I didn’t make [the new Thursday] Zumba class. And there were some new people there including, I hear, two tall skinny talentless young Russian women. Always a fine and natural sight. Why do I miss the good ones? Alas, my leg is still black and blue. Wanna see? But I also ran out of gas bringing the batbike home from the shop. They always joyride it. I don’t care since they do such good work. At a price.
Ouch, that price. The Honda tune-up set me back $420 and they could not fix the speedometer. It is the speedometer itself, not the cable as suspected, so add to the price if I want it [repaired]. (The GPS is more accurate but does not include an odometer.) I’ll get the list of repairs but the carburetors are the major labor cost—if you can still find anyone who works on them.
[Author’s note: Later, I removed the cover on the speedometer, found the mile-meter thingee was jammed, and freed up the mechanism. It is a tiny series of interlocking gears with ten teeth each. The entire speedometer began working again. This must have jammed when I hit a tremendous bump near a river in Nebraska last summer. The trouble began shortly thereafter. I treated the gears with a miniscule drop of castor oil each.]
You can see the first cut completed in the photo, to test the procedure. I’ll get you updated pictures as I progress but it is already apparent the difference in appearance is much greater than suggested by the small amount trimmed off. I have to reinforce the cutouts of the bulkheads.
The bank policy of holding repossessed real estate off the market appears to be paying off. There are federal limits to how many houses a bank is allowed to take back and that is where banks cross the line into unlawful. All banks are fantastically over the limit. This holding back of houses has caused the “low inventory” that the ignorant newspaper reporters keep saying is causing prices to rise. And they did rise, 28.5% in the past year. If banks were forced to obey the law, hundreds of thousands of houses would flood the market and fix the inventory "problem" in an hour.
If the banks were not allowed to get away with this “pre-foreclosure” scam, I estimate houses in Florida would be selling in the $55,000 range. Which is about what they are actually worth. But I also know that economics is supply and demand. Any artificial moves will result in some kind of unpleasant offset down the line. I suspect it may be that all those houses not sold are bound to begin showing signs of decay and neglect, resulting in a far greater loss to the banks than they think they are avoiding today. It is the banks spreading the false rumor that homeowners are responsible by not selling their houses at a loss. It is the banks letting them stay there without paying.
There is a new coffee house with a live show, but only in the exact hours that I’m at bingo. Harold’s Coffee in West Palm. It bills itself as a coffee lounge. What caught my eye is they have entertainment. This week they feature Sisterhood of the Traveling Panties. I’d pay the ten bucks to see that. Well, maybe, because I find older women who form groups like to repeatedly announce how “nice” they find queer men. Trivia, did you know 92% of coffee drinkers in this “Starbucks” era feel the drinks are over-priced. I think that is because they are.
Here is an aside to a few onlookers. Yes, every day I can, I do the crossword puzzle, the Sudoku, the Ken-Ken, and the Jumble. I don’t do the Boggle (too simplistic), the Scrabble (they have begun to use crazy, uncommon words), or Wordy Gurdy (too easy). But please don’t walk over and remind me that old people who do puzzles don’t get Alzheimer’s. For a start, that is not true. But I will state a medically unconfirmed fact. If you look at the background of the people who do get Alzheimer’s, they are a pack of the most boring, TV-addicted, ho-hum set of nobodies to begin with. I said "nobodies" in the social sense. There are educated nobodies just like there are uneducated politicians.
Remember, this is the blog that does not like stupid people.
