If My Statement Were a Crystal Ball

[Note: if this looks boring just read the two shortest paragraphs below.]

I received my annual Social Security statement this month. It shows that I have had Social Security earnings for 30 years now. The earnings for each year are listed and those listings are separated into groups of ten years. This makes it easy to see a pattern in my earnings history.

During the first ten years, 1980 - 1989, my earnings ranged from $579 to $6,005 per year. Then in 1990 I earned $14,888. (I got my first full-time non-temporary job on December 18, 1989.)

During the second ten years, 1990 - 1999, my earnings ranged from $14,888 to $24,430. Then in 2000 I made $30,299 (almost as much as my first ten years put together). That was when I quit working as a typist and got a job that actually used my degree. Of course I immediately ran back to the university and I took a pay cut to do it, but that pay cut wasn't very large.

During the third ten years, 2000-2009, my earnings ranged from $28,395 to about $42,000. (The figure for 2009 isn't shown, but I can make an estimate.)

So, if this pattern holds, I can expect to make a significant jump in income next year to, say, $50,000. Woo hoo!

On the other hand, you could notice that the first decade I increased my income infinitely over the previous one, the second decade I made six times as much as the first decade, the third decade I made twice as much as the second decade. In that case, you might guess that in this next decade I can't expect much of an increase at all. But since I plan to retire halfway through the decade, and pension income and IRA income don't count as Social Security earnings, a total about the same as this last decade also implies that a big jump in income is in my near future.

I wonder how that's going to happen.

Sweet Potatoes

I've always told myself I'd rather pay extra to buy my sweet potatoes in a can and not have to deal with raw sweet potatoes. But Robin got a bunch of sweet potatoes with his other vegetables in his CSA delivery.

I didn't even know what they were at first. They looked sort of like carrots, except that most of them were awfully fat. And they looked a little like potatoes, but like very long, skinny potatoes.

I found a recipe for sweet potato pie which started with raw sweet potatoes. I boiled them. Then it said to remove the skin. I wasn't totally sure if it was just the very thin dark outer layer that was supposed to come off or whether there was a thicker layer.



Above is one of the more carrot-shaped ones. You can easily see the skin peeled away and you might also be able to see the edges where a thicker layer came off.

Robin tells me just the thin skin layer should come off.

And getting the skin off reminded me of hard-boiled eggs. It seems like it could be easy. It could be possible to take off large expanses all at once, but what actually happens is that mostly just little bits come off at a time. It got a little easier at the end, probably not due to any gain in skill on my part but because the sweet potatoes had cooled off more. I did drain off much of the hot water and run cooler water over them, but waiting may have helped.

So now I have about four pounds of sweet potatoes. It's time to try some new recipes.