p.s. That's Jim Henson voicing for the baker.
j
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p.s. That's Jim Henson voicing for the baker.
j
Posted at 06:28 PM in J in Balto | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 06:06 PM in J in Balto | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I'm sitting in the university library, reading for my dissertation, wrapped up against the air conditioning and listening to my "Blue Six" station on Pandora.com. I am new to Pandora and definitely a fan, though I find it a little repetitive, no? I do like hearing songs I like, but not so frequently...it's like the Kiss108 model of ensuring that you're sick of that great new beat after a few days from hearing it so bleeping often.
Cross your fingers for me - it looks like I may have rented my apartment this week. I'm moving in with the man at the end of the month (to a new place, not his - people seem to want this clarification), and I've been trying to rent my place for a few weeks. Originally listing it myself, I not only deliberately priced it at the top of the market, I also cleaned and groomed the place as if I was selling it. When a couple came to check it out, I felt as nervous as if I was headed out on a first date. I hope they love my apartment! What if they don't love it as much as I do?? After they left, giddy from nerves, I decided I was too emotionally invested in my place, and to list it with a broker if they didn't take it.
The next week I listed it with a broker, and though I brought the price down, I remained at the upper echelons of my local rental market, which is highly competitive but has a housing stock that really ranges in quality (lots of absentee landlords in these here parts). For several days, no bites, and I was getting increasingly anxious - omg I'm going to have to drop the price, and not cover my own housing costs and no one's going to take it ever and it's going to be a disaster and I never should have bought to begin with!!!! Why me, G-d????? Drama.
But wouldn't you know, the next day a potential tenant, and she loved the place (as I knew she would - my apartment is almost precious, frankly, and the kitchen is recently upgraded, though modestly so). So if all her paperwork goes through, I've happily rented the place and can move into my new abode with only nostalgia and anxiety about co-habitation as my companions!
I've been thinking of writing this diarist post since shortly before the potential tenant came by, when I was scurrying around my place picking things up and neatening up the piles of papers and books that pepper my living room, and noticing the little details of my life as I prepared for a stranger to come look through my place. My New Yorker magazine - a liberal lives here! My academic journals - a PhD student lives here! My clothes laid on the bed, on top of my dresser, and bulging out of my closets - a clotheshorse lives here. My shoes thrown into the bottom of my closet - an impenetrable mountain that requires a flashlight I don't own to find the few pairs I wear with any regularity. A slob lives here. My hairdryer in corner of the hallway, my overflowing basket of toiletries in the bathroom, my numerous facial and skin lotions shoved into a bureau drawer. Someone not-so-secretly high maintenance, possibly with sensitive skin, lives here. An overly neat kitchen with a tub of brownies and a bag of cookies on the counter. Did I mention I love dessert? Golf clubs in the corner by the door, and a basket of hats and gloves next to the closet - don't I look sporty and seasonally sensible!
This morning as I got ready to head out for golf, I wondered if my boyfriend would allow us to donate his bath towels in favor of matching ones like I have now. I've mentally arranged our new apartment countless times this summer. We signed a lease in June, and now September 1 is only weeks away. I'll be handing off the keys to my place, where I moved right before my 30th birthday and threw myself a birthday-housewarming party where the guests sat on my brand new couch that had arrived just in time. Hopefully they'll have fun at my next housewarming celebration in my new digs with my man. Because it's happening. It's really happening...
On and upward! (Or down the street, as it may be for us)
- Redstar
Posted at 06:12 PM in RedStar | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Nothing quite like waking up to the calming sound of a morning rain... only to have it turn into a thunderstorm just as you are about to head out the door.
With hurricane season in full swing, all eyes naturally turn back to watching whether and what more destruction awaits the Gulf coast. But up here, the rain and storms tend to make a nice break from the heat, which has led to more comfortable nights of sleeping... and in my preferred form, without having to resort to air conditioning.
And so, off I go, to another Starbucks day, to train two new minions in the art of caffienation... or Coffe Nation... something. Nothing like plying a high school student with cup after cup of coffee, and expecting them to pay attention to complicated information. :)
Posted at 06:37 AM in Work and Life | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Yesterday's discussion of housing issues brought out my great pal Redstar, who offered a string of comments so thorough in slapping me around, all I could think of was Jennifer Lopez's amazing scene in Out of Sight... "You wanted to tussle... we tussled."
So, as I lie on the floor, writhing in pain, I can only offer a few mild clarifications to follow up on her far more complete assessments:
Those are my thoughts... I hope she doesn't pull out the baton again. :)
Posted at 07:07 AM in 2008 Elections, Film, House and Home, Inequality, Issues, Money | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
When I started writing the blog, I didn't expect to trip over various issues that I've come to care deeply about - immigration is one. Another is the growing concerns over affordable housing.
I wrote a long piece, early on, about housing issues, poverty, and Katrina relief. At the time, with the Democrats having just won back Congress (and doesn't that seem like ages ago, rather than less than two years), I was starting to think about issues that needed more examination. And my first one is still waiting.
Because of the mortgage crisis, questions around affordable housing have begun to crop up again. Unfortunately, few people still seem to look at the full picture, instead taking narrowly focused approaches that miss how the pieces all fit together.
One of the biggest pieces still being missed is part of why we have a mortgage crisis - that new buyers in the last 5 years or so were contending with massively inflated home purchase prices that pushed most people into taking loans that were, likely, beyond their means. The reason ARM structures looked good - low initial payments that would likely balloon after 5 years or so - was because they gave the impression that an overpriced house might be within reach.
When we talk about the mortgage business collapsing, and the huge number of defaults that are already starting to be seen, what's missed, often is that the defaults are exposing the issue of housing price inflation. It's the deflation of home values - often people's key investment asset - That really spells economic disaster.
Which is why yesterday's lead article in the Real Estate section of the Times says as much about the "affordable housing" issue as do these recent ones from The American Prospect: it's easy for policy advocates to look at "affordable housing" as simply an issue for poor people. But the reality is that "affordable housing" is everyone's problem right now.
Continue reading "Been Trying to Get Down... To The House Of The Matter" »
Posted at 08:09 AM in 2008 Elections, House and Home, Inequality, Issues, Politics | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Taking another step off the beaten summer blockbuster path, Mom and I caught Beauty in Trouble (Kráska v nesnázích), a Czech film from 2006 that finally got its release here this summer. And boy was it worth it - Beauty in Trouble is the kind of film that;s just not getting made in the US, except maybe in left field Indie
cinema, and we're really poorer for it.
Beauty in Trouble is the story of Marcela, an attractive young wife, living through the aftermath of the terrible floods that swept through Prague in 2002. Two years on, she lives with her husband Jarda and their two kids, struggling to get by in a wrecked house, while her husband subsists on a career of chopping up stolen cars. Their son, Kuba, suffers from debilitating asthma from the mold he's been exposed to, and Marcela, fed up with her husband's indifferences and concerned for her son, heads off to stay with her other, and her mother's longtime boyfriend, in their cramped apartment.
Things take a turn for the worse when Jarda is arrested in connection with the car theft from a man named Benes, a fairly patrician older Czech native who lives in Tuscany but maintains his connection to his parents' old house in Prague. Benes, benevolent and patient, takes pity on Jarda's hand to mouth existence and tries to soften the turn of events by providing his lawyer to Jarda. Benes also meets Marcela at the prison, and pursues her with courtly determination.
Posted at 10:39 PM in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 06:58 PM in J in Balto | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I've been struggling for the better part of the week for something to say - and time enough to say it. My usual blast of political insight, my love of the arts... nothing's quite got me going these days. I think it's the heat, which seems to have stupefied not just me, but the world in general. The uselessness of most political news in particular, has just amazed me (which can only get worse with the Olympic onslaught headed our way).
My mom and I have this low running feud going around discussing Obama; I refuse to get on board in the way she wants, and even the mildest observation, never mind outright criticism, leads to sarcasm all around. ("Oh, yet another example of how Obama's failing us." and such) Never mind the dreams of the father... Obama is, in many ways, the dream of my mother.
Mostly though, I just feel kind of out of sorts... and out of balance. And I've been trying to figure out what I need to sort it out, and mostly what I need is time.
In all my attempts to figure out how to balance my coffee work with my personal needs with my writing life, one rule I had was "I can't just stop writing." This, it occurred to me this morning, was probably not a helpful rule... as I wasn't actually writing because of it... and because if I need to sort things out, everything has to be on the table.
I am, always, very grateful for the fact that it turns out there are people who like to read what I write, even people who don't always agree. Because I respect the audience this blog has developed, and because I know it's frustrating to go to blogs that don't have new content often enough, I thought it best to give more of a heads-up about my decision than I have been recently (when mostly my not writing has been noted after the fact): I am planning to take a break, starting in about two weeks, until the end of August. I haven't had a chance to check with my fellow blog pals - Red, J, and maybe even Jennifer - to see if they can take up any slack (I'm betting Red, for one, can't). So there may be content while I'm away from the blog... but maybe not.
Blogging in earnest - and my plan is to relocate Earnest - will resume Labor Day weekend. Between now and about the 15th, I will write as I can, but probably as light as it's been.
Lest you think this is a trip to someplace fabulous to do nothing, the last two weeks of August promise to be a round the clock Starbucks fest: My Manager and several others will be on vacation, and my already written schedules are quite full. I'd like - and I need - to be as prersent as I can in Espresso-land, to give my boss the break she needs, and a smooth transition for her return. And I need to be honest with myself about how I can balance work with, well... work, the work of writing, which I am serious about, and which I feel has been a little stagnant.
Hopefully, by taking the writing out of the equation as a realistic way to balance things will help me figure out how to add it back. And, come September, when I do get to go someplace fabulous (J and I have a nice plan for the beach coming up), I will have the time to blog as I please.
I'm always afraid that I'll be one of those "well this was fun, but now I have to stop" people... and I want you to know... that's never my intention. I really enjoy this too much, and writing here has been incredibly fulfilling. I'm surprised to discover, as always, merely that I can't do it all. Summer I think, is a good time for taking a break... and reassessing. And rediscovering my dreams... rather than my Mom's. Keep in touch... and talk to you again, soon.
Posted at 12:05 PM in blogging | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
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