Coffee heat rising

Out and About in Loony-Toonsville

by

Lordie. Just ONCE for a whole day to go by in quiet, level-headed sanity!!

LOL! Unfortunately, you do not get into a car in these precincts and expect sanity of any kind to ensue. 😀

What a place!

So…the other day we had the excellent Haddox Electric over, doing battle with the latest Adventure in Homeownership. They got everything fixed…took two guys half a day of wrestling with the infrastructure here, so I figured their $400+ bill was fair and gave them a check.

This morning Haddox calls me up and tell me the check has bounced.

What??!? That account has several thousand dollah in it.

Call the credit union; confirm that to be true. The airhead I speak with, however, hasn’t a clue as to why a perfectly valid check would have been bounced.

Call Haddox; arrange for them to charge the bill on a credit card.

Hop in the car; drive to the downtown CU office, which is much less busy than the one on campus and seems to be inhabited by pretty experienced staff.

Traffic: fukkin’ HIDEOUS! Took forever to get down there. About halfway through this be-tangled journey, I realize I should’ve just gone out to the campus branch. The drive is further but the hassle factor is milder.

Belly up to the teller’s counter.

She says nothing was wrong with my check. She says it cleared.

We are mystified by their claim that it flubbed. But she, being a bankin’ type, is suspicious. She says to be careful that it’s not a scam:

a) That the call really did come from the beloved electricians’ office; and
b) What does someone who answers the phone call from me say is going on.

Drive and drive and drive and drive and drive through slums that grow direr as the days pass. Drive through the Old Neighborhood: the beautiful historic Encanto District. Think how much I miss my splendid house there, how much I miss my neighbors. How much I don’t miss the burglars and the wannabe rapists…ohhhh well.

Drive through a couple of neighborhoods where I imagine I might like to buy a house that could get me out of the clutches of Tony the Romanian Landlord.

* Realize there really isn’t another centrally located neighborhood as good as this one; certainly not one I could afford.

* Realize I have to resign myself to a Battle of the Wills with that Romanian bastard. Dayum.

Finally get home.

It’s 109 in the shade of the back porch…and 77 in the “guest room” where Ruby & I have taken refuge.

Every other room in the house is best described as “baking.” Hovering around 90 degrees. The AC is just not up to its job.

Ruby and I have been trying to sleep in the “guest” room. Problem is, a twin bed just doesn’t do the job for a human and a bodacious little dog. We have plenty of room on the queen-size bed in the master bedroom. But it’s hotter than the hubs in there.

How can I count the ways I don’t wanna buy another bed???

And what am I doing to do with the twin bed that’s in there? Which, we might add, was NOT a cheapie.

Well…how obvious is this???  Duh!

I call a couple of movers and have them move the twin bed out of the “guest” bedroom/defunct TV room into the master bedroom, and shift the queen-size bed into the “guest” bedroom.

Et voilà! Problemo solved!

Well. I’ll get on that later….

 

 

Eeeeek!

by

Not to say A-a-a-a-a-k!

Just saw the BIGGEST RAT I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!

She was lurking in the garage, and when she saw me she was just as startled as I was in spotting her. She shot underneath the dryer, where she presumably is hiding now.

Called Ruby the Corgi, who came trotting out to investigate.

Corgis are ratters. One of the things they’re bred for is chasing rats around ships and barns.

But by the time Her Majesty arrived, Rattie had dodged out of sight. Dayum!

Well, I have rat poison now. Been reluctant to put it out, lest Ruby find it and munch on it. Or…lest she find a deceased gourmet rat and eat that.

Tossed several pellets of the stuff in behind the washer and dryer, and then put some inside a rat trap along with a little slab of dog food, hoping maybe the combined deliciousness will lure Rattie into that.

Rattie, it develops, is very smart. She has exactly zero intention of strolling into a trap.

That would make her several degrees smarter than a dog, we might note.

I’ll have to keep Ruby out of the garage now, to be sure she doesn’t get into the scrumptious rat pills. Or find a rat roast to munch out there.

This is gonna be a PITA of the first water….

Speaking of water, as we scribble the much-vaunted California storm is making its way into the Valley. It’s thundering away out there, the air having chilled down to a crisp 71 degrees. We’re told to expect an 80% chance of rain and light winds.

Hmmmm…well, it may rip and roar a bit in our parts, but I doubt we’ll see any rain here. The thunder is pretty far off in the distance…I think the alleged thunderstorms are well to the north of the ‘Hood.

San Berdoo apparently got something over 13 inches of rain with this storm. Almost 12 inches in Riverside. Looks like the main part of the thing is bearing toward Nevada. Pretty startling images from the low desert of California…egad! Wunderground is predicting a .o5% chance (whoop de dooo!) of rain here, with a low of 71 during the night. Eeek. Be scared. Be very scared.

And lookee here!  I failed to “publish” this adventure. Apparently.

Trying again…

 

Rain, Rain…Come Again?

by

Here it is, mid-morning of an August day, high monsoon season.

We’ve been told repeatedly that (eeeeek!!) a HURRICANE is blowing in from the west and (eeeeeeek!!) we must be prepared for heavy winds and lots of rain.

Eeek.

Well. What we have is a gray, overcast, still day. But so far nary a drop of rain.

Usually if the Valley is going to get rain, our parts are first to see it. That’s because the ‘Hood backs up against a set of low mountains that marks the north end of the central part of town. Those hills collect rain clouds, so we get most of the action.

It’s plenty humid, that’s for sure. Some laundry that I set out on hangers to air-dry is still damp, after hours of hanging there. The sky is solid gray. But it ain’t a-lettin’ go of any raindrops.

The media just LOVE rain here. It’s such a rare and bizarre phenomenon that it gives local reporters (such as they are) opportunity to croon on and on and ON about…nothing…

We’re told that

Heh heh…The nice thing about rain predictions for reporters in Arizona is that you can fill up space without having to get up from behind your desk and doing any actual…you know…reporting.

Hm. I’m thinking I should take Ruby for another walk now, before (if) it starts to rain again. The nice thing about the cloud cover is that it’s keeping the temps down in the tolerable range.

But we went out at our usual 5:30 a.m. hour — get out much later than that, and you’re toooooo late.

And as a practical matter, my enthusiasm for traipsing over to the park and back through bathroom-level humidity is low, at best.

Wunderground, the most accurate source of weather reporting I’ve found in these parts, is also indulging in the widespread repertorial hysteria:

Jayzus… Guys! Teeth are “impacted.”

Airplanes are delayed.
Flights are canceled.

Just a little literacy would help a lot, when it comes to American reportage.

😮

Brave New Annoyance….

by

Lordie, am I ever tired of living in the Brave New World! Every which way from Sunday, you’re assaulted by electronic nuisances and hassles.

It’s 3:00 in the morning. I’m sitting here playing with my computer by way of passing time until the current spate of insomnia passes. It’s dark out. It’s dark in, mostly, except here in the bedroom where a nightstand light is glowing.

And what do I get serenaded with?

Low batt’ry!

Low batt’ry!

Low batt’ry!

Aaaahhhh SHEEE-UT! 

Get up and traipse into the office, whence the racket seems to be emanating. Shoof around. Several old cell phones are sitting there…is one them the culprit?

Check each one. Can’t find any way to tell, with some sort of gauge or screen or whatnot, which if any of them has a “low batt’ry!”

Plug in as many of them as I can find a cord for. One of them takes a round connector. None of the cords in there has a round connector. So I can’t attach them all. Nor can I tell which one is making the racket.

I guess if the damn thing keeps yapping, I’ll have to gather up all the portable whatnots and carry them out to the garage.

Why is this better than what we had in, say, 1950?  Is it REALLY so wonderful to have telephones that you can walk around with and distract yourself with while you’re driving that we need to be harassed constantly by the damn things?

Revisiting the Good Old Days…

by

{ooookayyyy…. Let’s see if this effort retains the formatting I kindly asked WordPress to emit…}

So…this morning, driving home from an expedition in a southerly precinct, I happened to wander through our old neighborhood, known hereabouts as the Encanto District.

It’s a beautiful area, consisting of tracts that date from the 1920s to present. The Young and the Upwardly Mobile live there, partly because it’s close in — no significant commute — and partly because the beautiful old houses are handsome, unique, and built to last the ages.

Here’s a pretty little shack in our old stomping grounds: just $1,050,000. Dollars. Yeah. It looks a lot like my friend Emily R’s place, the more or less elegant residence for her and her extraordinary husband, who believed he was a girl and in time had himself surgically transformed accordingly…

This thing is right on the park.

But then we have this, two blocks from where we lived on Cypress.  It sold for eight hundred and thirty-five grand….

The reason I wanted to leave that area, BTW, was two-fold:

* I thought our son should be able to go to the public schools. But that wasn’t an option down in the historic slums. If we moved up to North Central, he could go to the Madison schools, which had an excellent reputation, not only locally but nationwide.

* And yes, the place was overrun with bums and burglars.

My mother started to campaign after the evening that the guy tried to pop the deadbolt on the side door to the utility room, which opened into the TV room where I was sitting on the floor typing up a grad-school seminar paper…in my bra and panties. He came very close to succeeding. When I heard the rattling noise as he was trying to jimmy the lock, I got up to see WTF — I’d thought it was the cats shoveling litter out of their catboxes, one of their favorite activities. Finding the lock lever jumping around, I ran out to the front courtyard and started screaming FIRE! FIRE! CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT.

This, as desired, brought all the neighbors out to watch the house burn down, and that caused the would-be rapist to take off to the boondocks.

On the other occasion, a guy did get inside the house. DH’s resonant snoring had driven me out of the bedroom and onto the living-room sofa. Our German shepherd, Greta, was very elderly by this time. She was sleeping in the hallway right outside our bedroom door.  I woke up in the dark of the night, saw a flashlight in the kitchen, and thought (no kidding!) ooohhhh! the baby must have waked up and John must have gone into the kitchen to get him a bottle! 

 When I went “John??…well!  At the sound of my voice, Greta knew that whoever was ambling around in the kitchen was not me and not John.

She JUST EXPLODED! It was one of the most terrifying noises I’ve ever heard…truly: you do NOT want to piss off a GerShep.

She got between the poor li’l perp and the door he came in. As she was about to despatch him to his maker, he found the side door. Managed to dodge outside and slam the door in her face, just as John ambled into the kitchen from the back of the house.

Still clueless, I get up and trundle out to the kitchen.

“WHO WAS THAT MAN?” he demands.

“What man?” say I.

“THE ONE WHO JUST RAN OUT THIS DOOR!”

Holy sh!t. 

Well. I’ll tellya…it was the end of the romance for me. That his first thought would be that I was entertaining some chucklehead while he was sleeping off the evening’s drunk said to me this guy doesn’t trust me and he probably doesn’t even like me. I never felt particularly comfortable with him after that.

Life is strange that way…

 

Speaking of Storms: The Perfect $torm…

by

This morning the power went out in the two back bedrooms, shutting off my Internet connection and closing down the big computer.

Jeemineee.

Called the electrician, whose services I haven’t needed in an age or two. He came over with a sidekick, and they spent the ENTIRE MORNING wrestling with the wiring. Truly: they were here for a good three or four hours, and no grass grew under their feet.

Ultimately they decided the problem lay with the previous homeowner’s DIY Adventures in Wiring. Satan, as the guy is still (un)lovingly known, made a hobby of taking on challenges in the building trades. Seriously:

  • He removed a plastic shower surround in the master bathroom and installed new plumbing and stone tile all by his manly li’l self. Nice job…except the stuff has to be resealed every six months….yes, indeed: filling the bedroom with toxic fumes each time. 😀
  • Removed flooring in living room, dining room, and hallway; replaced it with new tile.
  • Rebuilt a wall between the living room and the front bedroom, removed by a prior owner. In the process, forgot to re-install the doorbell, so….now we have to rely on those battery-operated (highly-stealable) bing-bongs.
  • Removed the asbestos popcorn from the ceilings and replastered them.
    • Note that he didn’t understand how dangerous asbestos is, and so breathed in great quantities of dust as he scraped the stuff off the ceilings…
  • Installed a new mantel over the fireplace…out of code.
  • Installed new Home Depot cabinetry and tile countertops in both bathrooms.
  • Replaced the master bedroom window with a sliding door (Burglars Welcome Here!)
  • Replaced the master bathroom sink with a shiny new Home Depot fake marble sink.
  • Filled in the wall between the living room and the front bedroom, which a Previous Genius had ripped out so as to create a gigantic party room.
  • But didn’t notice that in doing so, P.G. removed the wiring for the doorbell. So now, the only doorbell that works for this house is one of those battery-run portable things.
  • Installed, for reasons incomprehensible, an electric outlet on the front porch down near the ground, where it gets drenched every time the watering system comes on.
  • Built the side deck on the west side of the house, and did a good job of it.

Great work. Seriously!

But…

Well, if you’re not a licensed, bonded electrician, you really shouldn’t be messing with wiring and electrical fixtures. /eyeroll/

At any rate, today’s Adventure in Homeownership set me back $380.

Uh huh.

While I’m glad to get the tangle in there cleaned up some, frankly, I doubt if it was necessary. I’ve been in this house for…what? eight or ten years. And no problems have ever ensued from the wiring lash-up in the office.