whether real or fake, credit cards and loans are even treated like income rather than future bills. Personal bankruptcy no longer holds the connotation it used to - rather it’s become a pleasing option for so many that have lived far beyond their means - fiscal integrity and responsibility means nothing in our society when we can erase all our mistakes with only minimal impact and no real punishment for our actions. Yet, the media would lead us to believe the appropriate course of action is to hunt down and “burn” these CEO’s profiting off of our poor judgements while continuing to make it easier for one to recover from their personal backruptcy…hmmm…

We put this upon ourselves - buying far beyond our means with money we did not have - nor did we take the warning that a souring economy was the time to save, conserve and to weather the storm that we are now in the midsts of. Economic stimulus packages which would have easily propped up many American’s (and to a greater extent, Alaskan’s) savings accounts were touted by our politicians as a time to “SPEND SPEND SPEND!”, suggesting that simply saving the money wouldn’t create a boost to the economy. Still, as our politicians stutter through the word “recession”, Bush, Obama and McCain alike are pointing their fingers at these firms and what they’ve done to lay waste to our economy - rather than giving us all a taste of reality and point it firmly back at us. Rather than pushing us to be weary on how spend, our elected officials refuse to attach the looming economic issues onto the average joe - in fact, it’s too hard for any of them to tell us that we need to save and be responsible - knowing full well that treating us like children (which we are) won’t get them elected again. In fact, the words “savings” and “cushion” have lost their meanings in a society hell-bent on loosing their entire paychecks to bills.