We Did It

Teri and I bought a 700 square foot condominium, and last night I ripped up the carpet in our work room. Ugly parquet with paint spray. Maybe we will sand it, maybe we'll do sheet flooring. It's 9x9.

After 20 years in public housing, I now own a piece of, well, history.

I tolerance everything and tolerate everyone. I love: Dona, Jeff, Kim, Kimmie, Mom, Neelix, Tasha, and Teri, alphabetically. I drive: A double-step Thunderbolt with 657% range. I fight terrorism by: Using less gasoline.

Reply to
Doug Goncz
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Welcome to the horrors of homeownership. After a while, it won't seem so bad.

When you rent and something breaks, you fix it and feel good. When you own and you fix something busted, you think: "now what's gonna break next?"

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

jim rozen wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@drn.newsguy.com:

Yeah, but when you own, you can put the beer bottle opener Right Here, Dammit! And no landlord's gonna tell me to take it off!

Reply to
Hitch

The first night in my own house felt very strange, almost as if I didn't belong there. The next day I discovered a leaking faucet that couldn't be repaired, so I had to quickly learn how to solder copper water pipe. That night it felt more like "my" house. :-)

Alan

Reply to
Alan

Took me a long time ... Fell into it cause certain people weren't welcome and it sat for a long time before I jumped on it. It *really* sucks about time when someone changes your plans. Plus , this use to be a black neighborhood and now it's Mexican. They wouldn't like me in the other suburbs. Like not being able to park on that side of the street.

Was 20 yrs. a ahhh , been to a couple, a joke? I thought they made them rotate... At times I thought that parking my car in the safest place was a good idea to stay out of trouble. Safe haven is hard to find. Even when you have a house and 4 cars in the drive way.

Personally I'd love to live in the middle of nowhere with an airstrip. The problems are a given.

Like the song on now, Welcome to the Jungle. The indians just couldn't understand that the world is running out of space. First time I saw the 5th Element I was like SEE !

Reply to
Sunworshipper

Hey Doug,

Congratulations to you and Teri. (Who is Teri, by the way?)

Welcome to the world of annual near double-digit percentage increases of Property Taxes, roofing disasters, replacement water heaters every

10 years and environment systems every 15, and new sod every five summers. Sand the parquet, if it's real. You'll love it.

Take care.

Brian Laws>Teri and I bought a 700 square foot condominium, and last night I ripped up the

Reply to
Brian Lawson

Yep, my property taxes went up a bit last year, because the value of my home increased some 20+%. Ownership can be great!

Welcome to the world of the peasant-proprietor Doug, it is a neat world where the government entices you to take roots and maintain something by simply making you believe you own it.

Vaughn

Reply to
Vaughn

Twenty years ago, we moved in here (second owned house) I knew we were due for a roof when we bought, got up the first morning to find out how soon. another new roof a year ago, before it started to leak. I am still eliminating all sign that the vendor ever walked down the street. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Reply to
Gerald Miller

Why do I have to pay shcool tax when my son goes to private school? Explain that to me. And my furance is going up, sure wish I had a landlord to fix it. Lets hope it lasts another winter, Probably won't and will kick on the coldest day of the year that is also a holiday and I am charged three times to going rate!!!! Welcome to the pitfalls of homeownership, you'll enjoy everything that breaks and when you fix it you'll be beaming with pride!! Cause it's all yours! Soon you'll find yourself staring at the electric meter yelling turn something off!

Searcher 1

Reply to
Searcher

Brian asked, by the way who is Teri? I can't quote him because my AOL newsreader isn't seeing my own posts today.

Teri and I met at graduation at the community college 1986-06-13. She's my first lover, Linda's, sister. I'd just finished the best job I ever had, working at Aerophysics with Jan Bochenek and Bill Jackson as an experimental machinist, the last six months on co-op with the CoCo for credit. So I got my one year certificate in machine tool operation and Teri got her two year degree in Data Processing, and she asked me if I had somewhere to put her cigarettes, as she had no pockets under her graduation gown.

I pocketed her cigarettes, lighter, and license. We smoked and talked about Germany where Linda and I were a couple and Teri and I had met briefly. The good old days. I walked her to her car, gave her her cigarettes, but not her license, for some reason, and off she went.

I found the license later and looked on the back. I went 'round to the address but she didn't live there any more! So I looked up her last name and called what turned out to be the family home. I asked for Teri and said it was Doug. Someone asked which Doug. One of her four sisters. I said Doug Goncz. A voice in the background said "Oh! *That* Doug!".

I returned the license. We got to talking. She had a PC. 256 *K* of RAM! It would run 1-2-3. We spreadsheeted the location of local libraries and sorted by distance from my apartment. What fun. As it turned out Teri was paying off a large credit bill, living at home.

It was a little awkward having a "history" with Linda, but there weren't that many family events. Linda's husband, Angel, was muy macho, though, and at one point swore he'd break my legs if I touched his wife. Silly man didn't realize Linda and I had agreed that would not happen the day she married him.

Teri and I have been through a lot together. 18 years, the deaths of her father, my birth father (who is my "uncle"), her sister, and my father. And thousands of couplings. We're notching the bedpost, so to speak, by marking the closet door in the new place. A fresh start.

After 20 years in public housing, spending first one night of three here at Teri's condo nearby, then two of three, then every night, then using my place mostly as a shop, we are taking the plunge and throwing our fortunes together, and throwing our property together, and throwing a lot of our property out.

We've painted, I've installed some telephone wiring and will soon install a LAN, and I've changed the locks and had cylinders repinned. We're down from five external keys to two, and two internal keys (were these people paranoid?) to none. Now I need to nibble a slot under the add-on dead bolt for a die plate I have that will forge the 1 1/4 cheapie lock hole to 1 1/2 to fit our Schlage cylinder, and we'll be down to just one key, and a mailbox key, and an entry way key. Simpler for everybody.

The work room is 9x9 and has an add-on box beam that does nothing, lowering the ceiling. It will hold my tiny, very high drill press / milling machine work table, the five drawer file cabinet I inherited from my father, the two side units of my desk, stacked, my Hollerith punch card tool cabinet, a metal bookcase for cast iron, and some of Teri's scrapping supplies. It's going to be tight. There's just room to build bookcases in the middle.

Pulling those staples is driving me nuts. Taptaptap, wiggle, lift, repeat. And prying the tack strip. But when sanded, we will see if that parquet is sound. If not, there's always vinyl. If it is OK, then certainly old wood is preferable.

And that's who Teri is. Aren't you glad you asked?

I tolerance everything and tolerate everyone. I love: Dona, Jeff, Kim, Kimmie, Mom, Neelix, Tasha, and Teri, alphabetically. I drive: A double-step Thunderbolt with 657% range. I fight terrorism by: Using less gasoline.

Reply to
Doug Goncz

Why do I have to pay school tax when I don't have any children in school? Why do my parents? Why should I pay SS tax, or medicare, or ...

If only those who had children paid school tax, it would be ETRAVAGENTLY expensive. Probably 5x what it is now. Distribution of burden is the basis for all of our taxation.

It's your choice to send your child to a private school and bypass the service that has been provided for your benefit.

JW

Reply to
Jeridiah

Consider that he could also more to a country where there are no public schools. My point being that even if one sends one's kid to private school, the public school system still benefits the owner by educating all the *other* kids in the area.

Sort of like herd immunity.

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

BIIIIGGG SNIP

Yes, I am. And now we know. I'm happy for you, as I recall the super sad times you were going through a few years back, although I've forgotten the "names" involved. Nice to see things approaching a survivable level for you again, as quite honestly it was seeming a bit scary back then. So, back to the bike building?!?

Take care. Brian Lawson, Bothwell, Ontario.

Reply to
Brian Lawson

Were you charged at the door when you were in school? I wasn't. Now I pay taxes so the kids in today arn't. Kind of like a loan--I was loaned an education, and now I have to repay it to the next generation.

If you went to private school like your kid, think of the tax as an investment in your life and property- public school $8000/year/kid; prison $45000/year/prisoner, and they don't go there until after you get ripped off, killed, or whatever. Also note that the prison population is extremely heavy with people with poor education, and very light in those with (I believe every year past eigth grade reduces chance of being in prison by something like 25%? I can't find the reference right now, but it is substantial drop each year)

Reply to
e

Brian asked if I was building bikes. His post is not on the AOL server yet.

Yes, I am. I don't do much framebuilding but I've got a little brazing project on, so I'll start with that.

I've got two cable ends and have filed and sanded them to match the head tube curvature on my Peugot mountain bike. 1 5/8 inches, 41 mm. Why the head tube?

I'm installing a locking fork to stabilize the child seat. Now, Teri and I are childless and not planning on having any, but when I work on the bike, I don't like having the fork flop around. So with a cable doubler having a metal frame and the usual M6x1 adjusters in three places, two against one, with a bridge in between having set screws to hold cable, each brake cable will be doubled to a single wrap of cable going around the fork column.

The geometry is tricky. To avoid unseating the conical fork headset bearings, which were *never* designed to take a strong radial load, you design the cable penetration points so the cable wraps *tangent* to the inner fork column. So you drill two holes a certain distance apart through the head tube, then braze on the cable ends.

The other project is a 2004 Lightning Cycle Dynamics Thunderbolt recumbent with the world's biggest generator. Two, in fact. An AC motor/generator at the pedals, and a DC motor/generator at the rear wheel. In front, I can drive the transmission for tuneups and soon will have a self-excited induction generator online. In back, the motor drives the drive train in reverse, driving the front generator for tests, and can drive the bike from an ultracapacitor bank that can act as an "electric flywheel". In generator mode, it's more than enough for car headlights on a down hill coast.

The AC motor is rated 110 VAC 1 A, 225 rpm, and the DC motor is rated 30 VDC,

12 A max, 900 rpm. That's 360 watts consumption at stall, about 180 at peak output, mechanical or electrical, roughly speaking.

Olin Drive and Brook Drive form a loop near here with *no stop signs* and all right turns. So when I ride, it's like my own private track. I go up hill and down and exercise really helps with the depression I have experienced since Linda died. Teri was so supportive. One of the things she did was rub my feet. It was just about the only way anybody could reach me, and she was just about the only one who would do it.

Now I am taking whalloping loads of an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer, and an antidepressant, and they help, but I really have to push to function. More than anyone can know, actually.

Yesterday I tore out that parquet leaving mastic on concrete. What a mess. I have to scrape, patch, and level now, something I have never done.

I must have sucked half the foundation out from under the baseboard with the vacuum cleaner hose after digging out the loose parquet on the edges. Playing cards, barrettes, bobby pins, broken shards of porcelain commodes, no drug needles, concrete powder and chunks, mortar, a rusty 3/4 pipe cap, indicative of a moisture problem, which probably caused the parquet to let go, carpet lint, no bugs, and *more*... :)

I've got a double brush floor polisher with sisal bristles that will knock down the loose mastic, but this floor really needs *wire* bristles, and I don't think I can get a set, this polisher is so old. So we will see what comes up after I try that.

I tolerance everything and tolerate everyone. I love: Dona, Jeff, Kim, Kimmie, Mom, Neelix, Tasha, and Teri, alphabetically. I drive: A double-step Thunderbolt with 657% range. I fight terrorism by: Using less gasoline.

Reply to
Doug Goncz

Simple; the govt has guns and is willing to shoot you to get the money and you are not willing to shoot them to keep your money.

Taxes go up until the next revolution.

Reply to
Nick Hull

So why does the US have the highest % of prisoners if we have more public education than the poorer countries with lower % of prison population?

Reply to
Nick Hull

On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 08:16:02 -0500, Nick Hull spake the words:

So, unlike his father, he can learn how to spell "school"?

If the Shrub tries to install that federal sales tax, the next revolution might happen real quicklike.

------------------------------------------------------------- give me The Luxuries Of Life *

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Reply to
Larry Jaques

Oh oh...Nick..you know you are not supposed to ask those sort of questions of people of the Liberal persuasion. It brings up all manner of sub questions about Liberal control of the educational system, poor test scores, minority entitlements, and so forth, that they really would rather you didnt ask about.....

Gunner

"I mean, when's the last time you heard of a college where the Young Republicans staged a "Sit In" to close down the Humanities building? On the flip side, how many sit in's were staged to close the ROTC building back in the '60's? Liberals stage protests, do civil disobedience, etc. Conservatives talk politely and try to work out a solution to problems through discourse until they believe that talking won't work... they they go home and open the gun cabinets. Pray things never get to the point where the conservatives decide that "civil disobedience" is the next step, because that's a very short route to "voting from the rooftops" Jeffrey Swartz, Misc.Survivalism

Reply to
Gunner

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