Thursday, July 30, 2020

still uselessly wandering around


More rain yesterday, another inch. So, of course the electricians showed up yesterday to hook up the house and septic system. The guy was under the house when the heavens opened and a heavy downpour ensued. Just what you want when you're working on electricity. He was trapped under there til it abated somewhat. I had just walked over to the shop to check on something and so was trapped in the shop. It's been rainy, overcast, or drippy every day since Saturday. I think we've about reached the saturation point so it can stop now. Can't we just have a nice soaking in rain every 4 or 5 or 6 days instead of these long periods of no rain and then days and days of rain? Apparently not. Not in the time of climate change. Well, the sun is out today with puffy clouds and it is hot and humid, steamy actually, and the mosquitoes are back. The electricians finished today and the AC guys are scheduled for Monday. Once the AC is in I have to get the surveyor back for the final elevation survey which will prove the house and AC unit are as high as they need to be and submit that to the county.

When we came up with a timeline last February for getting the house and getting it ready for Pam to move in we didn't realize how quickly it would all come together even with the pandemic and so set a drop dead date for the end of November which would give her a month to move before putting her house on the market after the holidays as our fav realtor recommended at the time. I thought we would have to order the house which would take a couple of months right there but as it turned out we bought one off the lot. So now, next week the house will be ready to start moving into. But things have changed in the interim. Apparently Sugar Land, then Richmond/Rosenberg have become too citified with Houston stretching out and Wharton has become a real estate hot spot. To which Pam and I always wonder...why? There is NOTHING to do here. Our few restaurants are mostly Mexican food and barbeque or fast food or a country kitchen where they serve the food on styrofoam with plastic utensils, no movie theater, no bowling alley, no aquatic center (all of which El Campo does have 12 miles further down the road as well as a much better selection of restaurants). We do have a funky little outdoor public pool and several brand new sports stadiums for the local schools, one gym, no nice pubs, no shopping besides Walmart. What we do have is a glut of hair and nail salons. And churches. Lots of churches. But I digress.

I've read that with so many people working from home during the pandemic, some businesses and employees are finding that that works just fine and it may actually be a sea change, that when the virus is under control via treatment and/or vaccine that some businesses will continue this way giving up expensive office space as they find their employees are more productive working from home which frees people up from having to live near their place of employment. Hence the migration out of the city to this little podunk agricultural town. So, checking with our fav realtor about the new timeline, she says every property she has listed except for one run down shack has a contract on it. Houses go on the market and they are snapped up.

So I did absolutely nothing yesterday, and I'm pretty useless today too, except read a little more in the book I'm trudging through and once again spending too much time online. These last 100 pages are taking forever. I've sort of lost interest, no longer care much for the main character, just want to get to the end. Why don't you just put it down, you ask? Because I'm stubborn that way. Surely something will redeem it at the end.

I did make a raspberry and blackberry crostata on Tuesday. I'm liking these better than the pies I usually make because there are just two of us and by the fourth day the crust is soggy on a pie.


I have nothing more to add unless I want to talk about politics and the latest bullshit from the twitler-in-chief, which rest assured there is plenty not the least of which is him whining about how popular Dr. Fauci is and how nobody likes him, him as in Trumplethinskin and so he had to make up a lie that he was invited to throw out the first pitch at a Yankees game which was news to the Yankees and the White House staff as well, and then claimed that he was just too busy to do it as another wall is being built around the White House at Trump's command, this one a 13' high anti-climb wall. You can't even see the White House from the street anymore. Or that he's musing about postponing the election, something he does not have the power to do, only Congress can do it and that ignorant Pompeo saying that Barr will decide if the election should be postponed except Barr doesn't have that power either and whether there's an election or not, his term will end on January 20, 2021 and since the entire House will be up for election, every House member's term will end on Jan. 3 which would mean the ranking Senator takes his place until there is an election. Not to mention the over 150,000 dead Americans. And he wonders why no one likes him.




12 comments:

  1. I do understand why people in the city want to work from home and be in a less traveled area. Even this quiet little area is almost too much city for me. The only city I love of course is London.-, would love to live there again.
    So it is PAM before Christmas and won't that be fun! I do not envy her move, so much work.
    The orange Turd is speaking just now,,,reading as best he can ...a complete turn around on the virus- pretending compassion. He is such a bad actor, in every sense of the word. Gotta put that guy to bed!

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  2. I would not believe your realtor's assessment had I not read that our economy shrank over 30% in the last quarter. I'll bet big business is dumping overhead!
    I wonder why the bottom of the crostata doesn't get soggy? It takes me four days to eat one.

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  3. I gotta get on this crostata train.
    It's so telling that Trump can't even figure out why people don't like him. He is such a mess.

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  4. Climate change is supposed to produce more extremes of weather, so I suppose that's what's happening. We kind of have the same situation here -- weeks of dryness and then, suddenly, rain! But not as much as you.

    The crostata looks great! I've never even heard of a crostata before. We'll have to look into it!

    It will be interesting to see the ways society permanently changes as a result of this lockdown. (More working from home being one aspect.)

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  5. That crostata looks amazing! I would love to work from home again, although my current commute is the easiest one I've ever had & I love my coworkers. Still, the commute to the office in my house would be AMAZING. Ha!

    It still seems so incredibly ridiculous to me that we elected this buffoon & that his base still thinks he's great. What in the actual hell. Sigh.

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  6. It sounds good where you are. I opened the computer to a new blogger today. I threw my hands in the air. I'm not happy. I joined twitter last week to see what it is about and from what I've seen it is one big conspiracy theory in a world sized whirpool. I give up with the tech (and the world). Like Candide, I'll just stay home and tend my garden.

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  7. No rain here, but this has been the bleakest foggiest summer. Temperature 53 almost every morning, and fog thick enough to make the car windows wet. It burns off for about two hours in the afternoon, when the temps rise to a crisp 65. Your crostata looks so delicious, and your assessment of the times we are living in is perfect.

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  8. This rain is killing my lemon trees. They don't like all this rain. We are expecting another rain storm coming in from the northeast. At least that's what the weather people say. I love rain but I like it better if it was once a week and not every day.

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  9. Of course the 2.75% mortgage rates aren't hurting either. I suspect that, post-plague, new local businesses (restaurants, shopping, entertainment etc.) will start popping up once more people (with money) start living there. Chicken and egg thing.

    We make the same crostata thing (well.... I don't) but with blueberries. Our blueberries have finally begun ripening but, sadly, no raspberries this year. Guess it takes a season for them to get happy enough to bear fruit.

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  10. Seeing your picture I now realise that a crostata is what we call a galette. I usually cheat, using frozen pie crust or puff pastry.

    Woke up to rain this morning after a humid tropical night. Turned into steam by now. I try and imagine what it's like at your end, probably 10 times stickier.

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  11. That crostata looks delicious. It looks like what I know as a galette but recipe please?

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I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.