Friday, February 15, 2008

Snippets

* I actually thought this was pretty yesterday, despite my crankiness about the snow. Check out those icicles too.

* At the end of the summer I brought in the exterior potted plants and kept 3 in the apartment and put the other three in the pitch-black basement (they were already scraggly). Every week when I went down to work-out, I saw them slowly dying. I wrestled with the guilt of dooming the plants to die. Then one of them flowered last month and yesterday I saw the geranium had come back to life. So I brought that one upstairs. I don't see how it's possible since they've had no light or water since October, but he/she must really want to live.

* It would take only a half million dollars for us to pretty much retire. That's how much to pay off the buildings. At the current rate, they'll be paid off in 20 years for the one, and 24 years for the other. I'll be 66 then. So far away, I wonder if I'll make it.

* Gayprof wondered aloud about the garage we have for the car. Well, since the city seems to pay no attention to the fact there is a garage with a no parking sign on it, they pile all the snow plowed from the alley in front of it. Therefore, we have to keep the car out, or it will be entombed inside until they get around to clearing the snow (usually day 5 after the storm on that side of the street).

* Up here they have an expression "avoir les petits yeux" (to have little eyes) which means, "you look tired".

* The earth is such a perfect sphere that if it were the size of a basketball, you wouldn't be able to feel Mt. Everest with your fingers.

* We've got another tenant woe. I've been keeping it to myself because, ugh, it makes me feel shitty to think about it. Here we are the 15th, and he still hasn't paid fully for February. This is a 20ish guy who just "had to have the apartment" back in December and when we said that we always check credit, offered to bring his father over to cosign right then. So we relented. My gut told me no, but he waved cash at me, and like Kryptonite on Superman, I crumbled. Anyway, the story (this month, last month's was different) is that he cashed his paycheck and then got attacked and robbed! When he told us, he scrunched up his eye as though it were sore from being punched. He got an advance from his job for part of the rent (and gave me the company check that he signed on the back). I really hope this is the only thing I'll ever have to write about this one.

* That reminds me. Two party checks. They won't take them if you go see a teller to make your deposit. However, slip that sucker in the ATM, and it clears every time.

* You know soon, we will adorn our walls with digital screens to display any artwork of our choosing. That's the logical next step to the digital photo frames. (Which I want, but am waiting for the price to go down.)

* I've been a crankball all week, the snow being a major instigator. Still, I'll take a crankball week over a bluesy depressed week any day.

* I saw nude dancer Wednesday while I was driving. He was walking down the sidewalk. I spotted his swagger first and thought, "That's how nude dancer walked, oh and look, he's got red hair too, is it? Ugh, it is." That swagger man, it still gets under my skin. (For any newbies, the nude dancer saga can be found here.)

21 comments:

CoffeeDog said...

Is this your house?

I'd go nuts with all that snow. I am so glad I live in an area that has virtually no winter.

Anonymous said...

I wish we had a bit of your snow here, it's been another dry winter in my area. It sounds as though your week has been full of little adventures. Have a nice Friday!

-C

Anonymous said...

Re the snow. Relax. Things could be worse. You could be living in New Brunswick where we have at least twice as much snow as you. The banks in our driveway, which we shovel, are over our heads in places. I've moved from cranky to downright depressed.

Anonymous said...

I don't like snow but Ice is worse. We haven't had much snow this year but keep getting freezing rain.
I've never been a landlord but I think I would tell each renter from the start that if they ever get 30 days behind on their rent they are out of here. I would not accept any partial payments either.
Geraniums never look as good as they did the first year so I don' keep them over anymore. They aren't expensive. I have several houseplants that go outside in the summer.
ND has proabably moved two or three times since he lived in your apartment. It beats cleaning house. Ed

bardelf said...

Bravo for that geranium! Reward it with some water!

I, too, hope that Kryptonite boy doesn't become another nude dancer-type tenant. And, how weird that you'd actually see nude dancer at this time. Hmmm.

Anonymous said...

Our suburb announced yesterday that they won't be carting the snow away from the streets and sidewalks for the rest of the winter. They say they have no place to put it. So they will be piling it onto our lawns which are already five feet high with snow. I'll have to toss it over my head soon in order to clear the driveway. It's a crazy winter this year, but at least it's not super cold like they predicted.

dpaste said...

The house is lovely.

Sometimes plants will flower out of desperation, in a dying attempt to get their seed out into the world. Or maybe it's a defense mechanism to get humans to feel guilty and move them into the light.

I understand the snow situation, but what's the point of having a garage if you can't use it, especially in bad weather? I'd be racking my brains for a way to keep the city from burying it. Or banging my head against a wall.

I will resist digital frames as long as possible. I like the real thing.

ChickenStrip said...

I hate cold weather but it's so pretty to look at snow like that. Still, it was near 70 here yesterday, so I will continue to look at photos but live where we don't get any real snow to speak of.

I can't remember the last time I saw an icicle.

Cooper said...

We snowed all day again yesterday but we've warmed up to 1 degree above zero! I felt like I didn't even need a jacket! We have more snow than I can ever remember and we've had it continuously since the day before Halloween. Porn for me is drooling over pictures of green lawns and gardens.

I sure hope you don't need to come up with a moniker for late-rent boy, and it's not a new saga in the making.

Lacey said...

Geraniums go dormant in the winter, in the basement, with no light or water. You bring them back up in to the light early in the spring, snip back to a few inches, fertilize, and voila...it will grow and bloom it's little heart out for you. The key is to cut it back so you get rid of a lot of that old, leggy growth. I love geraniums.

YNAGER '65 said...

I am right there with you on the digital pix frame thing...I also want the price to frop a little more. Great house BTW!

LOL nude dancer, a blast from the past....

Have a great weekend...

~Y~

don said...

I use my Apple TV to display art work and photos on my HD TV. You can create theme shows for those "special" party events.

You could create a sunshine theme that you could watch during one of your snowbound cranky spells.

Java said...

I spent the last two hours baking pies and reading the ND saga. The pies look good, but we'll wait 'til this evening to dig in. They are what Twitch asked for instead of cake for his birthday, which was yesterday.

ND. Wow. What an interesting saga. And he's still schlepping around the city. Wonder if he's still clean/sober.

Rox said...

All I can think of when I'm looking at those icicles is "Wow, that's a lot of heat loss! Their heating bills must be through the roof!"

GayProf said...

Evil city and their anti-garage agenda.

Big Midwestern University has announced that they have run out of salt. This means that campus sidewalks are soon to be slick, bone-breaking ramps of destruction.

dantallion said...

I love the half-a-million dollars thing - perspective can be a bit daunting at times...

Anonymous said...

Oh, don't get those silly art screen thingies, instead how about investing in REAL art! Support a real artist instead of stupid corporations that only make you think you have to have their latest gadgets.

Patrick said...

I had to read every word of the ND saga. It was like watching a train wreck, just couldn't look away. We'll hope this kid doesn't repeat the problem.

For some reason my mom hates it when people tell her she looks tired, so she'll respond "no, I'm just very plain," then watch them sputter and scramble. Don't know what the hell that is about.

I wonder if the plants are perennials and just thought it was an unusually dark winter? Reaching, I know.

David said...

ND is like a nightmare remembered.

Still, got to admit, his saga was some of the finest drama this side of Erica Kane

dirk.mancuso said...

Ahhhhhhhh, the re-emergence of nude dancer.

If he sees his shadow (or yours), does rthat mean 6 more week of winter?

Anonymous said...

Nude dancer lives? Awesome. Did you pelt him with rocks and garbage? Because he deserves it!