{"id":2384,"date":"2009-01-28T19:50:16","date_gmt":"2009-01-29T00:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=2384"},"modified":"2009-01-28T19:50:16","modified_gmt":"2009-01-29T00:50:16","slug":"for-a-few-dollars-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=2384","title":{"rendered":"For a few dollars more"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was about money,<\/strong> at least as I experienced it.<\/p>\n

First of all, I paid the bookstore\u2019s taxes. Deadline is Feb. 5, but I dread the experience so much I figured I\u2019d just go ahead and file. One more week won\u2019t make a lot of difference. Since most of our sales volume is textbooks for our school, exempt from sales tax in this state, we don\u2019t really have to cough up a whole lot. It hardly seems worth the trouble. Not that I have any plans to skip it some year and see whether anybody notices.<\/p>\n

I recall an old episode of \u201cDeath Valley Days\u201d<\/a> (why am I thinking about old TV westerns this week?). I think it was in the Ronald Reagan years or later (although for me \u201cThe Old Ranger\u201d [Stanley Andrews] was always the proper host. When they replaced him with Ronald Reagan, I just assumed he\u2019d died, but according to Wikipedia they simply fired him on account of his age. I guess nobody\u2019d ever noticed before that The Old Ranger was\u2026 you know, old. So they brought in Reagan, who [this may surprise younger readers] was not always ancient. Then came Robert Taylor and Dale Robertson). <\/p>\n

Where was I? Oh yes, anyway, I was deeply impressed by one particular episode. It was about this old guy\u2014a miner or something\u2014who travels a very long journey in a buckboard alone (except in the sense that a horse is company) across the desert, facing and enduring bad weather, Indian attacks and outlaw attacks. When he finally overcomes all the obstacles and makes it to the town he\u2019s headed for, he explains that he\u2019s come to pay his taxes. \u201cI always pay my obligations,\u201d he says. Or words to that effect.<\/p>\n

I thought that was great. Even in those days, the cool slacker was becoming fashionable in America, but I was deeply impressed by \u201csquares\u201d like that. That was the kind of guy I wanted to grow up to be.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t succeed, but I offer the intention, for the record.<\/p>\n

After work I ran by Office Depot to pick up a sign I\u2019d ordered for the Archive. We will now have a plaque on the door saying, \u201cGeorg Sverdrup Archive.\u201d I was afraid someone would have conscientiously corrected my spelling on \u201cGeorg,\u201d but they apparently trusted my cautionary notation. (\u201cGeorge\u201d is spelled \u201cGeorg\u201d in Norway. And in other places, which I\u2019m too lazy to look up.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, I examined the merchandise, wrote a company check, and headed home. When I was getting out of the car I noticed that my check was stapled to the receipt.<\/p>\n

So I drove back, planning out a gentle way to inform the clerk of her mistake.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s when I learned about \u201celectronic checks.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d seen them on bank statements before, but I\u2019d never had an actual, physical check handled that way before.<\/p>\n

I think I should start calling myself The Old Ranger.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was about money, at least as I experienced it. First of all, I paid the bookstore\u2019s taxes. Deadline is Feb. 5, but I dread the experience so much I figured I\u2019d just go ahead and file. One more week won\u2019t make a lot of difference. Since most of our sales volume is textbooks for … Continue reading For a few dollars more<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}