Green House

I just toured the WiredHome(+Living Homes) House showcasing the latest in eco-friendly architecture, technology and design. It's fabulous. Well decorated. Nice afternoon sun. And now I know why they call it Green. You're gonna need a lot of Greenbacks to park your fancy hydrogen fuel cell Beemer in that 4 car garage! It clocks in at just over $4m or in kinder terms $1000 per squre foot. Anybody have a subprime?
The house is set on a tiny plot--mostly slope in the uber-pricey Brentwood section of LA--the third B of the tony triumvrate of Bel Air & Beverly Hills. For that kind of money, I think I am going to need a little more land.
All the earth-friendly decor and fixtures are supposed to save resources but apparently not your financial ones. I did a little online virtual shopping and trust! you'll be burning serious green to trick the place out like they have it now. I checked, the house doesn't come furnished! I guess going green is really only for those who already got green!

Sour Puss

Call it "blogger karma." No sooner do I write about expiration date labels on food, than I get a mouthful of sour milk. I opened a brand new carton today and poured it liberally on my toasty honey "O"s in my favourite out-sized blue mug (perfect for chugging the sweet milk residue after the cereal is all gone--yumm-mee). I took a few mindless spoonfuls while chatting on the phone with my sis about, what else? --my blog. I barely registered that the "O"s tasted not quite so honeyed. I hang up the phone and one bite later it hit me. Ugh! The milk had gone off. I'd only just bought it two or three days before so, cheesed off, I checked the bloody date stamp on the box. October 30. What was this? A Halloween trick? My next thought: what would the girls at the office say? I told you so? Sure! If I had chucked the milk on the 31st, I would have been safe! But, I am holding my ground. That milk had to have been bad from the get go. I normally get another week or more past that "sell by" or "use by" date. So now I am off to the store for a treat--my money back or a new box of milk!

Too Real Halloween

On the building site of the latest mini-mansion to invade the neighborhood, I noticed that the construction workers had decorated for Halloween. It's not unusual in this part of the 90210 adjacent to see the spooky signs of the season. So what that the workers don't live there? They get to whistle while they work! Their decorations were very simple. Rough-hewn plywood grave markers with epitaphs written in black ink--stuck into a pile of dirt. Very effective! It wasn't until I took a closer look that I noticed what was written on the headstones. A little too real in this LA gang-land! I just hope they weren't real homies!

Anthony

10-26-07

Gun Down

(Hmm....Maybe I ought to dig up that pile of dirt)

"The Blinkin' Stick"

Via telephone, I am attempting to teaching my mom, who is 3,000 miles away, how to use the Internet. This is a woman who, prior to buying her laptop a few weeks ago, had NEVER even touched a typewriter keyboard in her life. Talk about a quantum leap from the the pencil age into the "post-future"! It's been an education for both of us, though I can only speak for myself.
We've gotten terribly frustrated with each other and have come close to slamming down the phone. She's a perfectionist and really hard on herself. (So that's where I get it). She thinks she's stupid but I think she's brave. She becomes frustrated easily, as do I. She's smarter than she knows because not everyone could follow directions over the phone to navigate an interface that is completely new and alien. Until a month or so ago, she didn't know from a dialog box. She calls the cursor "the blinkin' stick,"no pun intended on her part or mine. Just days ago, I received from her the "first email (she) sent without any help." I wanted to cry with joy and pride, but I don't do that sort of thing, so I didn't. She even reads my blog. So in case she reads this, she will know that as crotchety and impatient as I am, I do enjoy the privilege of being with her on her discovery of the vast digital-scape. It's not nearly as much as she has done for me in this life!

20% off and on and off again

The coupons kept coming so I kept going to the big box-store bonanza, that triple-B chain, renown for their endless coupons and generous, "bring it back, no questions asked" return policy. Bad policy if you ask me, a recovering boomerang shopper! Thanks to loving pressure from my husband and belle-mere,* I have been avoiding, for the most part, whiling away hours combing through aisles looking for round trip bargains on buyer's remorse! But the coupons keep coming and to throw them away feels, to this penny-pincher, like burning money! God grant me the serenity...
So yesterday I fell off the wagon, and proceeded to push it through those narrow Triple B aisles, crammed with boxes of must-have gadgets stacked strategically to fall right into your eager hands at the slightest bump. "Oh, what luck. I needed that!" you say to yourself, mesmerised by the mysterious sweet smell permeating the store. I can blame my brief relapse on two wedding gift cards and a long held store-credit. Free money and a dozen coupons--what's a tiny lapse? Oh, only about $100 extra! And yes! I wound up back there the next day, boomeranging a fancy knife set and a exchanging one gadget. The lapse wasn't all bad since the return allowed me to recoup much of the extra $100 I'd spent. Further, the blame really falls on the store's liberal return policy which benefited the previous owner of the apple gadget which I was then forced to return. My new gadget, as it turned out, was a pre-owned boomerang--missing the instruction booklet and encrusted with some gross brown crud. Though, now armed with a truly new apple slicer/corer/peeler gadget, I wonder just how often will I be cranking it up?
(*french makes mother-in-law sound much better!)

The Grass is Greener...Fractionally

Now for the latest dispatch from that beleaguered patch of grass in the no-man's land between my neighbor's place and mine. You may remember from a previous post that the poor dear was brutally mowed in half? Now it's been "done like a kipper" in the latest round of the gardener's lackluster attempts at horticultural rejuvenation. Again, it seems like the gardener wanted to respect the boundaries while spreading the fertilizer, but from the looks of it, he was having a spot of trouble with the fractions. No King Solomon that one.

Seems to me that if they just leave the grass alone it will grow and you won't need all that fertiliser. It's like over plucking your eyebrows then having to pencil the bloody thing back in.

Future Human

I read an article in the Daily Mail about the possible evolutionary future of humans. Turns out we may evolve over the next thousand years into two distinct species: the beautiful and the ugly people, with the latter, genetic have-nots, working to keep the former happy. A prediction, according to the article, in the vein of H.G. Wells' novel "Time Machine."

"In the 1895 book, the human race has evolved into two distinct species, the highly intelligent and wealthy Eloi and the frightening, animalistic Morlock who are destined to work underground to keep the Eloi happy."

Hmmm. Sounds to me like we are already there, economically, if not genetically. China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Micronesia, Dubai, Walmart, Free Trade Zones, cheap labour...anyone? But take heart, the prediction may have a silver lining. The scientist says once we hit our species peak, our heavy reliance on advanced technology will have set us on a course of devolution that will eventually do in the species--at least the pretty ones (and that's assuming the degraded enviroment doesn't do it first). Perhaps, finally, the poor uglies will catch a break! But wait! If it is true that the "meek(read:have-nots) shall inherit the earth," then it makes sense why the current "haves" are doing their darndest to muck up that inheritance. The ugly can't win!