HH, Land Baron

I'm a bit busy tonight. I ventured out for my first bit of Christmas
shopping today, and I am missing some vital items. I will try online
later tonight, after The Amazing Race and The Girls Next Door.
I may have to miss Celebrity Paranormal Project, but since it is
fake, and VH1 will run it several more times this week, I don't
really think I'll be 'missing' anything.

My sister, the Mayor's wife, wants to surprise His Honor with a
certain gift. Hey! It's not like that! Poor thing doesn't have a credit
card. Can you imagine--the Mayor's wife without a credit card?
She has her own career, you know. You'd think she would be able
to have her own credit card. Go figure! The Man is keeping her
down! All that hard work as a kindergarten teacher, and the poor
thing has nothing to show for it. Oh, she could use HIS credit card,
but then he would see what she bought. HH and I each have a credit
card. We both use them, but one was in his name to start with,
and one was in mine. That's after we got rid of various other cards
that were a bit superfluous. I don't really think we needed the
Central Hardware card, especially since they went out of business
some time ago. It was handy when we were remodeling my old
$17,000 house, though. We don't really need the Discover card.
We got it because Sam's Club took it. We used to have some
such card when we had our rental property. I got sick of the
assorted bills coming hither and thither, and told HH we could
get by with two. We really only use one, with the other being
what I put my work-related expenses on. Most of the time it's
just HH's airline tickets for work, and assorted online stuff that
we just can't do without.

Now that I'm all about sharing my credit history with you...let me
tell you what I've been doing all afternoon. It's TAX TIME here
at the Mansion. We do not like this time of year. We own a lake
lot that we share with two other couples, and the bill comes to us.
That means we have to pay, and they pay when they're good and
ready. So I have to send them copies of everything, with an itemized
bill. This year we had the property assessment, trash fee, fire tag,
and county real estate tax. Oh, don't go thinking it's some ginormous
amount of money. We got the lot as tax sale property on the steps
of the county courthouse. HH took his lawn chair and made a day
of it. Problem is, he went overboard, and bought himself several
pieces of property. Now we get tax bills on them. I am ready to
let someone else have a shot at them on the courthouse steps. But
I do enjoy me some fishin' at the big lake, and having that lot entitles
us to all sorts of activities. I'm sure the people who make it their home
hate people like us.

Here's the deal with HH's properties. They are worthless. We have
one lot that somebody might buy, to build a house on. The others
are junk. There are 3 lots together in another lake development
where nobody wants to go. Some man was cutting the wood off
it the last time HH checked on it. One lot is a strip of property
about 3 feet by 50 feet. It ran alongside a main road, and then
the road was widened, so I don't think this one even exists any
more. But we pay $9 and change for it every year (that should kind
of give you an idea how valuable tax sale property is). HH thought
he would get rich when the road went through it. He was never
even contacted. He used to say, "Well, I can set up my lawn chair
and my grill, and have me a BBQ on it!" Now he doesn't say much
when I tease him about it. Let's see...there was one lot in another
town that somebody planted a garden on. HH knocked on the
door of their trailer and told them he'd be picking his tomatoes
as soon as they were ripe. The people must have been scared,
because within a week or two, they called and offered to buy
the lot. HH sold it to them for about 10x what it cost him to buy
it on the courthouse steps. I'm hoping he'll sell the other lots, just
to get rid of them. Oh, and our Mansion 10 acres, plus the new
10 acres that adjoin it that we bought from the LandStealer, plus
the boys' 10 acres up on the hill, come with separate tax bills. It
is a royal headache. Good thing I'm royalty. I'm about to get it
all straightened out.

Please excuse me. I really must get to shopping online. We don't
want the kiddies and the Mayor crying their eyes out on Christmas
morning, now do we?