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Neighbors..
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2086
The new neighbors moved into the basement in January. The basement had been unoccupied for the first few months that I lived here, mainly because it was unlivable, but with enough time and renovations and numerous price adjustments the landlord finally found tenants.
Now they weren't, off the bat, my sort of people. But they don't have to be, they're neighbors, they live in the basement, not with me.
We can share the utilities, and this has to be a good thing, on my own they're killing me, electricity, power, phone, internet, together they are approaching $400 per month. And while more people will mean larger bills, they can't be THAT much larger.
They're a young couple, maybe 17 or 18, with a young child and another one on the way.
He had a job for a while, construction or drywall or something, I'd see him leaving early in the morning, he'd get picked up in front by a truck.
But he hasn't been leaving to go anywhere this past month, and I'm beginning to think he might be unemployed.
Now I don't like living with people. Hate it, in fact, it's rare that I get along well enough with anyone that I'd let them move in.
And having them live in the basement, well, it's not been the happy neighborly thing I'd imagined. Not that they've been unpleasant, but there are the typical grievances of anyone who lives in close proximity with people they don't know.
There are the smells, for instance. I don't know what they're cooking, one night it's sour milk, the next they're boiling the flesh off of human sacrifices. Strange, unpleasant smells wafting up through the vents.
And the child, strange crying noises at all hours, starting, stopping...
Then there are the parties, strange people over visiting, some over every night, every morning; old faces, new faces. I initially thought there were only 3 downstairs, now it appears there may be more...5? 6? 7? After watching one midnight evacuation, someones belongings thrown onto the lawn, I discreetly asked how many were living downstairs. He evades the question by answering that they had been moving people out for drinking too much. I wonder what "Too much" is, every night they sit outside the back door smoking and drinking, beer cans crushed and thrown over the fence into the back yard. In the winter they leave the back door open, it's easier than trying to shut it, -30° outside and the door isn't closed, it's easier when you want to go outside and smoke.....
The bills haven't dropped. We're splitting them, but somehow I seem to be paying $100 - $150 per month more than I was before.
The washer and dryer run 18 hours a day. I go down, every week, to do my laundry, fight my way through half a dozen oversized trash bags filled with detergent boxes that clutter the hall, there are several boxes of detergent, dryer sheets, liquid detergent, piled up upon the shelves, wet clothes piled on top of the dryers, lint balls woven into a mat on the floor.
It's like going for dinner with a family of 10, ordering a salad while they all order steaks, and then splitting the bill. I'd like to get them on their own bill.
Family and friends come to visit at all hours, a young couple, they are well connected. They find their way to the back door by following the trail of cigarette butts and trash they've left for them, a gutter filled with debris running beside the sidewalk.
The taxi drivers and pizza delivery men haven't learned the drill yet. Every morning a taxi driver rings my bell looking for the people downstairs, they never feel it necessary to provide directions, I redirect them. And every evening there's a couple of pizza's delivered, always ringing my bell first before I redirect them downstairs. I need to make a sign for the porch - "Pizzas and Taxi's Use Side Entrance Please..."
Then yesterday, a brutally long day of work, going outside for a smoke and I see in the middle of the front lawn a skip. For those of you confused, an oversized industrial trash bin. A dumpster. Smack dab in the middle of the lawn.
And so I go downstairs, I need to collect on the electric bill anyways, and while I'm showing them the bill I ask about the bin...
"Is it yours?" I ask
"Oh, yeah. I got a lotta trash...." He looks a bit sheepish, but he's right. In the backyard is an upended sofa, chairs stacked beside the house, empty Wal-Mart boxes filled with empty Wal-Mart products, pizza boxes, used diapers.....
"Do you know when it will be removed?" I ask, it's an eyesore that clutters the street.
He looks confused. Utterly perplexed. Stumped. It hasn't even occured to him that someone would want to remove a skip from their front lawn. Flabbergasted even. He hasn't even considered it. It's a question that's so far off his mental map of the world that he can't even formulate an answer.
They're not my sort of people.
I am a Strange Loop
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1640
Just finished reading "I am a Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter. Author of "Godel, Escher and Bach". Which started off enjoyably enough, but somehow he's turned what would have been an intriguing chapter in a book into a tedious book all and of its own. This despite the wonderful reviews posted all over the dustcover and bookflaps.
And again we come to the theme of "Preaching to the Choir". In that I was initially quite sympathetic to his arguments, not 100%, but there is much in them to think about, but he develops them, rephrases them with different examples, repeats them, repeats them, repeating them again and again (over and over) ad nauseum. The point would have been better made with fewer words.
Overall I'd give it one out of eight bananas.
TO save you the trouble of reading it for yourselves I'll summarize his arguments as follows: The Mind - Consciousness - "I" - The sense of self and individuality we all feel is an illusion created by nested patterns and thought processes running in the brain. This is expounded with many examples from Math and Physics; and using some of the techniques of his earlier books (the dialogues, for example). That's it.
Garage Sale Season - Week 4
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2282
One more day until the weekend. Not that I can get out, there's lots to be done, but there are the garage sales and I generally like to make time for them. Garage sale season begun roughly around April 18, then kicked off properly the weekend of the 25th with the "Good Samaritan" rummage sale in Kensington.
That one draws the crowds. Lineups of 2 - 300 people before it even starts.
So far there've been no great treasures, despite lots of searching. Or one treasure, almost, but I'll come to that.
The Good Samaritan sale in Kensington is one of the biggest and best rummage sales in the city. You can tell by the lineup. If you're not there by 8:00 AM, 8:15 at the latest you won't get a reasonable place in line. The sale starts at 9:00 AM. The die-hard dealers and flea market vendors are there by 7:00, some will even go so far as to spend the night.
It's a good sale.
Treasures vary. There's the room filled with collectables, antiques, a room filled with furniture, childrens toys, books and housewares, and another room (Gymnasium) filled with clothing.
Prices are reasonable.
And, as always, when at 9:00 AM they open the doors (never early) it's pandemonium. Imagine that God had come to earth for one day only to heal the sick and the ugly and you'll have a pretty good idea of the crowd. People jostling to rummage through clothing, pushing and shoving to get a look into the display cases, grabbing things they're not sure they want, but they're swept up in the confusion and if you don't grab it, and grab it quick, somebody else will....
I can only take it for half an hour before I begin to get claustrophobic. One too many Granny's elbows, one too many dealers trying to push past you, I've seen it all and it's time to leave....
A Medalta #3 crock is my entire haul this year. Modest, poor even compared to other years but that's not a reflection on the sale, just my increasingly high standards and diminishing space.
A few more sales last weekend, again nothing too exciting, some mixed media art supplies but I'm running out of room to store all these treasures, a couple of antique automobile horns, and on Sunday, when all the sales are almost done I think to stop at a benefit for the Mustard Seed on Memorial Drive. It's habit, there's no hope of treasures here, not at this hour on a Sunday, but poking around I notice an antique iron safe, big round cast iron wheels, a "No Combination, Offers?" sign taped to the top.
This is the treasure of the weekend. Of the season, even. Barely believing my good fortune I find one of the hosts and make my offer, seal the deal when a blonde girl appears out of nowhere:
"It's been sold. I've already bought it. Sorry...."
Now she's trying to sound apologetic, but really it's a photo-finish, she, like me, has her money in her hand and has found a different salesperson to do the deal with, my salesperson is confused, she's already sold it to me, maybe I'm with the blonde...?
I'm not with the homely blonde but I'm seized with an irrational urge to throttle her, she doesn't seem genuine in her apology, the fact that she's still holding her cash still tells me the deal isn't done, that she's first in her eyes only, but I'm not going to dicker or fight (sorely tempted as I am) and accept that this is one treasure I've missed.
The rest of the week has been spent in mourning. The antique safe, locked and without combination, a diversion that would entertain the children for weeks, months even. I'm pretty sure I could crack the combination within an hour, but that would defeat the purpose, I would have placed it in the kids room, speculated upon it's contents with them and allowed them to while away their free time trying to crack it.
And when finally we did crack it, and sold the gold bars and junk bonds, the diamonds and jewels that were doubtless still safely inside, we'd have a safe of our very own to store our treasures in - X-Box 360 games, Fudgeo cookies, .... if ever we tired of it we could wheel it downtown and push it out of a skyscraper window, the possibilites were limitless....
There's always this weekend. Week 4 of the season, seven, maybe eight weeks to go. And the thought of the safe will keep me running.....
Clock Mouse
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2164
I've fallen behind. Projects to be caught up upon, tight deadlines, revisions have all conspired to keep me from keeping this blog up to date.
Nonetheless I've made notes.
There was the Clock Mouse of a few days ago. Now I knew that after the roundups of the last couple of months I still had a couple of mice left, but I wasn't comfortable rounding them up with the weather being so inclement and all. I'd just grin and bear it until it warmed up then finish collecting and transplanting them.
But there was one that seemed to have made his home on the kitchen counter, admittedly a bit of a mess, covered with toasters, blender, tupperware, an antique slate clock I've been meaning to find a place for, ....
And I'd see it dashing across the counter, but somehow it would always hide whenever I got near.
Then there was the chewing sound. As if it was somewhere close, but I couldn't quite place where, and as I scoured the countertop I for the life of me would have sworn the mouse was in the clock. But looking around it it was impossible.
Finally the weather turns and I resolve to clean the last few of them up.
With my daughter we search for it on the countertop, I can hear it chewing, oblivious, then the clock chimes. The clock I haven't wound for years. Taking this as a clue, I go to move the clock and from underneath dashes a mouse. There is a tiny, 1/4 inch groove at the back, invisible unless you happen to be looking right at it, and somehow or another the mouse has slipped under it and made him/herself a home.
Now I clean out the mousetrap and bait it with fresh peanut butter and leave it on the counter. That night I caught 2 mice, within 1/2 an hour of each other. I walk down the street a block or so and let them loose in a vacant lot/field.
The next day I catch yet another - an older, scruffier one, I can hear it tipping the trap back and forth from my room. I wake the children and we take it out and free it.
I begin to think that maybe I'm finally mouse free. For three days, then finally another one peeking out from behind the stove. I've moved the trap, but he still hasn't fallen for it.
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