Month: December 2018

Cascading Home Improvements

I can tell the economy is better because the house across the street from me started a renovation trend that has rolled down the street to four houses. Let’s take a tour.

The beginner of the trend is this house. It’s been sold maybe twice in the 11 years we’ve lived here. It started as a classic house which hadn’t been updated much. There was a weird diagonal path surrounded by hedges from the front porch to the corner of the lot. The new owner has been a busy bee, removing the hedges, sledgehammering out the path and putting in a straight one. There’s a new fence and lots of boxes to grow things, plus things being grown in the boxes. (The two don’t always go hand in hand.) That bay window on the front porch is new and I think the front porch has been enclosed. Plus it’s been painted. It used to be a salmon color that wasn’t the greatest.

Next door, this house, which has also been sold in the past five years, has a big new front porch and the house has been painted. It used to be a cream color. Clearly the trend is toward darker colors.

Next door is this house which got a new retaining wall (mostly hidden by the blue car.) I think also it got a new porch, and they are building a big garage where their either wasn’t one or where there was a small one. It looks to be a garage with living space. I wonder if it will be rented out.

And the fourth house on the street is getting new siding, after getting its own very formidable retaining wall. The house next door to that is new construction so there is where our rolling improvements end.

But! Across the street from those four houses, this oddly shaped house has added an oddly shaped tall extension onto it. I hope it flows better indoors than it looks from outside.

3SMReviews: First Man

3SMReviews: First Man

Damien Chazelle teams up with Ryan Gosling in First Man, a very feelings-based telling of Neil Armstrong’s story. Both Gosling and Claire Foy (as Janet Armstrong) are very good as the stoic couple who never thought they would be public figures. This movie has the White Guys in Suits* problem, and I would have rather watched it with subtitles as the dialogue gets lost in places amid the very industrial sound design, but I loved this movie’s focus on a man with a lot of feelings who never lets any of them out.

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: $4.00
Where watched: at the Academy Theater with S. North and an audience that wandered in and out of the theater during the movie, plus a guy behind us who commented loudly and often.**

*It was very hard to get names of the supporting cast and match them with faces. Being the 60’s, there were a lot of similar looking men in shirtsleeves with ties. This movie also had the same problem as in Lincoln: there were so many “Who is that guy?” moments.  Patrick Fugit I recognized from the get-go, but there was also the guy from Girls, the guy from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the guy from Mudbound, the guy from Inception, the guy from the first Ant-Man movie, etc. etc. etc.
** “Space junk!” was perhaps my favorite of his eruptions.***
***He didn’t bug me tremendously, as it reminded me of when S. North and I saw the preview for this film and it so annoyed an audience member he loudly proclaimed, “WHY ARE THEY TRYING TO MAKE IT TENSE? We already KNOW what happens!” Both of us laughed.

3SMReviews: Roma

3SMReviews: Roma

Alfonso Cuarón lets his camera linger in Roma, which is nice because then we can draw our own conclusions. In this black and white film, we experience Cleo’s life as a servant in an upper-class house in Mexico City. Much like Y Tu Mamá También, I loved watching the relationships develop and change, plus there are some pretty intense scenes.*

*One extended male full frontal scene was intense and funny. Some other scenes were intense and heartbreaking.

Verdict: Recommended

Where watched: at home
Cost: Netflix monthly subscription ($7.99)

3SMReviews: Dumplin’

3SMReviews: Dumplin'

Anne Fletcher’s does a great service in her movie Dumplin‘; she populates it with actors of all sizes.* But aside from that, she weaves a good story with enjoyable performances by Danielle MacDonald and the other friends of Willowdean.** While this movie is probably not one for the ages, it is the best at what it’s trying to do, which made for a delightful experience right now.

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: Netflix monthly subscription ($7.99)
Where watched: at home

*Have you been to the mall lately? Or any gathering of normal people? We don’t look like any gathering of people in movies. I’d love to see the movie world look more like the real world.
**I was happy to see Odeya Rush, so very good in Lady Bird as the mostly vapid pretty rich girl. Harold Perrineau was also very good as Willowdean’s friend Lee. (And IMDB reminds me that he was a very good Mercutio 22 years ago in Romeo + Juliet!)

Three houses on one skinny lot

This is a lot I’ve been watching since 2015. I used to ride by it regularly as I bicycled to work. The lot was sectioned off from the house next door and sold during that time. Not much has happened since then, though that fence is new.

Today I was interested to notice this for sale sign which not only advertises the price of the lot as just south of $300k, but also has already drawn plans for a three-unit modern condo development. My mind boggled a bit trying to mentally fit three houses in here so I spent some time studying the renderings.

This seems to be an example of vertical living. On the main floor is the kitchen/dining area, followed by the living room/office on the second floor. Then you climb to the third floor to get to the first set of bedrooms and then to the fourth floor to get to the master bedroom.

I did the math and the square footage works out to 376–441 square feet per floor. That’s a little bit bigger than the footprint of my studio apartment.

This is an interesting development in infill housing. It doesn’t provide parking, which I still feel should be at least a small priority for each lot. I do rather like the idea of three normal-sized houses on one lot, rather than one big one.

I’ll keep my eye on this property and see what appears.

Christmas Eve Eve 2018

The MAunts and Matt’s mom Linda gathered to celebrate Christmas Eve Eve. (We celebrate Christmas Eve Eve not on 12/23, but on a random day in early December to kick off the holiday season.)

We ate the traditional Christmas Eve Eve meal of soup and bread and then we played a round of Uno. Aunt Pat won, with Matt being the first person to crest over 350 points.

We were playing Uno to kill time because the Miracle of a Million Lights didn’t open until 6 p.m. This Christmas lights display is just down the street from our house at an event rental space with a big old house. I’ve seen it for years, but this was the first year they put up a sign of what it was called. I could then Google it and find out information.

It was pouring. Though we were properly outfitted with umbrellas, I forgot my camera and didn’t bring my phone, so we have only these photos Matt took on his phone.

Here is everyone (Aunt Carol unfortunately in shadow on the right) amid the million lights.

We also got to tour the historical house. On the top floor were cutouts of many superhero cutouts including actual people portraying Shuri and Black Panther. Matt was very excited to get his picture taken with them.

We returned to the house to have gingerbread brownies and ice cream for dessert.

10 Years of Sentinel Damascus Collins

Sentinel joined our household in December of 2008. I adopted him on December 7, a date I remember because it also happens to be Pearl Harbor Day.* If you want to read his introduction post, it’s here.

Reading that first description, I can report that Sentinel still follows me around all the time. I’ve often thought about how accurate the original description of him at the Humane Society was. It said something like, “he’s more like a small dog than a cat.” He’s very much a companion animal.

He’s not a fan of posing for photos, as evidenced by his ears in this picture.

Sentinel is 14 now, and this is the first year he seems like an old cat. This year he had to have a bunch of teeth pulled. He’s now missing upper incisors on both sides, not just his right side. And he now takes a half tablet every other day that keeps him from throwing up regularly. His fur isn’t as thick as it was, but other than that, he’s the same cat as ever.

Sentinel is a marvelous cat, the kind of cat that friends look forward to visiting with, and that I’m sure I will think fondly of for years after he is gone. We’ve been lucky to have 10 years with him and here’s to another good length of time and a happy rest of his life.

*Antares was adopted on a random January day in 2010, and thus we never celebrate him properly. I’ll probably commemorate the occasion next Pearl Harbor Day, as it looks like we brought him home in mid-December 2009. Here’s the first siting of him on the blog.