Look who washed ashore….

…me, Lowandslow1.  And it hasn’t been easy getting here, either:  It’s taken me half an hour to figure out my old password and how to post a new entry.  A lot has happened since I last visited here.  We did sell our house and have successfully “downsized”.  We now have a 2 bdrm, 2 bath apartment in Legacy Village, a beautiful area adjacent to The Shops at Legacy on the north side of Dallas, TX, USA.

Getting here was a real trip:  K and I had been talking about downsizing our home and simplifying our lives for over a year.  Last summer we decided to stop talking about it and start doing it.  By the fall we had gone through our house and “de-cluttered”, which means to put away lots of family photos, knicknacks, and doo-dads to make our humble abode look less crowded and therefore more appealing to prospective buyers.  By December I was in full painting mode, and was ready to list our home with a Realtor right after the first of the year.  We received an acceptable offer in late March, and then the “real fun” started.

Our apartment has just a smidge under 1100 square feet.  Our old home had a little over 3000 square feet.  Big difference!  We began looking carefully at how we lived and realized we actually used around 2000 square feet on a daily basis.  Then we went into every closet, every cabinet, every drawer, and separated what we used from stuff that we had but never touched.  It was a real eye-opener!

It all came to a head in mid-April when I (yes, ME…whoda thunk it?) had a garage sale.  I’m still amazed at the junk people will buy.  I estimate I sold five pick-up truck loads of stuff….stuff I certainly didn’t want to move, nor had a place to put it even if I’d wanted it.  My SIL turned me on to Craig’s List, and there I sold tons of unused but very good stuff, especially tools.  I had a workshop that contained a table saw, band saw, joiner, planer…pretty much every tool you’d need to build a house full of furniture.  Unfortunately my skills didn’t match the capabilities of my tools, so I reluctantly agreed to let ‘em go.  But as soon as they were out the door I found I had no regrets.  None.  The best part is I’m no longer the (reluctant) owner of a lawn mower, or an edger, or weed-eater, or a rake, or….. 

The one thing I did have a tinge of regret about was parting with my library.  Over the years I had accumulated 400+ volumes and had built up a very manly “library”.  It was a shock when K asked if I was going to keep it all.

“Well of course I am.”

“Why?” she asked.  “Do you ever take one off the shelf and re-read it?”

“Duh…..no.”

“Then let ‘em go” she said.

So I did.  They’ve been gone for over a month now, and I must admit she was right.  I haven’t missed even one.  I did keep a few that have special significance; signed copies and such.  Otherwise, they’re gone.

We moved in on Saturday, May 9th, and the first few days were the typical pandemonium.  Now, a week and a half later, we’re straightend up and really enjoying our new simple lifestyle and our FANTASTIC neighborhood.  Within a couple of blocks we have a dozen excellent restaurants, a multi-screen theatre, shops, a small lake, a Mariott hotel, and lots of diverse neighbors.  Every day I take Emme Belle for a walk around the lake and enjoy the scenery:  the beautiful ladies friendly people being walked by their respective dogs.  Very interesting. 

Last Saturday night we were exploring our turf and discovered a great jazz band set up on the sidewalk of the main street, opposite several very upscale restaurants.  I’m not sure if they were paid by the restaurants or by the center developer, but regardless we just sat and listened and people-watched and had a ball.

Unfortunately, one of the casualities of “simplifying” has been blogging.  I’m no longer inclined to sit for hours on end at a computer, writing and trying to chase down all the other blogs I used to keep up with.  I suppose the death of JS hastened the demise of blogging for me, and this lifestyle change has just put another nail in that coffin.  I’ll come back now and then, but  I’m afraid there is just too much competition for my time now.

Hope y’all are doing well.  Paraphrasing Ah-nold…”I’ll be back.”

Regards,

S

It was a wise man who once said…..

“Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”

Hi everyone.  As my presence has been requested here (by at least one), I thought I’d make an appearance.  Like most everyone, we muddle along.  Kelly received an excellent evaluation and a nice raise at work last week.  The kids and  grandkids are doing well, and Erica’s pregnancy is going well, too.  Kristan and SIL Chris are down to about another year in the Army, then Chris can enter private practice somewhere.  Dallas has been mentioned as a likely place to eventually land, along with staying in San Antonio and possibly some place in Colorado.

Our big house under construction for M/M “E” is about 5 weeks from completion and is going very well.  It’s really a beautiful home!  After that, though….nothing.  Many don’t have the money to build a big new home, and most of those who do apparently aren’t opening up their pocketbooks right now.  This makes recession a self-fulfilling prophecy, doesn’t it?  I did meet with one of our current homeowners yesterday to bid converting their patio to a nice sunroom.  They’re English, and apparently sunrooms are big in England.  Here in Texas “sunroom” is usually synonymous with “oven”.  Haha.

Since having a job that brings in no income makes little sense, I’m putting out resumes locally looking for a paying job.  (After putting everything down on paper, I’m seeing I really do have a lot to offer.)  Whether I’m looking for something permanent or just something to generate a few bucks until the economy shows signs of life again, I don’t know.  A permanent career change actually has some interest for me.  We’ll see.  Anyway, I’m not really looking for a mega-income job, just something modest to sustain my/our modest lifestyle.

Our house is still for sale, and in a meeting just this week my Realtor assured me it’s priced right and is a comparative “cream puff” on the market today.  We still visit Lakeside Village (where we want to move) regularly, chomping at the bit to get settled in somewhere nearby.  Unfortunately patience is NOT one of my virtues. 

Emma Belle (mini-schnauzer) is fine, too.  She got a haircut yesterday and is prancing around lookin’ good.  The weather has been unseasonably warm here.  On the one hand it feels good to the skin.  On the other, the grass is beginning to grow.  Grrrrr!  Have I mentioned how much I HATE my yard?

Hope y’all are doing well.  I’ll say a prayer for us all asking HE help us through this tough economic time so we can live to prosper another day.  Take care….

S

I don’t get it

Actually there’s a lot I “don’t get”, but I’ll confine this to our banking system for now.  The business news has been all worked up about the possibility the US Gubment might nationalize CitiBank and/or Bank of America.  I know this conjures up visions of socialism, which to a capitalist is worse than leprosy or shaking hands with Nancy Pelosi, but I don’t understand the uproar.  All nationalization would mean is the Gubment would take over a few broke banks.  Big deal.  They’re BROKE!

They’re broke because their books are full of bad loans (“toxic” securities).  It has been suggested for months now that the Gubment should take all those bad loans and put them in a “bad bank” and leave the good loans alone.  With all the junk gone, the banks would overnight become MUCH healthier.

Problem was, the banks wanted to “sell” the bad loans to the Gubment for X dollars, while the Gubment only wanted to pay Y dollars.  They couldn’t agree on a price, so NOTHING got done, and a few of those mega-banks are now essentially broke.

If the Gubment just seized the broke banks, they wouldn’t have to dicker over what the bad loans were worth.  They’d own them all….the bad loans as well as the good loans.  The big losers would be the broke bank’s stockholders, but so what?  Surely they knew by now their bank stock was virtually worthless.  Let ‘em salvage what they can, then those investors can buy stock in the NEW, healthy bank that would be spun off by the Gubment, which contained nothing but the good loans.

With the Gubment then owning those bad loans (mostly home mortgages), they could write down principle, lower interest rates…anything they wanted to do.  Just taking those properties off the market (and foreclosure rolls) for now would go a long way to stabilizing housing prices.  Then as the housing market improved (less supply) and prices began going back up, the Gubment could slowly sell off their owned assets (empty houses) for a much better price, helping get us taxpayers some of our “bailout” money back.

But nothing is going to happen unless everyone stops getting all spastic every time someone says “nationalize”.  Sheesh!

Does this make any sense to you???   Am I missing something?

S

“Poor” is a relative term

Today K and I made our usual Saturday rounds, and along the way we stopped by the Starbucks in hoighty-toighty Highland Park Village.  Usually I see many fine exotic cars there, but today was a bust.  A bust, that is, until we walked around and found parked on the opposite side of the center this gorgeous Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder:

I wonder if all the rich people (except this one guy) are trying to play down their affluence during these tough economic times by venturing out only in their lowly Mercedes? 

S

Emma Belle the huntress

Hi everyone.  My disdain for computers has finally gotten the best of me.  I’m on it daily on a “need to” basis, but little more.  I just have enough on my plate without sitting here hours on end trying to navigate all the blog sites.  Sorry. 

All is quiet and well here in Big D.  We’ve settled into a familiar routine waiting for our current home to sell.  The bed is made as soon as we get up, fresh towels reside in the bathroom after every shower, the wood floors are dust mopped daily, etc.  The things we do to make it look good!  Haha.

We’ve been spending our (my) one-day weekends in the neighborhood we hope to one day move to, Legacy Village.  There are sidewalk cafes and coffee houses and nice restaurants there, too.  The weather has been cooperative, so we often walk around the little man-made lake and watch and visit with the locals.  It’s nice.

The funniest (?) thing happened last weekend.  I was doing something out in my shop when K came out all shaky and told me there was a mouse in the pantry.  She found a bag of tortellini torn open and the contents all over the floor.  I told her to get a broom and start cleaning it up and I would be there shortly.  Then she came back out screaming that as she was cleaning it ran right past her, and “it” was a HUGE rat!   The critter ran across the kitchen, the den, down the hall, and into the utility, all with Emma Belle in hot pursuit.  That’s where they had it trapped.

While K cleaned and disinfected everything, I went to Home Depot for poison and mouse traps.  I baited the utility room, closed the door and stuffed a towel under it, and left Emma on guard.  We went to Legacy Village, and when we returned we saw no signs of the critter, dead or alive.

I was afraid it had eaten the poison and would die somewhere in there and start stinking, so on Sunday morning I went looking for it.  Emma and I found it in the corner, behind the dryer vent, still alive but obviously not well.  Trouble was I couldn’t reach it.   I tried to pull it out with a broom but it wasn’t cooperating.  Finally my “Southern Engineering” gene kicked in and I went to the shop and got my Shop Vac and just sucked it right up.  I took the vac outside and opened it up and out staggered a tiny little mouse.  It was NOT a rat.  It was maybe a 6 on the Mickey scale, max.  K is such a wimp!

As we are fastidiously clean I couldn’t figure out why we would have a mouse in our house?  When I was doing the required after-action cleaning behind the washer and dryer I saw that it had come inside through the dryer vent, then gnawed it’s way through the thin corrugated aluminum ducting.  A few days before we had had some rain and it had been cold, so I guess it wanted to take up residence somewhere warm and dry, and we were it.

Through it all Emma was great.  She would sniff and listen, and when she finally led me to it, she actually went to “point”, just like a bird dog would while flushing pheasant.  Miniature schnauzers are considered terriers, which were bred over the centuries mostly to be “ratters” to keep the vermin population down on the farms and in the barns.  Obviously her ratting instinct is still strong.  She’s earned her keep, for sure. 

Hope y’all are doing well.  One of these days I might break down and do some recreational computering.  Take care….

S

Funny, funny, funny…..

This still has me chuckling.  It almost sounds like a Jon Daily routine, but I swear it’s true:  Yesterday Elliott’s Hardware, an old-time retail landmark in Dallas, offered a job to now ex-Presidenté George W. Bush.  They want him to come in three days a week and be a “greeter”, as in, “Hi, welcome to Elliott’s.  May I help you find what you’re looking for?”  (I think he’d look real spiffy in his little red vest with a new, shiny name tag.  I’m sure his mom would be SO proud!)

I find this hilarious!  One word of advice, Mr. Elliott:  Don’t let George anywhere near the cash register.  As he’s demonstrated over the past 8 years, he has no idea how to handle money.  Hahahaha!

S

Different, but not too strange

Erica and Donnie have picked a name for my newest grandson due in June….Parker Aiden B______.  I think it has a nice ring to it. 

S

If it wasn’t so serious, it would be funny

Is there a Gub-ment-grade version of Ritalin?  There should be, as they all have ADD.  Back in September when they were arguing debating the merits of the original $750B bail out they said they were going to “fix housing” by buying up all the bad mortgages held by the banks.  This would take many empty homes off the market, helping get supply/demand back towards equilibrium, which would stabilize values.  At the same time it would stop the bleeding of the banks, enabling them to know where the bottom was.  Knowing that, they in theory should then be able to get back into the lending bidness.  We taxpayers could then get some if not all of our money back by selling off this inventory of empty houses over time, as values improved.  Sounded like a plan.

Wrong!

Before the ink on the check dried they forgot all about that plan and instead just started passing out taxpayer money to the banks, all to no avail.  The crooks in the 3-piece suits are still getting their bonuses.  Merry Christmas, guys.  Meanwhile, home values are still dropping in many parts of the country, with foreclosed houses on every block.

Why is this so hard to understand?  If the problem is housing, then FIX HOUSING!!  People are NOT going to go out and spend money if they think their main source of wealth…their home…is losing value every day.  If people FEEL poor, they’ll ACT poor.  Poor people don’t buy things.  And if consumers don’t buy, manufacturers won’t produce, and they won’t keep people on the payroll.  More people unemployed—>more mortgage defaults—>even lower housing prices.  It’s a vicious circle.

I say screw the bankers and their bonuses and their pimp lawyers, too.  Stabilize housing prices like they said they were going to do last September, make those toxic mortgage backed securities a bit less toxic, and the financial sector should then see some stability, too.  (“Toxic mortgage backed securities”:  What a scam THAT was.  I’m sure the Mafia was taking notes on how to pull off a really big heist!)

And if they don’t do that, the commercial real estate market will be next.  Can you imagine how deep THAT hole is gonna be??  Empty retail stores and office buildings bring in no rents—>landlords can pay no mortgages—>gub-ments on all levels get no property taxes.  Vicious circle II.

FIX HOUSING!

Professor S

Now THIS is scary!

A noted editorial writer in yesterday’s Dallas Morning News wrote about how disgruntled the average “Blue Collar Guy” is with the way his tax dollars are being used to bail out companies (banks) who in turn insult us with their corporate greed and arrogance.  He wrote, “Don’t underestimate Blue Collar Guy.  He knows what’s going on.  He knows where he stands in the eyes of the power elites-and he’s figuring out where he’s got to take his stand when the time comes.  Oh, yeah…he’s armed.  Gun sales have gone through the roof since the election.”

“If Obama fails, the corruption of the institutions of government, finance, and even of culture-conditions he inherited from predecessors in both parties-will call up a predictable and quite furious response.”

After finishing the Sunday paper I picked up the new issue of The Economist (a weekly news magazine published in the UK) to read of the “Times of trouble and protest in France”.  It seems some of the very militant unions in France are stirring the pot.  One of their leaders said, “There’s a time bomb waiting to explode here.”

Next article:  “Government of Iceland falls”.  Then, “Protests turn violent in the Baltic countries of Latvia and Lithuania.”  Seems they want a progressive income tax (the more you make, the higher the tax rate you pay) instead of their current flat tax (everyone pays the same rate).   Class warfare, anyone?  “Unemployment reaches 13-16% in Spain, and is expected to go to 20% later this year.”  The people are unhappy.  “What will they do?  Nobody knows.”

Now I read that peasants who had begun to make social and economic progress in China by moving from the impoverished countryside to the city to work in factories are now dragging back to the countryside as their factories, which depend on exports to the west, are closing.  The Commie leadership there is scared shitless.  And irony of ironies, there is now widespread unrest in Mexico because of all the Mexicans returning home looking for scarce jobs there due to the lack of work in the US.  *chuckle*

Revolution?  Really?  Can’t we just lynch all the bankers and call it even?

S