For over a year, I have played music with Greg and Karel on Thursday nights.
Karel has had a raft of scheduling conflicts, and so we have rescheduled. Tonight, that meant that I had the pleasure of watching the Friends spinoff Joey for the first time.
It’s truly no wonder that Thursday nights were originally selected for practice.
Alright, one more thing before I crack the snoozer book. We’re going to one of the kabuki shows this weekend at the Paramount, and I can’t wait. I think I may have attended a kabuki performance around 1978 in Japan, but I do not have a clear recollection of it, and it may simply be a false memory. So far I have avoided my customary research binge, and thus retain nearly perfect ignorance about the form, save the most general facts: relatively old theatrical tradition, only male performers, etc.
I’m uncertain if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a rare thing, and that piques my interest. Should I retain this relative degree of ignorance, I hope I shall be able to use it to really look at the performance and form hypotheses that I can later analyze against all that tasty knowledge I’m now consciously avoiding.
I suppose it’s possible that this may also lead to an opera visit, as Viv has previously expressed interest in the form, while I have seen enough to know I don’t care for it.
You know, I’ve mentioned this before, so forgive me. The SIFFbloggers are really going to town over there – four, five posts a day, comments, building traffic, the whole schmeer. It makes me so proud.
Sniff.
I spoke with the patriarch of the family that owns our building. The family bought it from Fred Anhalt, the architect (in the creative sense) and builder of the place, when he went bust subsequent to the Depression in the late nineteen-twenties. At least one, possibly two generations of this family have grown up in this apartment building. However, my understanding is that this patriarch – a wonderfully sweet and understanding man, my favorite landlord ever – is now alone in the family in his desire to retain the building.
The prospective buyer is a real estate management company which currently owns one Anhalt, and has chosen to manage the building as Fred Anhalt would have, as a rental property. That building is among the most carefully maintained of all the Anhalts in the neighborhood. However, the care which has been lavished on that building is reflected in the rent – apartments notably smaller than ours rent for about 1.5k, quite higher than our rent.
Stay tuned.
In other news, Apple squeezes underperforming chip partner by making public announcement confirming years of rumors. Mac geeks dispirited; Intel, Apple, IBM stock down. So far no one I have read has asked: what does this mean for the G5 Xbox?
It won’t be me, because I could care less.
whoo dawgies! sometime in the last, um, hour, the two-hundred-thousandth site visitor looked in upon us, presumably in response to the previous link-oriented post. Welcome, post-two-kay site visitors!
Attn: VU nerds. totally fuzzy is said to contain the entirety of the Quine Tapes. This is unverified by y.t.
Y.T. does own the box set and it is among his mostest favoritest musics. [thankee, neighbor.]
Viv and I spent the day tear-assing around West Seattle looking at rentals. Our apartment building is for sale, and we’re already actively looking for a house to buy, so we’ve decided to move as soon as possible into a rental house. We have not had a lease here for nine years, so as soon as any sale goes through, we’re, ah, well, I’m sure you can fill in the vulgarity.
It will suck to leave this place, though. While I am sick to death of apartment dwelling, and eagerly anticipate dwelling in a place in which sunlight actually reaches the interior, I dearly love this building, and all the buildings that Fred Anhalt erected hereabouts some eighty years ago. It’s just not realistic to expect to find a place this size in another Anhalt, and while we certainly will take a look at what’s available in Anhalts, four years ago they were running a solid 20% premium over other 1920s condos. I can’t imagine that that’s changed much, as there is a solidly finite supply of Anhalt units in Seattle, and an apparently infinite demand for real estate.
Last week we looked at at least three houses that were absolutely appalling, each well under 1000 square feet in interior space, nearly collapsing, and stinky like old socks, cat feces, or other repugnant material. Each one of these houses was priced at a clearly insane $250,000.
This morning in bed, I awakened and cranked out a Filemaker database to track listings. I combed the Sunday paper and the online listings for houses that met our minimum spec, and populated the database with the listings that might fit. As I showered, Viv called and gave the listers a quick rundown designed to narrow the choices. By the time we were ready to leave, we had about twenty houses to check out.
We started in West Seattle. I self-consciously used my cell phone’s newly-hacked capability to act as a bluetooth modem for my laptop to spot each location in Google maps, and felt quite absurd on several locations as I called the rental agent from the lawn in front of the property’s sign. We saw a predictable mix, from terrible – even tragic – to spectacular and underpriced. While we did not get to second base with any of the renters, we identified two possibilities.
Man, it’s gonna be a busy month.
The DUN works quite satisfactorily, but MAN, does it eat the battery. Next time I will bring the power pack.