Category Archives: Homeownership

Homeownership

Fun with our old credit union

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Because I like our old credit union, I’m not going to name the guy by last name. He is probably embarrassed enough. In short, we left ICCU behind when we left Idaho, but only since they are not set up to do banking or mortgage business in Oregon. If we had disliked ICCU, this letter might have been more sarcastic, but we did like them and enjoyed dealing with them. They are probably the most worthwhile consumer financial institution in Boise. In fact, I liked my banker there well enough to copy him on my reply.

Here are the email and my reply, with some redactions for privacy:

From: J.K. Kelley [mailto:[redacted]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2016 7:37 AM
To: Chris; Mitch
Subject: Re: ICCU Refinance Opportunity

Hello, Chris, (Mitch, also thought you’d get a laugh out of this; hope you’re doing well, and I miss our conversations–good luck to Harsin and the Broncos; offensive line is the core of the sport)

===

On 10/6/2016 2:49 PM, Chris wrote:

At Idaho Central Credit Union we are looking after your daily balance.

That’s thoughtful of you! If this is true, then you understand that my daily, weekly, monthly, and annual balance at ICCU is zero, and you must have access to my balance at another mortgage bank in a different state, which I find fascinating.

That’s why I have identified you as a potential refinance candidate.

Have you? That’s a surprise! I didn’t know you were in the Portland market.

If you are at all interested in potentially refinancing your current property while interest rates are at all-time lows, please give me a call or shoot me an email to discuss how I can save you money on your monthly mortgage.

I have to respect your persistence, since we closed our ICCU accounts about eighteen months ago. Not with pleasure; simply that we’d moved away and sold the house. We liked ICCU, good outfit, good guys like Mitch. If we still lived in Boise our mortgage and savings would still be at ICCU.

Please answer the following questions and I’ll get right back to you with an estimate on your possible refinance:

  1. What do you roughly owe and what do you think your home is worth?

We owe $$$$K on a house I think would sell for $$$$K. Of course, the drag is that the house is in Beaverton, Oregon. Housing shortage here. We have homeless camps. People like us are making bank renting out a guest room.

2. What type of property do you own and what is the property address?

Residential. It is at Number SW Street, Beaverton. However, before driving over, please call first. It would be very sad-making for you to drive seven hours and find that we are out eating granola or something. [Afterthought. If he is so familiar with our mortgage, how come he doesn’t know the property address?]

3. Are you looking to stick with a 30yr term to keep payments lower or something shorter like a 20yr or 15yr to try and get this paid off quicker?

Now, please think about what you just said. If I wanted to make greater payments on my thirty-year mortgage, I could be doing that. In what universe would I lock myself into that?

4. If you had to guess what do you pay for in home owners insurance per month?

I don’t have to guess. Through the reserve, divided out, I fork over about $$$ per month. I cough up another $$$ per month for earthquake coverage that isn’t worth a damn. You didn’t ask about the property taxes, but they suck. Roughly triple what we paid in Boise.

5. Any idea on where your credit scores stand?

If anything, they have improved since you lent us money before, so I suggest you check your records. It was only three years ago. Should still be xxx+. Please don’t run it again, though, unless we’re looking at a 2% drop in our mortgage rate (that would put us around 1.75%). If you have that in mind, my number is xxx-xxx-xxxx; let’s talk.

I Look forward to working with you,

Chris

Idaho Central Credit Union

[title and other signature data redacted]

Well, that’s good to know.

[misc links, we-love-us, and guidance redacted]

Notice: This e-mail and/or the attachments accompanying it may contain confidential information belonging to Idaho Central Credit Union. The information contained is for the use of the intended recipient. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the e-mail and any attachments.

I’m not sure if I received it in error or not. Perhaps you can tell me?

-j

===

My former banker actually replied first, with a laugh. I suspect Chris will be a little red in the face, but no harm done except to his pride.

Homeownership

Things that go bang in the daylight

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I sat at my keyboard, doing my work and bothering no one.

Bang.

Some noise from the far side of the house, it seemed. Ho-hum.

Thump.

Neighbors obviously doing something, but it sounds like it’s hitting my house. I got up to inspect the likely direction, and learned only that my rosebushes are overgrown. Back to my office.

Bump.

I snarled an imprecation, got up. Left knee is worse than usual today, hurts even with the brace. I took another look around the same side; all calm.

Bonk.

Wait; that came from inside. I went back in and inspected the dog’s activities. The dog looked up at me without comprehension. He was innocent, and I let him be. Back to the office.

Whump.

Now my eyes narrowed; I spat a curse. It sounded like some kids throwing something at the house. I considered taking a weapon, rejected the idea; let’s not get carried away. But I was going to find out who or what was ruining my concentration, and it was going to stop. While I headed for the back door, there were two more bangs.

Whack.

Yeah, we’ll see, you little bastards.

Thump.

I wonder how my arm is these days. Some of those little green pine cones are pretty hard. If they can throw them, I can throw them back. I step outside, look east, and wait. Fuck you, you little shits, I used to throw a hard fastball that kept batters loose, and I will hurt you.

Blonk.

It’s a green pine cone, fallen from directly above my eave-trough, hitting it with a metallic sound. Okay, so pine cones are falling. I can see from the roof that bunches of needles are also falling.

Splop.

Obviously this is not some kids’ idea of comedy. I relax. Then it occurs to me: I have fourteen mature lodgepole pines. Why is all this stuff falling in this one area? I’m a bit worried about one of my trees; is another one flaky?

Crack. That was a real hard one.

And then I saw movement, a legacy habit from my long-past hunting days. A branch moving, not as if by wind. Nope, a squirrel.

Thump.

“You little shits,” I said, and went back to my office.

I’m fond of them.

Homeownership

The trash truck symphony

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In Oregon, and especially in Portland, recycling is all but mandatory. It is the path of least resistance. If I refused to recycle:

  • My tiny trash-trash bin would overflow.
  • I would surrender a significant annual sum in deposits. I hate waste, and especially the waste of money.
  • A lynch mob might eventually form.

I don’t mind. I consider it a good idea. In Boise, by contrast, someone who didn’t pour the used oil from his pickup truck on the weeds was something of an eco-freak. Here, by not being fascist about it, I’m questionable. I don’t mind that either. Gods forbid I too often agree with a majority, anywhere.

Since I am the only one in the house who much cares and is impact, I’m the one who gets to dig in house trash bins to get recyclables out of the trash can, trash out of the recycle bin, and glass out of both. When we have guests, it’s basically an exercise in shut-the-hell-up-and-be-a-good-host-and-just-fish-the-stuff-out. In fairness, it’s not realistic for those not living here to become conversant with the rules. If you’re at my house, and I look like James Herriot turned on his side, keep calm and, yes, you probably caused this, but don’t worry about it.

Every week, they come for the trash-trash. That’s one truck. Every other week they also come for the yard waste bin, the glass bin (a small tote-sized red thing), and the recycling bin (the largest of the tree, casting an appealing quantity of shade on hot days and offering tiny-house potential for those not too fussy). Today is every other Friday. Today is trash truck symphony day, when there nearly always seems to be a diesel monstrosity extending its tentacles to gather up a plastic bin. Each bin requires a separate truck, a separate diesel engine, and a separate godawful racket.

It creates conflict. My house is at the end of a cul-de-sac, with a sidewalk divided by my driveway. I just went out and measured, and only 25′ of the sidewalk fronts my property. Its center point is smack where we pull into our driveway. During my very first week, I received a snotty note from the postal worker, whining that I should keep bins 12′ away from mail boxes. This is completely unrealistic, but so typical of why average people come to hate government: common sense and reality be damned, these are the precious rules, and we will take any opportunity to rub them in your face just to have our moment of authority. His more sensible approach was to realize that his driving path is not the only factor in this equation, that it happens only once per week, and to just accept that he might have to…shift into reverse and back up a couple of feet.

I decided not to cooperate. I’m still not cooperating. The mailman hates me and engages in petty acts of spite whenever he thinks he can get away with it. I consider getting a box at a non-USPS mail station. I become a little less connected every day, every time someone does a petty thing to me just because he or she can, when I didn’t deserve it. (If I have it coming, I’ll take my medicine.) Credit to the trash truck guys: at least, at the very least, they do not weep openly about the best possible compromise space I have located for the bins. They seem to understand that their work is to pick up the trash without bitching, and that there is no perfect solution in this physical space. Hurrah. For my part, I place the cans as far out as I can without calling the Wrath of USPS, hoping to be helpful. Since they rarely spill any trash, I’m supposing they appreciate it. That or they could just be true professionals, which does happen.

The good news is that Portland trash trucks spill less garbage than Boise trash trucks. I shocked one Boise supervisor by asking: “Can you tell me what is the permitted quota of garbage dumped in the street by your drivers, on a per-house basis?” Of course, once these trash truck workers pick up the bins, they are happy to deposit them right in the middle of the driveway. I admit it: once, after a truly bad day in which I just wanted to get home without limiting future options, seeing that Nevada-sized recycle bin smack athwart my path, I lost it. I smacked down on the gas, rammed it (sending it bouncing almost all the way up the driveway to the garage door), then eased off the accelerator before I did something less recoverable. It was satisfying, watching that thing fly up the driveway. Sometimes you vent in the only way you can get by with venting.

But in the meantime, today is a relatively decent day, our postal worker could not think of any small spites he could get by with, I am home and thus got the emptied recycle bin before it blocked anyone’s path, and I may listen to the spasmodic, bellowing industrial rhapsody of the trash truck symphony.

Adventures, Editing/writing life, Homeownership

Where I read, and why I might wear a helmet

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Maybe this is not the expected answer, but I don’t do most of my reading in some deep-burnished law-library-looking place that screams “weighty matters.” I do have a library, but the space is more about a vista of historical and world travel books on Ikea-designed shelves, and a large leather recliner containing several heated massage devices. I can turn it up so high I can’t read even large print.

It’s beautiful there, but I find it inspires me less than do the great outdoors. Most of my reading is done in a cast-off Adirondack chair under two of fourteen lodgepole pines. I watch towhees forage, squirrels re-enact the Looney Tunes gophers, and chickadees dart about. I listen to the sounds of ravens, crows, and falling pine cones. And if I am fortunate, those cones do not hit me. (If it begins to rain, or there are excessive pine cones, I move to a plastic chair mostly sheltered by the eave.)

My back patio is about 10′ x 30′ of poured concrete, just outside the library window, looking at a back yard that is sort of like Chile. It slopes up a lot, has tall pines, and has one short and one very long dimension. I’d say my back fence is about 120′, but from my Adirondack, I could hit a badminton birdie off it. Except: if I wanted a shuttlecock, I’d probably just pick up a pine cone and use a tennis racket.

Every couple of minutes, the lodgepoles shed a cone. At that stage of their lives, the fertile cones are heavy, sappy, and probably weigh as much as a cell phone. I am tempted to counsel my patio guests to wear headgear. They may choose from an old US Army steel pot (with liner), my old lumber mill hard hat from back when I was a burly young cog in the workforce (supports pulled out for the suitable jaunty angle, crudely taped US flag image on the front), or if they ask correctly, my Russian Army chapka (which I can’t even wear unless it’s -5° F). I got rid of my hockey helmet a couple years back. They can have the steel pot or the hard hat.

Deb and I quit our most dangerous tobacco vices last Christmas, but I still enjoy cigars (not constantly, and never inhaled). It is not as safe as no tobacco ever, but if you asked your doctor whether it would be better to have a cigar now and then, or to chew daily, you can guess how she would answer. Same for huffing chem-laced mass-market cigarettes vs. a daily cigar: no one’s going to endorse tobacco, but less is better, and very little means less risk. So I get a big glass of iced tea, gather up my current book, pick out a robusto, and spend forty minutes of quality time with the towhees, re-enacting squirrels, ravens, and plummeting projectiles that would surely draw blood from my shiny pate. As I do it, I get a dandy read.

You should have seen it one time, cone hit the shed roof, bounced, landed straight in an empty aluminum bucket. Right next to Leo, the miniature Schnauzer, who does not handle sudden bonks well. Couldn’t call and make that shot in a hundred years.

Nothing against reading in the library, and in rainy Aloverton, Oregon, I treasure a comfortable place to commune with literature. But when weather permits, I find, I do some of my most thoughtful reading with ravens rawking, squirrels squirreling, towhees poking, and lodgepole pine cones passing through the branch bagatelle.

One of them will have to draw my blood before I’ll yield to the steel pot.

Homeownership

A real estate ad dictionary

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I did one of these for Craigslist ads some time back and had a lot of fun. Real estate advertising has one of the highest concentrations of known bullshit outside politics or corporate annual reports.

First, I put together as many as I could think of, from my own experience and by viewing about twelve current ads in my area. At that point, running low on damns to give, I deployed my secret weapon: my friends. That makes this part yours, so all of you please take your bows: Nick, Shawn, Mike, Candice, Chris, Jenn, Ragnar, Sonia, Ryan, Jane, Thomas, Susan, Laura, Patti, Keith, Marilyn, Tracy W, Jeff, Deb, Dobbie, Marcy, John, Dennis, Echoe, Linda, Tracy B, Buddy, April, Liz, Paul, Cindy, David, Mrs. K, Sharon, Russell, GDJ, Junko.

Here is our guide to cutting through all the bullshit in real estate ads:

  • “Amazing:” feature exists
  • “A must see:” devoid of obvious external damage
  • “Antique bathroom:” 1920s plumbing, enjoy
  • “A stone’s throw away:” provided you are equipped with a trebuchet, onager, or other ancient artillery device
  • “Back on market!” problem property where the deal fell through for reasons that say a lot about the sellers and their listing agent
  • “Bank owned:” abandon all hope of expeditious purchase
  • “Better than new:” ‘old’
  • “Blank canvas:” they took listing agent’s advice and painted white over the Crazy Cat Lady theme
  • “Boasts:” ‘has;’ we realize houses do not have the power of speech
  • “Bonus room:” ‘room’
  • “Boutique:” we ran out of adjectives and hoped you wouldn’t ask what we meant
  • “Bring your imagination:” and your wallet, because the seller refuses to fix this hovel
  • “Bucolic:” has an unpruned bush
  • “Cathedral ceiling:” bulbs changed by free rappel from beam, or surplus fire ladder
  • “Character:” wear and tear
  • “Charming:” weird and too small, or has hideous wallpaper
  • “Chef’s kitchen:” we’re confident you won’t know that this term has an actual meaning
  • “Classic:” last remodeled during the administration of a president no living person even remembers
  • “Close to bus line:” noisy
  • “Close to school:” enjoy frequent Vitamin Water bottles and Capri Sun bags tossed in your yard
  • “Contemporary:” starkly butt-ugly
  • “Convenient to:” somewhere roughly near
  • “Country living:” hope you don’t rely on the bus
  • “Cozy:” dinky
  • “Craftsman style:” fake Craftsman, wooden box with badly installed trim
  • “Creative touches:” inexplicable mistakes
  • “Cute:” too small
  • “Deferred maintenance:” abject neglect
  • “Desirable:” undesirable
  • “Don’t miss!” ‘exists’
  • “Endless possibilities:” endless liabilities
  • “Epic:” listing agent is under 30
  • “Expansive:” not exactly dinky
  • “Family friendly neighborhood:” usually has the peace and quiet of a grade school playground at recess
  • “Fixer-upper:” needs to be dozed flat and rebuilt
  • “Formal:” likely to sit unused
  • “For sale by owner:” for sale by cheapskate, or by control freak (often both)
  • “Fully updated bathroom:” had the disgusting tile grout redone
  • “Fully updated kitchen:” seller bought new, cheap appliances at listing agent’s insistence, to raise price
  • “Gem:” property for sale
  • “Gigantic ___:” feature is slightly above average size
  • “Good bones:” bad looks
  • “Good neighborhood:” has only “model” minorities, and not too many of those
  • “Gorgeous:” much like other reasonable houses have
  • “Gourmet kitchen:” ‘kitchen’
  • “Gracious:” overdecorated
  • “Granite and stainless steel:” if you can’t cook, at least you’ll feel snazzier failing at teh cooking
  • “Great investment:” not worth what we’re asking
  • “Great neighborhood:” no cars up on cement blocks
  • “Handyman’s dream:” homeowner’s nightmare
  • “Hardwood:” there is some wood in the laminate if you look closely and expand your definition of ‘wood!’
  • “Highly motivated seller:” this is the last step before insurance arson
  • “His and hers closets:” hers and hers closets
  • “Huge ___:” feature exists in average size
  • “Hurry, this won’t last long!” I want to create artificial demand, authentic demand being in short supply
  • “Ikea kitchen:” Euro-phone booth with everything folding out or hanging from ceiling
  • “Imagination:” ‘exasperation’
  • “Includes home warranty:” has visible issues that will make you uneasy
  • “Incredibly:” ‘somewhat’
  • “Instant equity:” will be generated by the five figures in immediate necessary repairs
  • “Large ___:” feature exists in some form
  • “Light and bright:” summer sweatbox with little shade, costs a mint to run A/C
  • “Lived-in look:” For Sale By Hoarder
  • “Location, location, location:” dump in otherwise decent location
  • “Low-maintenance lawn:” dirt, rocks, and weeds
  • “Lush natural vegetation:” bring machete, or if you can afford it, bush hog or even a herd of goats
  • “Make it your own:” paint job done by baboons, carpet reflects their influence and diet
  • “Many original features:” which barely work
  • “Mid-century modern:” all the flaws of mid-century, with a few semi-modern weaknesses thrown in
  • “Mother-in-law suite:” room for your adult kids who keep screwing up and having to move home
  • “Motivated seller:” seller has to be somewhere else by a specific date, or has already moved out and just saw the first bill for absentee homeowner’s insurance, or is fifty grand underwater and running out of money
  • “Move-in ready:” all problems are the sort no inspector will find
  • “Much bigger than it appears:” so small you’ll need a magnifying glass to spot the feature in question
  • “Multipurpose room:” space for the whole family to fight over
  • “Needs your touch:” ‘dump’
  • “Needs TLC:” money pit
  • “New carpeting:” cheapest available carpeting replaced incredibly nasty old stuff
  • “Old world charm:” old school electric wiring
  • “Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity:” and when you see it, you’ll see why once is a mercy
  • “One-of-a-kind:” ‘weird’
  • “Open concept:” room for children to throw things, and you can always see them doing so
  • “Open house:” listing agent is hoping to salvage some new leads from this dog deal
  • “Original:” looking beat-up
  • “Owned by handyman:” owned by bookkeeper who fancies himself The Great Renovator, and didn’t know what he was doing
  • “Peekaboo view:” sight of mountain or water obtained by standing on footstool in guest can, while leaning at odd angle and bracing against wall, on about three days per year if you’re lucky
  • “Perfect for the right owner:” perfect for about five potential people out of three hundred million, rest should run far and fast
  • “Photos don’t do it justice:” listing agent saves money on photographers by doing it herself, badly
  • “Possibilities:” ‘missing things’
  • “Potential:” none of the sane choices can work
  • “Priced to sell:” sellers are desperate; crush their souls with your offer
  • “Quaint:” ‘weird’
  • “Quirky decor:” sellers refused listing agent’s tearful pleas to paint over Early Crazy Cat Lady scheme
  • “Radiates:” could be said to have a little bit of
  • “Reduced:” seller has come down to Earth
  • “Remodeled:” owner took a stab at fixing flaws, with middling success
  • “Renovated from the studs out:” no longer smells of Sudafed, anhydrous ammonia, and burnt Drano, plus all cans are gone
  • “Secluded:” at least one side has some foliage that obstructs snoopy neighbors part of the year; far from anything
  • “Shady yard:” don’t even think about a nice lawn
  • “Short sale:” paperwork ass pain
  • “Spacious:” not quite average size
  • “Spacious lot with fruit trees:” messy back yard with ants, varmints, jays, magpies, raccoons, opossums, and hantavirus
  • “Starter home:” free-standing two-bedroom one-bath apartment equivalent
  • “Stop the car!” so that people offended by over-the-top verbiage can have a cookie toss before going inside
  • “Storage shed:” one of those cheap metal Home Depot sheds, still has dents where assembling homeowner kicked it in sheer frustration while issuing creative curses
  • “Stunning:” ‘for sale’
  • “Unique:” no one would make this mistake twice
  • “Unusual:” whose idea was this, and were they at least prosecuted by the taste police?
  • “Updated:” in general, cheap new-looking stuff put in to raise the price
  • “$___ in upgrades:” we raised the potential price by $___ x 120%
  • “Vaulted ceilings:” lots of unlivable space to heat and cool, perfect for spider webs
  • “Vintage:” inconvenient and old
  • “View:” if you squint just right at certain times of day
  • “Well cared for:” sellers finally surrendered, hired a landscape company and cleaners
  • “Wildlife:” feral teenagers
  • “Will go fast!” I want to create artificial demand

Thank you all.

Homeownership, Married life

Spar treatments

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Deb and I can be very juvenile. I’m talking ‘mocking Phil Keoghan’s accent’ juvenile.

For those unfamiliar, Phil is the New Zealander who hosts The Amazing Race. He’s balanced, entertaining, and has a reality show that is intriguing without appealing purely to vicarious sadism (Naked & Afraid) or glorifying the stupid (Jersey Shore). His accent isn’t heavy, but it does append an R to all words ending in an A sound. Thus Uchenna and Joyce became Uchenner and Joyce, etc.

On each leg of the race, the first team to finish gets a special prize. Sometimes it’s money, sometimes it’s a Productplacementmobile from Uncle Henry’s Car Company, but usually it’s a trip for two from Travelocity. Not all the trips are to someplace stupid like Nassau, either. Some actually go to interesting places, and all the trips seem to include a spa treatment, so Deb and I start heckling as the racers hit the mat: “Ready for your spar treatments?” Phil begins to tell them what the trip entails. “Shut the hell up about the ziplining, Phil, get on with the spar treatment!” Phil actually omits the spa treatment. “No! This is fake! It isn’t a trip from Travelocity without a spar treatment!”

We suck. But now that we have our own spar, we can give ourselves spar treatments. And I’m learning to maintain this spar, which is a process. I’m going to present what I’ve learned in mock softball Q&A format.

Q: Is it a lot of work?

A: Nah, except that draining it and refilling it is a little involved. Sometimes I’ll close some of the jets for more pressure on the rest, but that’s easy.

Q: My cousin had one and they all got a rash.

A: Let me guess: your cousin is one of those braying donkeys who ridicules anyone who takes time to do things exactly right. He fell down on the maintenance, didn’t think he had to worry unless he could see floating green things, and met cautions with derision. Now his whole family is on antibiotics. Right?

Q: Is it that risky?

A: Not if you stay on top of the maintenance. If you don’t, it changes from a chemistry project to a dermal immune biology project. If the water doesn’t get treated, it will develop an algae ring. We found that out when we first moved in and took a look before starting the treatment process, and I had to scrub that crap off.

Q: What is the maintenance?

A: Weekly, run a test strip and add chemicals as necessary. If the water level has dropped enough that the filter intake is rasping, add some water. Every four months, drain the whole thing and refill it.

Q: Can you put bath salts in it?

A: I’m told you can, but haven’t tested it myself. I may test it one day just before it’s drain/refill time, just to see what it does to the chemical balance.

Q: Is it spendy to operate?

A: Between the electric bill increase, water bill bump, and the chemicals, I’m told $750 per year is typical. So yeah, kind of spendy to do right.

Q: Do you have to leave it on all the time?

A: Yes. If you’re going to take it out of service, you shut off the breaker and drain the water. It runs on its own cycle for heating and filtration.

Q: Aren’t you worried that people’s kids will pee in it?

A: No, because no minors are allowed in it, ever. Age seventeen and your eighteenth birthday is tomorrow? Sorry. Tomorrow you can. But your child is special and mature and wonderful? I agree, and when she is eighteen and a young woman rather than a girl, we will welcome her. Hot tub = adults place, at least under the lodgepoles.

Q: You expect me to believe you’ve never done it, when you were by yourself?

A: It would immediately cloud up the pool. Therefore, since there are only the two of us, my wife would know. But even if it were just me, no, in fact I would not add urine to a large reservoir in which I planned to soak several times a week for four months, nor would you. I have learned that it is wise to take a leak while changing into one’s bathing suit. It would be horrible to have to get up, go all the way inside, and come back out. Especially in winter. But adults would do that, whereas kids might be too embarrassed, and just hope to get away with it, figuring they can always say they’re sorry and adults aren’t allowed to hold things against them. Problem: no matter how sorry they are, I still have to drain/refill it, and sorries won’t help reduce the cost or headache of that.

Q: But that’s unfair to my snowflake, who is more special and mature and wonderful than all others! Yes, she’s only six, but she would never do that!

A: Here’s the situation. Yes, your snowflake is wonderful, a joy to know. However, children will go to absurd lengths to avoid embarrassment. An adult will make an adult decision (and trust me, there are adults I wouldn’t let near the thing). If the water gets contaminated, I will have to spend a lot of time, money, and effort that need not have been. No, it wouldn’t cause me to hate your snowflake. Yes, I understand that snowflakes make mistakes. All the understanding in my soul will not eliminate my sudden requirement to do a full water change, well before I would otherwise have had to. So, since I recognize that children are children–yes, even yours–and since I do not want to have them learn a life lesson at the cost of me having to pretend not to be very angry while doing an early drain/refill, no kids in the tub. It’s much easier that way than explaining to Parent A that Snowflake A Jr. can’t get in when we let Parent B’s Snowflake B Jr. in. No discrimination, no exceptions, no kids, not even your special angel.

Q: It must be great in winter.

A: In some ways, yes. The only drag in winter is the interval between getting out and getting back in the house. Nothing like standing outside in freezing weather, in your bathing suit, trying to wring as much water out as you can. I think we will get enormous thick terrycloth robes made from actual towels, so that people can dry off by putting them on.

Q: When you go to drain it, do you just siphon out all the water?

A: It’s easier to buy a cheap sump pump attached to a long hose. My drain hose burst this time, oh joy, so I need a stronger one. I want to send the water right into the eave-trough drain, not into the yard. Once I drain it, I climb in with a turkey baster and slurp out any residual sand or dirt or crud. Then I refill it, put in a new silver nitrate stick, change the filter and put the dirty one in a bucket of horribly caustic filter cleaner, and flip the breaker on. Once the water hits about 85º F, I can start the treatment process whenever I’m ready. No spar treatments until I’m happy with the balance.

Q: What do you treat it with?

A: The test strip checks for chlorine level, alkalinity, pH, and calcium hardness. It gets an ounce of chlorinator (which will boil off each week), however much baking soda it takes to raise the alkalinity (which will typically raise the pH as well), some more calcium if it needs it (shouldn’t, except when refilling), and three ounces of shock sanitizer. Thus, we are hitting biology with silver nitrate, chlorine, and shock (potassium peroxymonosulfate). On the first treatment, it’s a gradual process that requires several tests to get the alk and pH where they belong, without overshooting the sweet spot.

Q: Does it get gross when it’s time to drain and refill it?

A: Not with regular maintenance, but it will get sudsy. This is caused by the amount of total dissolved solids plus whatever action has happened on skin oil, stray pine needles, and so forth. If it starts to look like a bubble bath, it’s time to replace the water.

Q: Do you have to shower before you get in the spar?

A: No, but if you’re filthy, it’s the logical thing to do.

Q: Is it worth all that?

A: The expense and effort amount to about $60/month, five minutes once a week, and a couple hours of work three times a year. The payoff is when your whole body aches from a lot of lifting or hoisting or driving or walking, and you can get into a place that will dissolve the pain away. The payoff is when it’s freezing out, and you gaze up from your little amniotic cocoon through lodgepole boughs at the stars and moon, hoisting a libation with your best friend in a non-glass container. The payoff is the ability to make guests feel welcome and relaxed. Yeah, I’ll make that trade.

Q: Any advice for people thinking of getting one?

A: Spend a weekend at a resort where your room comes with a hot tub. Go hiking and get really sore, then come back and hit the tub. If you find you love that feeling, that’s a good sign. If you find you never want to go anywhere else but in and out of the tub, that’s also a good sign you would like and use one.

Get one with a lot of jets and enough pump to power them; pointless to get a tub with skimpy jets. Don’t get it from Costco, because everyone who sells them through Costco seems to go broke, which means no one to call with questions down the road. Look into buying a used one, because quite a few people don’t like them as well as they’d imagined, and wind up selling them at just-get-rid-of-it prices on Craigslist. (Don’t buy one without a manual and a copy of the original receipt, so you know the model, manufacturer, and store that sold it. Or if you do, make sure it’s very cheap.)

Make sure your electrical system can handle a new breaker, because there needs to be one hardwired and probably dedicated solely to the tub. Fairly sure it gets its own circuit, so spring for a professional electrician. Needs to sit on a very sturdy surface, such as a concrete pad; hope you have one. Plan to have a pro come out and walk you through it the first time, so s/he can check out its operation, answer all your what-does-this-dial-do questions, and tell you how to maintain it.

Homeownership, Married life

Cleaning eave-troughs at two in the morning

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Years ago, I learned the fine art and essential wisdom of clean eave-troughs (some of you call them gutters) from my grandfather. Grandpa farmed and ranched in Kansas for a good percentage of his life, in some fashion or another. Every time I came back for a visit–always understood to be a working visit, in which I would assist him with whatever project came to hand–one of my first jobs would be to clean the eave-troughs. Always on the farmhouse, a sprawling limestone building that has to be 4000 ft² or more with a Shakey’s roof shape that means eave-troughs 360º, and often on two of the three enormous stone barns. (The third lost a roof long ago, I believe to a tornado, and thus no longer needed my assistance.)

Eave-troughs have been part of my life all through adulthood, even before I was a homeowner. The only ex-girlfriend I make an effort to stay in touch with, on my first visit, I had volunteered to tackle her house’s eave-troughs. This was in Seattle, and it poured that day. Of course, she made protestations that I didn’t really need to do it. Of course, being a young male, I was going to do it hell or high water. The metaphor never fit quite so well. It was a Midwestern thing; she was an Oklahoma native, I was a Kansas man, and she knew that I had to do it for my own sense of rugged pride and promises kept. Some would say I was an idiot. Others would understand, and think it meritorious to keep a commitment and assist a nice lady. It sparked a relationship with the nice lady, one that would teach me a great deal about good ways to help my future wife when I met her.

One day, should we ever make it to Hawai’i, my beautiful bride has many reasons to thank this lady. And being the class act that she is, my wife will do so.

Thus, in Kennewick, I took one look at our first home’s ludicrous eave-troughs and ordered them replaced. Unfortunately, I hired a professional contractor, who promptly sent out a disgruntled employee on the verge of quitting his job. He didn’t even screw the corner pieces together. The foreman treated me like a liar on the phone, at least until he finally came out under legal threat. That was my first experience with contractors, and it gave me an idea of what to expect from there on out.

Never needed them much in Boise, but when we moved back to the wet side, one of my first surveys of the home I’d just bought was of the eave-trough situation. (Yes. I signed on a house I had only seen in pictures. My wife had chosen it, and in married life, it’s one thing to talk a good game about trust and respect; quite another to lay those cards on the table and gamble six figures. If you refuse to trust your spouse with a major decision, it’s my opinion that you’ve got a problem.) They looked rock solid, but filthy, so I borrowed a ladder from a neighbor and cleaned them out. Thought I’d taken care of the problem for the near future.

Then it didn’t rain in Portland for two months. I dawdled buying a ladder, mostly out of a silly reluctance to cough up money that I knew without doubt I would need to spend before long. This very day, so happens, I broke down and bought one. Good thing.

Friday night was windy, and a lot of pine needles had come down. This evening, Portland began to return to its normal weather pattern: steady intermittent rain. Since I had cleaned the eave-troughs earlier, I remained serene.

Around 1:45 AM, I was taking my ease in the library, reading a library book (not one of mine), contemplating going to bed. I heard a mighty pouring sound. Exactly as tradition requires, I swore before getting up to survey the situation. At the midpoint, the eave-trough was blocked enough to overflow. I could see enough needles sticking up in the cloudy moonlight to grasp the problem.

I said some more bad words, then went in to wake Deb up. Nothing would freak her out like awakening to the splucking sound of wads of eave-trough crud hitting the patio outside her window; better to wake her now and explain than to scare the hell out of her. (That, and I didn’t want her coming out with her Gurkha knife to investigate me. Deb is Alaskan, and more prone to handle her business than to call 911 and cower.) Bless her, she offered to help, but that wasn’t needed. No reason for both of our lives to be unpleasant.

So: jacket (where the hell did we put it?), tuque, shoes, brand new ladder, eave-trough tool I’d bought, flashlight, and out I go. Of course, the clog is where the hot tub will not permit me to put the ladder, so I will need the reach of the tool. It’s pouring, I’m up on the ladder in my summer attire plus jacket and tuque, and every time I grab a spiny handful of muddy pine needles, I slosh about a pint of water onto myself. In the dark, not so enjoyable, but the nice thing about getting wet is that once you are soaked, you can’t get any more soaked. I used the tool to drag a clog of needles toward me, dug them out, threw them wherever, and repeated until one section was clear. Then I moved the ladder and repeated, working my way toward the downspout. It was clogtacular. It wouldn’t be worth writing about if it’d been daylight, but 2:00 AM in the rain is not when most of us experience a sudden impulse to set up a ladder and begin eave-trough maintenance.

The only sound sweeter than free-flowing water into the storm drains was the pouring of Laphroaig into my favorite whisky glass. One drop of tap water, as is traditional, and a return to my calm reading. Then I decided you folks would find most amusing the image of a fat balding middle-aged guy up on a ladder in the rain at 2 AM being uncomfortable, and decided to write while I rewarded myself with a snort of single-malt.

Good night, folks.

Homeownership

J.K. 3, Flies 1

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Even if it was an own goal.

For some reason, and in some way, flies are getting into our house. I hate flies. The aperture, wherever it is, must be very small, because there are enormous fat blowflies out of doors, but only the dinky ones inside. Those, of course, are harder to kill.

Most of the conventional weapons aren’t very good. The standard flyswatter gets gross, and can’t be swung against some surfaces. We have one of those electric badminton racket swatters, which is all but pointless. I bought some fly traps that are supposed to drown the little scumbags, and all I’m getting for my trouble is the rotting-corpse bouquet of the attractant. Charming.

(This is as good a time as any to remind all writers that it’s never okay to write “the sickly sweet stench of death.” There is nothing sweet about it. Go find a dead deer, inhale until you get the full decompository pleasure, and tell me how sweet it is. I’ll wait. Every writer who uses that description drops in my estimation.)

My favorite anti-fly weapon is good reflexes combined with a short towel. You know, the kind everyone has some of, but that are useless for everything else. Double up the towel, swing it randomly at the fly to tire it out, wait until it lands in a place where it’s safe to hit, and swooomp. Wall, ceiling, mirror, some windows, cabinet, all okay. Even if you whiff, you’ll agitate it, it’ll have to rest again, and eventually you’ll destroy the little vermin.

Or yourself.

Since the motion is from the elbow, a couple times I’ve felt a version of the pain I used to get from throwing too many sliders (or one screwball). Other than that, I’m mostly delivering the damage. Until today.

One of them was in our guest bathroom, and my swooomplust kicked into gear. You little bastard, you do not leave this room alive, I thought, taking a few swipes at the fly to get him worked up. (Call me a fly chauvinist pig, but I have a hard time seeing flies as female.) True to form, he soon alit on the mirror above the sink. He was in my sight picture.

Swooomp.

I felt a sudden pain, as if punched in the lower stomach. Well, and another pain one further down. I missed the fly, but got myself a direct hit in the groin. Men don’t need an explanation of this. For women: the deep, sudden testicular ache is bad enough, but worse is the immediate pain in the guts. I didn’t even hit myself terribly hard, and it was almost enough to double me over. If I’d swung much harder, I’d have thrown up (that’s the next level). To envision the pain, imagine the worst gas pain you’ve ever had. Same feeling, same general region. It takes a couple of minutes to fade.

(This would seem to support the conventional wisdom that a good self-defense strategy involves a kinetic energy blow to the nuts. I don’t want to support that, because I believe it’s wrong. The problem with going for those is that you have to hit just right, and if you do not, you deliver your adversary a powerful adrenaline rush without harming him. Nope, I’m a believer in knee hunting as a self-defense mechanism. Impair the attacker’s mobility, and you now control the range of engagement. Plus, if someone is attacking you, breaking his knee sideways will cause him enormous pain, and since he’s attacking you, he deserves enormous pain.)

This was the first time in years I’d taken a direct hit there, and man, I’d forgotten how debilitating that was. So I guess that has to count as a score for the flies, even if it eventually cost that one his life.

Stupid flies.

Homeownership

Gar items

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Unpacking has been sort of a multidimensional* chess game.

This would be easier if the packers had been a little more specific. Anything they packed, that happened to be in the garage, they simply labeled ‘Gar items.’ The basement, which to them was all one room (rather than a guest bedroom, living room, laundry room, unfinished space, and big closet) contained two things: ‘Books’ and ‘Misc items.’ So, for example, I could open a Basement – Misc items box and get some of Deb’s dolls, a lamp, two pillows, Trivial Pursuit, an art kit, one of those imbecilic gingham rabbits I had hoped and prayed we were rid of (probably mated in the box and raised a litter), and five hockey pucks. A Gar items box might contain a circular saw, an Alice pack, a bag of grass seed, some old army wool glove liners, the electric pumpkin I use for Halloween, a socket set, and those two overhead bike hoists I decided not to install when it became evident we were leaving Idaho. A book box usually contained some books, but could also include whatever other crap was within someone’s reach.

Sample problem: we needed to figure out a decent place to put the spare 16′ baseboard pieces. Overhead made sense, except that it’s not as easy as it looks. Once those were moved, we could get at some more Gar items, another couple of boxes of Basement Misc items, and so on. Because once I got these two boxes of Gar items out of the way, we could make a decision about this item and that item, and so on.

Second sample problem: once I could assure access to the right tools, I could help the situation in many ways. However, the tools could have been stuffed in any random box of Gar items. Could I go out and just buy what I needed, task by task? Sure. Keep doing that, and one goes broke buying things one doesn’t really need. We don’t have a counterfeiting operation, or a congress, where we can just print money. Plus, in the end, we’d end up with that many more Gar items. Already got two channel-lock pliers; do I really need three?

Oh, and then there was the AC going out in the middle of this. And then when that was replaced, the new condensate pump went wack. The contractor had the knack of getting back to me just as I was preparing to give him both barrels: “Look. It is not my way to patiently keep asking a contractor to please sell me a thing. I humbled myself because my wife has diabetes, cannot take the heat, and my pride came second to her health and comfort. Well, I did that, but I have done all the self-humbling I plan to do with you. Either stand behind your goddamn equipment, or I’ll find someone who will. And I’ll sign onto Yelp, first time ever, with the express purpose of letting people know what they’re getting into.” Of course, it took a couple of completely failed promises before it actually got done. I extemporize very poorly, so when I want to cut loose, I have to plan in advance. Almost needed this one.

The ant invasion in the master bedroom was actually a relief, because at least there I knew what to do. I had those in Boise. The few visible ants there now are corpses. Come at me, you little pirates, I will destroy you root and branch. Terro ant baits, great product.

Anyway, it’s a chess game, or maybe more like a giant housewide slide puzzle, but we are gradually winning. The library is functional if not finished or organized, we finally found the file cabinet (entombed as deeply as possible in the middle of the Gar items and Basement Misc items; deeply enough that we could not even locate it for some time), and I can see a day when I may feel slightly organized, more or less, to some degree.

When we get all this crap dealt with, though, it’ll be a nice place to live. We still have to find a respectable Mexican restaurant, though. First World Problems.

I just have to keep plowing through the Gar items.

 

*(That’s not hyperbole, because we have some rafter storage in the garage. However, hoisting anything heavy up there on a ladder is an issue, so we will need to reserve it for totes containing stuff I can carry up a ladder. When I break down and buy one, which I am irrationally resisting, mostly because I forgot our ladders in Idaho and they are not cost-effective to recover.)

Homeownership, Privacy

Let’s wait until drones are completely out of control, and it’s too late to do anything

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Why not? We did it with jetskis, cell phones, cell phone cameras, and quite a few other technological advancements.

Suppose a game-changing technology comes along. There are a couple of approaches we could take:

  1. Stop and consider the implications, and restrict at least the worst potential abuses. We’ll probably miss a few, but at least we won’t let people get comfortably entrenched in some of the bad behaviors. When the other bad behaviors become issues, we’ll restrict those. Orderly adjustment.
  2. Do absolutely nothing until they are ubiquitous and people are used to misusing them. Then, and only then, come in with draconian rules that are poorly thought out, unenforceable, and cause far more annoyance than if reasonable basic rules had been enacted at the start.

Guess which way we roll as a society?

This is foolishness. It is not an infringement of freedom to say “You cannot drive while using that device.” It is not an infringement of freedom to say “We are going to restrict some areas so you can’t ruin it for everyone with that goddamn noise.” It is not an infringement of freedom to say “You can’t use that to invade people’s privacy.” Unless, of course, your definition of ‘freedom’ includes freedom to put other lives at risk, screw up every decent lake for everyone else, and so on.

Drones are the Next Big Bungle.

We’ll find out when they start to endanger air traffic near airports.

We already found out how easily they can wind up in supposedly secure locations (White House lawn, for example).

We’ll find out as they become the police snooping tools of choice.

We’ll find out as they become neighbors’ snooping tools of choice.

We’ll find out as people start to take out .22s and shoot them down.

We’ll find out as citizens hover them over protests to capture police responses on film.

We’ll find out when some poor helicopter pilot, who was following things called rules, collides with one.

We’ll find out when a few other things happen, thanks to drones, that are sufficiently undesirable I’m not willing to mention them lest I give bad people ideas.

And by the time we step in to lock yet another barn door after another horse has already escaped over the hills, the impact will already be made.