Gah. I had to clock out from my contracting work. There's nothing to do. That isn't entirely true. I could find stuff to do if I wanted to. But it isn't like there's anything obvious, routine, and with a due date. So I'm doing "when I get time" personal things.
Look for a girlfriend. Gah. In principle I'd like someone to share my life with. I like sex and I'd like to have at least 1 kid. But in reality, I've got my life figured out and running smoothly right now. Adding another human to the mix would upset my calm routine. On top of that, I'm not really sure how to make myself interesting to another human. Talking to my neighbor's sister this morning as she helps out while my neighbor recovers from knee surgery. She asked me what my interests are and I realized I don't really have interests. At least not interesting interests. I read when I get a chance. I watch a couple TV shows. I fix up houses and, until recently the rest of my time was spent doing stuff with my dog and (to a lesser degree) my cat. And I BS on the Internet. Not exactly riveting stuff.
Got my DMV stuff done--new address on my drivers license, renewed the registration on my vehicles. Ordered a new battery for my phone. Hopefully that cures its current flakiness because I don't like any of the new phones out there. Even the 2.0 of my current phone, it doesn't have a removable battery. If I could get a 5g Android with a removable battery that is 3x5" or less, I'd be happy. Updated my mailing address for property taxes and asked my roofing guy to see what a shingle-over on my one rental is going to cost me. Then on to more miserable "fun" stuff.
My Mom didn't have a will when she died--even though she knew she had pancreatic cancer. So it was fun, trying to deal with the probate court in Wisconsin while I lived in Oregon--and my brother in Wisconsin's approach to unpleasant tasks is to just ignore them and hope they'll go away. Since, if I die without a will, all my stuff will go to my brother, and I literally don't know and don't want to know how much money he's pissed away over the course of his life, I really don't want him to blow in a few years what I've spent my entire life building up. So I plan to divide it up among my cousins. Our extended family is kind of like a split level house. My Mom's oldest sister got married at a fairly common age and had a fairly big family. My Mom didn't marry until 35. So I've got a batch of cousins who are, say, 8-20 years older than me. They all married and had kids so I've also got a batch of cousins say 8-20 years younger than me. The Plan is to basically divide up my estate among them. BUT!...there *are* a few wrinkles. I did inherit a few things from my Dad's side of the family. Grandma's China, an old old photo album, etc. Those should probably go to my brother. And then there's things like my artwork, my comic book collection, and memorabilia from my military career that probably shouldn't be just auctioned off. So I started getting all those notes together for my attorney--and hoping there's some slick, painless, and inexpensive way to carve out those niches and still keep the will fairly straightforward.
At that point I realized I would be e-mailing this along, so it could go out after hours. I had other stuff that needed to be done during business hours. So I called up USAA to look into health insurance and getting a VA loan on my home. Now those are 2 very different areas. And they confused the crap out of the call system robot, so I eventually wound up with an auto insurance broker. When I explained what I was trying to do, she transferred me to their health insurance person/company. Had that talk. And the fundamental stinginess of me has a hard time coming to terms with what the monthly insurance rate is for someone my age. Somehow I don't get hung up about it for homes or cars, but the idea of shelling out hundreds of dollars a month in case I get cancer or get hit by a car is a very hard pill to swallow (pun not entirely intended). So I copped out when the guy offered to e-mail me the info. Of course he wasn't going to be able to transfer me back to the VA Loan people. And I envisioned the difficulty the conversation about qualifying for a VA Loan would entail--once I successfully called back and negotiated my way to the proper authority. So I decided to take a break to write this.
And as I was typing, I realized the other miserable task that wasn't on my list: Last November I learned that a police department in Illinois, up near Chicago, recovered one of my guns that was stolen a few years back. Repeated telephone calls have gotten "don't call us, we'll call you." So I really should send a certified letter stating my claim--and possibly look at retaining an attorney. Heck, even if the police department WANTS to return it to me, I'm not sure it is legally possible. Because even though, practically, the police have recovered stolen property of mine, technically they would need to transfer a firearm in Illinois to an out-of-state resident. I might have to try to track down a local (Illinois) gun store and see if they can give me any insight on how this gets done.