All My Little Words

Things sure are getting interesting in Seattle these days, something which I would have expected if we were having one of those long, hot summers, but which we are not. I shudder to think what things would be like right now if it were 95 out like it has been at times in the last few summers.

This past weekend, instead of the usual “someone got stabbed at the Torchlight Parade” or the almost expected “someone got trampled at the Capital Hill Block Party” we had an unsurprising burst of “violence at Critical Mass”. Since late Friday or early Saturday it seems like EVERYONE in Seattle has thrown their 2 (200) cents into the opinion pot on that. I’d like to be able to say that it is shocking how many people are not putting themselves in the shoes of the driver of the car. Perhaps they have never been in a car caught in Critical Mass. I have been and it is terrifying in a number of ways. If you are driving, and they surround you but somehow allow you to continue moving at a slowed pace, there is the (very valid) terror that you will accidentally bump a cyclist. This is something I would never want to happen anyway, but least of all when surrounded by an angry mob. Then there is the chance that a cyclist will fall near your car. they ride slowly so as to slow traffic, and I see plenty of wobbling. In addition to the fact that having an accident involving a bike would be awful, and the mob aspect as well, if you watch CM videos, even though they sometimes try to edit them, or simply film around it, you can see people throwing their bikes under cars. Sometimes they then will say “Someone is under there!” It is difficult to say whether they are trying to scare you into getting out of your car to see if there really is a person under your vehicle, or if they really think of a bike as being a “someone”.
I was only caught in a CM ride once, and it was awful. I was on Hwy 99, and suddenly, here is this huge sea of bikes. I couldn’t tell you where they came from because, initially I think I was just so shocked to see a bike/bikes on 99 that I failed to take notice of where exactly they had come from. I think they probably entered the roadway from one of the downtown entrance ramps, probably not the large one at Denny, but a bit North of there, where you can get on at any number of streets that run right into 99.
In that situation, in which you are going along at 45-50mph, certainly seeing people on bikes will slow you right the fuck down, but it does not seem at all practical to stop entirely. Not that it ever does. Like I want to cower in my car while hundreds or thousands of people who don’t like me surround my car, possibly rocking it back and forth, or bang on it. If I recall correctly, in this instance they came onto 99 at such time as many of them were ahead of me, and so stopping would have been futile anyway. I could only slow enough to try to let them all pass me (which they seemed loathe to do, as that would negate the point, which is to slow car traffic as much as possible) and then follow along at a snail’s pace until they finally exited, I believe somewhere around Fremont. If you are from around here, you know that the distance I am talking about is not great – even crossing the Aurora bridge and then exiting, in a car traveling at the posted speed would take only a few minutes. But in this instance, I would have to say that I was stuck in this situation for 20-30 minutes, and stopping to not have to be anywhere near them and their danger zone would likely result in my being rear-ended at high speed by drivers coming up behind me who would have no idea of what was going on. Exiting was also not an option, as I was not in the right lane, and crossing through even one lane of traffic seemed far too dangerous. It was a pretty terrifying experience, even without being attacked. I’m sure my legs were shaking the whole time, in fear that something would happen.

I can’t even imagine being trapped in a vehicle which was stopped, but with the motor running, and people pounding on it. No one believes that he accidentally hit the gas, or didn’t realize he was in gear when he revved his engine, hoping to scare the cyclists off. I do. I personally have been driving a manual so long that I no longer think about the process of using the clutch as I accelerate or brake. This guy was young though, so I am guessing that in his case, inexperience and youth probably made him panic and make the tragic mistake of somehow making his car move forward. maybe his foot slipped and the car jumped forward and instead of letting it die, he actually engage the clutch, and then instinct took over and said “Hey, you’re already moving, you should probably just keep going”. At any rate, the guy DID stop, after a few seconds, he must have realized that if he left, it would be hit and run. If he really wanted to get away, from what I understand of the scene, he would have. His reward for doing the right thing and stopping? He was dragged from his car and hit over the head with a U Lock.

I don’t know what happened, I wasn’t there. But I do know that it could happen to anyone. When you are just minding your own business trying to go where ever you are trying to go, and something like this happens unexpectedly, it is easy to get confused and panic. Maybe this guy isn’t even aware of Critical Mass, and there he is, suddenly surrounding by some less than friendly guys on bikes. It would be confusing to have a group of cyclists surround your car for seemingly no reason, and of course you’re going to let them know that hey, you’ve got somewhere to be, can they please get the fuck away from your car? Then panic sets in when they get pissed and and start to pound on your car and threated to tip it over.

It sounds like it was pretty fucked up to me, and I don’t see how anyone can not see how the driver felt. Yeah, ok, he fucked up, but Critical Mass seems to try to set people up to fuck up. They seem to assume that everyone should know who they are too, and what their agenda is. Yet, when I looked on the internet, I couldn’t a single comprehensive reference to them. Websites that give info about rides don’t appear to be up to date, and they don’t map any route ahead of time.

In other Seattle news, I discovered yesterday that people in Ballard are SHOCKED to be witnessing hand to hand drug activity. I can’t even count the ways that I am flabbergasted at this. We are after all, living in a city. Are people really so naive that they don’t realize that drugs are everywhere? Someone commented on the post about it that maybe if all the Ballard hipsters weren’t so busy whining about the Denny’s being demolished then they could do something about it. Well, if the Denny’s were still there, taking up a huge chunk of a busy corner, open 24 hours and brightly lit, maybe people wouldn’t be so eager to deal drugs right there. We’ve got dozens of construction sites in place of what in many cases, used to be occupied housing. Those eyes are no longer around to watch the neighborhood. We’ve got dozens of empty condos and townhouses as well, not to mention houses for sale that are either unoccupied or occupied by people who are preoccupied, with trying to sell their house for a half a million bucks. Instead of blue collar workers who go to work at dawn, but come home early and occupy the neighborhood, we’ve got yuppies who are at work 12 hours a day. People who don’t have yards or front porches to hang out on. People who don’t have a presence at home, and who are out fine dining and rock climbing instead of living as if their home were really their castle.
I don’t know how to tell people also that  you can call 911 with license plate numbers all you want. There aren’t enough police on the streets to respond to every call in which they may or not  find someone to do something about, and they really don’t care about the little guys that stand on the corners and sell tiny amounts of drugs. They care about the big busts, the high profile big money deals. Unless someone is getting shot, they are going to shrug and ask themselves how you are living in the city if you are so ignorant, and wonder why you don’t go back to the suburbs where it is safe. I don’t know what kind of drug deals we are talking about here, but if people are driving up in cars, they probably aren’t street people, either. They are probably your neighbors. Yes, the people living in those half million dollar homes. They can afford drugs, which are not cheap, btw. A lot of people who are on the drugs are homeless because they spend all their money on drugs, but a lot more people who are buying drugs have homes, and it’s no problem for them to spend $50 on a Friday night for a gram of coke. Believe or not, they are probably driving back to their nice house overlooking the water, and doing it off of that $2000 glass coffee table they’ve got in front of their window wall. So moving west of 24th ain’t gonna get you shit. Except neighbors who can actually afford drugs.

It has been quiiiiiieeeeet today. I attribute this to what I refer to as the “Seafair lull”. It seems to happen every year. I wasn’t quite sure I had it right yesterday when I was thinking about it, but I saw today that tomorrow is indeed the Torchlight Parade, and almost guaranteed to be slow.

The extra time I haven’t spent working or even answering the phone has been very informative though.
I read all about the mortgage bailout, which I have to admit has a  bit of a benefit for us, in the form of a $7500 tax credit for first time home buyers. It also makes me feel a little better about buying a house RIGHT NOW, as opposed to trying to wait longer, because  everyone is saying that this will make prices go back up. I don’t know if I believe that, but it will make me feel better if they just stay flat for a while and don’t go down further. I will gleefully celebrate having found “the bottom” should such a thing exist. However, even if prices go down more, zillow currently has our house estimated at about $50k more than what we are buying it for, so I’m not really worried about it’s value dipping beneath what we are paying.
I will say: I told you so. I knew all of this buying of overpriced real estate was going to have severe consequences and I was completely and totally utterly correct. And I knew that people were going to get fucked over by their high mortgage payments, and the fact that they wouldn’t be able to refinance.
I also looked up crime statistics for our new neighborhood, and didn’t find anything really bad. Between that, the way things in mortgage and real estate are going, and what’s going on with gas prices, I’m feeling really about right about all of this right now. BTW, I paid $4.11 for gas on Tuesday (with my .10 cent Safeway discount) and I read today that gas prices dropped a lot this week (which I noticed, I think it was $4.75 last time I filled up a month ago) and are supposed to drop under $4 in the next month.
But maybe best of all, I found this: shoewheel!

Today we are supposed to hear back about the financing on the house. I’m sure it will be fine, but my stomach is still tied up. It will be such a big change to move, and I’m looking forward to it, but it may be a long time before my stomach settles down.

Just now, I was reading something a person that I don’t really know (a friend of friends) had written about going to the Sub Pop anniversary a couple of weeks back,  and in turn about Kurt Cobain’s death 14 years ago. Man, that is a long time. And I think about what I was doing then. About to move to Santa Cruz, CA. Didn’t know it at the time, but about to spend a few days down there is a less than luxurious hotel,  hiding my cats and rat, looking for a place to live. We ended up moving into a studio apartment that would have fit into the living room of this new house. Two of us. And two cats, and a rat. A tiny living room, kitchen and this weird bathroom that featured what is to this day, probably the biggest stall shower I’ve ever been in.

Kurt Cobain died just a few days before we were set to leave. I don’t have anything against Sub Pop, but I was never into grunge. As a security guard, I had worked a good number of grunge shows, and never really could believe how popular the whole thing became. Some of the performers were nice people. Some of them not so much. The fans definitely left a lot to be desired. While I didn’t have anything against ole’ Kurt personally, he was just another guy to me, nothing special, and his wife was the biggest mess this town has seen to this day. I wasn’t surprised when he died, and it was kind of ironic that we left town just a few days after, what with all the conspiracists around – when we came back 2-3 years later, there was still a show running on public access tv called “Who killed Kurt Cobain?” or something to that effect.

I guess reading that, and thinking about what I was doing 14 years ago is just a really weird thing to me, when I am waiting on pins and needles to be told, for sure, that I am officially going to become a first time home buyer. It is strange to think of that time when I lived in such a tiny space, and was barely able to afford it, and now I am still worried about affording my residence but these days it’s ten times bigger. I don’t even remember how much our rent was back then. I do remember that all we did when we weren’t working was go to the beach and drink.

I’ve led a funny life in which I’ve gone from being really quiet and uninvolved to right in the middle of the music scene (even if it was in a very low profile way) to a homebody again for years, to being really involved again (maybe in a much less low profile way) to now, in which I think I’m probably about to go back to being a homebody. We shall see, shan’t we?

Yesterday was our last day to change our minds about buying the house. When Alex asked me if I still wanted to, I said yes, despite having been told that some of our nearby neighbors may be unsavory. My reasoning was that I would rather buy a house knowing what I might be getting into, than try to buy a different one only that I know nothing about, only to find out something worse later.

Later last evening, he was told that they would put a “Sold” sign on the house, even though the financing isn’t completely finalized. Even though we will not find out about that until (supposedly) tomorrow, it feels pretty real at this point. I plan to drive by the house on my way to work, to see if they did put Sold on it, and also to see if I can identify the home of the alleged terrible neighbors. I am honestly not buying it, some of the details of the terrible tale do not really match up. We shall see.

Even though we keep taking steps closer and closer each day, I still feel nauseous pretty much all the time. Honestly, I will probably continue to feel that way for the next couple of years or so, wondering if we really did the right thing at the right time. I still wonder if we should have waited longer. So far, so good – I still check the listings each day, and there have yet to be any new listings look any better than what we are buying. Even if I were seeing comparable houses with lower prices, I wonder about the interest rates. I don’t know how low the price of a house would have to go to compensate for a higher interest rate, but I have to think that if we waited until next spring and found a house for $280k, but the interest was a lot higher, we’d pay about the same. Of course, we could refi later, but we’d have to wait awhile. Who knows? I do know that it will be hard to get a house that I like more, because even when I looked in a higher price range, I only found a few I liked as much, and I’m only looking at pictures on the interwebs.

I think back to way back when the first people I knew who were around my age started buying first homes. I knew this one couple that bought a house for probably around $125k. This was probably around 1996 or so. I was so envious, their house was so cute! Now looking back, I like our (hopefully) new house much better. They had two small bedrooms, one of which had french doors leading to the living room, which made it a hard to use bedroom. The bathroom was between the two bedrooms, and you could only access it by going through a bedroom. The kitchen was tiny and cramped and out of date, and there was no dining room. I think they had a pretty good yard, but not better than ours, and iirc, a great basement, but still, our house wins by a mile. And I think today that house would probably be really close in price to ours.

Even the last house I rented, which I loved and really wanted to live in for much longer, and had hoped to buy, doesn’t seem as good for us. Yes, it was big, but a lot of the space was wasted, or hard to use, or at least was hard for us to use. I would have had to change a lot of things in that house to make it what I wanted. I like every aspect of this house more, right down to the paint colors and floors. The yard is better, and we have a garage! and three side by side parking spaces (I hated tandem parking in that house!) The only thing I really loved about that house was my gigantic bedroom, and I think that maybe when Sage is older and no longer at home, perhaps that is the one major thing we would do to the house, would be to make a big upstairs that was a great big bedroom. We shall see.

Now I wait until tomorrow.

I am developing more and more perspective about the whole home buying experience. For me, it is not an investment, it is a place to live, hopefully for the rest of my life.

When I was a kid, we moved about once a year. I didn’t know that this wasn’t really “usual”, I suppose because I never got to know many other kids well enough for long enough to know that their parents owned their homes, at least until, I would say, fifth grade or so. I never really thought about the fact that my grandparents owned their home, and that they didn’t move all the time, nor did any of the other aged relations we visited. And I think that’s a big part of it – perhaps I just thought that old people owned their homes. At any rate, although moving as a child didn’t bother me as much as it does now, it did bug me. I recall making a big, long distance move, prior to which I was made to get rid of pretty much all of my stuff (of which there was not a lot to begin with, I was never a spoiled child) including my dearest stuffed Snoopy. Even as a child I reasoned with my father that it was only a Snoopy. How much space could it possibly take up? His logic as that I was too old for it anyway, and that it was worn out. I’m pretty sure that the fact that I never got anything as a kid, and I wasn’t allowed to hold onto even such a small thing as that is probably why I am a giant packrat now. Despite the fact that I have continued to move, time and again as an adult, I drag tons of crap with me. For the record, I will never ever ever under any circumstances make my son get rid of his most beloved and prized item, no matter how old he gets.

Another aspect of all of this is that when I was in my early 20s, buying a house seemed IMPOSSIBLE. Probably because my parents (by which I mean my mother and father when I was younger and then each of them separately with respective new partners when I was a little older) didn’t buy houses until they were 34 & maybe 36. They always said that they couldn’t afford it. I don’t know what lending was like at that point in time, so perhaps this is true. Or perhaps, they were just afraid because their parents had sunk in roots and not budged in 20 years. I don’t know. I do know that we didn’t have much money (hence the not ever getting anything) but I don’t know that they really knew for sure that they couldn’t afford a house, or if my mom just told my dad that because she knew better than to buy a house with him. It took about 5 years for her and her current husband to buy a house, but it was his parents’ house, and I honestly don’t know if they would have bought one otherwise. My mom – to this day – complains about how much that house costs them. When I found out how much they paid each month, I almost threw up. Not because it was so much, but because it was so little. I know that their property taxes are high, due to the fact that their house happens to be on the waterfront. It is NOT a nice house though, and in fact, I’m sure it is smaller than the one I want to buy.

So, even though I am choking on the price of this house that we are about to buy (it seems) and even moreso, how much it will cost per month, in a lot of ways, that extra money will be worth it to me, because maybe if I’m lucky, this will be the last time I ever put my shit into boxes and lug it somewhere else. If not the last time, maybe at least the last for a long time. I hate the misery of anticipating a move, and living out of boxes for up to a month before moving, and then the actual physical labor of moving, cleaning and then the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to unpack. I hate looking around and thinking that I don’t want to do anything about anything in here because we’re just going to pack up and move anyway. How much money per month is it worth to not move again for at least 10 years? I can make it work.

There is also the aspect that even though monthly house payment will be more, that includes insurance, so I cancel the renter’s insurance. Half the distance to work (heh- from 8 minutes down to 4) saves me money on gas, and the fact that I can take the bus saves more. The fact that I will be more than willing to cook in my new kitchen? Cha-ching. The fact that I will buy more energy efficient appliances and use the fireplace insert in the winter to heat the house? That erodes the monthly expense more. So, when I balance out spending more on the house with less on other stuff, $600/month more becomes maybe $400. I am hoping anyway 

I still will always wish that I had known better when I was younger. I will always wish that when I was 25 I had realized that in ten short years $150k was going to seem like NOTHING. But at least if we live here forever, it will be paid for by the time I’m 67. Hopefully, I can manage to live in it until I die, and then give Sage the money from my half of it, so that he has something. Or maybe he will just keep it for himself. Of course, by the time I’m 67, he will be 42. Wow.

We had the home inspection the other day. It was loooong (4.5 hours), but went pretty well, and was really informative.
It is interesting to note that while, no, there are still no other houses with the square footage for the price (especially that aren’t falling down) in the area, I have to wonder how well this house would sell if it didn’t to us. I wonder how many people would have made it to inspection, with it being so very noticeably settled (even though we now know that the issue has been arrested before any structural damage or major foundation issues occurred). I wonder how many people would really want this house after hearing that it needs this that and the other thing (nothing major now – the roof has a good 10 years in it, water heater and furnace good for a while, etc). I think so many people today are used to seeing these “perfect” houses out there, that they would rather pay more for one of those than deal with the issues this one has.

It doesn’t matter to us though. We are more excited about the house than we were before. After having spent all those hours in it yesterday, I know realize that only the living room is crooked, and it is all about one corner of that room, and we can fix it when we feel ready to do so. I noticed so many things about it that I hadn’t before, and I really feel confident about the size and the level of comfort we can have there. I’m even excited about fixing the things that need fixing because we know what is needed, and we can do almost all of it ourselves, and we can do it the way we want to.

So, assuming the sewerscope goes well today, and we find out on Friday that the financing is all good, I can’t wait for September.

So. Here we are, having made an offer, received a counter offer, fiddled with some details, and now everyone has signed some sort of contract which, from what I understand makes the house ours, as long as everything doesn’t fall apart.

Hurdle #1
Inspection on Sunday. I get to  be nauseous until then. The current owners have only been there 5 years, and are only selling to move to California, so it doesn’t seem like there is probably anything to badly wrong, but it still makes me ill.
Hurdle #2
Sewer Scope. I don’t even know what to think about that. Sure it will be fine?
Hurdle #3
Right around the time our inspections are done is supposedly when we will have a good idea of whether or not the financing is okay. It should be, as what I provided last night shows more income for me than what we were pre-approved with, and Alex is getting kind of a lot more money as of next month (again, more than what we were pre-approved with) so that should be okay.

Then the real stuff. Packing. Moving. Cleaning. And finally, actually making that big, old mortgage payment every month. I may get an ulcer before the end of the year.

But – No more waking up to Billy’s remodel every morning (not like that wouldn’t have been done eventually anyway, or halted at the end of summer for the weather). I’m really looking forward to the new kitchen – I’ll be sitting at the breakfast bar with the laptop, with the coffee pot just off to my right. Or in the solarium, at the table in there, or on the futon with coffee.  Alex and I will share that office, which will be nice. There are a lot of things I’m looking forward to. I can’t even list them all.

Yesterday morning, I arose blissfully late, having done nothing in particular up ’til that point this weekend. After browsing the usual websites, which takes quite a bit less time on weekends, I turned my attention to the usual search for homes. Lo and behold, I found a house that I just had to see. I figured we’d just go by and see if there was an open house, because why bother our agent when we were gonna get there and find another POS that they somehow made look good in pictures? Even though I tried not to be too excited for just that reason, I made Alex get off his ass so we could go check it out, because something about this one felt different.

For sure, when we arrived, the house revealed itself to be not quite as pretty as the pictures. BUT – it reminded me a lot of the garden house, only bigger. Much BIGGER. Same style of house, same living room, just slightly different front door placement, and living room a little larger, with not only a working fireplace, but with an insert, no less, and instead of a corner window, a HUGE picture window (which, of course will need to be replaced with double panes at some point, it is the only single pane left, I’m sure because it will cost $$ to replace). The bedroom placement is also pretty much the same, a doorway off to the right, at the farther end of the living room, one bedroom in front, one in back, bath in the middle. But these bedrooms are both larger than in the garden house, as is the bath. And nicer. A more normal coat closet as well.

The back bedroom also has a sliding glass door that clearly used to lead to a patio, which at some point was enclosed and is now a fairly large solarium. It is teh awesome. That in turn, has a door which leads to the dining room, which is large and open to the kitchen. (The garden house barely had room for a small table, in part of the kitchen). The kitchen is larger, has a breakfast bar, floor to ceiling pantry cabinets next to the fridge, and the stove is in an island in the center of it all. I love the layout. The kitchen is right behind the living room, just like the garden house, but instead of a doorway, there is a large open, archway. So the whole living area of the house is pretty much open, back to front. This house has an attached garage off the kitchen, and the washer and dryer are out there, not wasting space in the house. There is a storage attic above the garage too, that is easily accessible. Three parking spaces in front, also, side by side, not tandem. Oh yeah, and it has a bedroom UPSTAIRS, and a bonus room. the backyard size is perfect, and is fenced. In short, the perfect house for us. (Oh yeah, hardwood floors too.) All for the same price as the garden house. That house was, I believe 870 sf. This one is 1550. That’s 680 more. Wow.

So, of course, we made an offer. A better offer than the last one, and for this one, I think I would be willing to kind of do whatever. Fortunately, this house does need some prettying up, which will cost some money, and some things like the window replacement. It is also a bit crooked, because of it’s location in Greenwood, presumably. We had Josh look at it though, and he said it’s fine, we don’t even need to have it fixed until we feel like it, and it may actually settle more, and correct itself. It’s also right on 3rd, which is kinda busy, but not too bad.

I think this is the one. Alex said he’d be okay living there for ten years or so. I’m excited. So ya can’t tell me that the market isn’t getting better (pricewise, anyway) this is the best we’ve seen by far.

I wish it was so inviting.
While it is bad enough that this poor douchebag bit the dust over something so inane, now we’ve got the “people of size” pissed off at Pixar over Wall-E, their best movie to date. If you haven’t seen the movie, perhaps you’ve at least seen a trailer, and so you know that all humans portrayed are fat. That sure does sound like something to be pissed about, I suppose, especially in a random, out of context fashion like that. However, if you’ve seen the movie then you would know that it is a side effect of humans having left Earth and living on a space craft in which they are treated like huge babies (and in fact, I read one comment in which someone suggested that what he really saw was a portrayal of humans as babies, rather than just fatties), sailing around in hovercrafts that are like floating beds in which they never get up from, and fed liquid diets from Slurpee-like cups with straws. I saw the movie as portraying the corporation Big N Large as being a villain, who “rescued” humans from Earth (after destroying it by encouraging blatant consumerism which led to massive waste), and then lulled them into complacency with complete and total utter comfort, ie the hoverbeds and easy caloric intake. All of which would lead to fatness. Obviously. Realistically. You can sit there and say “well, how come no one got up and fought back and took their bodies back, and yadda yadda?” If you watched the movie, B N L treats the whole thing like a big, long vacation, after which everyone will return to Earth and normal life will resume. It doesn’t. So the humans go on their “vacation” to space, and are pampered, massaged and fed – for 700 years, instead of just 5. Tell me for reals that if we all had to go into space to escape our own garbage that anyone would complain about being pampered like that? Yeah, right. Especially since they were led to believe, first, that they would return home soon. Of course you would suck up the relaxing and lying around. Then they don’t tell you what’s really going on, and you’re still being pampered constantly. Vacay turns into retirement, and each following generation grows up knowing nothing else.

For the record – the fatties on board the Axiom on not portrayed as being bad people, especially not for being fat. In fact, the minor implication that they are lazy is negated when Wall-E interrupts the humans’ reverie, and it becomes clear that the point is that they have been lulled into total submission. There is nothing to be angry about, and it is clear that these humans are portrayed as fat because they have absolutely no physical activity whatsoever. Not because they are necessarily “pigs” or because they are unhealthy otherwise, but simply because they have been taught to ride around in their little hovercrafts, and they have no idea that they are “fat”. They must still feel attraction to one another, fat or not, as they are still reproducing. So what’s the problem? I have no idea, because I didn’t laugh because they were fat. Neither did my boyfriend or my son, or anyone else in the theater that I noticed. In fact, despite the fact that the film is charming and delightful in many ways, I think most people will take it seriously, rather than as an excuse to make fun of fatties.

Can everyone stop being so fucking overly sensitive please? I would be just as shocked and horrified if the film used any sort of name calling or other negativity towards larger people, but if anything, it portrayed fat acceptance as much as anything I’ve ever seen. Everyone was fat, and no one cared. And it was a realistic theory. I don’t know what else to say, except that I think it is completely true that I live in a world full of big, whiny babies.

It’s Tuesday morning and I woke up to the smell of tar. I guess it is from the new roof next door, but it is fairly disconcerting.

Yesterday, Sage and I went out to breakfast at the OPH, and lucky him, Christine was going to the zoo, so he got to go too. Melissa and the girls also went, and it sounds like that gave Sage a chance to show that he’s kind of the best kid ever. “Either let me keep this one or you have to raise mine. Sage is awsome.” Sounds like a compliment to me.
I was the most tired person ever yesterday, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. 27 cups of coffee did absolutely nothing for me. I felt better by nighttime (as usual) but still fell asleep waiting for another disc of The Wire to be burned, and fell asleep by midnight as well. And then proceeded to sleep until after 10 this morning. Because as I pointed out last night, I will sleep forever. I have 2 modes – Never Sleep and Sleep Forever – and never the twain shall meet.

After work, I came home to a little BBQ, including corn on the cob. My dog loves corn on the cob. If I hold a corn cob out for him, he will bite the kernels off just like a person. If the cob is empty, he will take it and gnaw on it like a bone, and I have to take it away before he bites pieces off of it. Pretty sure his internal systems are running pretty smoothly today.

Afterwards, we went to Carkeek Park to rejoin Christine, Jaxon, Melissa and Josh and the girls. Sage got chased around by the girls, and after we saw the sunset we all went our separate ways.

I certainly have plenty of things to do around the house today, but most importantly, I have to drive to meet and adjuster to look at my vehicle which was T-boned last Wednesday. The traffic signal at 85th and 15th (the biggest intersection around) was completely out. There wasn’t much traffic, and everyone I witnessed ahead of me stopped, looked and then carefully took their right of way, exactly as they are supposed to in this situation (lights out means, the intersection simply becomes a 4 way stop). Until I got there of course. After the car in front of me stopped, checked and went in turn, I pulled up, stopped and checked. No one to my right at all. No one across from me. A car on my left, in the far right, about to turn right. Nothing else that I could see, certainly no other cars stopped and waiting for their turn. So I attempted to cross the intersection. Sensed something to my left,  turned to see a mini van coming directly towards me, no stop at the edge of the intersection at all, then watched as he plowed right into my side of my car. It wasn’t a hard hit, but as I realized later, it caused enough damage. Of course, he was from Canada. I don’t have a damn thing against Canada or Canadians, but when all he could say was I’m from Canada, I was a bit flabbergasted. I was really nice about it though, as no one was hurt. So today, I have to waste an hour of my day off going to meet an adjuster. Awesome. I will probably get screwed on this somehow, I always do.

I had some other stuff to do too, but seeing as how I just paid $120 for web hosting, I think I will skip the beauty supply today. That cuts it down to the bank, and get something for dinner, after meeting the adjuster. Then clean the house. Again.

Housing is totally stagnant. I don’t think I’ve seen a new listing in our range for a week, nor any changes in any of the existing ones. One may have dropped in price a bit, but that’s it. I really could stay here kinda forever. Well, except for what sounds a lot like more jackhammering next door.