Thanks to Laura for demonstrations and explanation. The illustrations, however, are all mine (lol).
Exercise Notes
Category: 2019
The minutiae of my day
Ghali Amdouni
I just discovered a great new musician from an article in one of my magazines, titled, “Music for the Migrant Crisis; A fiercely anti-immigrant country falls for a Tunisian Italian rapper” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/ghali-rapper-italy/583207/
He’s Italian, born to Tunisian immigrants, and his music is becoming really popular in Italy. And he also sounds like a great guy (unlike a lot of rappers who deliberately cultivate a not-a-great-guy persona).
His lyrics encourage open mindedness about immigrants and there’s hope that his music could help mitigate the anti-immigrant issues in Italy. The article says, “Ghali is so popular that even far-right voters are being dragged to his concerts by their children.”
The article says, “Ghali is careful to avoid talking about religion or politics publicly—yet if you listen to his lyrics, you’ll hear plenty that’s subversive. “The newspaper … talks about the foreigner as if he were an alien,” he announces in his most popular song, “Cara Italia” (“Dear Italy”), a love letter that envisions an open-arms nationalism. “When they tell me, ‘Go back home!’ … I reply, ‘I am already here.’ ” Other lyrics are equally pointed: “You think that Islam equals ISIS,” he raps in “Wily Wily,” a song whose chorus Italian fans delight in joining, even though it’s in Arabic.”
I just bought an album of his and I really like it. It sounds like Hispanic rap to me, which only proves that I know nothing about music. (And I also can’t tell the difference between Spanish and Italian.) I always enjoy the Hispanic fusion (rap, rock, etc.) that’s common in New Mexico. Ghali sounds to me like something I would hear here. I wouldn’t have guessed it was Tunisian-Italian.
Go Ghali!
Solar tube google fail
I’m trying to find internet advice regarding the design aspects of colocating solar tubes with traditional ceiling light fixtures. And it’s just not happening!
You’re like, “What?” Yeah, that’s what google was like. “What?” Google knows what solar tubes are, but it does not understand the concept of determining where to colocate them with ceiling light fixtures.
Solar tubes are a more modern and cheaper version of skylights. From inside your house, they look like regular recessed lights.
Here’s what they look like on your roof:
And here’s what a whole one looks like:
Our new house was built in the 1970’s and it has low, flat ceilings. It’s dark! We’ve always had lofted ceilings and skylights in the past, and we’re used to a lot of natural light. So we’re going to install solar tubes throughout the main living area (kitchen, dining, family, office).
There are a couple of existing ceiling lights in the kitchen-dining areas, but no light at all in the family room and office. I’m not a fan of floor lamps because I like to locate furniture away from the wall, and then I’ve got cords in the way. Plus I don’t like cluttered houses. I much prefer my light coming from the ceiling.
However, skylight and solar tube options only work during the day, obviously. So at night I’m going to need some sort of electric lighting.
I have specific places I’d like to light; above the couch, above the dining room table, and so on. So, do I put the ceiling lights near the solar tubes? Or do I put the ceiling lights where I want the light, and then put the solar tubes somewhere else? How close can I put them?
So that was when I started googling about interior design and colocation of solar tubes with ceiling lighting and google was, “huh???”
There is a potential option to put electric LED lights inside of the solar tube, so you can turn those on at night. However, there are several potential issues with that solution. We have a flat roof and there may not be enough space between the top of the roof and the ceiling to add the LED light fixture (particularly because it’s an older house).
Secondly, there’s a limit to the wattage, so they aren’t going to be particularly bright. So I might end up needing lamps anyway.
Thirdly, a lot of the light goes out the roof, which is a waste and causes nighttime light pollution. It probably won’t be visible from the street because our roof is flat with a parapet around it. But the house on the hill that looks down on us would definitely see it.
We’re going to have an “in home consultation” in a couple of weeks, so hopefully they will be experienced with deciding where exactly to locate them.
Moving
We’re right in the middle of moving! Finally, after spending all winter trying to figure out what to do, we are now implementing. Actually after spending three years trying to figure out to do, we’re finally implementing. We moved back to New Mexico in 2016 expecting everything to fall into place better than it actually did. But we are now more hopeful that soon we can create the slower, easier life that we left California for.
We are now in the preliminary stages of moving back to Albuquerque, within a few blocks of where we lived before moving to California. We’re purchasing a house whose best features are 1) low price and, 2) a large, sheltered backyard, and whose worst feature is a neighbor’s house above us overlooking the backyard.
For us, it’s pretty much aways been all about the yard. I’m hoping the house perched up there above our yard won’t bother me. It’s a little intimidating. I’m reminding myself how nice and sheltered from the wind that yard will be.
We’re under contract and due to close later this month. I’ve also submitted my resignation at work, and will be finishing up there later this month.
We are currently working hard to get the house in Placitas on the market. We’ve hired a real estate agent, a handyman (woman) crew, and are awaiting yard clean-up quotes from a couple of landscapers. The landscaping is going to be expensive even though it won’t look like much when it’s done, because it needs more than just a few bushes trimmed and a lawn mowed. (Lawn, haha, as if.)
There’s large amounts of rubble and holes that need leveled so it doesn’t look like a war zone. All in all, we’ve got to throw several thousand more dollars at this house to finish the remodel and get cleaned up, which is just painful. We’re just hoping it will sell fast, and we’re grateful that the house in Albuquerque doesn’t cost very much.
We are starting to get packed to move. It’s a complicated move, involving three houses (Santa Fe, Placitas, and Albuquerque), and two storage units (Bernalillo and Albuquerque). There’s also going to be two moving pods, one in Santa Fe and one in Placitas (both going to Albuquerque). We’re also going to need to get rid of about 1/3 of our stuff, so we’ve started to create huge piles of give-away and throw-away items, some of which we’ve hauled up to Santa Fe just to get it out of Placitas. It’s a big musical chairs.
John is going to live in Santa Fe for most of April while we wait for the Albuquerque house to close, so currently we’re moving stuff out of Santa Fe into a storage unit in Albuquerque to make room for him, and moving his essentials to Santa Fe, and moving his non-essentials to either a pod or a storage unit. Then after we close on the house in Albuquerque we’ll move the Santa Fe items to Albuquerque. And lastly, when the Placitas house sells, we’ll move all the furniture and decor we’re using to stage the Placitas house.
You’d think the last thing I’d be doing right now is buying stuff, but I couldn’t resist this:
It made me happy. And sometimes in life you just need a pig. That’s a saying right? Well, now it is.
The pig is currently hanging in Placitas to help stage the house, as is most of our “real” art and better furniture. I hope the house sells fast because I’m looking forward to getting our art and furniture moved into our new house.
We also bought a couple of cacti to put near the entryway in Placitas.
We didn’t want to try to use anything greener that would need water. We’re heading into our very dry season and the house might be on the market for awhile, and we don’t want to have to go out there and water all the time.
Later in the month we’ll have a professional photographer out, and I will post those photos. And then you’ll all say – why are you leaving? It’s so beautiful! The views!
It’s the wind folks, it’s the wind.
Great News
Our real estate agent met me out at the Placitas house today to talk about what needs to happen to get it ready for the market. The major remodel is mostly done, but the house is still really rough around the edges.
There are pits in the yard where holes were dug for various reasons and never filled, and dead plants that need removed.
There’s missing baseboard trim and general touchup needed.
Paint mishaps (oops!)
There are stained and gouged places in the walls as a result of various projects.
We’ve got a missing gate,
Old cabinets that need touched up (or the vanity just replaced)
A new front door that was never stained or finished and is now showing water staining
Heater controls that are unreadable and look like the 1960’s (these are in every room, right at eye level).
And the handyman list goes on and on.
John was planning on doing it all himself, and he has been working very hard. But there is still way too much to do, and it’s just not realistic with his work schedule. Meanwhile, we have an enormous amount of belongings at the house that need to get moved out. Just getting moved is going to be about all that we can manage ourselves.
So my agent, who is fantastic, is going to bring in a crew to knock out all the many little interior issues. She’s going to write up the list of items, get them out here for the quote, and oversee the work. All we have to do is write the check. It’s unusual for an agent to do that much, and I’m very grateful.
She’s also sending a yard guy out to fill in the holes, remove the remaining rubble, and basically tidy up the yard. The yard currently looks like the tail end of a construction site, because that’s exactly what it is.
We’re also going to do some work on the long, steep, driveway so it is less intimidating.
After we’ve gotten our junk moved out and the crew has handled all the remaining items, my agent is going to help me stage the house.
Then this house should sell well! We hope. It’s such a relief to have professional help, because I’ve known for awhile that we were in way over our heads.
Maybe tonight I will sleep well!
I think I’m falling apart
I chipped a huge piece of tooth off! The top back part of one of my front lower teeth broke off while I was eating a grilled cheese sandwich! Apparently the cheese wasn’t soft enough?
It sheared off the back side of the tooth, so you can’t actually see the damage (unless you stick your head in my mouth). But my tongue sure notices! I’ve been chewing gingerly, afraid that more of it will crumble.
In general I have strong teeth, but I clench my jaw and grind my teeth at night. I’m currently using a plastic cushioning device at night, which is really cutting down on the number of migraines. But I spent a lot of years inadvertently damaging my teeth. Previous mouth guards I’ve tried in years past never worked, because they were a hard plastic. This new style is the first one I’ve tried with a softer, cushioning plastic. Because they are a softer plastic, they’re designed to be disposable. They’re called “Plackers Grind No More” and I recommend them highly for anyone who grinds their teeth and gets headaches.
The other big issue at the moment is I AM NOT SLEEPING! I suppose it’s the stress of buying a house and the imminent move. And I’m leaving my job, which I’ll miss. I often have trouble sleeping when making big changes like moving and changing jobs.
I’ve been waking up around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, and staying awake for a couple of hours. The sleep experts say to get up when you’re not sleeping, but I don’t agree. I think it’s better to just lay there quietly. I’m trained in mindfulness techniques, so I know how to quiet my thinking and not lay there worrying or anything. I think it’s better than getting up and trying to read or something. Plus, I don’t want to disturb John.
My Oura, the sleep tracker, is fooled. It categorizes my quiet awake times as “light sleep” and thinks I’m getting a fantastic amount of sleep. Wrong!
Last night I woke up at around 3 AM and was awake until almost 5:00, although my tracker miss categorized much of it as light sleep with only a few awake periods. Then around 5:00 I went back to sleep, and you can see the expected rem-light-rem-light pattern until after 6:00. I took today off work (the goal is to start packing), so that’s why I didn’t get up at 6:00.
Here you can see I woke up at 2 AM and was awake until about 5:00, when I went back into the rem-light-rem-light pattern. This one’s from a couple of nights ago. I actually did fall back asleep at 5:00 and slept well past 6:00 and was almost late to work. I find that the rem (light blue bar) is quite accurate. It’s just the light sleep that’s not accurate. That big long uninterrupted stretch of light sleep was actually me wide awake, laying still and practicing mindfulness.
We are actually buying a house
And…we are under contract! I bet you thought we were just going to look forever.
In case you’re confused, this house is in Albuquerque, where we plan to stay for a little while longer.
It’s a modest house, and if I wasn’t used to New Mexico, I’d think it was a funny looking house, but this architectural style is quite common in Albuquerque. Plus, it looks pink to me, but that color stucco is everywhere here.
A gated front courtyard is also common here, like down in Mexico. However, I don’t like the cage-like look of the full height gate. We’ll take that metal gate down right away.
Initially we’ll probably leave it without any kind of gate. It’ll be a nice spot for potted plants and will be sheltered from the wind.
Eventually we’ll probably either install a lower gate, or expand the courtyard. The windows to the right (in the picture below) are the master bedroom, and I don’t like the bedroom window facing the street. An expanded front courtyard would add privacy and value to the home because front courtyards really are part of the culture here. They are especially common in Santa Fe, where often they are built all the way up to the street, like in Mexico. Albuquerque city code probably requires set-backs from the street, but I’m pretty sure we would still have enough room to put something additional there in front of the house. Luckily, there is no HOA to worry about.
The house was built in 1979, but the interior has recently been redone, which is nice. We didn’t want a huge remodel project. I’m not a fan of carpet and it’s unfortunately throughout the house, even in the dining room. But it’s brand new, so we’ll just leave it.
There are two living rooms right next to each other with a wall between them. The listing calls them a “living room” and a “family room”. We don’t need two adjacent living rooms, but we do need an office. A lot of newer homes I’ve seen recently have an office near the front entry, separated from the entry by a set of french doors. So I’d like to add French doors and make the first living room into an office. The French doors would go in the open doorway you see near the front door in this photo:
That would leave the “family room” to become the living room. It is adjacent to the kitchen, providing a more modern “great room”, that looks out to the backyard.
It has a “gas assist” wood burning fireplace. The gas is just used right at first to light the wood. That’s crazy, what’s the point of that? But maybe we could convert it to a gas fireplace fairly easily. We’ve made that conversion twice before in different houses, but in those cases there wasn’t already already gas piped to the fireplace. So maybe it would be easier since there’s already gas to the fireplace.
There’s a breakfast nook between the living room and the kitchen, with a sliding glass door to a generous sized backyard. The ceilings are low and there’s no vaulting, which is a disappointment, but it gets good light. And the backyard looks very nice out the windows.
The kitchen has been updated and has a gas stove. We’ll need to buy a refrigerator.
There’s just two bathrooms. The master bathroom is small, but upgraded. The hall bathroom has a tub.
There are also two guest bedrooms, for a total of three bedrooms. The rooms and the closet space is small, due to it being an older house. We will be pressed for storage space and will need to get rid of stuff and get really organized.
It has forced air heat, which is by far the most common in moderately priced houses in Albuquerque. It’s not my favorite because it’s very drying, and the air in New Mexico is already extremely dry. My townhome in Santa Fe has radiant heat in the floor, which means I can run a humidifier and the air will actually hold some of the humidity. So I will miss that. It has evaporative cooling, also the standard for most modest homes in the region.
It has a good sized backyard. A lot of backyards in New Mexico aren’t landscaped because the weather is harsh and it’s a desert. So it’s nice to have one that is at least partially landscaped, and the solid patio roof will be great. I’ll put a table out there because I love to eat outside.
Unfortunately there’s a house on the hill above, just behind the backyard, that looks down into the backyard. This is a major pet peeve of mine. It’s hard to see the neighboring house in these marketing photos, because obviously they wouldn’t want to advertise that flaw, so they did not take a picture of the overlooking house. And I didn’t take any pictures myself when I was out there. You can sort of see the overlooking house in the top left of this next photo:
From this angle the trees mostly obscure it, but from the other part of the yard the house is RIGHT THERE looking right down on top of you. I’m already plotting to remove the juniper bush, which isn’t tall enough to screen it and to plant more trees, and install some sort of pergola or gazebo on that far side of the yard to help shield the yard from the looming house above.
However, there is a major advantage of having a depressed yard like this – it is sheltered from the wind. Wind is a huge problem in New Mexico and one of the biggest issues with our house on the hill in Placitas. My backyard in Santa Fe also has a hillside behind it, and it limits the wind considerably and makes the backyard much more useable. In Santa Fe, the houses up on the hill behind the townhome are screened with numerous trees, so they aren’t bothersome.
There are generously sized side yards on both sides of the house. The side you see in the distance in the previous photo we’ll make into a large dog run. (I don’t have a good picture of it, but the side yard for the dogs is nearly as large as my entire backyard in Santa Fe.) We’ll have to do a little bit of work to get the dog run set up. The wall is too low on that side, so we’ll have to add a couple rows of cement blocks. Also it needs a bit of fencing and a gate between it and the rest of the backyard. There is a garden patch that is currently just bare dirt. I’ll plant a small lawn there for the dogs to do their duties.
I know lawns are not politically correct in the desert, but even if we put gravel in the dog run, we’d still have to water it because otherwise the pee smell just reeks after awhile. We don’t get enough natural rain to wash it through the soil. I need some sort of nitrogen fixing ground cover or lawn or something out there, and it will need regularly watered to keep the smell down, even if it’s just rocks. So I figure if I’m going to have to water rocks, I might as well water a lawn.
The other side of the house has a large access gate and cement pad where we can park the boat and the van. John is happy about that.
You can almost see the mountains in the distance from the street, but from the house and the yard there is no view at all. I’d be pretty worried about buying a house with no view at all, after the stunning views in Placitas. But we’ve discovered that we really like the “cozy” feel of our Santa Fe townhome, and don’t really miss the views.
I hope we don’t end up regretting selling the house Placitas. It’s such an impractical house, and we’ve been so frustrated with it these past 12 years. But we also have a lot of history with it, and have put a lot of time and money and effort into it and are attached to it. I suppose we will occasionally come across pictures of the astounding views and ask ourselves, “Why did we sell that house?”
Well in case I forget, here’s why:
That’s not clouds in the air, by the way, that’s dirt.
Disappointed
I’m pretty disappointed, but we’re not going to move on to our next location yet. We had been hoping to get closer to family, into a less harsh climate, and into less-stressful jobs. But John’s not ready yet to get a new job.
For me it would have been the perfect timing. We had already decided to sell the house in Placitas this spring, so we have to move anyway. John is retirement eligible next month, so in theory he could start that up and go work somewhere else, and have both incomes. Management changes at my job have largely removed my ability to develop programs as I had been, so I don’t feel like I have a meaningful role anymore, and am ready to find a new job. Everything seemed lined up.
Except for John’s job. He is in midst of a project that he is enjoying, even though it is very stressful and requiring way too much overtime. He’s worked at his same company his whole life, and although he’s changed jobs within his company before, he’s never worked elsewhere. We’re concerned that a new job might mean giving up some of the perks he’s earned for being there so many years, such as a lot of time off. So a job hunt is more daunting for him than it is for me. Also his career is more specialized, whereas I am a generalist in my field and can fairly easily find a job pretty much anywhere.
I’m very concerned that if he stays with this same job he will continue to work ridiculously long hours, which is really taking a toll on us. But he’s promising that he will be cutting back. He says he’s training a new early-career coworker, and soon that coworker will be able to take over some of what John is currently doing. John says then he will be able to drop to part-time. That would be wonderful, although I’ll believe it when I see it. At the moment I’d be ecstatic to just have him working a regular 40-hr week without all the travel.
So the plan is we’re going to stay in Albuquerque for a little while longer before getting moved to the next location. It’s hard on me because I’m not sure what I’m going to do with myself for a year or two or three, without ending up feeling like I’m just waiting to move again. We do still intend to move out of the area. Just not yet. It’s discouraging to have to move while knowing it’s temporary and we’ll have to move a second time fairly soon. I totally hate moving (who doesn’t?). Moving is so much work and we move so often. I wish we were ready to settle down somewhere. But maybe I can think of the time as an enjoyable phase and not just a waiting period.
We’re going to go ahead and get a house in Albuquerque near where we lived before moving to California. The one we’re making an offer on is a comfortable house, and doesn’t need much work. It’s not our dream house. It doesn’t have a swimming pool or a workshop for John, or anything special we were hoping to have eventually. But we want to keep our budget down and buy something that will be easy to sell later.
We are not going to stay living in the Placitas house because we are at our wits end with that house. Plus, it’s a very difficult house to sell, and we feel like we need to get it sold while the market is strong. We’ve tried and failed to sell it two or three times in the past 12 years. We really just need to get it sold.
The house we’re looking at in Albuquerque is much more practical of a house, in town, and costs much less money, and would sell much more easily than the one in Placitas, even if the market softens in a couple of years. The new house in Albuquerque will be fine; the house is not the problem. I think we’ll be comfortable there. The difficulty for me is not being able to get started on what I had imagined was going to be our big new phase in life. Instead, I’ve got to figure out how to create a shorter, temporary new phase, and avoid the trap of feeling like I’m just waiting to move again.
Deja Vu
So here’s deja vu for you. The housing market in Albuquerque is peaking. I can feel it. Inventory is shrinking and all the weird houses that have been rentals or gone unsold are now being listed for prices higher than they’re worth. Everything I look at is rundown inside. The owners aren’t taking their time to get the houses ready – they’re too confident in the market. But I think that if they don’t sell this summer, they aren’t going to sell for a long while.
I’m hanging out in John’s house in Placitas at the moment, but it’s not where I live, I have my own comfy-cosy townhome that’s set up just how I like it. We’re getting John’s house ready to sell in preparation for moving in together, but there’s still a lot more he wants to do to get the house ready. I don’t want to wait for all the stuff to be done; I want to list it yesterday already because I’m so worried about the market. But maybe we’ve got another year before it all comes crashing down.
I’m looking for a house for the two of us to live together. It’s not the best time to buy, but we want to move in together. I’ve been looking all winter. He wants a lot of garage/parking space and we want to be near trails. I’ve been looking all over the place, including the east mountains. I’m not finding anything; there’s just crap on the market for too much money. But there’s one in the foothills, on the east side of Tramway that I’m going to go take a look at tomorrow. It’s fairly far south in the northeast heights, not the better northern section, but it’s still north of the freeway.
Did you read that like I was writing it today? I was. It’s completely accurate for today.
It’s also completely accurate for March 2007. Read it either way. Read it for 2007 or read it for 2019. It is the same. Here we go again. Deja vu.
Only difference is we’ve put a ton of money and work into John’s house in the past 12 years, so we’re really, really, really going to get it sold this time! Like no kidding, we’re going to give it away if we have to. It’s not worth any more than it was 12 years ago, even after all our renovations, but it’s worth a lot more than it was 10 years ago after the crash.
Here’s the listing photo of the one I’m looking at tomorrow. It’s within a few blocks of the one we bought in 2007.
It’s nothing exciting, because I’m being much more careful about the price of the new house if we do end up buying in Albuquerque. I’ve given up on the idea of getting a pool now that we’ve decided not to stay here forever. I don’t want to spend too much money because we’ll want to be able to turn around and sell it in a few years. And darned if I’m going to lose a bunch of money again in another crash. Because eventually (if not sooner) we’re moving south! Then I’ll buy that pool.
Here’s the google street view from the summertime. You’ve got to wonder about the quality of the listing agent when the street view is better than the marketing photos, but then, there’s not a lot you can do about it being winter time.
Last time we were in Albuquerque for 5 years before we moved to California. Will we be here another 5 years? I’m so impatient to move south, but John’s not ready to go out and get a new job yet. So fine, if he’s not going to go get a different job elsewhere, he needs to get a lower stress job with his current company because he’s working himself to death, and that’s not ok. And, we need a house!