Choo choo

Somehow, I don't imagine this is our conductor.

Secret Agent Fred and I are spending Christmas day taking the train down the coast to Los Angeles.  It's supposed to be a really spectacular trip and I like riding on trains,

but right now, four hours before we're supposed to leave, Fred and I are both sort of loaded (in Fred's case, you can delete the "sort of" part.  Plowed would be a better description.)  Still, how hard can it be to get on a train?

Hmmm.

We'll be back soonish, I'll tell you all about it.

Houseless

Oops, I forgot to mention after all the drama about trying to buy that house in New Orleans that it didn't work out.  Oops.  The rapacious sellers simply wanted too much money for a house equipped with an antique electrical system and plumbing that was essentially a bog.

I looked it up just now and it's back on the market with an increased price tag.  Wow,  just wow.  When I was considering it, the price they were asking was a chunk over comparable places in the neighborhood, so how they're justifying this is beyond me.  They do mention in the description it has "updated" plumbing, which I assume means they've patched up the sewer.

I'm still looking for a place there, but there's nothing on the market and probably won't be until after New Year's.

Maybe I'll just invest in muscular Australian youths.

More Thanks. Lotsa Thanks.

Oh, hay.  Do I still have a blog?  Waddya know?

Do you remember Thanksgiving?  A couple of weeks ago?  Some friends and I went down to Big Sur to spend the Feast of Fat in this place that was astonishingly sumptuous.

This is the view from the backyard.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "I find it harder and harder every day to live up to Northern California's excessive prettiness."  Sometimes it's sort of oppressive, much like what I assume dating this guy might be like.

I made turkey and cornbread dressing and gravy, all of which was totally delicious, if I say so myself, and our friend J made pulled pork for sammiches, which was even more tasty and the place even had a dance floor where mrpeenee demonstrated the moves that made him the terror of bars throughout the 80s

and there was a giant soaking jacuzzi tub for after dancing.  All fabulous.  And that's when the cocaine came out.

Oh my little schnitzels, I haven't done any coke since Ronald Reagan was president, but it turns out I can still snorfle it up like a Dyson.  My co-miscreants, all of whom are considerably younger than me and were not around for the Liza Minnelli years were most impressed.  Apparently they had fallen for my respectable facade all these years.

Equally impressive to them was at the very end, when there was only smallish pile left and someone (NOT ME) spilled water on it.  I had only the briefest pause before I announced "I'm licking that up."  Who wants to waste cocaine?  It was one of those decisions you make that even as you're processing it, you think "Probably not the best idea," but that doesn't stop you.  And besides the feeling returned to my tongue by the next morning.  Pretty much.

A lovely Thanksgiving.

Everything counts in large amounts.

Bless Us. Now.

Negotiations on the purchase of the house I want in New Orleans continue, with the sellers unimpressed with my big words or the fact the house is sitting on a potential cholera pit.  I wanted them to come down $35,000 on the price, they came back with an offer of $8,000.  That is not, as the real estate industry would have it, "a lot of movement."

And I am concerned my realtor may not be the pit bull negotiator one would hope for.  I know this is shallow, but the last time I saw him, he was wearing coral colored jeans and loafers with no socks.  As Super Agent Fred pointed out, he was a short step from wearing a sweater jauntily knotted about his shoulders.  So being fierce at the bargaining table, maybe, probably not.

Just in case, I have decided to create a virtual shrine to various saints and other voodoo whatnots that might be of help.

First up, we have Saint Roch, since the house is on the street named in his honor.  He's specially invoked against the plague, which is appropriate since I have AIDS and because of the raw sewage hanging around under the house.  He is also sometimes one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.  I'm charmed by the fact that this is just a part-time gig for him.

He also would appear to be a medieval can-can dancer.  Get it on, girl.

We're also including an old favorite, Our Lady of Prompt Succor.  This is a title of the Virgin Mary and she is the patroness of New Orleans and Louisiana.  She's who you turn to when things go bad and you need help in a hurry, and god knows, that happens plenty in New Orleans.  Just as a side note, I'll admit that I've also occasionally been referred to as  Our Lady of Prompt Succor, usually at some bathhouse or the other, but that's neither here nor there.

Plus she's a snappy dresser.

St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes is on the list, as he on plenty of others, just in case.

Besides he's kind of humpy.

Lastly, Saint Justin of DeRoy cause look how clear his skin is.  Right?

Schmatta. Goddam It, Schmatta.

I sort of love that they refer to these scraps of schmatta as "swimwear" when, obviously, they are go-go boy lingerie.

“Brevity is the soul of lingerie.” ― Dorothy Parker.

"Musclepussy is the raison of go-go boys." - mrpeenee.

And how do you turn off this fucking auto-correct, which has been fighting me over "schmatta" like it's a matter of honor.

It's a Perfectly Good Word.

In an email to my finance guy and my realtor, I referred to the condition of the little love nest n New Orleans I'm trying to buy as "squalorous" and the fucking autocorrect function refused to recognize the word and kept trying to change it to "squalors" and is that even a word?  Are there multiples of squalor?  Is squalor ever used as a verb?  No, I think not.  And what kind of editing software has never heard of the word "squalorous" but is okay with "fucking?"  It's a pretty cool word, even if the chances of it coming up in Boggle are tiny.

I realize I have not been including any images of attractive, scantily clad young men, so here.

Inspect This

So it all looked so innocent, just a shabby little house needing a little mrpeenee love and decorating to turn it into a swell New Orleans pied a terre.  And then came the inspection from hell.

In my post about buying the house, I mentioned I was going back for the inspection and that "unless it turns up a nest of alien invaders in one of the back rooms, I'm set."  How was I to know that would wind up being pretty much the whole truth?

My realtor, my friend Stephen, who's going to be in charge of the reno, and I met up at place with the guys who would handle the inspection, a jocular gang and who rapidly confirmed all the worst fears a prospective home owner could have.

To wit:

The electrical system consists of the knob and tube wiring from when the house was built in the early 1900s.  When I enthused over all the original fixtures being preserved in the house, I meant the pocket doors, the charming transoms, the mantles and such, but certainly not the antique wiring.  Everyone meticulously avoided the term "firetrap" but it hung unspoken in the air.   So the entire electric system needs to be replaced.

The plumbing includes a gigantic crack in the downspout from the bathrooms so that sewage flushed from them simply gushes out onto the ground under the house.  Maybe that's what's kept the whole place from burning down in a tragic electrical fire.  Who knows?  I do know the plumbing has to be replaced.

The sellers had proudly advertised the roof as new, which is true.  Unfortunately, it was installed without the proper plywood decking under the shingles and tarpaper so it turns out to be more decorative than functional.  Roof, has to be replaced, got it.

By the time the inspector even mentioned the sill, which is the beam the house rests on above the foundation piers, I assumed it would have to go.  Sure enough, but just the back one, and about a third of one of the side ones.  All right!  Only thirty per cent of the foundation!   Score!

Oddly, I'm still interested in the house.  The realtor is supposed to meet with the sellers on Monday to hash out a deal where they come down enough on the price to cover the extensive repairs.  If they do, then at least I'll know all the systems in the place are new and as good as I want them to be.  If they don't, I'll walk away from the deal and call the health department on their sorry asses.  We'll see.

At least there wasn't any nest of alien invaders in one of the back rooms.