Updates From The Homefront

I've got some folks coming over for corned beef and cabbage tomorrow (dig the green background) so I don't have time to write a whole big rant on this week's New Yorker or the latest Times snobbishness - or even my own stupidity. So here are some random updates on some random things I've mentioned before, starting with my own stupidity...

The radio broke again yesterday - the radio that broke before but wasn't really broken? The same exact thing happened: it wouldn't turn up. Turns out I had it on mute. Turns out when it's on mute you can still hear it a little bit. Is it just me? Is nothing I'm complaining about really broken? Am I just a big fat idiotic moron? No, the toilet in the new bathroom won't stop running, and I'm pretty sure I don't have it on mute - and yes, I did jiggle the handle...

The radio announced the other day that the reason people let banks foreclose on their houses is not so much that they can't afford to pay their mortgages, though that's part of it, but also that when property values drop down so far that if they sold they'd still end up owing money, they figure it makes just as much sense to walk away. Hmmm... Well, we'll see what the market's doing in seven years when my fixed rate runs out.

Still no word from Keyspan, though a very nice stranger did write in to suggest that I consider some electrical something or other. I don't know. That would probably entail more electrical work (i.e., rewiring the entire house) than I'm prepared to do right now. Plus there's the whole mysterious-socket-in-the-living-room thing, which I'll have to explain some other time...

I took the plastic off the windows this week when it was 70 degrees outside - a stupid decision, as it turned out, because it's snowing now - but behind the plastic in the picture window in the living room I discovered a dried-up little spider that had apparently been trapped last fall when I put it on. Ha ha, fucker!

Oh, and a new way your house can kill you: you spend an hour and a half making the new stove level and even with the counter top, and then the new stove breaks and you call the Maytag guy and he comes and pulls it out to fix it, but when he shoves it back he doesn't bother levelling it off, and you don't notice, and when you slide the big pot of spaghetti off the range it hits the counter and splashes all over you and you get burns over whatever percentage of your body it is that you can't possibly survive.

I think that's it for now. Happy commencing on St. Patrick's Day!