Its Memorial Day and its raining

So what better time to catch up on my blogging?

I'm washed out from doing repairs on my sprinkler system this morning so I might as well stay inside where its warm and my coffee pot is nearby. The weather guessers say it might clear off later but right now it is too wet to get outside.

My hummingbird population is beginning to grow, with 3 regular visitors to the feeder outside the dining room window. Right now there are two males claiming the feeder as their own and a single female appeared yesterday. Today they are trying to hide under the porch roof from the rain but there's just no good places to hang on so they keep looking in my window, just outside where I am sitting.

Here's some pretty interesting news- I am now not only a veteran due to my military service but I'm also a disabled vet. Long time readers and family, (redundancy alert!) might remember that I finally applied for disability consideration back in September 2007. I could have done this as far back as 2000 when I retired but I deferred this action out of laziness and apathy. But I finally went through the disability consideration process- which was not all that bad, really and this week I finally received the Veteran Administration's decision. I have received a 60% disability rating!

What does all this mean? Well, it means a lot of things, not the least of which is a considerable amount of cash will be deposited into my savings account each month. The amount is 60% of my retirement pay and most interesting, it is tax free. I also received a retroactive payment from September until now. Additionally, with the letter I received from the VA, my property tax on the house will be reduced to probably 0 dollars per year, saving me another $1000 per year and I will receive free entrance to Utah State Parks and all our US National Parks! Finally, and the real reason I applied for disability consideration in the first place, I will be able to apply for any Civil Service job that I wish to apply for on base, even if it is normally open only to persons already in Civil Service employ.

So one of my next steps is to start shopping for a permanent, Civil Service job doing the Program Manager work that I'm currently doing as a support contractor!

I'm also beginning the process to refinance the mortgage so I can pay for some improvements on the house and put a new roof on the shop. As our house is currently VA backed for payment support, I discovered that because of my disability, I can be excused from paying the VA financing fee which is several thousand dollars! Right now we are planning to refinance the house for 15 years instead of the existing 21+ years and with the extra funds that I will be receiving from VA I will be able to add extra to the principle most every month and probably pay for the house in under 10 years! This disability thing is turning out to be a good deal!