May 23, 2016

Yesteryear
One year ago today: May 23, 2015, Deland, Florida.
Five years ago today: May 23, 2011, fembot joke.
Nine years ago today: May 23, 2007, preparing my early solo material.
Random years ago today: May 23, 2008, on expensive bicycles.

           Today was one big long planning session. You’ll see the effects in a bit. Everything going on concerns the new place. Although I’ve not made any renovation plans , there is enough money left over to cover all the bases so far. What is committed is the termite tent and a look at leveling the foundation. I spent an hour reading on how that is done. Either way, there is a much longer stretch of cool weather in the mornings and afternoons above the frost line.

           Here is a more complete mockup of the building as it now stands. There is a hallway partition missing, but you can see the major sections The biggest room shows that closet in the corner, the one that spells “servants quarters”. Note the bedroom has windows on three sides.
           The kitchen is a bit cramped, but if you look, moving that one partition back two feet to align with the other wall would make it just right. As it is, the position of the main door (you can’t see it) makes for a dead spot along that wall. This is just part of the advantages of making a model.

           There have been lessons learned purchasing this property that show the real estate business has become a dinosaur. The banks won’t accept cash as proof of funds unless you put it in their branch. Registering the property has forms that don’t allow for cash purchases less than in the millions. City Hall doesn’t like filing title information without stating a lender. The whole system is sluggish and operated by clerks each over-trained at one repetitive task.

Wiki picture of the day.
The Treskilling Yellow, $2.300.000
           Once again, everything is ready to go at my end, but it looks like Wednesday before the next step. So I can kick back a bit, take the situation around in my head. If I add the sun room, the floor space of my cabin will leap by 44%, all of it resellers gold. Even so, my objective is not to sell. The small town bureaucracy is already at work, the lawyer has been registering the change of title since Wednesday already.
           That’s actually fast, because as far as bad government goes, Florida is tops. I’ve been out of the loop for days now without missing a thing. I was thinking there are so many ways that the government could combine related departments to save money. For example, think of the floor space savings alone by amalgamating the Florida Home for the Mildly Retarded with the Dade County Institute for Creative Highway Intersection Design.

+++ Ig Nobel Prize Winners +++
           Arvid Vatle: Medicine, 1999. Arvid, known for short as “Vlad” by his friends, or at least would have been if he’d had any, for cataloging urine sample container preferences. The fee to view his private collection is unknown, but reputed to exceed the PayPal transaction limit, although negotiations with southeastern Poland, Saudi Arabia, and an interested family group (the Chorneys) in Red Deer, Alberta, have been ”quietly underway” since mid-February.
+++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++
           Every time I look at that sun room idea, I like it better. However, do not go overboard, for I well remember the older housing in San Francisco. The renovators left nothing the new buyer could do. Every possible square inch of wall space and cubic inch of room was finished in some way. My sister shared a room in one of them and I crashed there a couple of times. You knew it was an old house but everything seemed new plastic and chrome.
           What I have in mind would not overlap much. The old part of the cabin stays as is, only when you step into the sun room would you notice anything from this century. It is an interesting design and I’m kicking it around. It would add 248 square feet of interior space. But I could not afford both that and the front porch I always wanted.

           The evening was research into the uneven footing of the new place. Yes, the sandy soil is mine tailings. This sand was raked level and the building set on upturned concrete cylinder blocks, which are exactly 16” high. This works okay for a few years, but eventually you get frost heaves, just like Texas. The sand will slowly flow away from points of pressure when the ice melts. I have not measured, but if this is the case, the corners of the building will have sunk the most.
           If that’s the only trouble, which it probably is, a proper footing is relatively easy. The alternative is those big spiked pylons, but nobody can explain to me if that can be done under an existing structure. The good news and bad news is that although the soil frost line in Florida can’t be more than a few inches below the surface, foundations are normally one of the most heavily regulated city ordinances.


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