You who are so wise in the ways of home-selling . . .

Keep the advice coming. We’re having a garage sale this weekend.

I’m advertising, and I’ve enlisted the aid of one of my favorite scrub nurses, a Portuguese woman who made over six hundred dollars at her last garage sale. This is a woman who knows how to sell shit. I don’t know what she’s going to ask for her assistance, but whatever she asks, chances are it isn’t enough.

I’ve already decided not to mess with prices. “Make me an offer” will be my motto. I’d like to think people will offer a fair price on things, but I’ve heard too many stories of people wanting stuff for free.

Bake cookies. That’s what one of my friends always tells me. Feed ’em chocolate chip cookies, thereby guilt-tripping them into buying stuff. She likes garage sales because she thinks it’s fun convincing people they NEED this garbage. I think she’s nuts.

I’ve already made $230, though. Tonight, I sold some of our construction detritus — French doors that we’d had to remove since, guess what, French doors leak like sieves when faced with horizontal rain; a storm door, never used; a window box, removed from the “old kitchen”; the ultra-heavy front door which we replaced; and a few other doors besides. Where did all of those doors come from? They looked vaguely familiar, but fuck if I could name their former location.

But we have oh so much more junk to sell. Tons of Jake’s clothing, much of it heartbreakingly new. (And we bought this stuff why?) Snake cages and other aquaria. Ikea furniture, fart and it falls apart. Children’s books and toys. An old gas dryer. A wet-dry shop vac with one of its casters missing. An old Peugeot mountain bike.

Meanwhile . . . time to do more laundry. Good night!

D.

We’ve got a hot one

Those nice folks who spent a long time poking around our house last weekend? They’re coming back on Friday for a second look.

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes . . .

We’ve asked a gardener to come out tomorrow to mow the lawns and neaten stuff up, and we’ve got a housekeeper coming Friday morning to do whatever it is she does (and she does it well, believe me). I wish I could bake a loaf of challah, though, since that makes the house smell so nice. But since I don’t have the time off from work to do something like that, I decided instead to google “tips advice showing your home.”

. . . and discovered this nightmare. And I thought baking challah would be a lot of work. I mean, really:

Make the House Sparkle!

• Wash windows inside and out.
• Rent a pressure washer and spray down sidewalks and exterior.
• Clean out cobwebs.
• Re-caulk tubs, showers and sinks.
• Polish chrome faucets and mirrors.
• Clean out the refrigerator.
• Vacuum daily.
• Wax floors.
• Dust furniture, ceiling fan blades and light fixtures.
• Bleach dingy grout.
• Replace worn rugs.
• Hang up fresh towels.
• Bathroom towels look great fastened with ribbon and bows.
• Clean and air out any musty smelling areas. Odors are a no-no.

And that’s just one-tenth of the article.

I have to agree with that last bullet point. When we went house-hunting in Seattle, one otherwise beautiful home had an unaccountable odor in the hallway. Every time I passed through the hallway, I smelled cooked cabbage. The realtor said, “I think they have a dog,” but that means what, exactly? Dog farts don’t linger for hours, do they?

We have a funky smelling bathroom downstairs. Maybe I should go buy some of that smelly crap . . . what’s it called? You know, it has cinnamon and star anise and dried flowers. A bouquet? Gaaaaaah! I am so not up to this task.

Hmmph. How come so many of these advice-givers tell me I have to “disconnect my emotions”? I only have one emotion here: I want to sell this house quickly so that we can buy, not rent, when we get down to Santa Rosa. Or at least, I don’t want to have to rent for more than a few months. And if we have to rent, I want to be in a place like Oakwoods where they have EVERYTHING furnished, so that way I don’t have to unpack anything but clothes. Unpack once, that’s my goal.

Don’t any of these websites provide simple advice to make my home appealing? You know, something I can bake, or spray into the air?

Maybe a potted plant, strategically positioned. That would be easy.

D.

It’s Santa Rosa!

Santa Rosa is hotter than we’d prefer, but we’ve lived in hotter climates — San Jose, Los Angeles, and (obviously) San Antonio are all worse. Even in Brookings, we’ve had a lot of 80F-and-above weather lately. Sometimes we get an ocean breeze, sometimes we don’t.

I’ll be going into practice with a guy I’ve known since med school; we’ve had an excellent professional relationship for the last ten years. I like him, I trust him, and the feeling is mutual. Best of all, he really, really wants me there. It’s nice to be wanted.

What about Washington? I told both places that I needed to know their offers, if any, by July 1st. One place managed to get me an answer by this morning — a little tardy, but not so bad as to make me risk my offer from Santa Rosa. They decided they didn’t want me. It was one of those baffling phone calls where you wonder afterwards, “If y’all liked me so much, why didn’t you make me an offer?”

I think I charmed the head of recruiting. She sounded genuinely disappointed to be giving me bad news. She told me, “They want to keep interviewing.”

The doc who would have been my partner did the menschlich* thing and called me this evening. He told me they had just hired two nurse practitioners, and they’re concerned about bringing on another partner this quickly. (So you had to fly me up there to figure this out? Whatever.) What this suggests is that they want to hire docs who would have a start date July ’09. Maybe they liked me, maybe they didn’t; bottom line, I was ready to work sooner than they needed.

You thought maybe I was kidding? They bronzed his ass, and his little dog, too!

Karen wonders whether the economy might be to blame. I would gladly have taken all of their pediatric patients, and they knew it. At present, those patients go to other ENTs in the area. Pediatric patients are predominantly Medicaid patients. Medicaid doesn’t pay well. If we’re looking at an impending recession, the organization might not want to see a big influx of Medicaid patients.

It’s a thought.

Oh, and the other Washington position? Once again, they knew I had a July 1st deadline to meet. They haven’t emailed, haven’t returned my calls. In my book, this defines “unprofessionalism.” Better to find that out now than after I’ve been hired.

It’s been a stressful time for me, but I’m glad I went through this job search. I feel like I’ve made an exhaustive study of the best opportunities from San Francisco to Seattle (and north of Seattle, too) and I’ve found the position that’s right for me. It’s not perfect (thanks in part to global warming) but what is?

Don’t know when we’re relocating. I’m going to shoot for mid-August. Meanwhile, no one wants to buy our house. There’s always something to worry about.

D.

*I explained to Jake that a mensch is a man who behaves in an impeccable, upstanding fashion. He asked me what you call a woman who behaves impeccably.

A womensch?

High concept

Earlier tonight, Karen watched a German vampire lesbian art film.

Don’t believe me? Watch. (Warning — some nudity, some blood. But what did you expect from a German vampire lesbian art film?)

Jake and I accused her of watching vamporn.

I’m sorry I’ve been so quiet the last few days. This job search thing is getting me down. I should have things settled by tomorrow, but . . . but I’ve been saying that for the last two or three days. Meanwhile, my stomach is on the auto-digest cycle and my head feels like it’s being used as test material for a hydraulic press.

Meanwhile, my forensics and how-to-write-a-mystery books have arrived. Any time now, people will start calling me the hairy Sue Grafton. You just watch.

D.

Speaking of disasters . . .

I hung out this evening with my friends and we got to talking about lahars. That’s when Stan told me about bleves (pronounced “blevvies”), which I’d never heard of before. Bleve is actually an acronym, BLEVE, which stands for Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion:

A BLEVE can occur in a vessel that stores a substance that is usually a gas at atmospheric pressure but is a liquid when pressurized (for example, liquefied petroleum gas). The substance is stored partly in liquid form, with a gaseous vapour above the liquid filling the remainder of the container.

If the vessel is ruptured — for example, due to corrosion, or failure under pressure — the vapour portion may rapidly leak, lowering the pressure inside the container and releasing a wave of overpressure from the point of rupture. This sudden drop in pressure inside the container causes violent boiling of the liquid, which rapidly liberates large amounts of vapour in the process. The pressure of this vapour can be extremely high, causing a second, much more significant wave of overpressure (an explosion) which may completely destroy the storage vessel and project fragments over the surrounding area.

This one is spectacular:

I’m not sure what’s more impressive — the sight of the fuel car rocketing 3600+ feet, or the fireball which follows.

D.

What am I thinking? I can’t move here!

Something new to fear: lahars.

An eruption of Mount Rainer would include lava flows like those that scientists have discovered from past Rainier eruptions – flows that stretch more than nine miles from the volcano’s peak. In and of themselves, these scalding rivers of molten rock will be the least of our worries. What’s far scarier is the prospect of a massive, eruption-triggered lahar that travels more than 60 miles per hour down the side of the mountain.

“Lahars can be directly triggered from the eruptions because there’s a lot of snow and ice on the surface [of Mt. Rainier],” says Pierson. “You dump out a bunch of hot rock and have it flow over all that snow and ice, you’re gonna produce a lot of water from melting snow, and mix it with the rock to form devastating lahars.”

The largest mudslide the world has ever seen occurred on Mount Rainier 5,600 years ago. The Osceola Mudflow dumped 10 billion cubic meters of mud over more than 200 square miles. Six other massive lahars have occurred since then. The most recent happened only 600 years ago and didn’t require an eruption to begin. With a 4.5 billion cubic meter glacier resting atop Rainer, lahars that stretch more than 50 miles are not unimaginable, which puts the city of Tacoma at risk of being submerged in mud, trees and volcanic ash.

What do you think, folks — should I risk a lahar?

D.

Tacoma, day two

I think today’s interviews went well. The Assistant HR Director told me, “I think you would fit in very well with our organization,” to which I almost gave her my most effusive wrinkled-nose smile and almost said, “I bet you say that to all the candidates.”

No, I’ll bet she really liked me. I told her stories (hey, she said she liked stories) and I answered all of her HR-ish questions with something more than a monosyllabic grunt. In particular, I managed to answer the super-tricky “What is it that interests you about our organization?” with something more logical than just, “You’re hiring.” I suspect she appreciated that.

Of arguably greater importance, the doc who would be my partner spent something like an extra hour with me at lunch. I’m going to take this as a good sign, even if things did get off to a rocky start. First thing, he took one look at me and said, “My GOD, how long ago did you take THIS photo?”

. . . and he flashed a page he had printed out from my medical blog, wherein I looked like this:

No way to answer that question but the honest, “Um, er, ten years ago?” (At least?) But jeez. Back when I still had some hair. And back before private solo practice had stamped out all my joie. I suppressed the urge to ask for a ten-year-old photo of him.

Just got back from dinner, a trendy fusion Japanese place called Two Koi, where I ate kaki kushi (bacon-wrapped oysters grilled in a mild teriyaki sauce), calamari strips, a teensy sushi platter, and lava roll (imagine futomaki topped with maguro and that Thai spicy/sweet sauce, what’s it called?) Not bad, but nothing knocked my socks off, either. Before dinner, I made it to the University of Tacoma bookstore 5 minutes before closing and picked up Carl Hiaasen’s Lucky You, best I could manage with so little browsing time.

Now I’m debating whether I should sit around and veg, finish my Judith Ivory, maybe watch some TV, or go driving around the area. I have such a nice hotel room (23rd floor overlooking the harbor!) that the temptation to veg is great. OTOH, how often do I get to go cruisin’?

D.

Nothin’

Just spent the last forty minutes watching George Carlin videos on YouTube, wondering which one I should choose for an RIP, and thinking, “Nope. No. NSFW. Naw, wouldn’t do.”

It’s the damned job search. I keep imagining that these folks are looking over my shoulder and that none of them are quite as out there as I am. Obviously, there’s plenty here at Balls & Walnuts to offend a potential employer, but I’m counting on people not to look any deeper than the first page. Folks are lazy that way.

Logical would be for me to realize that they’re too lazy to google me, let alone explore my websites, and that I can safely say whatever the hell I please so long as I don’t refer to them by name. (Bad idea. People DO google themselves.)

But in any case, I’m tired, I want to shower and shave and go to bed, but I still have to pack and I still have to type up Jake’s homework for the next three days. So yeah um nothin tonight I’m afraid, just a load of blather. I’m flying to Tacoma tomorrow and staying at a pretty nice-looking place. Maybe I’ll get me some decent food tomorrow night and blog about it. That’ll cheer me up.

Wish me luck!

D.

Tired (again)

NSFW.

SFW:

That is all.

D.

Vlogging hairless (almost)

My head feels like a peach. A big, gray, bristly peach.

D.

PS: What’s with the poor image quality? Is it that crappy when I live-blog with you guys?

I need one of those cameras Dan was talking about.

Oh! Jake wants credit for the “peach” comment. Hat tip to Jake.