Here’s a quiz. What is this object? The only hint I’ll give is the picture is around half life-size. It is made by “A Better World By Design” and bears a copyright stamp rather than a patent logo. Return next day for the answer. If you like that one, I’ve another but let’s see if it draws enough attention. I was six hours behind schedule all day. I was up at dawn to check the paint coating and made a pot of New Orleans coffee. So I did it again, fell asleep in the easy chair until noon. Rough life.
[Authors note 2016: What I'm saying next is that I had calculated the price plunge if all 117,000 houses had hit the market at one time. That was the law, the bank could not own more than a quota of houses or total value. I had spotted something funny going on much earlier, but I had been fooled by banks claiming they didn't have enough lawyers to process the overload. That will be the day there are not enough lawyers. I did not know the banks were purposely dragging their feet. Careful here, just because Plan A did not work out for me, that does not mean the same money was not rolled over into what I bought later.]
For the record, I made a serious miscalculation over bank foreclosures. Under laws passed in the 1930s, there is an upper limit to how much REO (Real Estate Owned) a bank is allowed to carry. And the 117,000 houses in default in this area certainly exceed that limit. I thought the banks would be forced to dump the houses on the market, as has happened in the past, but more discretely. This time, the banks are in outright contravention of the rules and they got away with it.
By allowing only dribbles of houses onto the listings, prices have indeed gone up. I wonder, though, what is happening to all the other properties. Whether they are vacant or the bank is not evicting, those continue to deteriorate. At least, you can see in Detroit what happens to vacant property, and anyone who is living in their old place but behind six months or more on the mortgage is hardly going to knock themselves out over repairs. Sooner or later that situation has to come home to roost.
The moon over Miami. This is about as clear a view as possible. Can you tell which glowing dot is the moon? It is the orange one just above dead center. On a rare cloudless night, as I came home from exercise class. I was the only one who showed. Essentially I had a private lesson. I was alone in a room with Miss Hungary for an hour and nothing exciting happened. Sigh.
However, maintaining this exercise routine is very important. I have faith that I will hit upon the correct weight-loss routine. My greatest dislike on a social level is that everyone subconsciously attributes extra weight to bad eating or drinking habits, which in my case is patently not true. But I know that’s how I think. I can’t shake the concept that everyone who is fat lacks self-control. And that’s despite the fact it happened to me, the guy who wrote the book on self-control.
I start my new regimen in about a week, I’ll report any weight loss but not necessarily anything else. Lost pounds are a side effect of the program, not a goal. But experience shows I always get the side effects, which keeps me hopeful. Besides, staying limber is its own reward, you’ll probably agree. For years now I’ve been able to ride the bicycle an infinite distance and that wasn’t supposed to happen. Before anyone points out it is the eBike, note that I use the pedal-assist mode almost exclusively. It’s a workout and my seven miles per day constitutes much more exercise than most people of any age.
What do I miss most, besides Miss Hungary, I mean? Chocolate, peanut butter, pizza, ice cream, bacon & eggs, French fries, cheeseburgers, whole milk, and Kraft Dinner. Yes, I can pack away an entire KD myself, with extra added cheese. Lesser missed but still distant memories are crème pie, lasagna, nuts (particularly peanut, cashew, and macadamia), gravy, beef hotdogs, and those Swanson chicken pot pies. What can I say, I like ‘em. Bottom of the list are fattening foods I never cared for: avocado, shrimp, all jams except raspberry, and banana splits.
The one food I outright refuse to discontinue, over which I have defied my physicians, is cream or Carnation in my coffee. That crosses the line into quality of life. I have been drinking coffee since the age of five, two cups per day. If I kick the bucket over drinking coffee, I would have wanted to go that way.
ADDENDUM
Progress on the wagon camper. The dominance of this project (in the blog lately) is more due to the weather than my diligence. Let me explain something about the summers here in Florida. People do not realize how big Lake Okeechobee really is. And you don’t see it looking at a Mercator, but it is the second largest lake entirely in the USA. The prevailing westerlies bring the dry continental air over the gulf (of Mexico), where that water can be very warm.
The camper work, once the frame is completed, can largely be done indoors or on my porch. Here’s a few candid shots of the activity. Top is the PVC conduit that I’ll encase most of the electrical wiring inside, this is not intended to be waterproof, just well-protected. I’m investigating replacing all the trailer bulbs with LEDs. Let me dwell a bit on that.
The filament bulbs draw plenty of current, most of it converted to useless heat. The electrical systems on motorbikes are hard done to supply that extra juice, and all the bulbs get visibly dimmer. Knowing people see what they expect rather than what’s there, my intention is to keep the camper as visible as possible where the lighting is concerned.
For example, I’ve already tested an inverter that changes the signal lights from “on-off” to “off-on”. This means at rest the light is normally on. I’m already testing an independent power supply for the running lights so that only the brake and turn signals draw motorcycle current. And even then, I’m considering designing a relay that works on millivolts to isolate the two systems. However, this arrangement, which I erroneously call “fly by wire” is expensive and possibly beyond my skills.
I will need metal strapping or better to fasten the camper down, and you can rule out this material at Home Depot. How come, in a major steel producing country, metal is so expensive? I’ve already located a better source for the right price. America does not see the link between imports and pricing themselves out of the market. I studied pricing strategies in accounting school, and none of those formulas allow for consumer backlash.
Put another way, I know that a three foot length of ordinary steel strapping is not worth no twelve bucks. I keep hearing how the steel companies are becoming more efficient and automated, but what good is all that if their prices remain unreasonable? This is America. We overcharge people for postal services, not steel.
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