Coffee heat rising

A Whole Wasted Day?

by

Good grief! Someone say it ain’t so…

Yesterday I spent the whole damn day batting from pillar to post, trying to repair one of the antique lamps that grace the bedroom. It flickers after it’s been on for awhile, suggesting it needs some rewiring. No, a new light bulb doesn’t fix the problem.

One place, a hardware store that usually fixes stuff like this, said they couldn’t do it.

Schlepped across the city in search of another place: closed. Out of business!

Drove ALLLLLL the way back across the city and downtown to a third place. They charged me a pretty penny and apparently fixed it.

So I’m sitting here reading the Gnus of the Day when….flicker flicker flash flash!

The damn lamp is NOT fixed.

WTF, think I… Might it not be the lamp? What if the problem is not the lamp but the bulb?

Haul out of the sack. Change out the light bulb.

And what if the problem is not the lamp or the bulb, but the electric outlet?

Move the lamp so it can be plugged in to a different outlet.

Just this minute, the flickering has stopped. We shall see how long that lasts.

But if it does last, then (because of my over-eager machinations), we won’t know whether the issue was the outlet or the bulb, since the thing now has a new bulb in it.

Oh well. If it stops with its flickering trick, at least it will be fixed.

Yeah…leastwise. At the cost of a whole day of my priceless time.

Fortunately, now that I’m not working much, my time is without price. But driving through Phoenix’s gawdawful LA-style traffic is just unholy. While it was kinda fun to explore old precincts that I haven’t visited in years, this city really is a gawdawful place to drive. Public transit isn’t much of an option: it’s slow and you end up sitting elbow-to-elbow with some very creepy (and smelly) folks. So I didn’t much enjoy yesterday’s endless junket.

****

{minutes pass}

***

Now, neither light is flickering.

WTF?

So…I wasted the whole goddamn day and a quarter-tank of gasoline and a fistful of dollars for…nothing? And I got ripped off by at least one local lamp merchant; probably two.

Nice.

Tempus Continues to Fidget

by

Crimineee, here we are halfway through the first month of another year. Who’d’ve thunk it possible?

When you’re old, time shifts into the higher velocities. It passes with absurd speed.

Yesterday I had one of the strangest experiences I’ve enjoyed in quite some time. I happened to be driving around on the east side of the city’s venerable North Central district, and in a moment of idleness, I roamed into the neighborhood where one of my old friends grew up. He lives in Portland now, his parents are deceased, and I haven’t seen any of that crowd in years.

There’s a Weirdness to driving around places you haven’t visited in forever: It looks familiar, and yet it doesn’t look familiar. 😀  I recognized the neighborhood, but I didn’t recognize it. Exactly.

When that friendship was active, his parents lived there. It’s a pleasant little middle-class neighborhood of pleasant little middle-class homes. Dates back to the 1950s or 60s, I’d guess.

Surprisingly, it hasn’t run down. To the contrary! Apparently centrally located single-family homes are hot property! The place looked as good as or — IMHO — better than it did when Dear Friend lived there. The houses are maintained as well or better…actually, I’d say significantly better. That property, because of its central location, is now worth FAR more relative to the rest of the city’s going value. Yet amazingly, it was full of families with kids.

Presumably the kids of doctors and lawyers…there’s no way the average tract-house family could afford that location.

Hm.

If the houses were not significantly older than mine, I might consider moving into that area. But they ARE older…a LOT older. So they would require a lot more maintenance, much of it very expensive maintenance.

On the other hand…they’re a long way from the grim slum that borders my neighborhood to the north. And they’re nowhere near any piles of grim (indeed!), crime-infested apartments like the mess that borders us to the west.

But on the third hand…those older houses are not cheap to maintain. Plus because of its location, the taxes might be higher than mine or my son’s. They’re practically uninsulated, and so summer power bills are astronomical. How you would insulate such a place escapes me — we blew tons of insulation into M’hijito’s attic, and the AC bills on that place, which is similar to the houses I was admiring, simply defy belief. My house, which is larger but 30 years newer, has significantly lower power bills than his does…and his house is probably newer than the places I was coveting yesterday.

Heh! While all that tempus has been fidgeting, a whoooole lotta changes have happened.

My friends divorced. Both have remarried. One lives in Portland, Oregon. The other in Seattle. DXH and I also divorced, though we both still live in lovely Phoenix, where our son also lives. Said son is now a middle-aged man with a highly responsible job and a house rather like the place pictured above.

I’m now retired and, freed from the joys of teaching college students, spend a great deal of time loafing around a pretty little North Central shack. I love my house but could do without the pool — and the house full of juvenile delinquents my bosom enemy installed across the street.

The hassle and expense involved in moving, however, outweigh the potential benefits. So far, I have yet to find a place that looks like its benefits would trump the hassles. The other day I did see a very pretty house within walking distance of my son’s place. But it was in the upscale neighborhood that borders Central Avenue: the price defied belief. Not only that, but because of its age and construction, the cost of running it would have been phenomenal.

Today, it’s highly unlikely that I could afford a house in an area where I would want to live — between about 7th Street and maybe 15th Avenue, from about Missouri to about Northern. The prices are so Californicated now that the cost of buying is in the stratosphere…and that doesn’t even include the cost of packing up and moving.

And so…time passes.

Gettin’ Old…or Gettin’ Walloped?

by

Lordie, it’s only ten to seven p.m., and I’m so tired I can hardly see.

Ruby is crapped out at the bottom of the bed, presumably also reamed, steamed, and dry-cleaned.

Of course, we’ve been awake half of every night, what with the New Year’s “celebrations” and various acts of vandalism.

Meanwhile, the docs out at the Mayo want to subject my brain to an MRI. Looking into this procedure, I decide that on this, they are not a-gunna get their wish.

Half the afternoon (or so it felt) at the physical therapist. That guy is some kinda low-key miracle worker. By the time I left his precincts, the hip pain was gone — as in GONE gone — and it has stayed gone all afternoon.

Dog and I walked, fairly briskly, for about an hour this evening. So…I guess I’m not crippled.

Yet.

 

We thought it was entertaining at 9 p.m.?

by

Now it’s 12:30 in the morning. THE most unholy racket has been going on out there since shortly before midnight: a long, loud rolling tattoo of BAM BANG BLAST BANG WHISTLE BLAST BANG BAM.

Yeah. Some fun, eh Fun? What the Hell gets into people? Is every moron in the neighborhood (and in all the surrounding neighborhoods) drunk, high, or stoned stupid?

Ruby the Corgi, who apparently is not enraged by Stupid, is conkered out on the bed. Wish I was, too. But even after the morons get finished “celebrating,” the arm will still hurt so much it will obviate sleeping.

May every idiot who can’t force him- or herself to think about other people enjoy the same. Lots of the same, in upcoming nights.

Off the Wall Since the Fourth of July

by

LOL! Actually, the issue is ON the wall: the great mounds of cat’s-claw vines that have piled up all over my backyard wall. The one that runs along the alley. The alley where the Brats and the Nitwits are blasting off their bang-bangs…and will be, for hours to come.

A few years ago, the State of Arizona and the City of Phoenix decided to legalize fireworks. It bein’ an ethnic thing, after all. And a patriotic thing. Is that “ethno-patriotic”? 😀

Fireworks manufacturers have descended on the city and now sell bangers and crashers from every corner parking lot in the city. Result: BANG BAM BAM BANG POW BAM BAM POW KEEEEEEBLAST BANG POP POP POP BANG BAMMMM BANG BLAST POP BANG WHACK BLAST…half the night. It’s 9:00 now. The antics have been going on a good two hours. With no end in sight.

The back wall along my lot line, running up the alley, is festooned with thick, heavy cat’s claw vines. They’ve formed a kind of carpet over the thing. Piled up on year after year of past, now dried-out growth…

A highly flammable carpet.

Stupidly, I didn’t think about the likelihood that ninnies would be out in that alley setting off their toys. And other ninnies would be driving by and riding their bikes by to throw their bang-bangs into the alley. So…that creates quite a fire risk.

If my brain had been in gear this afternoon, I would’ve dragged the hose out there and saturated those damn vines. But — lacking a noticeable IQ these days — naturally I didn’t even think of it.

Very.

Very.

Stupid…

Age seems to bring stupidity in the door with it.

So now I’ll have to wait till the middle of the night before I dast to go to sleep. Wait until the morons have exhausted all their toys. Wait until they’ve gone off to drink or smoke themselves into a stupor.

Hmmmmmm….. I wonder….

If some A$$-hole sets fire to the vines out there — which will soon jump to the roof and consume the house — could I sue our honored state, county, and city fathers for legalizing a clear and present fire hazard?

Unholy Christmas…Unholy Scheming

by

Over in the fringe precincts of North Central’s Richistan — within walking distance of my son’s house — we had an unholy event the other day. Some nut case — a rather prominent one — murdered his entire family and then blew out his own diseased brain.

The horror of this happening aside…that place is in a lovely area, and right in the middle of the part of Phoenix I frequent. Not only could you walk to M’jito’s place from there, you also could walk to the beloved AJ’s and over to several decent restaurants and even down to my car mechanic’s place without much trouble.

When the unholy story came in across the Internet, an unholy thought leapt into my fevered little mind: I wonder if I could buy that place at a fire-sale price?

Lots of unholiness going around today, no?

Seriously, though: that house is in one of the nicest, prettiest parts of old North Central Phoenix. It’s a lush, irrigated district, far away from the slums of Sunnyslope and West Phoenix, where my house resides.

Dreadful as it seems to think about this…I am seriously thinking of calling one of my Realtor friends to find out if we could glom the house at a price comparable to what we could get for my ever-so-much humbler (and less bloodied…) abode.

On the one hand, you don’t even wanna think about what it would cost to render it livable. Presumably the flooring would have to be replaced, along with a fair amount of drywall. And everything repainted.

One wonders if their homeowner’s insurance would cover any of that. Probably not. Blowing away your family a natural disaster does not make. Besides…who’s left to receive the money?

On the other hand, even if you had to pay every penny of the repairs, it would be worth it. Those are million-dollar houses down there, in a beautiful, mature centrally located district. So…oh, my goodness, what a place!

On the third hand, I hafta admit: I’m not sure I could even afford the property taxes for one of those places.

But ohhh…it would be a long way from Tony’s Home for Juvenile Delinquents, from the oceans of crime represented by Sunnyslop to the north of us and the run-down slum apartments to the west of us.

Seriously: my neighborhood itself is very pleasant, but it’s flanked on two sides by truly dangerous districts. The fancy-Dan neighborhood that recently hosted the scene of the crime is a very nice area, indeed, and the humbler areas (if you can call them that) around it are on the high side of middle-class. Upper-middle-class, really.

If I could get my hands on that place at a fire-sale price…well… Maybe I could afford it.

Tony’s instant slum across the street will cut about a hundred grand off the asking price for my house. But with a suicide/murder scenario in place, buying that place in North Central could be a wash.

That’s assuming I can get the previous owner’s insurance to clean up the blood and repair the damage.

Think I’ll jump in my car and drive down there…see if I can get close enough to shoof around.