Our Last House Guest?

Yesterday, a friend came over for dinner. She'd never been to our house before and was taken aback by its size. She may well be the last guest we entertain here in the Rented Mansion In The Desert.

The reason for that is that The Wife and I put in an offer to buy a house of our own, less than two miles away. After some negotiation, the seller and we agreed on the price and terms. Escrow is open and should close by the end of the month. Our new house will be half the size of the Rented Mansion In The Desert, has hard flooring surfaces throughout the living space, pleasing landscaping with mature trees, a combined air conditioner and swamp cooler climate control system, and granite tile countertops in the adequate if not luxurious kitchen.

Its defining architectural characteristic is a rather unusual structure running about eight feet high underneath a vaulted ceiling in the front portion of the house. When I first saw it, I said, "What's up with that floating soffit?" and thus the nickname "Soffit House" was born. (It's not really a "floating soffit;" I think properly it would be called an archway, but since it doesn't have a classic arch shape, I didn't use that term.)

Anniversary

At breakfast this morning, The Wife pointed out that we've been back in California for a year and a day. And that means that we've been in this gigantic house for an entire year now. I've been so busy recently I would certainly have not noticed this anniversary had The Wife not pointed it out to me. Once I swore I'd never come back here. Now, I'm glad that I did; while it's not Santa Barbara, unless we win the lottery we can't afford somewhere like that anyway, and California simply suits us better than Tennessee ever did.

Certainly we're comfortable here (how could we not be, with three times more space in the house than we need?) and our circumstances today feel much improved from where they were in Tennessee. We can contemplate the possibility of buying a (smaller) house in the reasonably near future, even in hyperinflated California, due to a confluence of good employment and a favorable local housing market. I'm quite grateful that things have worked out so well.

Last year at this time we had to save all our money and could not even afford a few extra dollars to go to the U-pick cherry orchard. But things are different, today. Later on, we're going to Leona Valley, and we'll get as many as we can eat before we get sick to our stomachs tonight. It'll be hot out and I'll wear my floppy wide-brimmed hat. The cherries will be fresh and tart. It'll be a good time.

Lengthy Visit

My folks came to visit over the last week. We had a great time. This was as good and enjoyable a visit from them as I could possibly have wished for. Everyone got along great; everyone had fun; everyone enjoyed everyone else's company. The time together was far too short. We didn't even have to do that much. It was sufficient to spend time together, to enjoy being together, and to eat and drink and be merry.

I took particular pleasure in seeing The Wife and my mother get along well; they both enjoy looking at open houses and new house models, so they seemed to do quite a bit of that. They also share a fondness for stamping and making cards. My father and I (more him than me) fixed some of the broken sprinklers out on the lawns, and that may well improve the appearance of the RMID. While he's much more capable than I at such things, it is enjoyable working with him and learning how he does things.

It's also exciting to hear about the improvements and plans that my parents have for The Estate At Louisville. My father's retirement business is going swimmingly well and it looks like they'll be able to fund a lot of those improvements very well in a fairly short amount of time. I'm very pleased that they're enjoying their retirement and that things are falling in place for them out in Tennessee (and out here). My father may have found a new client in the High Desert so hopefully we'll be seeing more of them soon!

Saturday night, we had some friends over; they brought their baby and we locked the dogs in the back yard. My folks had brought a premium tri-tip down on their drive from Northern California; I put it in my special marinate for a day and we grilled it up and served it with roasted rosemary potatoes, sunflowered haricots verts, and sweet corn on the cob. My mother made chocolate creampuffs and we managed to knock back a couple bottles of wine. A very good time was had by all.

For Mother's Day I made up a championship-quality quiche and we had a peach strudel. Then we looked at more houses for sale. After a while, it got to be late enough in the day that my folks had to get driving back up to Sacramento to catch their flight home (they had originally flown out to go to a wedding in the wine country) and so we bid them farewell.

But not before thanking them for the wonderful anniversary present (a new dryer) and finding the one thing they'd left behind -- what may be the last bottle of a particular kind of German wine my father likes very, very much and which he won't figure out he left behind here until he gets home tomorrow night. Rather than drink it myself, I'll pack it up and mail it to him tomorrow.

New House Guests

Springtime has arrived in the desert, and with it came the beloved cherry blossoms and (allegedly) the flowering of the California poppies. We are starting to see temperatures in the eighties -- that is, when we aren't experiencing week-long windstorms. And along with the coming of spring we have had some new house guests.

The common black cricket is, frankly, an icky-looking bug. I have no love of him for that reason, although I realize he is harmless. His chirpy mating call is thought in many cultures to portend good luck of some sort -- an imminent pregnancy, an unexpected source of money, and so on -- but I've no such illusions. He's come in the house to look for shelter from the snakes, mice, and birds that feast upon him and his friends out in the desert fields, and if he is really a "she" who has just mated, she is looking for a safe place to deposit her fertilized eggs so that there can one day soon be hundreds of little crickets just like her.

Our first cricket invader was spotted by The Wife, who adopted a heightened tone in her voice and asked me to come take care of the "Gigantic icky bug I hope it's not a roach tell me it's not a roach!" She freaks out about bugs.

I took a look at the creature -- obviously not a roach with his big grasshopper-like legs, but I could see how she might think that because the cricket does have really long, droopy antennae. I remembered all the crickets chirping in the ice plant and juniper bushes near the house where I grew up. "Oh, it's a cricket," I said, "He won't hurt anything, but he's tough to catch."

And they are. I found another one, a much bigger one, yesterday on the stairs. I tried to get him in a paper towel but he kept on jumping away from me. Then I tried to get the cats to come and play with the creature, figuring it would be great fun to see them figure out such a thing. Both the cats ran away from me, apparently afraid that I would kennel them. The dogs were completely useless and aren't good for that kind of play anyway. So I vacuumed up our cricket guest and he's lived inside the vacuum cannister with all the dusty pet fur ever since.

We are quite likely to have several more cricket invasions over the next several weeks. No house is ever sealed up from the outside world (not if it wants air conditioning and working toilets, anyway) so this sort of thing is just going to happen. But relax, my lovely wife, these are not roaches even if they are icky looking. Hopefully they don't come in and start their chirpy, loud, and ultimately annoying songs while we're trying to sleep.

Exile in My Own House

The Wife is having her girls over for a stamping party. This is where they convene around a table and make greeting cards using a variety of stamps and other craft techniques.

After helping out with the cleaning, I prepared food for them -- from-scratch mac-and-cheese, crudites with mint ranch sauce, and melon balls. I made up a honey butter for The Wife's banana bread, too. Now that this is all accomplished, my job is to get out of the way and let the girls have their fun. I may come down to grab some food in a bit, but aside from that, it's up in the loft with the cats, so I can let the girls have their fun.

All part of being a good husband.

I feel bad after our near-miss on buying a house earlier this week. We found a nice house during one of our open house shopping expeditions, one in which the owners had put in a lot of extras -- granite countertops in the kitchen, custom millwork everywhere, and laminate floors in practically the entire house. We thought they were a bit over the market in this neighborhood at $373,000, but loved the house. So when the owner called me up and said that his realtor suggested they come down in price, and had cut the price to $267,000, we jumped at the chance to buy it.* I pulled the public recordings, saw their mortgage situation, and figured that the drop in price was because the house had been on the market for seven months and the sellers were beginning to feel distressed, so the big drop sounded like it was within the realm of possibility. So I spent a day lining up the financing. But later, the owner and I spoke again and he apologized for misspeaking; he had cut his price to $367,000, not $267,000. $367,000 will probably not be within our grasp for several months yet.

Now, remember that I haven't seen the house yet that has made me swoon, but The Wife cannot make that claim. (I certainly did like the good layout, generous workspace and storage, and granite countertops in the kitchen of this house.) So she was pretty bitterly disappointed with the miscommunication and the likelihood that we will not be buying this house. I feel bad for her and I figured helping her out with her girly event would make her feel better.

Or, maybe we will, when we get in a position to put a bigger offer down on the table than we are in at the moment. The general consensus of the real estate brokers and real estate lawyers I've spoken about this with is that $367,000 is still over the market for this neighborhood and a house like this. Yes, it has a lot of extras one would not expect in a neighborhood like this, but that's the reason why the owners aren't getting the value for it that they would like; they've overbuilt the extra touches and the market won't support it. And real prices are falling faster than these owners seem to be reacting; one broker I had lunch with a few days ago said that real prices** were down 12% in the past three months.

So for the time being, I'm exiled to the loft of the Rented Mansion In The Desert, and that's okay; I'll manage for a few hours. My class for tomorrow is already written; it's about employment law so that's one I will be able to teach with enthusiasm and little preparation since it's my second-favorite subject (after Constitutional law) to cover. I'll just take it easy. If I decide I want to watch a hockey game on TV or something I can always drive out to the sports bar a few miles away, but I'm not motivated enough to do that just yet.


*(I know those prices seem out of sight to people in Tennessee. I assure you, housing in the Antelope Valley is the only place in Los Angeles County that is even remotely affordable like that.)

** "Real prices" are distinguished from face-value prices in that most of the price depression is showing up in after-transaction values to the buyer, in the form of financial incentives like interest rate deductions or principal rebates, or premiums like free swimming pools, free granite countertops, or free cars.

Irritating Morning

I seem to have lost the ability to sleep in, even on the weekends. This is unfortunate, because I could really use the sleep as only rarely in my life have I had the ability to fall asleep at an appropriate time.

So from the time I woke up at 6:30 this morning, I was already irritated because I could have used more sleep than I got. But the critters need to be fed, so I figured I'd do that and see how things went from there.

We moved the kennels last night to what used to be my office. The Wife wanted to rearrange things yesterday so her computer was out in the living room and her back room was just for her crafts. She also wanted the kennels to be out of sight for guests who drop in from time to time. (Like we have a lot of guests who drop in.) So we did that, and put the kennels up in the bedroom that we had set aside for my use. I now have no office.

So I set up all the food for the critters and went into their room to let them out of their kennels. There, on Jordan's bed, was a large pile of "kitty pebbles." For whatever reason, the cat had decided to shit all over her pillow. Dogs will not defecate where they sleep. Cats -- or at least this particular cat -- apparently lacks any such inhibition.

The dogs were very confused and didn't know why they were being let out of their cages, and got so excited at being free and having a people around that they forgot how to get to their feeding station. I had to guide them there.

So after getting the dogs fed and put outside, I decided to teach my online class rather than confront the pile of cat shit in Jordan's kennel. As I observed last week, my crop of students this cycle is particularly dim and that was frustrating, too.

Eventually, The Wife pointed out that someone would have to clean up the cat shit, so I did that, and put the cat pillow back in the washing machine (we had washed it the previous day to eliminate the smell of cat urine) and the rinse cycle didn't work.

Then, over breakfast, we played trivia and scrabble. I forgot that the Dodger pitcher whose bobblehead included a bouncing arm was Tommy John (for whom the surgery is named) and then in scrabble, The Wife cleaned my clock. She got two 50-point bonuses in a row, which was quite discouraging. Normally I try and be a good sport but after the first one (which was on a triple word score) it was apparent that I had no realistic hope of winning, and the game was only half done.

My reward for getting my ass waxed in scrabble was an hour of poop patrol out in the back yard. The Wife was nice and kept me company, serving as my spotter. It went faster with her assistance, but picking up dog shit is never a pleasant proposition under the best of circumstances, and while having my wife with me usually makes most circumstances better, this chore is only ever going to become so pleasant.

After that, I discovered that my cell phone had run out of battery and that I had left a smear of dog mess on my shoes.

Then, I sat down to try and read the news and blogs. Someone, somewhere, had posed an interesting question about distributive justice and political theory, and I wanted to respond to it. But The Wife wanted to discuss what to do about our friends' wedding. To answer her questions required using Google Maps, and that led me to discover that the internet connection had failed. So that meant fixing the connection, which involved taking apart all of the modem and router assemblies which are in The Wife's office and located in an "out-of-sight" area so she doesn't have to look at a bunch of cords and peripherals.

In the middle of all this, Jordan sat down in another cat bed and pissed in it. Is this cat house-trained at all? Shortly after that, Jordan initiated a vicious fight with Ginger, producing hissing and spitting and emerging with a big hunk of Ginger's fur in her mouth. Makes me wonder if she's turning feral.

After fixing the internet problem, we and wound up quarreling over what to do about the trip to Denver. We were both looking at a variety of travel options at the same time and there were too many different options pending at any one time for either of us to keep things straight. Since we were considering going to Lake Tahoe that same week, we tried to put together a three-leg trip, which is far too complex for any of the travel planning sites we were using. It looks like we'll have to forego our planned trip to Lake Tahoe altogether in order to go to the wedding. Eventually, we agreed for the sake of marital harmony to hire a travel agent tomorrow rather than try and plan things ourselves. The good news is that it looks like we'll be able to fly directly out of Palmdale rather than going to Burbank or Los Angeles.

But, it's now nearly 1:30 and I think maybe my best course of conduct is to just resign myself to today not being a particularly good one and look forward to a better tomorrow.

Do These Dogs Look Tired?

They should. They were on the loose for nearly three hours today. See, I got home before The Wife, so I let them out of their kennels, fed them, and let them out into the back yard to relieve themselves. Then I went upstairs, fed the cats, changed into shorts and a T-shirt to go take them for a walk, and came downstairs to get the dogs.

That's when I noticed that the lawn had been mowed. Fearing the worst, I checked the side yard. Sure enough, the gardeners hired by the landlord had left the gate wide open. I'd been up in the bedroom for at least ten minutes, maybe more. So I went out looking for them. First, I shouted their names up and down the street. Nothing.

Then I got in the car and started driving around for the dogs. Nowhere. I drove up and down every street in the neighborhood, shouting their names until my throat hurt. Nothing. I expanded my search, and checked the them. They'd been gone for half an hour. I wanted to call The Wife, but I noticed my phone was missing. After a check back at the house -- I don't know why, the dogs have no idea where they live -- I decided to make another circuit of the neighborhood, checking the construction sites nearby.

Half an hour of driving around later, I still hadn't found the dogs, and The Wife still hadn't come home, and I still didn't have my cell phone. Apparently I'd left it at the office. If someone had found the dogs, hopefully they would call the number on the collars, which was my phone. So I had to get it.

On the way out to the office, I saw The Wife driving in to the Mansion. So I turned around and got her, and we looked for the dogs together. We searched in pretty much the same places I had looked on my own, and asked people out walking their obedient, well-behaved, leashed dogs.

I felt terrible. It was my mistake that let the dogs loose. People drive so fast, and the dogs are so dumb. It was easy to imagine the dogs getting hit, splitting up for some reason, getting taken by someone with less-than-kind motives, wandering out into the desert and getting lost, and us never getting to see them again. And it would all be my fault.

The Wife was much more calm about the whole situation than me. She made us get food, which did help. She reminded me that the dogs would get picked up by the pound and while we might have to pay a fine, we'd get them back. It made me feel a little bit better. She had her theories about where the dogs might have gone. One idea was they might have been attracted to the house that burned out down the street and now, four weeks later, is still sitting unrepaired.

Well, they weren't there, but the Rottweiler and German Shepherd across the street were barking like they always do when we walk the dogs past them. So I looked up the street, and sure enough, there were our naughty little doggies, wandering in and out of someone's garage like they owned the place.

It was all I could do to keep a friendly, attracting voice and call them into the car -- I was mad and relieved at the same time. But I got them in the car and got them home. Safe at last, I felt redeemed at finding the missing critters. They must have drunk a quart of water between them, and they were panting like I'd never seen them pant before.

Now, I have to make a sign for the back gate that says, "¡Para el amor del dios cerciórese de por favor que la puerta sea cerrada cuando usted se va!" And worry about whatever it was the dogs ate while they had their big adventure. Hopefully nothing makes them sick. But at least they're home where they belong.

The Times They Are A-Changing

Today is the first day of the new daylight savings time. This is supposed to happen at the start of spring and a lot of people feel inconvenienced because it is coming earlier than usual (and earlier than expected, which will make a lot of computer consultants well-paid but irritated tomorrow). But here in the desert, the timing is just about perfect.

Today the weather is mild and pleasant, with a light breeze. Shorts weather, very comfortable. I've turned off the climate control and opened up every window in the house. In a house this size, that's a project in itself.

The cats love it. They get access to windowsills they don't ordinarily get, and they can sniff the fresh air outside all day. Both of them are pacing from window to window trying to figure out which one is best. They all are, kitties. They all are.

It's loud, because we're right up on a major street and living across the street from a white-trashy neighborhood where people seem to enjoy revving automobile and motorcycle engines and leaning on car horns; I can hear people shouting at each other from time to time. Mostly, though, that's not really much of a factor. Aside from the noise, it's really very pleasant to have the windows open. If I turned on some music it would pretty much take care of that.

The grass is coming back alive and the flowers that the dogs haven't dug up yet are also starting to bloom. I'll go outside in a few minutes on poop patrol to pick up after the dogs, wearing sandals and shorts. It's nice to have winter gone and summer not yet here; while poop patrol is never pleasant, it's at least nicer when the weather is good and there's a breeze.

Speaking of the dogs, yesterday, The Wife and I took the doggies for a walk along the aqueduct. They loved it. There are ducks and loons that like to hang out on the water. The Wife thinks that the desert is beautiful. I do too, this time of year. From the nearest access point to the aqueduct, we can walk by old cherry orchards (mostly dead now, unfortunately) and see the almond and cherry trees in bloom, and the intense green of the spikes of recently-watered Joshua trees in bloom. The juniper bushes have berries and the sagebrush is not yet dessicated and there are even still patches of green grass out.

A mile up the aqueduct and then back to the car was much more tiring than I would have thought. Walking two miles does not seem like it would be very challenging, particularly along the mostly level path. But by the end of it I was feeling it in my legs, and both The Wife and I slept quite soundly last night. We're hoping for similar results again today after repeating the walk, this time going a different direction along the path.

We finally used a gift card we got for the holidays last night, getting a new digital camera (the old one finally stopped working about a month ago) and a scanner for The Wife's computer. Today while we're out on the aqueduct, we'll take some pictures and I'll post them for the Loyal Readers to view and see what the desert looks like when it's springtime here. By the time The Wife gets back from her girly event (a stamping party) the gentle breeze may be more of a steady wind, so we'll need to go quickly before it kicks up into the semi-nightly windstorm we expect to see most days here in the desert. But for now, I'm going to enjoy things just the way they are.

House Hunting (Again)

Like another couple pictured to the right, The Wife and I are house hunting. Our budget is somewhat more modest than Dave and Vicky, but we're hopeful we can find what we're looking for anyway.

So, this weekend's primary activity was house hunting with The Wife. She found a floor plan online that she fell in love with. To me, falling in love with a floor plan seen on the internet is not comprehensible, but that's what happened. So we drove around to the address where the developments were going to see the floor plan in real life. The developer indicated that the floor plan would be available in three locations.

At the first location, there was a retaining wall surrounding a dirt field. Not even a sales office.

The next location was twenty-one miles away. We drove there and found nothing but older developments. We tried looking for the marginally-employed people holding signs to guide home buyers to the developments, but there were none to be found.

The third location was an alfalfa field north of the aircraft assembly plant, inhabited by sagebrush and Joshua trees.

So we found another tract being built by the same developer, and went into a sales office there. It was a madhouse. There were people waiting in line to buy houses. We were collared by a real estate agent before we even walked in the door. After some difficulty, we got directions to the site where a model of the house could be found -- about a mile from where we had been earlier that day.

But we didn't just tour that house. Oh, no. That house was nice but we had to see the other five models also. I got a kick out of the one with the foyer with a mosaic floor in the turret, with a big heavy oak door facing the entryway. (Someone knocking on the door could say, "Open in the name of the King!")

Virtually all of the houses were way too big for The Wife and I. It's just us and our critters, and we're not real big on the whole formal room thing anyway -- we rarely use our formal dining room now and never use the formal living room. Both of these are dens for the animals, who could care less about the extra space. We also don't need four bedrooms -- ideally, we'd have two but will probably have to put up with three.

We looked again today, at two open houses and one built by a developer that hasn't been sold yet. Two houses that we saw were suitable for us. Both had the "great room" design, rather than having divided spaces. I favor this idea because the fact of the matter is that most of the time people are in the casual rooms or the kitchen anyway, even when you have guests over. Formal dinners and cocktail parties are not really part of our lives, so we'd rather have a house set up for relaxed everyday life and causal entertainment.

The good news is that, by California standards, these kinds of houses -- 3+2 with great room and adjoining kitchen -- are on the "affordable" end of the spectrum. The bad news is that there just aren't very many of them out there. Developers seem to think that people want to buy the biggest houses they can, with the greatest number of rooms possible. Formal dining rooms, eat-in kitchens, formal living rooms, parlors, libraries, offices, and even conservatories in which Colonel Mustard might use the revolver.

Master bedrooms have grown to "master suites" in a lot of these houses. Instead of a larger room with an adjoining bathroom, now there are cavernous complexes of rooms, with arched entryways to dual walk-in cabinets. This is just the master suite, remember. Several of the houses we saw (for me, they all start to blend in together after I've seen three models) had separate seating areas within the master suites.

No, not for us. Less is more. Great rooms are great. We don't need, or want, master suites with separate seating areas long enough to install bowling lanes. This isn't a room at the Plaza, it's where we intend to live every day. And we don't spend a whole lot of time (awake) in the master bedroom anyway. Back when we lived in the Estate at Louisville, we made a point of using the smallest available bedroom for our sleeping purposes.

So it's proving to be something of a challenge to find the right house. The one model The Wife found was, indeed, very much what we're both looking for. We intend to buy the house and stay put for some time, so it pays to look around and take our time. It also pays to think about the neighborhood the house is in -- to me, that is probably more important than the house having the perfect layout. Methinks The Wife's priorities are a bit different, but that's what all the shopping about, so that we can both get what we're looking for. There's no reason we shouldn't have both.

Fun Day

Today, The Wife and I got a lot of activity in. We did a little bit of sightseeing, driving up Elizabeth Lake Road out to Three points, and then back for some lunch. Most of our shopping options were curtailed because of the holiday, but we did make it to the gym. We also put up some coat hooks around the house; just a small home improvement project we've been meaning to do. The Wife wanted to go to an antique shop she had seen before way out in the desert, where she got a copper teakettle and a basket. And we had a very good work out at the gym, too; one I hope that we repeat in the future. A sensible dinner and some relaxation later, and it's been a fun, full day. A good start to the new year.

Ending The Year With A Shopping Spree

The Wife and I used some of our day to go get some things to improve our quality of life. We got some coat hooks to hand up near our doors and to replace the fallen towel hook in the bathroom. And we bought some books. I got a history of India, a subject about which I know nothing, after being inspired by some nice Indian food for lunch. I also got a textbook of Italian verbs, to work on the part of my Italian that is somewhat weak, looking forward to our next trip to il pais vecchio at an as-yet-undetermined time in the future.

I'm resolved to make good on my promise to take The Wife to San Francisco next year. We're also looking forward to spending some more time in the gym, and more time smooching and less time arguing about keeping the kitchen clean. That last one will be a challenge as I would like to cook more than I have been cooking recently. New Years' resolutions? Not really, just a desire to do better in the future. The new year also promises to bring lots of new teaching gigs for me and hopefully a trial or two. It looks like there will be a new quarterback in Green Bay as Brett Favre looks appears to move to retire, a new set of political activity as the government returns to divided status, and so there will be a whole host of new things to write about.

Oh, and The Wife and I want to buy a house. I guess that's kind of a big agenda item.

So maybe a shopping spree at Barnes & Noble wasn't the best thing to do, but hey, you've gotta have some fun, too. Nothing wrong with getting a few books, maybe having a cafe latte, and maybe even picking up a new CD, every once in a while.

Wind Advisory

It gets windy in the desert, and tonight it's especially so. The National Weather Service issued a strong wind advisory for the Antelope Valley tonight. In the western portions of our little triangular slice of desert, places like Antelope Acres, gusts of up to 75 miles an hour are predicted. 75 miles an hour, by the way, is what meterologists call "hurricane-force" winds.

Out here near the Rented Mansion In The Desert, the winds are steady at about 20, with gusts of up to 34 miles an hour so far tonight, although it appears that the winds will peak in about three hours or so. I've moved the barbeque and the greenwaste bin to areas where they won't be blown over, but aside from that, there isn't much we can do about it but keep all the windows shut. The dogs sure don't want to be outside and I don't blame them.

The wind farm in Mojave is probably shut down -- if the turbines run too hard, that burns out the generators. That's kind of ironic, if you ask me. More wind should mean more electricity, but I guess there's a point that the mechanical parts just can't handle the stress anymore.

Bitter Snow In The Desert

It snowed Friday night in the hills. In our neck of the woods, the snow came down to about 100 feet above us, and continues to linger even now, three days later, and will almost certainly still be there tomorrow. At these altitudes, it was just a dusting, so it's not like anything catastrophic. It's kind of pretty, at least a nice change from the usual dull brown. The Tehachipis and the San Gabriels, somewhat farther away, have got a more heavy, proper coat of snow as one would expect in the wintertime.

Cold weather, however, is no fun. I would rather it was cold and dry than cold and snowy, to be sure. Still, it's always seemed odd to me to have to keep winter clothing in Southern California, and particularly in the desert where it is so often uncomfortably hot. The wind, particularly, is biting and not fun at all in the desert during the winter, and out in the flats where the courthouse is, it gets up to about twenty-five miles an hour, really pushing things around. When I leave for work in the morning, there is frost and ice all over the lawn.

So that's winter in the desert for you. Snow, not quite at the level of human habitation, and really cold wind. Unpleasant, not unbearably so. I remember the winters we spent in Tennessee and they were miserable. I was reminded of that today, seeing so much ice and frost built up on the windshields of cars that had been left out overnight.

(Spring will be nice. For about a week, after the February rains, the desert will bloom in purple and orange with the clover and poppies in abundance; the cacti will bloom and sprout prickly pears; and the grass itself will be green. After a rain, even the Joshua trees look clean and vibrant. I'm looking forward to spring -- best two weeks all year in the desert.)

So maybe I'm in a sour mood after a ninety-minute long bad customer service experience with the cellular phone company. Maybe I'm in a sour mood because my old insurance company in Tennessee still just doesn't get it -- we sold our house and moved half a year ago. Maybe I'm in a sour mood because our bank won't let us buy the television set we wanted to buy for ourselves. Maybe it's because I just don't buy in to the Christmas thing anyway. But for whatever reason, the holiday season just isn't penetrating into my consciousness. Images of winter beauty seem like so much cold, white, bleak, barrenness and I just want them to go away. And maybe I'm bitter because my fantasy football team's once-commanding hold on second place (like all fantasy teams not presently in the lead, we lack LaDanian Tomlinson) has evaporated to merely six points. This week only one of our position players scored any points at all.

And people start being silly with their holiday decorations around this time of year. Strike that -- Christmas decorations. Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, secular humanists, and Wiccans don't seem to do a lot of decorating their houses with ostentatious displays of lights and lawn sculpture. It's the Christians who celebrate the birth of their Messiah with images of Santa Claus, reindeer, angels, and a variety of generically-nice messages like "Noel" and "Peace on Earth." (Talk about taking a controversial stand!)

But my favorite Christmas decoration so far has to be near the intersection of 30th Street West and Avenue L. There, the property owner has ringed white lights around twenty-foot high plywood picture of Mr. Hanky, the beloved Christmas character from South Park. This is a heavily-travelled street, and located just two blocks away from a Christian elementary school. Subversive, yes; socially appropriate, no. Whether anyone has complained about this or not is a good question, one which I intend to ask the editor of the newspaper when I have dinner with him Wednesday night.

Critter Concerns

Friday and Saturday we had ants in the kitchen. And no, Spungen, they were not odiferous, at least not to me -- but then again my sinuses have been causing me so much trouble for the past two weeks it's possible they stank to high heaven and I never noticed. But more about that another day. I heard all kinds of theories -- they're looking for food; some settlement from the house dislodged their nest; it's cold outside so they're trying to stay warm; they need a source of water; they're being driven into the house by other creatures. I've no way of knowing which are good theories and which are pure speculation.

After a second bad morning in a row cleaning them up, I didn't care. The Wife and I decided to not take any chances on any of these theories and take more direct action. We bought ant motels and Spectracide and used them liberally everywhere near where the ants had been sighted. The cats didn't understand why we confined them for so long in the spare bedroom, and the dogs really wanted in from the back yard, but we waited until the insecticide dried completely so the critters would be in no danger.

Since then, I haven't seen any ants. The Wife says she saw some in the trash cabinet tonight but that she poisoned them. Ah, chemical warfare -- bad for people, to be sure, but somehow morally acceptable when used on insects.

More on the critters -- the big dog, Sassy, has been scratching her ear a lot recently, so The Wife took her to the vet. The vet discovered a fungal infection in her ear and we've had to clean it out often since then. She does not like that one bit; at least she's stopped whining because she knows that after she makes it through the rinse and cleaning, there's a dog cookie in it for her. It's really gross cleaning out the dog's ear, but that's part of the job of having critters.

So is worrying about things like the Parvovirus outbreak in the area. Sassy just had her shots updated but I'm not so sure about Karma. So we'll have to take her in soon, too. And the vet advises that she's seen an increase in flea activity -- which is really bad news, because Frontline is expensive and none of the critters like it, especially the primadonna grossa of all cats everywhere, our very own Ginger.

That, and we really ought to register the critters, too. I've sort of been thinking about putting that off until we move into a permanent house of our own. We're likely going to do what we can to buy a place when our lease is up in June; it makes sense to register the pets at their permanent home rather than here, but of course we really ought to register them anyway in case they get loose somehow. The Wife has been window-shopping quite a bit already and we've toured a number of houses to see what we like. Right now it feels as though we can save enough money to get into the world where we can at least pay our closing costs.

Invasion!

I go downstairs to the kitchen this morning to let the dogs in and get some breakfast. To my great displeasure, I see a line of small black ants walking across a kitchen counter. Before killing them all and wiping them away, I traced them back to their source and tried to figure out what they were after.

As best I could figure, they were feeding off of two half-popped kernels of popcorn in the sink, and they were coming out of an electrical outlet on a nearby wall. But there were exploratory committees looking elsewhere for supplements to the popcorn.

The animals, needless to say, were useless to help with the ants.

I wiped down the counters and got rid of all the ants I could, and covered the edges of the outlet with dish soap. This should last several hours until the ant pheromones fade away and I can remove the cover plate on the outlet without unleashing a horde of the evil little beasties into my kitchen.

The good news -- the liquid dish soap thing really works. It will stop an ant dead in its tracks and turn it around. I've prevented further ant entry into the kitchen for the time being. More good news -- these ants hadn't found something they really, really liked, meaning they hadn't got into the flour or the sugar. The bad news -- if they were coming from an interior wall outlet, it means their nest is probably under the house where I can't get at it with poison, so that means they'll be back.

I've Got Rude

So I'm sitting on the couch, talking with my father on the phone. The doorbell rings and The Wife gets up to answer it. We're not expecting anyone so I figure it's a solicitor of some kind; The Wife will say "no," and that will be that. But she doesn't come back for a while.

So I get up and sure enough, The Wife is standing there in the doorway and there's some kid with acne and looking all of seventeen years old. The Wife is holding this folded-up piece of paper with a bunch of photographs of magazine covers with prices listed on them. I say to my father, "Here, you can ask The Wife that," and hand the phone to her. The kid selling magazines hasn't come up for air the entire time, he's so busy spouting out his patter.

"Thanks, have a nice night," I say, closing the door.

"Well, you don't have to be rude about it!" he replies.

I finish closing the door and that ends the encounter. But I'm thinking to myself, "Dude, that wasn't even rude. It was firm. If you want rude, I've got lots of rude for you."

What's the difference between my "firm" and what I'm calling "rude?" The story goes, one of our friends, six months pregnant at the time, confronted a trespasser in her back yard with the phrase "You! Get the f--- out of my yard right now or I wil f---ing kill you!"

So it's probably just as well that this guy didn't get a taste of what real rude sounds like.

Halloween

No trick-or-treaters came by the house tonight. The Wife and I did step out for about forty-five minutes to get some milk and bread at the grocery store (and almost got killed by a really foolish teenage driver, but that's a different story). So it's possible that we just missed them all. But I doubt it, even though there are a lot of houses with kids in them up and down the street.

I guess the neighborhood that our house is in is too new and there just aren't enough people living here yet to make it worth the while of costumed moppets to beg for candy here. We don't plan on being here next year so we'll probably never know if this turns in to a trick-or-treating neighborhood. I'd heard that kids from bad neighborhoods in the area have been bussed to better neighborhoods to go out tonight because there are some areas that are just not safe at night.

It's kind of disappointing, actually. Do kids even do this any more? Or have all the stories about creeps putting poison, razor blades, and drugs in candy, as well as somewhat more-justified concerns about generalized crime and violence, killed this charming custom that I enjoyed so much as a child?

Wanderlust

I've been thinking a little bit about travel and getaways. We've got a friend who would likely watch our dogs for us over the weekend if The Wife and I wanted to get away again, so that's handy. I've been thinking a lot about seeing the Sierras, where I've not been for several years, but that's not a very Wife-friendly sort of trip. So instead I've been wondering about how I could make good on my promise to take The Wife up to San Francisco. She's never been and I've always told her I'd take her.

I'm not actually a huge fan of San Francisco but it is certainly has some good points from a tourism perspective. It's as picturesque a city as you could ask for. It has some fantastic restaurants and good shopping. I'd rather go a few hours north and enjoy the wines in Sonoma and Napa, but there's no reason we couldn't do both the city and the wines if we had a few days up there.

Mainly what I want is a few days away from the Antelope Valley. Aside from three nights in Wisconsin, I've slept every night here in the Rented Mansion In The Desert -- a very nice, big, and empty house on the far west side of Palmdale that has a view of the Tehachipi and San Gabriel Mountains, with a vast expanse of a well-developed desert plain in between that lately has begun to seem more than a little bit dreary. The same landscape I remember as a teenager. It's making me a little stir crazy -- my world seems so small all of a sudden!

But, sensibly, I don't think it's going to happen any time soon. We've the holidays coming up soon and gifts to buy for then; after that we need to save up our money to buy a house when the lease on this gigantic, empty house expires in June. Spending several hundred dollars on gas, lodging, and food for a trip to San Francisco, while pleasant-sounding, is not the best use of our money.

No Hay Agua

Once again, plumbing problems confound the Rented Mansion In The Desert. This time, the rear yard's sprinklers had a PVC coupling bust in half. Water has shot out uncontrollably for several days. The landlord has not fixed the problem -- admittedly, information about the problem has been slow getting to him -- and now one of our meddling neighbors took it upon himself to turn off our water main so once again, we live in a house, in the desert, with no water at all. That this situation infuriates me should not be a significant surprise to anyone. So I'm going to Wal-Mart to find a cap and some super-glue and I'm going to cap off the pipe so we can have water again. I am sick and f****ng tired of the water not working around here.

Dogs and Tables

Our table is done. It didn't turn out quite like we planned; the map cinched up during the last phases and we had to trim it a bit. We will need to get some glass cut for the top, but we'd planned on that all along. It still looks like we planned and we're very pleased and proud. Pictures to follow.

Of less pleasure and satisfaction has been finding not one, not two, but three "accidents" in the house. I don't know if it's the results of Karma's Big Adventure yesterday; surely she ate a lot of people food. Hopefully this trend comes to an end soon.