Wednesday, August 17, 2005
This Old F***ing House, Part 1
Moving blows, and moving into your first house blows big time, which, one can assume is worse than just blowing. It's not just the "packing everything up and transporting it to the new location and unpacking" that is so effervescently sucky, but the fact that there is so much to do once the stuff is moved. I could make a list of projects that would stretch longer than a Milbarge post,and I want to have them all done by the end of this weekend. Oh, and I don't want to perform any actual work in the process, because, as it turns out, I'm very lazy.
If you have never bought a house, here is my advice: Expect to spend at least double the list price of the house. Sure, your mortgage may only be for $150,000, but you can bet your ass that you will spend at least that much during the first few weeks on other crap, like extra soap dispensers, bedding, lawn mowers, trimmers, edgers, clippers, phones, furniture, pictures, wheelbarrows, hoses, tools, electronic parts and connectors, shower curtains, towels, etc. Hell, I've been to Lowe's so many times in the past two weeks that some folks think I work there, and I'm going to have to sell off my first-born just to pay for all of the crap I've bought there.
Also, be aware that you cannot walk into any store without buying twice as much as you expect. For example, I went in to Circuit City last night to buy a $15 cord, and came out with a $70 alarm clock, a wireless router, and the complete 2nd season of Joanie Loves Chachi on DVD.
Some of this stuff is superfluous, but if you live in Texas the ant-killing crystals and spreader are mandatory. I got bitten by several fire ants last week, and within a day it looked like I had developed boils where they had nailed me. The rash acts of these few bad apples cost the lives of thousands of their friends and family members as I laid waste to the nearest football-sized mound with chemicals, water, and the "Nike of justice."
The previous owners also had the hots for roses. I hate roses so naturally the damn things were in beds all around the house. Some of them had stalks as wide as your thumb with inch-long, wicked-looking thorns. I finally decided on the most effective way of removing them -- wrap a chain around the base of the rose bush, wrap the other end of the chain around the ball hitch on your pickup, and let the V-8 do the rest. Unfortunately, my wife didn't want me digging up the front yard and running over the embedded sprinkler heads, so many of the rose bushes experienced what I like to call "ground level" pruning.
Tune in next week when or topic will be, "Crabgrass: Nature's Attempt to Really Piss Me Off."
If you have never bought a house, here is my advice: Expect to spend at least double the list price of the house. Sure, your mortgage may only be for $150,000, but you can bet your ass that you will spend at least that much during the first few weeks on other crap, like extra soap dispensers, bedding, lawn mowers, trimmers, edgers, clippers, phones, furniture, pictures, wheelbarrows, hoses, tools, electronic parts and connectors, shower curtains, towels, etc. Hell, I've been to Lowe's so many times in the past two weeks that some folks think I work there, and I'm going to have to sell off my first-born just to pay for all of the crap I've bought there.
Also, be aware that you cannot walk into any store without buying twice as much as you expect. For example, I went in to Circuit City last night to buy a $15 cord, and came out with a $70 alarm clock, a wireless router, and the complete 2nd season of Joanie Loves Chachi on DVD.
Some of this stuff is superfluous, but if you live in Texas the ant-killing crystals and spreader are mandatory. I got bitten by several fire ants last week, and within a day it looked like I had developed boils where they had nailed me. The rash acts of these few bad apples cost the lives of thousands of their friends and family members as I laid waste to the nearest football-sized mound with chemicals, water, and the "Nike of justice."
The previous owners also had the hots for roses. I hate roses so naturally the damn things were in beds all around the house. Some of them had stalks as wide as your thumb with inch-long, wicked-looking thorns. I finally decided on the most effective way of removing them -- wrap a chain around the base of the rose bush, wrap the other end of the chain around the ball hitch on your pickup, and let the V-8 do the rest. Unfortunately, my wife didn't want me digging up the front yard and running over the embedded sprinkler heads, so many of the rose bushes experienced what I like to call "ground level" pruning.
Tune in next week when or topic will be, "Crabgrass: Nature's Attempt to Really Piss Me Off."
Centinel 1:50 PM #