The roof estimate comes in at about $1,500, which is somewhere around what I figured. While not great news, it’s better than being told the whole thing is shot. So the floors will wait a little while longer.
Overheard at Dinner. The setting: a whitehaired dude sitting four booths down from us at the restaurant down the street suddenly exclaims to his table:
“The difference is, George Bush never threw his medals away!”
It took all my strength to resist yelling back, “At least Kerry earned some medals.”
Activism. Last night there was a meeting at the elementary school across the street about a proposed road-widening not too far from our house. We’re near a major north-south artery off the beltway, and the State Highway Administration wants to three-lane one of the feeder roads, citing accidents and public safety as their major reasons. Living on a highly trafficked state road already, the idea of opening the area up to further congestion does not appeal to me. I’m one of the weird folks who believes that wider roads don’t ease congestion, but promote higher speeds and enable more traffic to back up. I believe in alternative methods for “safety”.
We’ve been in the house for a year now, and we’ve only met a handful of our neighbors. I don’t think we’ve offended anybody on purpose; we don’t let our dogs crap on their lawns, shoot bottle rockets at their windows, or mow the lawn naked. The “community association” in our neighborhood seems to be run by people who aren’t predisposed to welcome new arrivals—they held their annual picnic two weeks ago and never bothered to invite us, or our friends who live across the street. (Just wait ’till I put my “Kerry For President” sign on the front lawn.) So it was interesting to see all of these people together in one room.
The meeting was as you’d expect: one tired-looking state official fielding questions from a room full of frightened residents, with the occasional whitehaired man shouting rambling statements at him. Jen and I filled out our opinion cards and listened to the rabble for a while before leaving; I decided to sign up for the community organization south of us so I have some connection to the opposition (I’d say the room was 95% against, with four or five people timidly raising supporting hands in an informal poll) and the neighborhood. This should be an interesting foray into local politics.