It turns out my reassessment was mailed out on July 1. It arrived yesterday, and I found it lying there in front of the PC waiting for me when I got in from another brutal day at the office.

Apparently, parts of Plains Township went out in the July 1 batch (my mother-in-law's also came yesterday).

When we built our new house, we were told our new taxes would be determined after the reassessment. Our mortgage documents estimated our county and school taxes at around $1800. This was based on a house that was supposed to have a garage, finished basement and a sound foundation. It has none of these.

For the past couple years, we've been paying about a third of the above amount. I fully expected my taxes to go up after reassessment (and rightfully so) but hoped they would come in no higher than $2000. I would have been ecstatic with the $1800 originally forecast, but suspected I wouldn't get that lucky.

The poop: My estimated tax impact total tax after reassessment is $3269. That's within spitting distance of doubled taxes on a house that simply isn't what it was supposed to be.

The real "bottom line" as far as my empty wallet is concerned is this: Our total tax has jumped from $619 to $3269...more than 5 times what we've been paying. Obviously, the $619 was far too low...but we've jumped from one extreme to the other. Unlike the few years we paid low, which we knew was a temporary situation, the new amount might be permanent.

Again, I knew my assessed value would rise significantly. But there is an 81% difference between the estimated tax of 2005...based on a house completed as planned...and what my reassessment came in at. How can there be such a wide divergence?

Well, for one thing...Luzerne County was reassessed based on 2005 data at the top of a housing bubble that has since burst.

Normally, I try to find something funny or clever to say about stuff like this, but I'm at a loss. I am having a hard time making payments on the mortgage now, and that check includes escrow payments for, among other things, the $1800 in tax which was originally estimated. I expect my escrow payments to jump by $125 a month next year to cover the increase.

In the meantime, just like everyone else, my real buying power is being eaten alive by inflation and higher fuel costs. This further tightens our household income, which has already fallen by a double-digit percentage. It's look for a 2nd and possibly 3rd job time. Neat trick, in an area where unemployment is now at 6%.

Sorry folks...there's just nothing funny in any of this...and I have a feeling that I am not alone in feeling the "sticker shock."

There were five of them, which was two more than I'd been expecting.

I had but three quarters left, the very last of my pocket change after buying lunch. I don't generally eat in the cafeteria, but on this particular day they were serving home fries, and I have a thing for good home fries. My lunch plan was simple: Meatloaf, home fries, and a beverage. The food was waiting at my table. I just needed something to wash it down. I took two quarters from the pocket of my jeans and went to the soda machine for a can of cola.

I wasn't paying attention as my first quarter slid through the coin slot. A successfully fed coin makes a series of distinct ka-chinking sounds as it journeys through the innards of our cafeteria soda machine. Instead of paying attention to the fate of my quarter I was absorbed in watching Mary Lou Bruckmeyer, the consensus goddess of our employee cafeteria, as she stocked the condiment station with mini-packets of relish and ketchup. She was in her trademark ultra-tight tee-shirt, swaying softly and singing along with the tinny country-western music blaring over the ceiling speakers. Watching her work and imagining her without the tee-shirt pretty much demanded my full attention. I simply didn't notice my first quarter's trip through the soda machine ended in failure.

Mary Lou watched as I fed my second quarter into the machine. It slipped silently through the slot. No ka-chink. No flickering Make Selection light. Nor was there a rapid rattling of quarters emptying into the coin return. I frowned and pressed the cola button.

Nothing.

I pressed every other flavor in turn, even the orange soda (a sure sign of desperation).

Still nothing.

I worked the coin return lever, slowly at first, then with vigor.

Nada.

"It's broken," said Mary Lou. She headed toward me.

I kicked and then shook the machine. I was, of course, flagrantly ignoring the "Please do NOT Kick or Shake Machine" sign scotch-taped prominently across the front of the damnable quarter-eating monster. The sign's letters are in bold black marker, and the edict is punctuated by three fat exclamation points.

Everyone ignores the sign.

My Luzerne County re-assessment was mailed out yesterday. I can't wait to get home from work today to see if Mr. Postman brought me my new tax burden!

I'm not worried in the least. Nope. Zippo. Not a bit.

I'm sure, based on all I've read and seen of the wondrous machinations of Luzerne County Gubbermint, it will be a completely fair and realistic assessment.

(JimboNote: No sign of my official assessment on Thursday. I'll just stay here on the edge of my seat, gnawing chicken wings and trying not to hyperventilate, until it hits the mailbox.)

(JimboNote #2: As of Monday, June 16...still nuthin! These must have been mailed by way of the Northwest Passage. My new assessment better get here quick...I'm just about out of wings.)

(JimboNote #3: As of Friday, June 27...no sign of my reassessment. My online data, which says it was last updated on February 22, 2008, still shows data from the house that was torn down in 2004. After we built the new house and moved in during the summer of 2005, we were told by the local tax collector that the county was being reassessed and we would get our new values then. Next came the delay in reassessment. Now here we are, 2008, and I'm seeing online values from a house that no longer exists. My wife is going to tear through every bit of mail that came in since the assessments were mailed out to make sure we didn't miss it somehow. Stay tuned...this is bound to get a heck of a lot more interesting.)

...This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A. Shut up.

Here's my own question...

This post had its roots in an e-mail I got last week from Bridget, someone I've known since we were both teens. In a nutshell, she asked: "What's with all the @#$%^ dead wives in your fiction?"

She'd noticed a trend...there's a widower in No Cognitive Defect, and another in Water's Edge.

I told her she'd forgotten the widower in Tears of Saint Lawrence.

I decided to see how many other bodies I could unearth. It ain't pretty kids. Here we go:

Falling in Love with Loredana (work in progress): 1 widow
July 27: 1 widower
The Eternal Mayor: 1 widower
No Cognitive Defect: 1 widower
The Tears of Saint Lawrence: 1 widower
Joseph Plum and the Panic of 2000 (in re-write): 1 widower
Water's Edge: 1 widower

Dead wives: 6
Dead husbands: 1

It's not over...a new piece with a working title of From the Sky originally had no dead spouses. But hell, I'm on a roll. I'm throwing in a pair of dead wives. Maybe a husband or two as well.

Go for the gusto, that's what I say.

It took nearly nine hours to drive to Taylors Island, almost twice as long as it should have. He stopped every hour or so to spend ten to fifteen minutes walking off the pain and stiffness his hips…both hips today, lucky him. It was getting into the bone now, no doubt about it.

He'd reserved a room in a motel he'd found on the Internet. He arrived very late Friday afternoon, paying cash in advance for the entire weekend. The place was being refurbished by its new owners. It bordered on ramshackle, but there were signs of renewal everywhere: a Bobcat tractor at the edge of the parking lot; piles of gravel and new lumber; cans of paint. He knew these folks meant business. Too bad he couldn't come back in a year just to see how the job ended up.

He found the gun six months after Ellen died, while he was cleaning out the cellar. It was a job he'd promised Ellen to do many times over the years, but he'd never gotten around to it. Mostly out of guilt for breaking that promise he'd set aside a weekend to brave spiders, fight cobwebs, repeatedly bump his head up against the low ceiling and finally get the job done. He sat down on Friday evening and carefully crafted a checklist for the job ahead. He spent all of Saturday and half of Sunday following his checklist and hauling all the clutter up the decaying steps of the cellar entrance, out the Bilco doors and onto a jumbled heap in his small front yard. The junkman could have it all on Monday. Finally, the only thing left was a battered, dust-covered bookshelf up against the painted stone cellar wall a few feet from the unused coal bin.

I try not to get too political on this site, and try to keep it tongue-in-cheek when I do. I am plenty active politically, and I have other forums to express my personal political views.

In this case, I am making an exception because of yet another attack on our rights here in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

Within the past year, residents of my county learned that there are two types of citizens here: Property owners and unwashed peasants. You just may have a voice against county government if you own property in my county. If you don't...well, in these parts, yer outta luck pal.

Today, I've learned of another attack on our rights. It is an assault underway in many cities and towns across our nation...possibly even yours: Using fees and other economic weapons to muzzle free speech.

Here's what has my shorts in a bunch:

Another washout from the Ralph Kramden Bus Driving School ...

For every season except spring, I recognize clear lines of demarcation. Summer starts on a specific day. So does fall, and also winter.

Rules of celestial mechanics aside, I refuse to acknowledge the arrival of spring simply because the calendar says it is so. Perhaps it is because spring "officially" begins while things still appear gray and lifeless here in northeastern Pennsylvania. Our air is too cool, snow is still a threat, the tree branches are bare, and our hedges and shrubs look dead, gnarly and naked. In the earliest days of spring, you simply can't tell if winter is coming or going. It feels too much like November

It is not till the first hints of color emerge from this black and white dead zone that I allow myself to think of spring at all. It starts with flashes of green in a few scattered, low-lying shrubs as I zip by them in my car. Next, buds begin appearing on trees, promises of spring's palette of colors soon to come. Dogwoods and cherry blossoms begin to bloom. Colors explode from the landscape.

But does all this new life mean spring has arrived?

Nope. Not for me. In my book, it's not officially spring until I'm hanging out with 70,000 friends in a sea of blue and white at the annual Penn State Blue-White Game.

Vernal equinox my fanny. It's not spring till JoePa says it is.