Author: marionvermazen

I am a traveler, hiker, avid reader, Sun alumnus, computer geek, Spanish and French language student, knitter and genealogist. I am retired after working for almost 30 years in the Computer Industry. I live in Reno, Nevada with my husband Duke.

Reno Citizen’s Institute

For the last several weeks Duke and I have been participating in the Reno Citizens Institute (RCI). RCI is a ten-week class in which we have learned a lot about Reno city government. The city has run this program twice a year since 1999. The class meets every Thursday night. It has been a fascinating fantastic experience. I have learned so much. Let me give you just a few of the highlights from each week.

  • Week 1 is the only week we missed. We were on vacation which was too bad because we missed the introductions. The program was about the City Manager's office. Luckily we will be able to make it up next time they run the program in the spring.
  • Week 2 was about the Human Resources, Finance and Communications and Technology Departments. It doesn't sound too exciting does it? But it was great. We learned that Reno has 1500 employees. We learned about the budget process. Given the number of years I worked in IT I found the technology section of the program especially interesting. The software people must have enormous challenges given the diversity of software from Municipal Court Management to Geographic Information Systems to Building Permit Management to Fleet Maintenance Software to name just four.
  • For week 3 we had a tour of the water treatment plant and learned all about Reno's municipal water sources and systems.
  • Week 4 was all about the redevelopment agency and public works. Reno's downtown area along the river is so beautiful and is so obviously getting better and better that it was interesting to learn how redevelopment works and what is in store for the future. We had a short bus tour and also learned that there is a special public works crew that just focuses on keeping downtown beautiful and clean. 
  • Week 5 was at one of the fire stations and was all about the fire department. We got to see the equipment and talk to fire fighters. I was surprised to learn that only 6% of the calls they receive are for fires. 63% are medical calls and 31% are calls for other kinds of service. Another instructive tidbit of information was about the Mizpah hotel fire that happened when we were visiting Reno back in October of 2006. Eleven people were killed. The fire chief  told us that anyone who opened the door of their room on the hall where the fire started died. Anyone who went out a window survived.
  • Week 6 was about public works and was at the corporation yard. We toured the maintenance shop there and saw everything from snow plows to police cars to parking meter monitoring vehicles. Very cool!  We also learned all about everything Reno is doing to be green. 
  • Week 7 was at the McKinley Arts and Culture Center and was all about parks, recreation and community services. There is so much to do in Reno. This year I want to be sure to go ice skating on the rink by the river downtown.
  • Week 8 was on community development. We learned all about building inspections and permits. We also got a demonstration of the very cool Reno GIS mapserver. At this site you can use year-by-year aerial photographs to look at how a location changes from year to year. You can admire the scrub brush that five years ago was where our house is today.
  • Week 9, last Thursday, was about the Reno Police Department and City Attorney's office (Civil Division), The assistant police chief who talked to us was fascinating. He described how Reno changed from an old time police department to a model of community based policing. He had lots of interesting examples. Last year Reno had something like 8 pedestrian fatalities this year I think he said we have had 1.
  • Our final class (week 10) is next Thursday. It is about the City Attorney's office (criminal division) and the Reno Municipal Court.

I can't say enough about how great this class has been. The thing that has most impressed me is the enthusiasm and quality of all the city employees who have talked to us. From the people who run the water treatment plant, to the police chief, to the parks and recreations people to the building inspectors there has been a  level of professionalism and pride that has just blown me away.

Voting – John Marshall by John Edward Smith

I love voting. It is absolutely one of my favorite things to do. It makes me feel good. I just walked up to the Aspen Lodge and cast my vote. There was no line so I didn't even need to use the book I brought along to read if I had to wait in line.

I am reading John Marshall by Jean Edward Smith  and I am really enjoying it. I just read about the congressional election of 1799. Marshall was running against John Clopton in a very close race. I love Smith's description of the voting process

" Election day, April 24,1799, had a festive air about it. There were no written or printed ballots at that time in Virginia, and the voter merely announced his choice to the election judges seated behind a long table placed on the courthouse green. Suffrage was limited to male freeholders twenty-one or older, and it was customary for the candidates to sit alongside the judges, where they acted as scrutineers. When a voter announced his choice, the candidate for whom he voted rose, shook the voter's hand. and thanked him for his support. All of this took place before a partisan crowd that grew in size as the day wore on. Each party provided a barrel of whiskey, and voters often tested both barrels before making their choice. The liquor warmed the spirits of the crowd, who greeted each vote with the appropriate cheers and catcalls.The contest between Clopton and Marshall was tight, and throughout the day the lead shifted back and forth between the two men. Each party worked hard to get absent voters to the courthouse"

In the end Marshall won by 114 votes.

Money Saving Ideas

A  friend recently started a discussion among a group of us about ways to save money. She is retired and would like to stay that way. I feel the same way I would do a lot of cutting if it meant I can keep from having to go back to work. Like most of us her nest egg and thus her income has shrunk. The discussion that ensued came up with some good ideas both big and small. Some of these ideas are mine and some are from friends.

  1. Track your expenses.  I've used both Quicken and now I just use a spreadsheet. One friend described what happened after she looked at her spending: "An
    immediate Ah-Ha moment came at the end of the first month when we
    looked at our food-related expenses.  We were spending more on the
    category "Eating out
    – because neither one of us is in the mood to cook" than we were on
    groceries and "Eating out – social" combined.  We did a quick
    adjustment to our grocery planning and made sure we always had
    something tasty in the freezer that could be cooked in a hurry."
  2. Health insurance – I got this book from the library and found it invaluable.
    The New Health Insurance Solution: How to Get Cheaper, Better Coverage Without a Traditional Employer Plan by Paul Zane Pilzer.  The approach in this book can potentially save a lot of
    money. The
    approach is not just for people who are retired or unemployed – you can
    get health insurance on your own instead of through your employer at a
    big savings, assuming you don't have a health condition that would put
    you into the uninsurable category. 
  3. Essential
    Expenses versus Discretionary Expenses.      Putting expenses into one
    of these two categories led to some really good discussions and
    decisions. Some expenses are obviously essential – food, property taxes, insurance, utilities, car registration,
    etc.  Others are not so clear.  Maintenance of my hair, for example, cost me more than $1000 per year. Is this an essential expense or not? I decided to let my hair go gray and Duke agreed to cut my hair for me. I love the result.
  4. The biggest money saver for Duke and me has been moving out of the Bay Area. We figure it saves us more than $30,000 a year. We just bought a house as
    nice or nicer than our house in Union City for half the price. We
    have less money tied up and our insurance and property taxes are lower.
    There is no income tax in Nevada
    either. The icing on the cake is that I love Reno. The hiking,
    snowshoeing and four seasons are just a few reasons that I am beginning
    to sound like the Reno chamber of commerce!
  5. Another MUCH smaller money saver is that I make my
    own bread    . I have a bread maker that I use at least once a week and I
    have a great recipe. I think every loaf I make is about $2 cheaper than
    a loaf in the stores. Of course I probably eat more bread than I would
    otherwise so maybe that is a down side.
  6. Here is an idea from a great friend, "I used to buy fresh squeezed orange or grapefruit juice.  But now I mix
    juice that costs a fraction of the cost of a quart of Odwalla and
    tastes pretty damn good. 4 oz RealLemon (really cheap at Costco,
    1 oz sugar, 4-8 oz 100% pomegranate juice (pretty cheap in the
    half-gallon size at Costco), and 24 oz water. Costco prices for
    RealLemon and Pomegranate juice are such that a quart of this juice is quite cheap."
  7. And here is another idea that I haven't taken advantage of but it makes a lot of sense again it is an idea from a friend in her own words.
"On
a more substantive note, there is one money-saving thing that I didn't
figure out early enough.  I'm going to share it in case the rest of you
haven't thought it through.  One of the biggest chunks of my annual
budget was donations.  What you should do, if at all possible, is to
fund a charitable trust
while you are working, so that you can get the tax deduction for the
contributions when it matters most.  Then, when you stop working, you
can make your donations out of that trust account.  By creating the
trust while working you get the tax deduction when it matters most. But
you maintain control of the distribution of the account assets so you
can still make contributions from it during your
non-working-lower-tax-bracket years."
Here are links to Vanguard and Schwab charitable trust sites.

So what other money saving ideas to people have? I'd love to hear some from some of you.

Irrational Optimism

I read both conservative and liberal blogs.

I like Digital Rules by Rich Karlgaard on the right and Robert Reisch's Blog on the left, to name just two.
In all cases I enjoy thoughtful discussion and am always depressed by extremism.

I was especially depressed recently when one of my Dad's doctors in all seriousness told us that he believes that Obama is a sleeper cell agent of terrorists. And then even more depressing the next day a blackjack dealer openly displayed her racism when she told us she was appalled that we might actually elect a black man. Both of these people are in professions that usually keeps their political opinions to themselves which makes you wonder  if they are just the tip of the iceberg. Depressing!!

For me the bottom line is in a comment I recently made on another Blog.

In either case you have to hope.
If I vote for McCain I am hoping he will be more like he used to be
before he ran for president and will not be like he is now….
pandering to the far right.

If I vote for Obama I am hoping that in spite of his liberal voting record he will govern from the center.

It probably comes down to irrational optimism in both cases. I'm inclined to believe in Obama more than McCain.

Exploring – High Rock Canyon and Verdi Peak

Duke and I have made two back road trips with our new four wheel drive truck recently,

Sunday we drove through High Rock Canyon. To get there from Reno we headed north past Pyramid Lake to Gerlach.  Gerlach has only about 300 residents but it is the largest settlement in an area of about 10,000 square miles according to the Moon Handbook of Nevada. The Moon Handbook also described high Rock Canyon and how to get there.

From Gerlach we headed north on highway 34 which turns to gravel after about 20 miles. After several miles of gravel road we turned off on the 4 wheel drive road. The High Rock Canyon is this amazing canyon with 800 foot walls of rock and a narrow very difficult trail going through it. The trail is part of an intact segment of the original emigrant trail to Oregon. We found one of the carvings on the wall from an original emigrant from Wisconsin who went through the canyon in 1855. The trail was very rocky and remote. We saw only two other people. Our new paint job got scratched up a bit and we had to drive through a couple of  creeks hoping they weren't too deep. It was a beautiful day with beautiful scenery. The icing on the cake was the herd of pronghorn antelope we saw racing across the hill above us as we left the canyon.

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If you would like to see all of our pictures from High Rock Canyon they are available on Flickr here.

Sunday Duke and I decided to drive to the fire lookout on Verdi Peak which is directly west of our house, The road is very rough but the drive is only about 20 miles and the 360 degree views are stupendous. We could see Mount Rose, Boca and Stampede Reservoirs, our house and down town Reno. Wow!

Verdi and High Rock 022 

If you woudl like to see the Verdi Peak pictures on Flickr they are available here.