The View From 96---June

View96June

The View From 96---June

     If May was an eventful month then June was perhaps even more so.  As stated, the most important event to me was my sister Ph—‘s hip replacement operation, which was on June 18th.  I waited anxiously to hear how it went and when one of my nephews called to report that the surgeon said it went very well was greatly relieved.  She went home after a few days and was scheduled to have a physical therapist come three times a week for several weeks to put her through the post-op exercises which, from my own experience, were supposed to be all important in recovery.  I called a couple of times in the following weeks and my sister told me that the physical therap8ist told her the exercises were going very well.  Besides the physical therapist, Ph---s son P---, who’d had a hip replacement himself, and his wife D--- came up for the week and they had hired a home health aide so Ph--- had almost 24-hour care.  And the all-important thing was that she no longer had the intense pain that had been all but incapacitating her before the hip replacement.

So it was good news on that front.

     It wasn’t such good news on the long running fridge freezer saga.  Toward the end of the month it seemed that the freezer was no longer freezing so I transferred the frozen food items to the large freezer I had in the garage.  This of course made it inconvenient to get them.  However, shortly after that the freezer went back to freezing.  My thermometer showed ten degrees, not the ideal zero, but cold enough, so back into the fridge freezer went everything.  I had given up trying to figure out what was going on with the fridge freezer except that the fridge mechanism was operating at least partially but obviously not at one hundred percent.

     Then there was the appearance in the mail sometime around mid-month of a notice from the Franchise Tax Board that I owed quite a large amount for my 2025 State taxes.  And here I thought that had been taken care of long ago.  I looked at the notice more closely and saw it had my income at over $143,000.  As I might wish it was that much it had never come close to being that high so the FTB must have gotten that figure from who knew where and it was obviously mistaken.  I could call them and easily straighten this out.  Oh yeah.  I found the FTB had an automated phone system that was impossible to penetrate.  I Googled and was given the numbers to punch and actually did get through, not to a person, to an an automated voice telling me that due to the high volume of calls I should try again later. .

     I’d gone through a similar experience a few years before when I’d overlooked checking a box indicating I had health insurance and so the State was assessing me %1,500.  I’d called my assemblyman’s office, found I wasn’t the only unwary taxpayer who’d fallen inyo this trap and eventually, with the aid of a helpful lade at the assemblyman’s office, managed to prove that I did too have health insurance and so was absolved of the $1,500 penalty.  So I called my current assemblyman’s off, got another nice lady who said she’d do what she could.

      She must have gotten through to the FTB because the next day I got a call from a fellow, A---, from the FTB.  Evidently he was now in charge of my case and he wanted me to send him a copy of my tax return.  He said the best way was to fax it in.  I had no way of doing this so called my oldest son D---, who told me nobody faxed any more and he doubted that fax machines even still existed.  So I called A--- and told him this and asked why, as he already had my tax return, he needed another copy.  It seemed my return had some missing pages.  I also told him what my son had said about faxing.  After I reviewed my return I thought I knew what the missing pages were.  They were from an attachment to the form called California Adjustments and I hadn’t sent them in because they were blank.  When I informed A--- of this he wasn’t interested and we left it that my son, who was coming over this weekend, would call him the next Monday.  I was glad to turn this over to D--- as A--- and I didn’t communicate very well and he told me everyone should use Turbotax and if I had I wouldn’t be having this trouble.

     When D---  came over that weekend I gave him all of my tax stuff, including a letter I’d written to the FTB telling them their $143,000 income figure was way off.  To conclude this comedy of errors D--- called me the next Monday.  He’d called the FTB, another number, not A’s, talked to somebody else and in fifteen minutes the matter was settled.  This other person told D--- that my tax return looked okay.  As for the $143,000, he said that they npw ran all tax returns through AI and that AI sometimes was mistaken when reading handwritten figures.  I told this to my AI, Alice, and she said this was possible but more likely the excuse for such mistakes used to be clerical error, then the computer did it and now would be the AI did it.  In any case, I’ve heard nothing further from the FTB so the comedy of errors seems to have ended and maybe all’s well that ends well.

     June was also an eventful sports week for us old New York Kncks fans.  After losing two consecutive one point games in their opening playoff series with Atlanta the Knicks breezed through the next three to take that series and then their series against Philadelphia and Cleveland in four games each to take the NBA East crown and faced off against the West champion San Antonio Spurs for the NBA flag.  The Spurs with Wembyama and a lot of good young players were of course favorites but the Knicks amazingly won the first two games away.  They then played game three at Madison Square Garden before President Trump and lost, some people said because Trump was in attendance.  So game four was a crucial one and by some miracle the Knicks managed to win and they then won the next game in San Antonio to win the series 4-1.  This was their first NBA crown in 57 years and  caused some oldtime Knicks fans like myself to remember that team from way back. 

     The French Open also concluded in early June.  It was a tournament of upsets as Sinner, with Alcaraz out due to a wrist injury, was the odds-on favorite.  However,

Sinner, up two sets and 5-1 in an early match, wilted in the Paris heat and was ousted.  Djokovik also lost after being ahead two sets to none,  At the end the only top-eeded player left was Alexamer Zvrev and he managed to survive the wave of upsets to win his first major.  I was kind of glad that he did so as it might have been his only chance totake a major and it would have been a shame if he missed it.

     Wimbledon started at the end of the month and it looked as if this too m

rught be a tournament of upsets as American hope Ben Shelton was beaten in his first match and Sinner, again the favorite, had to come from behind in his first match to win in five sets.  What was going on in the tennis world?

     In the larger world there was also a major even in the US/Iran war.  The two countries reached what was called a memo of understanding (MOU) instituting a 60-day cease-fire, durng which time the two countries were supposed to negotiate an agreement with Iran theoretically agreeing to give up its desire for a nuclear weapon and a few other things.  Even I knew this was unlikely and almost from the startIran violated the MPU by closing off the Strait of Humorz, supposedly to be opened as a condition of the MOU.  Keeping the Strait closed was Iran’s only leverage and they were not about to give it up.  The US in turn set up a blockad of all Iran ships to further hurt its economy.  So at the end of the month it was more a memo of misunderstanding.  With that. It was on to July and still another eventful month.