Today I added this site to the GeoURL server (that little button on the left.) Following my link to the list of local sites, I found a great site called Rebuilding Madison, set up by a guy who has some serious stones. He’s got a log documenting the progress on a house he bought over in Bolton Hill and the experiences he’s had fighting the drug dealers on his block. I have to respect him for this idea: He met with the local beat cops and built a break room out of the carriage house. Sending the word out, he was able to gather a bunch of donations from the community, including a fridge, stove, microwave, and furniture. That site sent me to 2321 E Fairmount, another site run by a woman battling the same issues in her NW Patterson Park location. It’s a testament to the people who take chances and work hard to improve neighborhoods. Keep up the good work, folks.
Reading through that first site makes me think about my own worries over the last few days, now that this house is looking more like a probability. I’ve been fretting over the work involved, the time and money and stress levels that we’re going to be taking on, sleeping poorly at night wondering if we’re getting in over our heads here.
Then I think about all that this guy has taken on—not just the rebuilding of a house, but of a neighborhood—and it gives me hope. He’s not just working on his house, but fighting against racism, drug gangs, the city, and prejudice every day. He goes to sleep with it (from what it sounds like, that can be hard sometimes) and wakes up to it every day. His defeats are hugely personal, and heartbreaking. But his successes are dramatic and uplifting. I have an overwhelming amount of respect for his fight.
His story gives me a lot of hope. I’ll eat PB&J for a month if I have to. I’ll live in the basement if I have to (and it wouldn’t be the first time.) We can do this.
I’m also considering how to document all the progress at our new house, if we’re able to buy it. I was originally considering a new URL for it, but I think I may just start a sub-section off the main site. Believe me, there are going to be a million pictures of the place before we’re done.
they chose us!?, 6.01.03
Today, for multiple reasons better left unsaid, I am alternately giddy, heartsick, worried, and hopeful. We’re heading up to my parents’ place this weekend for some R&R by the lake, and when we get back we’ll be starting the process of living together.
There are not one but two home inspections on the way, which means another round of cleaning for my furry household (and a replacement vent pipe for the hot water heater, something I’ve never bothered to do since the last home inspection) and the possibility that our dreams may be dashed, twice.
There is the happy thought of all the legal mumbo-jumbo which will involve signing not one but TWO chest-high stacks of documents (hopefully).
There is the exciting prospect of boxing all my stuff and moving it across town, and then mingling it with Jen’s stuff, so that it becomes our stuff.
A message to two of our best friends: We love you, and please let us help in any way we can.
…
Ric Ford is asking for help with the Macintouch site; his business model has become untenable and he’s asking for donations to keep the site going. I sent him $15 through Kagi to keep the site going. It’s one of my daily links and something I could not do without. If you run a Mac, you should consider helping out too.
I don’t know if I’m mad or just upset about this, but I didn’t know anything about it until just now. Dennis Miller has become a tool of the Republican party. And a tool.
Jesus, when the wheels of Fate get moving, they really get moving. I just got some news that, while not unexpected, has me a good deal worried.
8:35: Choices: American Idol, or something, American Junior Idols, or something, some nameless sitcom, or 60 Minutes. What a brainer no-brainer.
Thank you for taking the time to review our offer on your house.
Please God, accept our offer.
We are Jen Lockard and Bill Dugan. Engaged May 19, we have been searching for a home in which to start our own family for a couple of months now. We’ve seen a lot of houses since we started and your house is the first one in which we instantly saw ourselves being truly happy. Your home is everything we had hoped to find, and then some.
We’re recently engaged and very much looking forward to living together so that we don’t have to continue driving through the stupid Harbor Tunnel every time we want to see each other. We’ve been looking at houses all over this frickin’ state, and we’ve seen a bunch of dumps that are across from gas stations, decorated in Late ’60’s Widower, or conveniently situated way out in the middle of nowhere. We saw your house and wanted to go rent the moving van that afternoon.
Before we started looking, we did what every young couple does and wrote a list of things that would make up our dream home. We included everything we wanted, knowing that there would be things that we would probably have to compromise on along the way. Two of the things on that list, which we felt sure we’d have to go without, were a green house and a wood working shop. We were immediately in love with your house, so you can only imagine the goosebumps we got upon going into the backyard and discovering two things we never thought we’d find!
We’re still in shock, and we can’t describe to you how excited we are without getting really, really weird about it. We’d talk to you about karma, and pre-destiny, and you’d be fidgeting with your car keys wondering if it would be rude just to run away from us.
Another thing we both discovered when talking about the house after viewing it was that we had both envisioned holding our small wedding in the backyard. It has the perfect amount of space for a ceremony and reception, and we would love to share that treasure with our families.
Seriously. With the flowers and the guy in the corner playing guitar and everything.
In closing, should you decide to accept our offer, we feel our talents and interests would ensure that your family’s home is well cared for and filled with joy.
We can make you and your late father proud, I promise you that.
Again, we thank you for reviewing our offer.
Please God, accept our offer.
Columbia, Maryland, was built in the late 60’s by a “visionary” developer who bought up acres of viable farmland between Washington DC and Baltimore and put in row after row of Stepford housing on quaint little streets with names like “Cameldriver Court” and “Old Man Way.” (No kidding .) Jen and I looked at a pair of houses in our price range out there last night, and oh, my god are they shite. The first one was set back into the bank of a hill under some nasty fern-looking trees, and had all the charm of a beaten dog. Each house in the development featured a shared carport which was some kind of modernist sculpture; the roof was cantilevered high off the back and sloped down to the front like a torpedoed ship. The windows all measured about three inches by six, and the urine-colored vinyl siding was covered in a film of green mold. Inside the cave, er, house, the ceilings were all a cozy seven feet tall, and the kitchen cabinets looked as if they were formed out of some prehistoric cardboard. No kidding, folks, I have been inside trailers that were less claustrophobic than that house.
The second house, from the outside, looked as if it had run into the flat blade of a bulldozer. One whole half of the house was solid, with no windows, as if a garage had been covered over. The windows, while large, looked like they dated back to Nixon—thin metal edging with no sills or shutters. The entire house was sheathed in T-11, that cheap-ass “siding material” they sell at the Home Depot for $10 a sheet. (picture a rough sheet of plywood with 11 lines gouged out of it.) And painted a dull slate blue. The owners had done some decent renovation inside; the kitchen was large and spacious, even if the cabinets were crap (I’m sensing a pattern here, along with windowless bathrooms), and the rooms upstairs featured floor-to-ceiling windows, which were a nice touch. Still, it’s hard to see any potential in a house when you know you’re going to have to lobby a community association for each individual improvement to the outside, especially when your vision involves a total gutting and remodeling. (“Yes, we’d like to Sawzall the entire front of the house off. Would you mind?”)
And on that subject, the neighborhood levies a yearly “fee” for things like community upkeep and improvement. In the areas we looked at, I didn’t see any upkeep or improvement—it looked like a trailer park to me. I don’t think so.
* * *
So $200 later, I have a new A/C compressor in the backyard. Halleleujah, amen.
no longer the Archie Bunker backyard, 6.18.03
I got the third section of the backyard fence installed last night, during a rare break in the rainy weather we are stuck in. This section went up quickly and without fuss. I also built the basic gate door and stuck it in place for the time being. Compare and contrast with this shot from a year and a week ago. The plants are going out of their minds back there—The sage which wintered in the planters is blooming (directly behind the large pot in the right foreground); the lantana are waiting for more intense sun but seem happy to be outside again, and the geraniums are all sprouting leaves like crazy.
This weekend, we are travelling to D.C. to shoot new pictures of Jen’s print materials, courtesy of Nate’s wife Kristen; we will bring the beer and the camera and hopefully capture the goods in a professional manner and then post them online. Thanks Kristen!
Happy one-month anniversary, baby!
I set up my camera on a tripod in the kitchen window this weekend and played with the time-lapse feature, in a fit of KOYAANISQATSI-esque experimentation. What I got were some pretty interesting results, the best of which came this morning at about 5am-6:30 or so.
For my next trick, I’m going to set the intervalometer on the camera to take a picture every 2 minutes for a total of 3 hours’ change (the current video is 1 picture a minute at 12 frames a second) to hopefully bring out more of a difference in change.
Jen and I got the first two sections of fencing up as well, after some abortive attempts with inferior materials, cussing, sweat, and frustration. The backyard is a little smaller but a lot more private. Once the gate is built (probably tonight) and installed, I’ll feel a heck of a lot better. (You’ll be able to see the fence on the left side of the video and in the picture to the left.)
And for anybody who hasn’t seen KOYAANISQATSI, you should check it out when you can. My local Blockbuster does not have it (go figure), and it’s been a long time since I saw it (ten years or more) but it is a phenomenal movie, and I recommend it, as well as the film score, composed by Phillip Glass. Great music for working to.
So I’m doing about seventeen things at once this month, including learning (again) about selling and buying houses, learning more 3Dsmax, putting fence up in the backyard of my house, freelancing, and living life. As if that isn’t enough, I’ve been considering a redesign of my site using CSS and XML. To that end, I’m looking for the best book to use as a guide on this quest (My site is as simple as I can make it, but I’m a holdover from the days of hand-coding with nested tables and invisible pixels.) My two finalists are
Designing with Web Standards, by Jeffrey Zeldman, and
Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design, by Eric Meyer.
From what I’ve read, the Meyer book is better at acually getting you through the guts of the project, while the Zeldman book makes a strong argument to take to your clients before it’s started. I think in my case I’d rather pick up the Meyer book and try the thing out myself, but I’m soliciting opinions: Who has both books, what did you think about them, and what are your opinions? (additionally, did you use them to create a CSS-based site?) I’d like to hear about your experience.
I spent a good portion of my time last night in the basement, where it was cool and dry, waiting for the thunderstorm to blow through town and cool things off. I have a call through to my HVAC guy to come replace the compressor in the backyard (finally) now that I have some cash. Did I mention how much Baltimore sucks without A/C? Bored, I spent some more time learning about my camera, especially the aperture and shutter settings, as well as the time-delay feature (gotta try that out on a sunset in the backyard.)
Somebody is selling the URL www.marthastewartinjail.com on eBay, starting at $500. That’s funny.
comet, 6.2.03
Huh. I had a boss who bragged that he had done this a few years before September 11. I thought it was an asshole move then and it’s an even bigger asshole move now.
I called my realtor yesterday to begin the process of selling and buying a house. Talking to her was great (She’s the friend of an old friend, and did a fantastic job for me last time) and I’m excited to see what she can do for us now. Hanging up the phone, however, I began to realize just how much work there is left to do to sell my house. I bought an Idiot’s book on buying and selling houses, and I have to read that (I don’t have time to wade through mountains of books on this—just give me the important stuff) as well as get with my bank (not the original bank, but the bank that merged with the bank that bought the bank that bought the loan from my bank, which reminds me, I should be getting another new masthead on my mortgage statements soon) to set up a bridge loan and pre-approval. Big fun!
I realized that I’ve got a backlog of photos featured on the home page stored away, so I set up a quick & dirty page with all of them accompanied by a brief description. You can find it here, if you’re interested.
I’ve been wanting to move out of the city for some time now. I’ve been here for twelve years, since the first Bush administration, and I’m ready for a change of scenery.
I’ve been increasingly unhappy with the city experience over the last couple of years; minor gripes with the amount of space in my house have grown to include things like an intense hatred for the police helicopters hovering over the bedroom each night; the endlessly repeating song coming from the ice cream truck (yeah, it’s cute the first time, but just wait until the frickin thing crawls down your street at 2 mph), and the kids walking down the street who FEEL THE NEED TO YELL ALL THE TIME. I’d like to actually have a lawn, some trees, a garage, and a house with windows on all four sides. And now that life is getting serious, I’d like us to live in a place where the schools are public and good.
That being said, I drove out to Finksburg to look at a house listed online. On paper, it sounded good: Built in 1900, four bedrooms and three and a half baths, an acre of land, fireplaces, central air. I drove, and I drove, and I drove. I wound up out in farm country, following single-lane roads through rolling countryside, until I found the house.
The house wasn’t what we were hoping for, at least in my opinion—the neighboring house is stuck right up on one side of this place, and it’s a plumber’s office, with the attendant vans parked outside. The area is surrounded by farmland, and the distance to any main highway is far. The first live being I saw after getting out of the car was a Holstein cow. But that’s not what spooked me.
I got scared when I began thinking about the changes about to take place in our lives—both Jen and I have lived in the same place for years. We’re used to our routines, we’re used to our habits; we have a relationship with our surroundings and our neighborhoods that’s easy and comfortable. Need a good cup of coffee? I’ve got you covered. Need a valve job? We know the guy. Looking for a great dinner? Jen can point you to several within a ten minute drive of her house.
I’m not scared to join households with my fiancee. (I’m not afraid to use the word fiancee, either.) I’m not scared to start an adult life with her, to arrange joint accounts and save for retirement and think about marriage plans and buy stuff for babies. I’m looking forward to it, in fact.
I’m concerned about all the unknowns that go along with buying a house. I’m afraid of redneck neighbors, termites, radon, tornados, decreasing property value, indian burial sites, eminent domain, locust infestation…
We are at the edge of a wide chasm, Jen and I, and we’re about to jump together. Knowing that makes me feel better, but I’m still worried about the unknowns.
I posted pictures from the NY trip this afternoon. Tractors, type, barns and boats. Big fun, people.
My (incomplete) artist suggestions for Apple to include in the iTunes Store:
- The Pogues
- Dismemberment Plan
- The New Pornographers
- The White Stripes
- Sigur Ros (was up there, but is now gone)
- The Rolling Stones
Song of the Day: Go With The Flow, Queens of the Stone Age. Rawwwwk!
I broke down and bought a Jelly Roll Morton album From the iTunes Store last night. 22 of the best mid-20’s Jazz standards for $10? I’m all over that.
Link not work? Sorry, you need iTunes on a Mac.
Today I ordered $175 worth of fencing for the backyard of my house. Big deal, you say, so what? Well, with the completion of the fencing back there (so that we may hopefully be able to ignore the lovely view of the alley, the fact that three of our neighbors have taken to parking their cars directly across from the house, and avoid any more theft) and some planting, the backyard should be complete. A major overhaul on the front door, some minor cosmetic stuff, and we put the house up on the market. ¡Adios, Baltimore! Time to beat feet out of there. And not a moment too soon.
Frightening. There comes a certain point in the day, sometimes midway through your career, sometimes several in one week, where you realize just how much you still have left to learn. And I mean just technically. Not the existential every-day stuff (which is cause for more concern, and usually another round of drinks.)
I just had one of those moments. It’s only 3:38PM. Boy, I need a drink.
One reason not to drink, but to get back to work: The collected caricatures of David Levine, one of the bestest there is. The New York Review of Books has made his work viewable as a gallery going back to 1963. (via metafilter)