Garage Sales

We have a garage sale tomorrow to clear out some stuff that we can’t take back to the UK. For shoppers I guess this is good news, as we’re not really selling much junk (we’ve only been here for 7 years, so if some stuff is junk at least it’s relatively new junk).

For me, however, it’s bad news. One of my least favourite* things to do that doesn’t involve electrodes is packing for a move. Clearly, therefore, moving to the UK is a short-term negative for me. But take the worst part of moving (sorting stuff out), and then add in random interaction with strangers, and you get garage sales. Now I’d rather interact randomly with strangers than pack, but it’s a close-run thing, so you can understand why I’d rather spend the morning jabbing myself with a fork.

And we shouldn’t forget that I’m English, so presuming that someone will want your cast-offs is rather like exposing yourself in public. Did I say it’s rather like? Well that’s wrong; it’s actually exactly the same thing.

On the upside the alternative is to pay someone to take the junk away, so I guess I’ll just have to suck it up. But that’s not going to stop me whining about it.

*Trying to get back into proper spelling

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More Logic

Yesterday I commented on the bizarre logic of the recent bid we got on our house. As an outlet for my irritation, I thought I’d mentioned a few of the other things that were mentioned:

*Kitchen needs remodelling [good point]
*Ceiling heights are low upstairs [again, very valid]

See how reasonable I am? But then we get these two:

*Basement isn’t finished

That’s right. Our house is almost 1900 sq ft (which is big for St Louis Park) and that’s without having used any of the basement, which is at least another 800 sq ft when finished. That’s an advantage, not a problem!

*Construction this summer

Ah, you got me. Unlike the overwhelming majority of permanent roads in the Cities, ours will have to be dug up at some point during your ownership of the property. The fact that it’s to make the road narrower/quieter and install a handy sidewalk, well that just makes it even worse, right?

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Logic

We’re currently selling our house, and this morning got an offer. It’s a fair way below the listed price, but near enough that we’re considering it. One of the odd things about the house is that we have one full bathroom, and a plumbed-in space that will become a second, half-bath. We’ve offered to either complete this space before closing or give the purchaser $2,500 to do it themselves. So, in all but the most literal sense, our house has (will have) 2 bathrooms.

You can understand our confusion, then, when the offer came in with the following comments:

Purchaser wants the $2,500 for the bathroom to pay for A/C [fair enough]
Offer price is lower because the house only has one bathroom.

W, as I believe the saying goes, TF?!

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Intelligent Design Climatology

While reading an article on the Beeb about “clear evidence of climate change caused by human activities”, I had one of my rare thoughts. The article says:

The report, from the federal Climate Change Science Program, said trends seen over the last 50 years “cannot be explained by natural processes alone”.

Now the Design Institute (no link, we don’t want to encourage them) claims that the inherent complexity of life can’t be explained by chance, hence God. If that’s true (clue: it isn’t, but let’s go with it for a moment) then a statement like the above proves that we are messing up the climate; if we can’t explain it, then God.

Or in this case, us.

And Counting…

Approximately one kajillion people have pointed this story out to me, so I thought I’d pass it on:

White middle-aged Americans are less healthy than their English counterparts, research suggests.

Americans aged 55 to 64 are up to twice as likely to suffer from diabetes, lung cancer and high blood pressure as English people of the same age.

The healthiest Americans had similar disease rates to the least healthy English, the Journal of the American Medical Association study found.

Have I mentioned that we leave for the UK in July?