Today was a total cakewalk at the shoe shop, nothing but easy high-paying work. I even got to rag on a doctor. Being top of the pack doesn’t make me your servant. It all came okay, as he was a nutritionist and that dovetails with why Alfredo was not in all last week. My, my, he has developed the identical symptoms to me: normal blood pressure at night, high pressure in the morning. Should not the pressure drop after a relaxing night of deep sleep? The doctor, later in the day, called me out front to translate some advice. Count me supportive of all natural, non-chemical approaches to heart troubles. The doctor recommends beet juice. I had a nasty experience with that in Venezuela back in ’94. It plain tastes bad. The doc made sense about the chemistry, so I’ll give beets a second chance even though I think it will be like drinking cold borscht.
It turns out Eddie has an 11”x 17” printer. But he will not share or donate. So I pedaled over to Office Bunker and found a Hewlett-Packard model for $129, or $70 less than before Xmas. The salesman by coincidence has a teenage daughter doing a flyer and was extraordinarily knowledgeable about printer foibles. He is certain the HP will continue printing until all cartridges are empty, or as certain as can be.
So it may be another HP despite their hellacious reputation for spyware, malware, and screwing with your computer registry. Last count, when you install an HP driver, it places 747 files on your computer without an explanation of what the other 746 are for. By now, we know there is something wrong with the printer, as HP will always sell you their junk. Whatever, we’ll work around it. Everything is still a go-ahead, I guarantee we have a far better chance of selling a $40 bizcard ad than anybody at the Panera has of selling an $8 pizza.
Who likes statistics? It seems that over 100,000 houses in Broward (69,691) and Palm Beach (47,221) counties have gone into foreclosure last year and so far this one. That’s around one in twenty. It does not reflect the total problem. Thousands more are clinging on to their mortgages hoping the market will come back. It won’t. My guess is 250,000 houses by mid-summer, and 1,000,000 by year’s end. Then we’ll experience some real “price adjustments”.
Approximately two years later, Canada will follow. Half of all the smart-asses who think they have equity in their homes will find they have nothing. Destitute, as it were. I’m biding my time, I commuted to work in Canada and not much would make me happier than to see that entire population get their “pensions” wiped out. What kind of idiot brags about borrowing $350,000 to buy a house in the middle of nowhere? It was amazing to hear them rationalize, “people gotta live somewhere”, “prices will never go down in Canada”, and “our banking system is different”.
My favorite excuse for buying too much house on credit, “It’s for the kids”. You bought a monster house for some delinquents and single mothers? Very nice of you.
