Comma Dot Comma

The hot dog guy outside the building always has interesting stories. I haven’t heard many of them because I only eat hot dogs when a) I forget my lunch and have less than 2 dollars in my wallet or b) I am moody and choose to be self-destructive by eating only vending machine food and hot dogs. So that’s maybe three times a year. Anyway. Hot Dog Guy (his real name is Mike but anecdotes sound better with nicknames. Seinfeld has changed the world forever in that regard). Hot Dog Guy has a second job at a major international shipping company which shall remain nameless (it has three letters in its name, that’s the last hint and I mean it!). Today he told me about the excitement of the holiday shipping season, when employees order New York Style Pizza straight from New York when they work overtime.

The customers send even more exotic things, such as lobsters on dry ice. In the holiday rush/slowdown, sometimes the dry ice melts and Hot Dog Guy hears the reanimated lobsters scritching around in the box. Click, Scratch, Shuffle… I’ll save the one about the damp 32-box delivery to a high school biology classroom, in which one of the boxes breaks.

So, the sellers hired a general handyman with an apparent IQ of 65, or the work ethic of a grouchy llama, to make most of our requested repairs on the house. Some of his handywork:

Stuccoing over the hinges of a new door
Stuccoing a nearby treetrunk (or at least cleaning his tools off on it)
Causing a leak in a toilet that wasn’t there before
Putting one large dark tile in the middle of a sea of cream-colored tiles
Setting up the bathroom plumbing so that both the tub faucet and the showerhead run simultaneously. In both bathrooms.
One bathroom that used to work fine now has no hot/cold.
Filling holes in the siding with putty that has since dried and shrunk, instead of patching the holes.
Creating a new hole in the wall where he tried to install a new doorbell.

He has been let loose unsupervised in our future house for 45 days; who knows what other treats we will discover!

Thank goodness they used a real electrician and HVAC installer to take care of the really dangerous stuff.

Suspenseful question of the moment: Will We Close Tomorrow as Scheduled?

UPDATE*****

Superrealtor comes to the rescue! Our realtor, Becky Shaw, aka Ms Damage Control, got on the phone and sorted everything out in an hour. We are switching from the seller’s contractor to one selected by her, who guarantees his work. He will fax over an estimate and we’ll leave that that plus 1000 for unforseen issues in escrow. He will clear his schedule and work all day Thursday and Friday to re-do the bad stuff and finish the incomplete stuff. We will move in as scheduled on Saturday. Rock on.

Transparency international has come out with its annual survey results of perceptions of corruption around the world. The country where I served in the Peace Corps, Benin, is ranked 118th, among the lowest of the non-war-torn countries and similar to its position on the World Bank’s per capita income index. It’s interesting that citizens of the places with the least wealth to go around often have the highest perception that the wealth is not getting where it needs to be. In Benin, I recall, there is a general expectation that if someone gets access to wealth or power, it is that person’s obligation to pass some of it on to the family and village, regardless of where that money or time is allotted to be spent. If you are working with the Germans to build a highway, you’d better make darn sure that some of those bags of cement make it back home. Otherwise, don’t set foot in your village again. If the project runs out of cement before the highway is finished, well, that’s just too bad. In a contest between personal relationships and “the greater good,” the personal will nearly always win.

This image is from www.transparency.com, where you can see the full table and download the map.

I am happy to announce the arrival of Unsplendid 1.2, the online poetry journal I help edit. Check it out, and if you like what you read, spread the word.

If you want very short poems: Hailey Leithhauser or Christof Scheele
If you want poems about hair: “Hair Receiver” or “Nappy Head.”
If you want sonnets: “Parable of Farid,” “Poem,” or “Adieu Cruel Girl”
If you wonder what the president would sound like if he spoke in rhyme: “Poem Composed of Statements made by George W. Bush”

Also consider: what happens to the extra pins when you are sewing; Billie Holliday in her old age; insults in the gym; and so on. I think all of it is good, but then again I helped choose it.

There is also some cool textile artwork.

This morning in the car NPR was on and Dr. G and I were cracking up at some of Alan Greenspan’s ridiculous, old-man-economist phrases. Two of the big winners: “marginally immoral” and “moderately euphoric.” If I got a student essay containing those modifiers, I’d ex them right out! It reminded me of last week I was at an economic development meeting where the keynote speaker seemed to delight in mixing his metaphors. My favorite: “The low-hanging fruit will bob to the surface.” I love English. I love what people try to do with it.

The reason Dr. G and I were driving around together was our appointment to sign papers at the title company and check up on the home repairs going on at the new house. I must have signed or intialled 300 times since we started this process. If I had thought ahead I would just have had a stamp made, like the CEOs do.

They replaced the wrong shower enclosure at the new house! There is one in the master bedroom and another in the hallway. The one in the bedroom was old but okay; the one in the hallway was pretty beat up and had a hole in it. So, we asked them to replace the “secondary bathroom” shower and tub (as opposed to the master bathroom). But they interpreted “secondary” differently than we did and replaced the old-but-okay shower. Bummer! I wonder what will happen.

The high temperature has finally, finally, dropped below 100 for a few days running. I can walk around outside at any time of day, with my head held high and my arms swinging freely at my sides. 98 degrees feels GREAT. The lows are in the 70’s! I drove to work two mornings in a row without AC. It’s a whole new Phoenix, or at least a brief reprieve from the old Phoenix. Each day is its own animal. With the temperature a little lower I can more easily recall that living here is not so bad.

Today I was thinking about how much I love the internets. For one thing, they have allowed me to regularly make high-stakes bets on trivia that can be instantly verified. “NO, mushrooms do not contain vitamins! Wanna make a bet? I’ll let your dog lick my entire face if they have vitamins.” We rush to the computer and do a search. It makes conversation just that much more entertaining.

I no longer have to troll all the big stores in town to get enough boxes to move. No more begging surly liquor store clerks and damp produce managers. We just set up an rss feed to alert us via email whenever anybody posts free boxes to craigslist or freecycle.

I get surprise books in the mail since we joined paperback swap. Dr. G orders them for me but the effect is the same.

Yesterday an old coworker and I sent a flurry of IMs back and forth containing youtube clips related to rodents, which I consider an extremely valuable use of time.

Right now, cable TV is included with our rent. We are not going to get cable when we move to the new house, and I’m sure it will transform my life. The time I used to spend watching TV will now be devoted to more constructive pursuits, such as poetry writing. And regular times for prayer and reflection. And exercise. Yes, I will be a whole new me. I’ll do all those things plus my online teaching gig, my journal editing gig, and the 5x increase in chores that apparently comes with home ownership. Oh yeah, and traveling, hosting guests, hiking, starting a women’s book club, getting back into pottery making, and finding some artsy friends. (Dr G: “Let the transformation begin!”)

I’m sure all this will work out because of my excellent history of making sweeping, long-lasting personal changes, albeit ones that are invisible to the outside world. Why do you doubt me, fair reader? Pshaw.

Why shouldn’t politicians accept donations from ex-convicts? I expect a lot of former criminals care about politics and would like to support certain candidates. NPR reported that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has pledged to do criminal background checks on her fundraisers. I expect others will follow her lead. Another example of overreaction to one scandal, and an expression of the typical relationship between politics and crime.

We thought briefly of switching to blo*k*uster, but then we couldn’t enjoy our favorite reviews. Today, the Netflix reviewer weighs in on Love Actually.

“But that this movie little bit of porngraphic I still enjoy much. Different stories of the finding love for the many people, youthly and elder, is much to my heart a warming sensation. Many the protagosists to shine and triumphment in rejoicing in discover their lovers. And I also too rejoicing in their discoveries! My predict is you also will rejoicing!”