Balls and Walnuts
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this is only a test . . .
I’ve turned off comments. I think I’m getting hacked by code injection from a site called ‘huge top locate dot cn” (all run together, of course, with the http, etc.) Baaaastards! So here’s my theory: they’re injecting code through the comments, so if I shut off comments, no injected code. Brilliant!
This code forum thread suggests that it is, indeed, BlueHost’s fault: “the problem is with the server and your ISP who has not implemented appropriate security measures to prevent this.” So maybe I’ll switch to a new host once we get back from Bakersfield.
Aside from all that, we’re househunting this weekend. The frustrating thing is that we’re limited by the size and timing of our down payment. We’re also constrained by the fact we want a particular school district, a one-story house, and Teh AWWWEsome Kitchen. Some things are important.
The email I’m using most frequently, for those who wanna say hi: malmerkin at gmail dot com.
D.
Give him the business
Karen and I want to give a shout-out to our mortgage broker, Michael Zoretich. He’s been our broker for the last 7 or 8 years and has helped us — a lot. Many times. Anyway, the mortgage biz is a mess right now, so Michael has developed a sideline in mortgage consultancy. He’s offering advice on mortgages and refinancing deals. You give him your financial details and the quotes you’ve received, and he’ll figure out if you’re being screwed. Simple!
Michael is respected in his field. He’s the kind of guy you check in with if you’re going to write a “Should you refinance your mortgage?” column. He even got quoted on MSNBC back in 2007. Karen, a woman who knows her stuff, vouches that Michael knows his stuff, too. So if you need mortgage advice from a guy who knows his stuff, check Michael out.
In other news, I dyed my beard today and now I look like Evil Spock . . .
. . . only I can’t make my eyebrows do that.
D.
Hacked!
I maligned BlueHost too soon. Turns out someone hacked into some of my WordPress files and left all kinds of syntactically heinous code.
B&W is back now, as you can see. From past experience, I know that I can only rest easy after a few problem-free days have passed. The tech who figured it out has changed things (“permissions”?) to make my dearest Balls impregnable. (Huh. Wait. Impregnable balls — something is wrong with that.)
Why would anyone hack a blog, especially a relatively low traffic blog like B&W? I don’t get it.
Things are a little mellower today. I’m no longer on call, which means they can’t hurt me too badly.
D.
Home
First of all, a big thank you to everyone who griped about B&W going offline. It was a theme problem, that’s all I know, and my heartfelt thanks to Pat for suggesting I change themes. You da alpha geek, Pat. Maybe I’ll futz with a new theme later, but for now I’m happy to be back online.
What is it that makes a home feel homey? As much as Karen urges me to see past the furniture, the funky color schemes or window treatments or omigod the smells, it’s difficult for me to take that step. One place was just so great-grandma I couldn’t take more than a quick walk-through. (When the owners have daguerreotypes hanging on the walls — I shit you not — we’re dealing with srs generational schism.) Karen had to point out the real deal-killer: a surfeit of yucky carpet and yuckier tile. I don’t want to have to redo a home’s entire flooring, thanks much.
I’m partial to the least expensive home we visited, and not because it was the least expensive. Although that helps. (You have to like a place wherein the mortgage equals what you’re currently paying in rent.) No, I liked it because it felt homey. I could imagine living there. It had a comfortable feeling to it. It was small, arguably too small, but that helped me imagine the possibilities of filling it up with comfie sofas and stuff on the walls . . . what I mean is, I could see myself living there.
I liked this one bedroom located just off the den: darkly paneled, or perhaps there was a dark wood floor, with dark slate tile in a newly remodeled bathroom adjacent to it. It had library/writing nook written all over it. My muse squirmed with scarcely repressed glee.
Off the master bedroom, there was a hot tub just outside, sheltered by a privacy wall. I liked that, too. Didn’t like the carpet in the master bathroom (why do people do that?), and the pool in the backyard was a mite small (nearly all B-field homes have pools in the backyard, it seems), but still. Minor quibbles.
Oh, and we would probably have to do some kitchen remodeling if we decided to stay in there for any great length of time.
Anyway, I think I’m losing the argument on this one. Karen and Jake prefer a home that’s half again as expensive (but still very affordable) because it’s bigger all around, has a better kitchen, bigger pool, etc. But it has yellow walls! YELLOW! And someone CHOSE to make them yellow.
Yes, I know about this thing called “paint.”
The saga continues . . .
D.
Househunting
Oddly enough, it’s a seller’s market here in Bakersfield (if our agent can be trusted). People are getting their asking prices. I can believe it, because three or four of the homes we wanted to see — homes which were still on the market a week ago — are now in the process of being sold.
We looked at six homes today, I think. Maybe three or four left for tomorrow, and that’s it for homes in the right school district & price range. We saw two we liked, one of which is very affordable, and inevitably we saw one nightmare: a place that smelled of dog and was more tear-down than “home,” a place that made me want to shake the seller and say, “What are you thinking?” Even in a seller’s market, that place ain’t gonna move.
None of them is perfect. The one we liked best still needs some work in the kitchen — I need my gas range with the big fat powerful hood. And all of these homes had way too much carpeting . . . but in Bakersfield, people seem to like the tile/carpet combo.
I wish we could do one of those homes-to-be-built. They have ’em in our price range, but it takes forever to build a house. If we can avoid it, we would prefer not to move twice.
Tomorrow: a few more homes to see, and then we make our way home. Quick trip.
D.
What does this mean?
Yes, comments are enabled again. You don’t have to be a registered user, or whatever, and I’m not sure how that even happened. I blame gremlins.
Carmela, my woulda-been* college girlfriend, once told me she had a running dream of ancient Rome or Greece, wherein her former self married at an early age, lost her husband to some foreign war, and spent her spinsterly existence working a loom, looking out upon the fields beyond her window. As Carmela matured, her dream self matured, too. The two moved forward together in time’s river. Sometimes I wonder what they’re both up to.
I’ve written before about my recurring dream: a sandstone landscape to the northwest, a narrow passage through steep-sided rocky hillsides. There was a time when this region would draw me in, but the last time I saw it, I drove past, thinking wistful thoughts about a time when I would have stopped and had myself a little hike. See, there was always someplace “in there” I never quite reached. Once, I made it as far as a cave among cliffs where other pilgrims had gathered, but I didn’t get to see inside the cave.
Last night, I was back. As before, I viewed the region from a distance, and I was surprised to see my cave — it’s been 20 years or more since that dream. It had changed, somehow, and it took me a while to recognize the difference.
Someone had built a hotel at the top of the cliff face.
I thought: For a price, I could stay there tonight.
But I moved on.
D.
*Woulda been, if her longshoreman father hadn’t vowed to execute any non-Catholic who dared court his daughter.
And then there was one
One good thing about mammals: they don’t croak over dead when we move. Our cats and ferrets take it all in stride, and indeed, the ferrets love a new house. For ferrets, new environments are like crack and sex and high speed internet all rolled into one.
Not so the reptiles and amphibians. As much as I love my exotics, they do poorly with changes in environment. We had seven dendrobatids (poison dart frogs) when we came to Santa Rosa, and now we’re down to our last azureus. The latest casualties were my two auratus.
It’s the small ecosystem problem. Our primary frog tank is, what? Forty gallons? Sixty? Can’t remember. It’s big. Lots of microenvironments, gradations of temperature and humidity. Lots of hiding places for our easily stressed critters. They can find whatever environment suits their mood for the moment. Our azureus did well in the big tank: the current survivor is at least five years old, and might be much older. (Always hard to tell who’s who in the poison dart frog biz.)
But when we came to Santa Rosa, we had to make a few difficult decisions. First, the frog tank had to stay in the garage because we were concerned about the potential for flooding from the reservoir tank. We’re living in a rental with wood floors, so spills could be disastrous. Second, since the frog tank is in the garage, it is subject to much wider temperature swings. (The reservoir tank is supposed to help keep the overall temp at an even keel, but it has its limits.) We decided it would be better to keep the frogs inside where the temperature is less variable, but the only way to do that was to put the frogs into a much smaller tank.
So, as I said, it’s a microenvironment problem. Small tank means uniform temp and humidity and fewer hiding places. Honestly, I’m amazed we kept them alive this long.
I’m taking a vow: no more exotics until we live in a home we own, one we don’t anticipate moving out of for a good long time. And wouldn’t that be nice — the expectation of not needing to move in the near future.
D.
When does the ‘relaxing’ part happen?
Sometimes I wonder if I get more rest when I’m on call.
Yesterday, I picked up my new eyeglasses, dropped our Camry off for its 60000-mile tune-up (7500 miles too late, but better late than never), bought an electric drill-powered pump from the hardware store so that we can bail out the tubs that our window-mount ACs sit in, went home and did the bailing-out, went grocery shopping, took myself and Jake down to Supercuts so that he and I could get Supershorn, did some more shopping, came home and swept up, then made a custard sauce for trifle, and then made dinner (gumbo).
All day, I kept meaning to make a dent on the paperwork Bakersfield sent me. Didn’t get to it until evening. I managed to fill out one of the nine-page applications before I hit the wall and gave up for the evening.
That meant I had a bunch more forms to fill out today, and oh boy yes it took almost the whole day to get it all done. The really, truly annoying part of this whole thing is the redundancy. You would think hospitals nationwide could develop one standard form, one size fits all, but NO. And the background checks some of these places require . . . do they really need know every place I’ve lived for the last 10 years?
I recognize a new question on these forms. They want to know if you’ve ever taken more than 30 days off from work. I guess they’re snooping around for Betty Ford Clinic alumni, but what if I had wanted to take off six weeks to travel? Should I have to explain my vacations?
I have to keep reminding myself that these intrusions exist for a reason . . . that there ARE impaired physicians out there (hell, I’ve known a few) and hospitals have every right to protect themselves and their patients from such folks. But still, it’s irksome to have to use a justification I wouldn’t wish on anyone. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to be afraid of.
Anyway, it’s done, it’s history, it’ll be in the mail tomorrow. I need to get proof of my negative TB test and I need to make arrangements to have a bunch of titers drawn. They want proof of my Hep B status. Surprised they haven’t gotten around to demanding HIV tests, but I guess that’s still too much of a hot button, eh?
Time to relax. I wonder if that old game Populous is freeware yet? I feel like playing God.
D.
Found it at last
Jarboe’s cover of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart:
She’s one of a few female vocalists whose work I really, really love. Here she is doing In My Garden . . . with a really cool video to boot.
Enjoy.
D.