Sunday, June 15, 2008
d-day
As much as moving here has been good to us (my job, great neighborhood, Felix's classes and being near the park) or bad to us (Andrea's job, no dishwasher, bare bones laundromats, high cost of living, "the house", education system for Felix) or indifferent (death, taxes), its nice to know that there are some pleasant surprises. I had taken Felix ti the park this morning so he could practice riding his new trike ($3 from a stoop sale), Fisher Price sort of tricycle/big-wheel hybrid, and we had a good time. Felix goes down for his nap and i run out the cycle some laundry that we hadn't had done yesterday. I decide to go around the block on my way back instead of coming back the way I came. I discovered that all of 7th Ave is blocked off and there are stalls set up all along it as far as you can see in both directions. It's a fricking festival on my street and I didn't even know it!!! And try as I might, I can't see any visible signal as to what its about. Yesterday was a gay pride parade up near the park, but this doesn't seem to be related to that. Maybe its just park of "Celebrate Brooklyn" since that just started this weekend. But seriously, it has more the feel of "On June 15th, every business on 7th Ave is just going to roll out its front door and start selling on the street." Seriously. Its amazing. When Felix gets up from his nap, we're all going to have to go down there. Holy shit.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
post of substance
some more meaty news from our corners of the world: we may, just may, have the house rented out starting July 1. Our management company is still running their background checks but they seem pretty confident that the application will get approved and we'll be honest to goodness absentee landlords in no time. This also means that we are required to pony up the city of Minneapolis's residential-to-rental conversion protection money. They recently (March I think) enacted a policy that required single family homes being converted from residential to rental property to pay $1000 to cover "up to four inspections" with the left over going into the general fund. This is required along with $61 for your rental property license. See, they used to require rental properties to be inspected every five years and it was your standard inspection rate of about $150 to $200, just like the HUD inspection you get when you prepare to sell a house. So this thousand dollar "inspection fee" is complete and utter bullshit. Our fucking republican governor has been holding the tax rate down, peeling back taxes to the wealthy, and not allowing any new taxes so government at all levels are having some serious budgetary problems. What they are doing instead is to write bonding bills and increase "fees" on everything they possibly can. This last one just takes the cake. See, the municipal governments are stuck so they are looking for money anywhere they can find it. SOmeone comes up with a bright idea like, "Hey, because all these poor fuckers are screwed due to the housing market falling through the floor, there are a lot of people trying to rent out the houses they can't sell to cover their payments. We can just tax those poor bastards and voila! Easy free money for us!" Nice. Really fucking swell. Pardon my language, but I get this way when something is really just out of line with this system.
Its another case where the people who are really in need are the ones who are getting squeezed even more. I mean, I'm looking at taking out a loan or putting this on a credit card somehow, just so we can get the house rented. Its really fucked up. The woman who wrote this ordinance and pushed it through the committee said it was a measure to protect renters from slumlords and substandard conditions. Hey, guess what? You could still do that if you charged the regular inspection rate...its not like we're really paying for 10x better inspections by 10x better inspectors with our 10x higher inspection fee. No. Not at all.
So it just pushes the loss we're taking on the house out that little bit more. I mean, hey, what's $1000 anyway? I make more than that in a week! But then I also spend that much, or more, a week when you figure in groceries, bills, child care, my own rent AND mortgage, etc... It's just a really sickening prospect, like I'm some poor fuck who has to go to the "Checks Cashed" place to PAY someone to give me my own MONEY. I'm not used to being that guy. I have a bank account and a 401K and a college education, a credit card and a debit card and a REGULAR 30 year mortgage (not sub-prime). I relocated for work and now I'm being punished for it because it put me and my family in a situation that the state, county, and city governments has us over a barrel. I didn't vote for any of those fucking people. And yes, you can bet your ass I've already written to some of them.
In BETTER HUMORED news, Felix has taken his first pee pee in the potty chair. Last night after his bath he sat on the potty and pee pee peed, over and over. Still no poo poo in the potty, but if he is allowed to he'd sit naked on the potty all day, trying to squeeze out some more pee pee. I think we're off to a good start.
The heat wave is supposedly on its way out, which is just as well since i can't afford to buy a new AC for a little while due to the previously mentioned ass banditry by the good old city of Minneapolis.
Work is good, very busy, getting busier. I'm really rolling into some hard core stuff on the PC refresh project. We've all but signed on the dotted line with one of the vendors and I really need to start building our new image. And at the same time I'm planning on bringing our whole process into the 21st century. Just since I've arrived I've replaced the network boot floppy disks (yes, for real) with WinPE CDs and cut the reimaging time from 50 minutes to 10. You start out strong like that and people tend to expect something from you. I intend to deliver on this next project as well. But man, we only have until August to do it. Good times, here we come.
Well...after the initial ranting and raving, I don't even know what I'm in the mood for now...
I've started writing a book. Maybe a book. I'm not going to say too much about it. I'm working on writing something. Turns out that the subway can be a good place for working on story ideas and watching TV shows (due to heat wave related switching issues, I was able to watch about six episodes of Naruto Shippuden while riding in to work on Monday morning).
Its another case where the people who are really in need are the ones who are getting squeezed even more. I mean, I'm looking at taking out a loan or putting this on a credit card somehow, just so we can get the house rented. Its really fucked up. The woman who wrote this ordinance and pushed it through the committee said it was a measure to protect renters from slumlords and substandard conditions. Hey, guess what? You could still do that if you charged the regular inspection rate...its not like we're really paying for 10x better inspections by 10x better inspectors with our 10x higher inspection fee. No. Not at all.
So it just pushes the loss we're taking on the house out that little bit more. I mean, hey, what's $1000 anyway? I make more than that in a week! But then I also spend that much, or more, a week when you figure in groceries, bills, child care, my own rent AND mortgage, etc... It's just a really sickening prospect, like I'm some poor fuck who has to go to the "Checks Cashed" place to PAY someone to give me my own MONEY. I'm not used to being that guy. I have a bank account and a 401K and a college education, a credit card and a debit card and a REGULAR 30 year mortgage (not sub-prime). I relocated for work and now I'm being punished for it because it put me and my family in a situation that the state, county, and city governments has us over a barrel. I didn't vote for any of those fucking people. And yes, you can bet your ass I've already written to some of them.
In BETTER HUMORED news, Felix has taken his first pee pee in the potty chair. Last night after his bath he sat on the potty and pee pee peed, over and over. Still no poo poo in the potty, but if he is allowed to he'd sit naked on the potty all day, trying to squeeze out some more pee pee. I think we're off to a good start.
The heat wave is supposedly on its way out, which is just as well since i can't afford to buy a new AC for a little while due to the previously mentioned ass banditry by the good old city of Minneapolis.
Work is good, very busy, getting busier. I'm really rolling into some hard core stuff on the PC refresh project. We've all but signed on the dotted line with one of the vendors and I really need to start building our new image. And at the same time I'm planning on bringing our whole process into the 21st century. Just since I've arrived I've replaced the network boot floppy disks (yes, for real) with WinPE CDs and cut the reimaging time from 50 minutes to 10. You start out strong like that and people tend to expect something from you. I intend to deliver on this next project as well. But man, we only have until August to do it. Good times, here we come.
Well...after the initial ranting and raving, I don't even know what I'm in the mood for now...
I've started writing a book. Maybe a book. I'm not going to say too much about it. I'm working on writing something. Turns out that the subway can be a good place for working on story ideas and watching TV shows (due to heat wave related switching issues, I was able to watch about six episodes of Naruto Shippuden while riding in to work on Monday morning).
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
heatwave
yep. super hot here. our AC is a sad sad sad unit. luckily there are plenty of places for Felix and the nanny to go during the day that have air conditioning (or sprinklers).
Luckily it should get down into the high sixties tonight, which is really what makes the heatwave hard to handle; unrelenting heat 24x7. When its 90s all day and then doesn't go below 78 at night, an apartment like ours doesn't exactly cool off. But with 68 temp, I think we can flush out some heat and suck in some cool. and we've finally gotten some thunder and lightening that we've been complaining about not having since we moved here. 2 nights in a row!
woo.
Luckily it should get down into the high sixties tonight, which is really what makes the heatwave hard to handle; unrelenting heat 24x7. When its 90s all day and then doesn't go below 78 at night, an apartment like ours doesn't exactly cool off. But with 68 temp, I think we can flush out some heat and suck in some cool. and we've finally gotten some thunder and lightening that we've been complaining about not having since we moved here. 2 nights in a row!
woo.
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