Coffee heat rising

Weekend Recouping and Recombobulating

by

One long round of extreme work! Give me a four-day weekend (mine is four days because I don’t have to go back to campus till Wednesday, thank God) and that’s what you’ll get.

Is this only Sunday?

Saturday morning I decided to return the rockers I’d purchased at Pier One. The stationary outdoor fake-wicker chairs, billed (somewhat clumsily) as “nesting” chairs, worked just fine. But the rockers…not so much. After endless unwrapping of cardboard and twine and plastic, one is left with the chair, its naked feet, and two loose metal rocker pieces.

The lucky purchaser is supposed to slide the holes in the rockers over the chair’s feet and then (what could be easier?) insert screws to hold them in place.

What could be easier, indeed?

Well, the problem is, the chair’s feet don’t align with the holes in the rockers. The only way you can get them in is to bend the chair’s metal frame and force the ends of the legs into the holes.

This is a feat best suited to a youngish man at the prime of his strength.

An elderly woman is not up to it. I explained this when I left Pier One, as their saleslady was merrily telling me it would be no problem while their male manager sulked behind the counter, trying not to be noticed.

More annoying, after I got the first chair unwrapped and realized there was no way on God’s green earth I was going to get the rockers onto it, I noticed that the fake wicker was unraveling.

Experimentally, I unwrapped the feet only of the other cardboard- and plastic-swathed chair and found that noooo, none of the supplied rockers would fit on those, either.

So, back they went.

Wrestled the two rockers back into the car. Shlepped them back to Pier One. Retrieved $225, charged back to American Express. Despite annoyance, was pleased about this. I had other things to spend $225 on.

From there it was on to a Costco run, a Home Depot run, a Safeway run, and back to the house mid-afternoon. Driving around this city through the unholy heat is in-fucking-sane. Drivers here go mad when temps exceed 100 degrees.

Northbound from a very long on-ramp I hit the I-17 at speed—just over 65 mph. As I entered the freeway I could see a guy in my rear-view mirror, moving with the traffic a good long way behind me. He saw me trying to merge into the right lane, so he floored it and came roaring up behind me, trying to cut me off.

He, alas, was driving a Corolla. My aged Sienna has had most of its heavy seats removed but still retains its vast, superbly maintained six-banger. I breathed on the gas pedal and the thing shot forward like a Mercedes-Benz. Or, to speak in today’s terms, like a Titan rocket.

phphphbphbphhhhttttt!

Heat drives white folks crazy.

rockingchairscrapedThe old Cost Plus rockers are tired, but not beyond resuscitation. So I spent most of the afternoon scraping off peeling paint and sanding.

Had to drag them indoors for this activity, because at 108°-plus, it’s way too hot and way too humid outdoors to be scraping and sanding wood.

Despite several layers of paint, they’re sunburned and rain-soaked to the point where most of the paint just chipped right off.

This is either the third or fourth time I’ve painted the damn things. It’s a bitch of a job. It was a bitch of a job eight years or so ago, when I first did it. And each year of advancing age seems to make it more of a bitch of a job. That, truth to tell, is why I wanted to buy new weatherproof fake wicker chairs!!!!! I just didn’t want to do it again.

paintingchairs1By sundown on Saturday the things were scraped and filled and sanded and dusted as best as one can dust old wicker chairs. In the relative cool of the evening before sundown. I applied one layer of paint to the underside and backs of the chairs. This took the better part of an overheated hour.

It also consumed both of the two cans of white paint I’d bought at the Depot. Luckily, though, two ancient cans of white spray paint in the garage were still functional, despite residing there for three or four 110-degree summers.

By the time I finished, it was after dark. I had inhaled enough aerosolized paint to vomit it up for a good hour afterward. That was grand fun.

Sunday morning the runners were dry enough that I could flip the chairs upright and repeat that drill by light of dawn.

Getting the picture about why I really, really did not want to do this again? About maybe why that $225 for those two discounted chairs—a mere $500 for six, all told—felt like one helluva bargain?

Oh well.

They look pretty good  now. By mid-afternoon, when the skies were starting to clabber up again, they were dry enough for me to pick them up and carry them back to the covered patio, where with any luck if it rains tonight they’ll be at least moderately protected.

The effect is somewhat…rustic. They’re weathered, pleasantly weathered. I do like these chairs and wish they weren’t wearing out with age. This latest slathering with spray paint, I expect, will tide them over for another year. I can’t imagine they’ll last much longer than one or two more years. By then, though, maybe I can afford to buy a couple of fake-wicker chairs from some outfit that puts them together, rather than expecting elderly women to construct them.

After my arms quit hurting and my right hand quit shaking, I decided I’d better try to replant the schefflera I’d bought a week ago into a pot that it could live in. Quite a nice plant, this thing from Costco. Figured it could take the place of the dying thing that’s on its last legs in the family room.

So I dragged a heavy pot M’hijito had given me around to the side yard and primed it with some of the potting soil I bought during yesterday’s HD run.

Tried to shake the schefflera out of its plastic pot.

No luck. Trudged into the garage; retrieved the big plant nippers. Cut open all four sides of the square plastic pot the plant came in.

Went to lift the big plant out of the pot. And….

SPLAT!

It fell apart!

Yes. It fell apart into half-a-dozen small plants, each with a root ball about the size of a 99-cent potted plant’s.

So. Instead of paying $12.99 for one large schefflera, I’d paid $12.99 for x + (.99 ·5 y) + ~$8. ARGHHHH!

Jumped in the pool to wash the sweat off. Blow-dried the chlorinated hair. Painted the face. Threw on a moderately presentable dress and some makeup. Piled the plant debris into a box and tossed it in the back of the van. Set out again into the vicious traffic.

Got the $12.99 back from Costco. Didn’t have the nerve to ask them to pay for the large bag of potting soil I’d bought at HD, intending to transplant their fraudulent house foliage.

From Costco, intended to head east on Missouri toward Scottsdale, skirting my son’s neighborhood.

At 15th and Missouri a godawful wreck had had shut down the intersection. Fifteenth was closed northbound; Missouri in both directions. One of the crushed automobiles was an aged, once-silver Honda.

It looked exactly like my son’s car. Trying to convince myself that ten thousand cars a day drive through that intersection, I cut through the neighborhood to get around the accident scene. Headed east on Missouri from Seventh Avenue. Made a U-turn. Drove back to M’hijito’s house.

No answer at the doorbell, no puppy yapping. Stood in the heat silently rehearsing what I would say to the cop at the intersection…was one of the victims a 30ish man? did he have a white puppy with him? where are you taking him? can I take the pup, if it’s still alive?

Finally after what seemed forever a voice from the back of the house hollered “coming!”

Holy God.

Back on the road, eastering, eastering through the madding traffic. Arrived at Scottsdale Fashion Square, the erstwhile home of the upscale.

It’s getting a bit worn with age. Marble steps are cracking. Brass treads, where broken, have been replaced with black tape. No joke.

It’s still populated by upscale stores. The crowds, however, consisted of hoi polloi like me in search of smokin’ deals. What a zoo!

At J. Jill’s, I picked up a coveted little dress at a 20% discount. At Macy’s, I got an allegedly $80 pair of sleek sterling silver earrings for $29. Could’ve gotten them for another 20% off if I’d been willing to use my Macy’s card…no chance of that, though, after the last fiasco, despite their manager’s fine recovery. Dropped by the Coach store and confirmed that a hobo bag I covet costs $298; add 10% tax to that and you’re looking at a $330 price tag. For a purse. And that’s cheap. The really cool bag they had was $425. Before taxes.

Well, it’s clear I don’t get out enough. So long has it been since I visited those rarified climes that I had no idea Pottery Barn had closed its outlet there and been replaced by three new boutiques. Some stores have moved. Others, little remembered and less regretted, have been replaced by new palaces of mercantilism.

I must have walked through thirty acres of merchandise. And the weird thing was…almost none of it appealed to me. In all that huge expanse of expensive products, I couldn’t find anything more than a mid-priced dress and a pair of plainspun earrings that wanted me to buy them.

No wonder the economy is going down the tubes. Americans are learning to do without and prefer it.

Oh well.

Homeward bound. Stopped by a Safeway to grab a bottle of wine, having decided that now is not really the time to ride the wagon again.

Fed the dog. Fixed a piece of steak, a slab of Costco scalloped potatoes, a fine green salad. Wine.

Noticed the dog’s eyes are running. She has an eye infection, lhudly sing goddamn. Sunday night before Labor Day: soonest I can possibly get her to the vet is Tuesday. Soaked paper towels in ice water and applied cold compresses to her eyes. Seemed to relieve her a little. Now we’re having a frenzy of ball chasing.

I have not graded student papers.

I have not cleaned the house.

I have not repaired the kitchen cabinets where Charley scratched them up (again).

I have not dug the new pup-resistant fencing into the ground around the poolside garden.

I have not washed the car.

I have not cleaned the garage.

I have not loved my fellow drivers as myself.

Heaven help us.

Image of God at work: Michelangelo. Believed to be in the public domain.


 

 

 

 

Worrying

by

God, I hate waking up at quarter to four in the morning! It seems to happen every night unless I dope myself with Benadryl. And dammit, every single time I awake in the wee hours, my first conscious thought is some worry. I don’t know whether I wake myself up worrying in my sleep (in which case it’s no wonder I grind my teeth…), or whether there’s nothing else to think about in the dark and so the worrying comes naturally.

A dear friend is having some health problems. It’s potentially very serious. I can’t imagine how she’s going to cope…her job is running out and so she’ll soon be without health insurance. I think she figured she could just put her six-year-old on COBRA and try to get on our state’s miserly equivalent of Medicaid herself. But clearly she’ll have to buy COBRA for herself, which will be financially crippling. Awful.

Damned Republicans, getting us into this financial mire.

Speaking of financial mires, our clever right-wing leaders crow that they cut our taxes here in lovely uptown Arizona. To accomplish this, they’re shutting down schools, laying off teachers, closing school libraries, cramming kids into classrooms like sardines, trying to crush the police and fire unions, laying off city, state, and university employees.

Well, my property tax bill arrived yesterday. The county  has devalued my home by over $20,000. And my “reduced” taxes have gone up by three hundred dollars!

Of course, because we were told our taxes not only would not rise, they would drop, I kept the self-escrow for property taxes at the same level as they were last year. So I haven’t set aside enough to cover this bill, nor have I set aside enough to cover the taxes for the downtown house, which we pay ourselves. Son of a bitch.

So that money will have to come out of the money budgeted for me to live on. Which means, effectively, it comes out of grocery money.

If they continue to raise the taxes at that rate—$300 a year—I won’t be able to stay in my home. In two more years, that will amount to a $900 increase. I already set aside $375 a month to cover property tax, homeowner’s insurance, and insurance on an 11-year-old junker. That is right at the limit of what I can afford, even working the equivalent of full time (which is what I’m doing when I’m teaching four sections—this year I’ve taught as many classes as I ever did when I was paid a full-time wage at GDU, and I’m doing it for less than half of what I earned there.)

In April, the city raised water rates 7 percent. That came on top of the 40 percent increase they’d already enacted. So there’s where the $170 water bill came from. Power bills are also beyond the pale: sweltering in an 88-degree kitchen leaves me owing $228 to the Salt River Project.

So I’m going to have to start thinking more seriously about moving.

I can’t sell my house for anything like what I paid for it. The value of this house has dropped to what it was about 15 or 20 years ago.

If I’m going to move into an apartment or patio home, it needs to be in a reasonably safe part of town. That means Scottsdale, probably, which is out of my price range. So my price range leaves me with Sun City. And, god damn it, I don’t want to live in Sun City.

Nor, come to think of it, do I want to spend the rest of my life teaching freshman composition. When I got out of graduate school, which I largely financed by teaching comp as a slave, I vowed that even if I had to go on welfare, I would never teach freshman comp again. But here I am, looking at spending the last functional years of my life teaching freshman comp.

I don’t hate it as much as I used to. And because community college courses, especially during economic hard times, are liberally sprinkled with adult students, teaching at Paradise Valley is a LOT less obnoxious than teaching at the Great Desert University. But it’s still a grind that requires you to spend most of your waking hours reading drivel and feeling that you waste your time trying to teach people in one semester what they failed to learn in 12 or 14 years of grade- and high-school miseducation. If they haven’t got it by the time they reach college, they’re not going to get it. And if they do have it (as some do), they’re wasting their time in your course.

Given this basic fact, teaching freshman comp is a profoundly frustrating activity.

Well, it’s finally dawn. I’d better get up and get going.

Looks like it must be overcast out there. By this hour the sky should be a little brighter. Goody! A hundred and twelve degrees predicted…and cloudy.

{ugh}

 

How’s about we do some actual teaching in the schools?

by

{sigh} I see New Jersey has mandated another social work program in its schools. We’re told that, in a law containing eighteen pages of detailed orders, the state’s legislators have instructed its public schools that they must put children through classes on how to “tell” rather than “tattle” (uh huh…), have instituted a system through which any child can call the police and claim any other child has been bullying someone, and required that special antibullying staff be put in place.

And therein lies our problem. Teachers are not teachers anymore. They’re social workers.

Last week a young woman, evidently middle-class or even affluent, clearly neither disadvantaged nor stupid, came up to me after class. Diffidently, she begged to ask a question. Then she opened the syllabus, pointed to a word in it, and said, “I’ve looked this up in several places and tried the best I can to figure it out. But I still don’t understand what this word means.”

The word was urbanization.

Think of that.

A graduate of fourteen years of schooling, preschool through twelfth grade, does not know what urban means and cannot extrapolate from that word what might be meant by urbanization.

That’s right: another victim of Arizona’s bottom-ranking school system. But, I would suggest, not just of my state’s ridiculously underfunded and underqualitied schools, but of a nationwide conversion of our public schools from institutions of learning to institutions of social work. Teachers are being asked to do everything but teach their subjects, and then when the kids don’t learn subject matter, it must be all the teachers’ fault.

Now, I’m not trying to say that schools shouldn’t be trying to get a grip on bullying and violence. They certainly should. I was the victim of constant harassment and bullying between the second grade and the sixth grade, when my  parents finally left Arabia and came home to the States. It caused me to hate school so intensely that to this day I cannot bear to walk into a grade-school classroom—the characteristic odor of a lower-grade classroom makes my skin crawl.

That notwithstanding, pressure to conform is part of the socialization of young primates, including humans. To survive, social creatures have to learn the pecking order and obey it. Those who are “different” get beat up until they either die or give up and go with the flow. Obviously, that’s a cruel way to teach the lesson that you have to go along to get along; but for some of us it’s the only way.

This is why we have adults: to temper the cruelty. Instead of micromanaging school programs and classrooms, the legislators would have done better to give school administrators, teachers, and the larger society the tools to handle the prevailing brutality. These tools once were part of their repertoire but are no longer options:

• Allow school administrators to expel disruptive students, without having to jump through hoops to do so and without having to bend over backwards to make exceptions for students’ socioeconomic status or any other status.
• Fail students who are not performing.
• Reinstate strict dress codes.
• Teach academics in school, not social skills.
• Require, in all states, that teachers have degrees in their subject matter, not in education.
• Allow teachers to teach their subject matter, rather than forcing them to teach, lockstep, to standardized tests.
• Provide vocational training programs for students whose skills lie in nonacademic areas.
• Create jobs for people who do not have high school diplomas—bring back the gas station attendant, if need be, and revive our  manufacturing industries so people who aren’t suited for higher education can get decently paying jobs.

But of course, this would require the leadership of our country to create jobs. Real jobs. Blue-collar jobs. And pay something more than Third-World wages.

Oh well.

Real Estate: Is everyone down the Rabbit Hole?

by

Who pays people to write headlines like this?

Home Prices in U.S. Showed Signs of Stabilizing in June

Filled with optimism, we dive into the copy:

The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities fell 4.5 percent from June 2010, after a 4.6 percent drop in the 12 months ended May that was the biggest since 2009, the group said today in New York. The median forecast of 31 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News projected a 4.6 percent decline.

Well, that’s cheering. So…where does the bright, sunny headline come from? Anywhere in this story???

Values fell by 0.1 percent in June from the prior month after adjusted for seasonal changes, matching the decrease in May, indicating the deterioration is slowing.

That values continue to drop does not, to my mind, represent “stabilization.” In the next breath, Bloomburg’s reporter adds,

Nonetheless, any recovery in home values is probably years away as foreclosures dump more properties onto the market, while a jobless rate hovering around 9 percent and strict lending rules hurt sales.

Property values have dropped so sharply here that the county is predicting most of us will see a drop in taxes, even though the community college district, which has something like absolute taxing authority, is jacking up the tax rate.

In spite of property tax rates that rank Arizona among the lowest 11 states in that department (and give us a school system to match: yesterday one of my students came up to  me, pointed to a word in the syllabus that she couldn’t pronounce, said she’d looked it up in several sources and tried to figure it out, and added that she still could not understand its meaning. The word was urbanization), our doughty citizens continue to call for a Proposition 13, which goes on the ballot here next year.

LOL! The politics here get stupider and stupider. We can say good-bye to our libraries, as well the health and public safety infrastructure. Roads have already gone to Hell, as the city has stopped filling potholes and repairing heat and rain damage. One silver lining: our schools couldn’t get much worse, so I guess we won’t have to bemoan the loss of that service.

Meanwhile, homeownership is going away in this part of the country. My Realtor friends say they’re doing a land-office business. One woman is working 14-hour days, seven days a week. She says she’s selling almost exclusively foreclosures and short sales. One day she closed on seven sales. In one day! Another friend has reinvented himself. He no longer calls himself a real estate salesman. He’s now a “property investment consultant.”

Both say most of their buyers are Canadians, with a few well-heeled American fix-and-flippers. Most of them are buying homes with the specific intention of turning them into rentals.

The rental market here, for obvious reasons, is very hot. We’re told now that even if you’re stuck with an underwater mortgage, you can often rent a house for as much as the mortgage payments. The locals are no longer buying, whether because underemployment will not support a house purchase, because they can’t qualify for a loan no matter how good their credit is, or because they’ve lost their homes and won’t be able to borrow to buy a house anytime in the foreseeable future.

So, large numbers of houses in formerly quiet residential neighborhoods are being turned into commercial properties owned by foreign investors.

Experience suggests that this is not a good thing. The last time hordes of Canadians bought Arizona real estate—in the wake of the savings and loan fiasco—the result was a contagion of blight. When you live in some other country or state, you do not care about the condition of your “investment property.” It does not matter to you whether the lawn is mowed (or even watered), whether the paint is peeling, whether the shingles are curling, whether a public nuisance occupies the place.

This was so when the clown in upstate New York bought the house across the street, where the obnoxious Biker Boob and Bobby McGee resided for a couple of years. Before those two, we had the passel of male roommates, one of whom led a police chase through the neighborhood and had to be subdued in the front yard by the occupants of five cop cruisers plus two motorcycle cops. He finally unloaded the house. Whoever bought it did some fixup on the inside but nothing to the exterior. Unclear whether the owners live there or whether it’s a rental. Various signs suggest the latter, though. People who rent a house do nothing to care for it, and if the landlord doesn’t maintain the place, it quietly (well, sometimes not so quietly) sits there and deteriorates.

A steadily declining rate in property values “stabilization” does not make, any more than an excess of renters “stabilizes” a neighborhood of single-family homes.

End-Times Bargains! (End of season, that is)

by

So this weekend I decided to act on my new vow to loosen up on the frugality and get a life. Or at least get a few things to make it look like I have a life.

The set, about $540 at Amazon

For quite some time I’ve been craving some of that fake-wicker outdoor furniture—you know, the stuff that looks like wicker but really is some sort of extruded plastic woven on steel frames. These combine the design look I favor (OK, I know: it’s not a “look,” it’s just bourgeois) with some resistance to Arizona’s ferocious elements.

Right now I have two beloved white real wicker rocking chairs on the westside deck. These things came with me from the old house, where they resided for some years after I bought them at Cost Plus (World Market). Once every few seasons (used to be every season, but I got lazy), I drag them out and apply a new coat of spray-on white enamel paint.

Despite the paint, though, rainwater is singularly bad for them. Plus the wind really howls through the side yard during a good storm. The damn things kite and sail off the deck. So far they’ve landed in the yard rather than crashing through the Arcadia door, but in either event, it’s a mess. So I’ve taken to hauling them inside the house every time the sky so much as hints at rain.

Then there are the four wooden chairs I bought at Cost Plus a couple of years ago, to arrange around the back patio table. Not a terrible choice, but an inconvenient one. The chairs are attractive enough and they’re very comfortable (given a cushion). But they are unfinished wood. I’ve never gotten around to sealing them, and…well, when a hard rain falls the back patio can flood right up to the back door, two or three inches deep. Not relishing the thought of having those things soaking their legs in three inches of muddy water, I invariably haul them inside the house every time it rains, too.

This has become a real nuisance.

I wouldn’t mind cluttering the dining room with a couple of sailable rockers during monsoon season. But filling up the dining room, family room, and living room with six scruffy outdoor chairs every time a fluffy little cloud appears in the sky? Enough, already!

Then we have four clunky old metal and aluminum-strap outdoor chairs given to me by a friend as she was moving out of her perfectly affordable home into a bottomless pool of debt. They were, when new, very expensive. When she let go of them, they weren’t new; and price or no, the things were never to my taste. Particularly noxious is the circular tube base on which each chair assembly rests. This object collects trash. Lots and lots of trash. Every time a light wind blows, leaves, pollen, and twigs dune up inside the circles that are the chairs’ bases; don’t ask what happens when a stiff breeze comes up. The duning phenomenon means that every time I or Gerardo tries to blower off, sweep off, or wash down the deck, all four chairs have to be dragged around the KoolDeck. Drag them back, drag them forth, drag them around some more because every time you run a blower or squirt the hose anywhere near the things, more debris catches in those damn metal circles. Beyond enough!

So on Saturday it was off to Pier 1. No longer do I shop at Cost Plus/World Market: they’ve started demanding that you give them give them private information so you can get a “shopper’s card,” without which you pay a premium price. With the exception of Safeway, whose employees think I’m my dog and that my phone rings at Safeway’s local business offices, I do not shop at businesses where they pull that stunt on customers.

For all of these gigantic chain stores, the end of August signals the end of the outdoor season. Never mind that it’ll be another month before Arizonans can venture into the backyard; never mind that when we do, we’ll be out there for nine or ten months straight, every day. Despite the fact that people here are hotly in the market for outdoor goods, Pier 1 and its ilk have got everything that smacks of backyard living hugely on sale!

mwa ha hah!

And did they have fake wicker furniture on sale? Holy mackerel, did they ever have fake wicker, and was it ever on sale! Everything was marked down significantly from its original price, and then marked another 20% off the mark-down.

I found this nice fake wicker rocking chair in white, practically identical with the beloved real wicker rockers. Just as pretty as the numbers available through Amazon, pictured near the top of this post. Couldn’t believe how close this comes to the chairs I use almost every day when the weather’s good, out in the Leafy Bower. And the darn thing is just as comfortable.

Ordered up two of those.

And they had a rather attractive and amazingly comfortable stackable chair, perfect for sitting around the big glass-top table in back. I loved them: the’re ideal. Could not be better for the purpose! Fortunately the fake wicker weave also came in a kind of tan straw shade, much more convincing than the sort of brindle effect pictured here. So that’s what I ordered.

The cushions I got two years ago are still perfectly serviceable. They’ll probably last another year or two. So: all told the tab for SIX FAKE WICKER CHAIRS came to $500.

When you consider that Amazon’s $500+ tab for just two chairs and a tacky-looking table is relatively cheap for this stuff, five C-notes doesn’t seem so bad at-tall. Amazingly some places sell pieces like these for upwards of $200 apiece.

They’ll be in late next week. Yay!

So:

The hideous plastic-strap chairs will go on the curb, there to warm the cockles of some metal scavenger’s heart.

Two of the Cost Plus wooden chairs will go outside the bedroom door, taking the place of a pair of hideous plastic-strap numbers. They’ll get rained on and will weather to the classic silver outdoor wooden chair look, but since water doesn’t pool up there, they’ll never actually be standing in a puddle.

The other two will be offered to M’hijito, who could in theory use them on his front porch. Or stash them in back to accommodate friends during his many parties. The little twins will soon be big enough to sit in chairs, and so these could come in handy. If he doesn’t want them, I’ll either fob them off on some other friend or put them in my own front patio. Or someplace.

Ditto the white real wicker chairs. They could in theory, be repainted and parked inside M’hijito’s house, giving him a couple more chairs in front of his giant computo-television monitor. Or they could go to the Salvation Army, I suppose. Hate to give them up. But…they need to go now.

Now it will be much, much easier to clean up outside. The chairs themselves can be washed down with a hose. A blower or broom will scoot the plant debris and dust out from under the old wooden chairs, which have no weird circular footprint to collect trash. And though I may need to bring the rockers in when the wind comes up, those nesting chairs can stay on the back porch through all but a high gale.

Five hundred bucks is a chunk I don’t like to part with. But I’ve got the money, thanks to teaching two sections in the summer, and thanks to my fourth course making this fall. It it’s not like the purchase was a whim: this is something I’ve been thinking about for over a year. I’ve wanted to upgrade to fake wicker out there, and I’ve also known I couldn’t afford to do it at regular retail prices.

The end of a season is the best time to look for sales like this. Especially when someone else’s end of season is your beginning of season.

🙂