Wunderground sez it’s supposed to hit 112 today. But I wouldn’t put any money on it.
After yesterday’s scorcher, this morning is nice and balmy. Skies are overcast, the cloud cover very slowly growing thicker. It looks suspiciously like we’ll get some rain today.
But best of all, the inside of the house has cooled into the habitable range. Without the sun blasting down on the roof and the skylights, the temp in the house is an astonishing 77 degrees.
Crazy!
Speaking of attempts to cool down…I bought a couple packages of Talenti ice cream at Albertson’s the other day. The kind that comes in small round plastic containers. And the one I happen to crave just now? I can NOT get it open.
Ran hot water over the lid.
Nope.
Tapped the lid all the way around the rim.
Nope.
Knocked the lid hard on the floor, all the way around the rim.
Nope.
Ran hot water over it again.
Nope.
So I guess whenever I get off my duff, I’ll take it back and complain. O’course I’ve already tossed the receipt, so won’t get any money back. But after this, I also won’t buy ice cream there.
Don’t buy much at that store anyway. It’s one of those fine establishments where you don’t feel safe in the parking lot. So it ain’t much loss.
Eyeballing real estate ads.
The prices have gone completely out of reason.
Here’s a place in town…not far from where I live, as a matter of fact. They want SIX HUNDRED GRAND for it.
They’ve renovated the interior…hafta say that for it. Looks like they’ve done a good job at it, too, if you like that kind of stark effect. The backyard, while not a wreck, is gonna require some expensive landscaping. All in all, not a bad li’l house…but still…that’s an INSANE price.
But so is everything else. I couldn’t even begin to get into the coveted Central Avenue high-rise now — prices are pushing a million bucks. For two-bedroom blah apartments.
Price of a house in the same zip code? $1.15 million bucks. And up.
Here’s a two-bedroom look-alike apartment in the high-rise where my friends J & L live. It looks exactly like their place. Under 1200 square feet…over 700 grand.
Wow!!
For what I could get for my house, I couldn’t afford to move anyplace in the city of Phoenix. Well…not anyplace where one would want to live. Prices are comparably crazy in Fountain Hills
This thing is a condo — an apartment — and centrally located. Look at the insane price! And you’d be running up and down stairs all the time! And it has no yard!
Sun City prices are still below the market in the rest of the metropolitan area. That would be because only a certain type of person wants to live in a ghetto for old people — thus the market is limited, to a degree. And they’re cheesily built, just like most of the cheesy new(er) construction in the Phoenix area.
Well…I’d better post this. WordPress keeps trying to throw me out. And I really should get off my duff and start moving around. ‘Bye!
Seriously… Don’t you feel like we’ve gone through the Looking Glass and come out on the other side?
Fires and smoke consuming Canada and the East Coast. War rages on in Eastern Europe. A living former president of the United States is indicted for a felony. A former prime minister of Great Britain stalks off the job. And Apple brings us a technology that blends reality and fantasy into one weird world.
Not that the world wasn’t already weird enough….
Boris Johnson, yes, quits as the UK’s prime minister — a little too much indiscretion about the partying.
Mark Zuckerberg brings us a fancy new headset that blends reality with fantasy. And why not? Who can tell the difference, as it is?
The former President of the United States is indicted for a felony that he signed into law.
Same Pretend President is found to have boxloads of state secrets hidden in his shower.
Canada is burning down.
The smoke from Canada is asphyxiating the northeastern U.S.
Chat GPT is scaring the bedoodles out of the guy who developed it.
A logjam of cargo ships is already piling up off the West Coast: more to come.
AI is charging up the road like a demented buffalo.
A new prescription treatment for Alzheimer’s is coming up the pike. Let’s hope it works! 😀 It’ll be just about on time for the likes of me. Unfortunately, it appears to have a high incidence of untoward side effects. Plus to get it, you have to have a biweekly IV infusion — doesn’t that sound like fun!
***
Ahhh, the Gnus of the Day.
I refuse to pay for TV.Profoundly, indeed, did I resent our Civic Fathers taking free, off-the-air television away from us. I could see paying for cable if there were something worth watching, or if something that runs regularly were worth paying for. But, alas…unless you’re a sports fan, there really isn’t much of anything that, IMHO, is worth plunking down a monthly fee.
Seriously: if you have the Internet (which most of us do), you can import just about all the televised drivel you can stand to contemplate, right on your computer. Ad-free. I use a big iMac to follow the news and the very few PBS shows still worth watching. Why pay extra for that stuff?
***
Meanwhile, closer to home:
I’ve been too sick to pay the bills, what with this li’l covid adventure. Most of them autopay. But a couple don’t, because I don’t much trust this or that vendor. Cox, alas, is one of them. Just realized I probably didn’t pay the recent Cox bill, because I’ve been too distracted to notice which bills were what.
So tomorrow I’ll have to get on the phone and pay that by charging it up on the AMEX card.
Goodie.
****
One of covid’s interesting effects is to render your brain nonfunctional. Thus: never did hit “publish” on this post. Never did pay the phone bill.
Still seem to be online, though. First thing after dawn (it’s about 3 a.m. now), the phone predicament will have to be dealt with.
Coughing coughing coughing coughing. Every BARK BARK BARK rips into the spavined back and the sore hip.
Seriously, how HAS a creature so many of whose representatives seem dumb as posts managed to survive at all? Gawd, but humans are stupid!
Out the door this morning, in an early hour of a hot, sticky morning: doggy-walk time.
Ruby dearly loves to walk around the park. The human dearly hates it.
No doubt Ruby loves it first, because our yard has no grass, so that grass stuff is THE bidness. And second, because the damn place is overrun with dogs, many of them as ill-trained as she is. Whatever her sentiment, a visit to the beloved park means an hour-long Dawg Drag for the human: she hauls me around the park at the end of her lead, jerking here and jerking there.
She arrived here at the Funny Farm just as I was getting both boobs lobbed off at the Mayo. Upshot was, I had neither the strength nor the inclination to leash-train an obstreperous puppy. Upshot of that is: the morning dawg-drag.
This would be OK if other people would keep their dogs more or less under control.
Today, for a change, we didn’t encounter any dogs off the lead over there. The “dogs must be on leash” sign at the entrance is for other people, y’know… But on-leash dawg or off-leash dawg, Ruby wants to lunge at them, yanking me with her.
And today, just barely beginning to recover from the Cough from Hell, I am distinctly NOT in the mood to be jerked around.
I should call a vet and try to get a recommendation for a professional dog trainer. My dearly beloved, now long-retired vet did that for me when I had Anna the German shepherd. The guy he referred me to was a miracle-worker. Seriously: he had that dog under control in two sessions.
Heh! Here’s a new movie series, V, which really does bring up the question of how humanity will survive — the inevitable alien invasion, o’ course. Unreality oozes out of the production room, though, and comes to visit us right here. If it just weren’t so…true to life… 😮 Substitute a virus for the aliens, and you’ve got it.
Speaking of survival — or not: This morning I felt like maybe the agèd body was begin to schuck off the Killer Virus. Now, late in the afternoon, it seems to be thundering back. Dunno about you, though, but in my case whenever I come down with a bug like this, it’s always worst in the late afternoon. It’s 4:30 as we scribble. Can’t sleep — not least because of some moron coming door-to-door trying to hustle up lawn maintenance business. If I hadn’t been busy hammering at Death’s Door, I would have taken him up on that, since Gerardo and the boys have disappeared into the forest.
While hammering, though, I spent half the day driving from pillar to post through Phoenix’s Hellish L.A,-style traffic.
Up to Young Dr. Kildare’s office. They insist I owe them $160, even though I’ve repeatedly tried to pay them. Why my payments don’t go through escapes me. And them, too…apparently.
So I staggered through a covid fog up to his place and insisted on paying the bill in person. This time they took my AMEX card, even though over the phone his staff insists they don’t accept credit-card payments.
Why? Is there some REASON to inflict a mindless hassle like this on your clients? What, really, is the point?
Then it was over to the credit union, to check in person if there was some reason earlier payments didn’t go through. Staff were as mystified as I was.
So now I’ll have to ride herd on that nonsense for a couple of weeks, But…in my covid haze, I’ll be damned if I can get through the online hoop-jumps to access my account. So that means I’ll have to drive back up there again in another ten days or two weeks. Better put that on the calendar, or I’ll forget it.
Hmmm…in other sylvan realms…
Think solar power will be our over-developed planet’s savior? Think again! We’ve been merrily trashing the Mohave Desert, sucking up its water and blighting its surface.
{sigh} Y’know, folks…there’s only one solution to the Kill Mother Nature problem: that’s to QUIT MAKING BABIES.
The adorable Pool Dude surfaced (heh!) with the sun this morning. Ruby SOOOO adores that man! Instantaneously she knew he was out back, and so it was OUT THE DOOR, the better to love him up.
He’s a…distinctive-looking fella. Has a frizzy, light-brown beard that he wears halfway down his chest. This, IMHO — and certainly in Ruby’s opinion — does not make him any less adorable. He’s just one of the sweetest guys you’d ever hope to meet, and nothing about his sartorial taste changes that.
Almost 9 a.m., and I’m coughing my guts out. Just ran out of Robitussin, so I now I have to trudge down to the store and buy another bottle of it. Or two…
The ‘Hood is adorned with shopping centers north and south along Conduit of Blight. With the exception of the Sprouts, most of these contain stores I avoid, because of the crowds of derelicts and panhandlers. I REALLY do not like to be hustled!
But…the AJ’s is way to Hell & Gone down on Camelback Road, and getting there entails a trek through rush-hour traffic. The Safeway, adorning the neighborhood where DXH and I lived (to the east and the south of the ‘Hood), requires two left turns across homicidal thoroughfares. Half the time they don’t have what you want. Granted, there’s a Walgreen’s across the seven-lane street (another left turn!) ….but really. Covid-smacked as I am, I would prefer to drive to ONE store, even if one with considerable, daunting drawbacks, than to Store 1 (nope: no cough medicine), Store 2 (nope), Store 3…and on and on. The Albertson’s at Blight and Main Drag South will have the gunk, and if they don’t, the Walgreen’s right across the street will.
Despite the nasty hack (which was expected), I’m actually feeling noticeably better (which was not expected). That’s not to say I feel good….but, surprisingly enough, I’m not utterly out of it. At least not yet. And I think I’ve had this thing long enough to be feeling really, really sh!tty, if that’s what’s gonna happen.
A-a-a-n-d…that’s probably one reason (if not THE reason) this damn thing is spreading far and wide. People tend to power on through “just a little cold” — and nevvermind that whoever you infect with your “little cold” could end up flat on their back or even in the hospital. And of course, every time they tromp around in public when they’re sick, they disperse their germs far and wide.
No kidding. I picked up a really fine bug from some nitwit who showed up at choir practice, stood behind me, and coughed on the back of my neck through the entire three hours. People are so stupid…I know the public schools teach the basic facts of infection and contagion, because I remember reading those facts in our biology text. I guess if it’s a fact that doesn’t fit their convenience, though, they just put it out of their mind.
Welp! It’s after 9 a.m. Better go out and spread a few germs of my own…
So…how would you like it if you got a call from the kid’s grade school while you were at the office:
“Please come pick up little Ignatius. We’ve had a murder here.”
Noooo kidding. That’s just about what parents here in the’Hood and environs heard today.
La Maya and I met for lunch today, at an old favorite Phoenix standard, a place that We Who Were Parents used to frequent when our urchins were preschool age. In the course of conversation, she remarked that Feeder Street E/W, which runs from Main Drag West through the ‘Hood to the freeway, is said to be closed, because there was a murder just outside MittelAmerica School, which sits on the Hood’s western border. The corpse was found outside the blocks of prison-gray apartments that border the school on the its south side, a few yards west of Conduit of Blight Blvd.
Eeep! thought I. But then not much more of it, since…yeah, that’s life in the Big City.
An hour or so passed as we munched and socialized. Then she went on her way.
I took my ailing laptop over to Best Buy (again!!!!!) and forked it over to the techs. So often do I surface over there at the service desk that His Cuteness recognized me. Alas, though: he was born about 20 years too late.
From there I drove homeward (and homeward…homeward…homeward…) through the unholy surface-street traffic. Made it back to the house. Having no pistol in the car (GOT to fix that little lapse!!!), I inspected the doors and windows before entering the Funny Farm. No sign of any fleeing murderers.
Thank Heaven for small favors, hm?
The school — a grades 6-8 middle-school campus — was roped off with yellow crime-scene tape. So was Feeder Street E/W, which east of Conduit of Blight leads to the Post Office (so much for mailing your bills today, eh?).
Just imagine:
Your child’s school wrapped in police crime scene tape.
A dead body right across the street from the campus, next to the slum apartments that border the school on the south.
Sunnyslope rock garden, one of the many eccentric sights in those parts
{snort!} Living in a place where you need to have heavy-duty deadbolts on all the exterior doors AND, while you’re at it, on the back bedroom that serves as your office is for the birds. Not to say a PITA. This state of affairs is hugely exaggerated by encroaching senility: you can’t remember your name, to say nothing of what all the fistful of keys are for.
First off, I misplaced my key ring, the one with the keys to all the exterior doors, the mailbox, the garage side door, the car’s ignition, the car’s doors, on and on: SEVEN KEYS!
You realize, I have to have all seven keys. Otherwise I can’t get into my house, I can’t drive my car, I can’t get into my office, I can’t unlock the yard gate padlocks, I can’t get into the garage…on and on and endlessly, aggravatingly on.
They couldn’t have gone far. I knew I hadn’t left the house since the last time I saw the monster keyring. But “far”and “near” are basically the same when you haven’t a clue where something is.
Finally found them. Added the mailbox key to the key ring. Put them down. A-n-n-d…lost them again!
I.
Can.
Not.
Remember.
ANYTHING!
No matter how trivial or how significant.
This stuff is getting very frustrating and very scary. What else have I forgotten…well….
Have I paid the bills this month?
Have I gone into battle to figure out where a spurious bill of something over 5 grand came from?
Have I refilled the gas tank?
Have I fed the dog?
Have I walked the dog?
Did I water the plants?
Where’s my grocery list?
What groceries do I need?
Where did I decide to get gasoline, since Costco is now kinda out of the question?
Yes. Get gas. One of the consequences of deciding to quit arguing with Costco over their annoying shopper card is that one has to find some other station to refil the gas tank.
Headed westward out of the ‘Hood , by way of visiting the credit union and thence the high-voltage Sprouts out by the university, I stopped in a Circle K gas station. HO-lee mackerel!
You forget how creepy this part of town is. A panhandler is stumbling around the gas station — fortunately he doesn’t importune me. A weird guy is also wandering through. The damn gas pump tells me I have to go inside to untangle some kind of mess.
Dodge the weirdos, get into the Circle K, and am told, no, nooo, nothing is wrong, all is well.
On my way, wondering WHAT is going to show up on next month’s AMEX statement.
Trudging across the city toward the ASU West campus and its branch of the credit union, I notice an odd thing: Once I get a couple of main drags past the freeway, I see many, many fewer transients and panhandlers. They cluster around the freeway overpasses and the signals a few blocks on either side, but once you reach about 35th Avenue…well… Nary a bum!
WTF? I never noticed that before. There’ve always been transients along that route…everywhere.
Not today. No one standing at the intersections, set to pester you when you stop at a red light. No one pushing stolen grocery baskets full of their worldly goods up the sidewalk. The mile-on-mile tracts of bland, cheaply built working-class and middle-class housing over there are effectively FREE of transients!
I will say, that has not always been the case. If you’d asked me before today, I’d have told you the population of panhandlers was pretty constant between here and the campus, especially the further south you go on the west side. But today…where were all the bums?
In our neighborhood, that’s where! 😀
Brought back to the repeating rumination that if it weren’t for my son’s strenuous objection, I would would be OUT of the ‘Hood by now. Long gone. The dust shaken from my high-heels. Never to be seen again!
Ohhhh well.
West-side errands completed, I cruise eastward, ever eastward across Thunderbird, a main drag that proceeds all the way west across the Valley from somewhere in Paradise Valley or Scottsdale to the sprawl out by the Air Force base, halfway to Yuma. Drop south on 19th and then, to avoid some of the heavier traffic and also to sight-see a bit, cut through Sunnyslope, a historic slum.
Sunnyslope has always been fairly dank, but as the years pass it merges into dire. More than a slum, it’s a central Mexico barrio brought north. It’s hard to imagine poverty of such depth in this country. Yet…there it is. People living in lean-to’s cobbled together with boxes and old boards nailed together. Ancient apartments that look like crumbling fire-traps. Once cute little houses tumbling down into the dust. And dust is what it is: precious few lots have grass ($$$) or gravel ground cover.
That notwithstanding, the staidly middle-class ‘Hood itself is officially regarded as part of Sunnyslope. This would be the result of canny map-drawing by our city parents, who have divided the burg into so-called “villages.”
Har har! Normal folks would call those “districts.” But whatever works for your PR campaign works. I guess.
Historically, Sunnyslope was a TB refuge. Until antibiotics were developed, about all doctors could do when you developed tuberculosis was advise you to betake yourself to a warm, dry climate. Arizona has plenty of that, and it was to provide the same that Sunnyslope came into its own. But of course, if you’re at death’s door with a lung infection, you’re not in any shape to found and build a business or to take on a steady job. So a lot of that population sank into poverty. And the poverty has remained.
So now it’s where your yard dude and your cleaning lady live.
Gerardo the Yard Dude lives in Sunnyslope…he’s sending his Eagle Scout son off to the UofA this fall. Not bad, eh? He and his clan — cousins, wives, mothers — own a row of houses up there, so the whole clan has cordoned off its territory.
