It was a frosty 48 degrees in the living room this morning, after Herb’s temporary boiler fix broke in the middle of the night (when it was somewhere in the mid-teens). He’s back now, having finally acquired the necessary replacement part, so I’m hoping I’ll stop being cold soon.
Yes, the heating repairman and I are on a first-name basis now. Remember that, guys: the secret to establishing a succesful relationship is calling back after the first encounter.
As I’ve said before, it seems most of Krispy Kreme’s problems started when their shops stopped looking like this.
This one, for reference, is in Spartanburg SC. It actually isn’t open anymore, but they keep it in pristine condition right across the street from its replacement, with counter, stools, original signage, and all. I’m not 100% sure why; it’s almost museum-like, similar to the McDonald’s in Des Plaines. But a Kripsy Kreme museum would presumaby be in Winston-Salem, not Spartanburg.
The high school friends people I barely knew and didn’t really like in high school have been coming out of the woodwork and accosting me on Facebook of late. I don’t really do Facebook; I find it rather annoying, and I keep my account open mostly for school purposes and because I’ve occasionally been contacted by old friends I actually did want to hear from again. But I’m thinking of pulling down my high school affiliation because there’s pretty much no one from those days that I ever want to hear from again.
On a completely unrelated note, it was a beautifully cold, gray, rainy day today, and I noticed this view out my window at work. The photo doesn’t really capture it at all, but the combination of the rooftop, the smokestack/chimney thing in the background (that you can’t really see), and the overall gloom sort of gave this really enticing Dickensian London feel.
Again, the photo doesn’t really capture it. maybe I should’ve skipped it. Oh well.
This article about a group of downtown Winston-Salem condos going up for auction at potential bargain basement prices was no big surprise. The project involved struck me as a little bit questionable right from the start. It’s sort of far-removed from the “action” and it’s one of those generic, tacky, cheap-looking (and overpriced) developments that you’re seeing downtown in almost all cities now, with a barely-concealed first floor garage and some pitiful and essentially useless street-level retail that’s included because of zoning ordinances rather than because anyone really wants it. These types of developments invariably look almost more like subsidized housing than the “luxury” units they’re supposed to be.
But get this:
Selling the remaining 17 residential units, along with one remaining commercial space, has become a sticking point that’s holding back future phases for the project, Furman said, which led to the idea for the auction.
Let me get this straight. They’re auctioning these things off for next to nothing so that they can move on to the next phase of the project and build even more of the bloody things even though they couldn’t even unload the first group?
Meanwhile, of course, actual downtown housing that people might actually buy has languished for two years across from the new downtown stadium (which itself displaced a whole downtown neighborhood), so that it can eventually be bulldozed to create parking lots or sports bars or whatever the hell is planned for that area.
Of course, building additional housing in the stadium area might have (gasp) involved working within the existing urban framework rather than wholesale clearance (and wouldn’t have resulted in government subsidies for the stadium). Even worse, the existing residents of that area were insufficiently upscale and white, which doesn’t look good when you’re doing “”Emerald City” planning, which is apparently the only kind that’s been considered in most inner-city areas for the past decade or so.
Right now, this (lack of) planing has resulted in Winston-Salem getting two blighted areas for the price of one: the one that was built and then abandoned for no good reason and the one that probably shouldn’t have been built to begin with.
Great article in today’s LA TImes about my favorite eatery in downtown Los Angeles (or anywhere in Los Angeles, for that matter). Every time I see Clifton’s, I’m afraid it will be the last, but I’m really encouraged to see that the family now owns the building, at least.
I need to visit Clifton’s again. It’s been almost six years.
Interestingly enough, the textbook I bought from Amazon UK because it was cheaper than buying it domestically arrived today with a flyer for a service contract from British Gas that might have saved me money on my boiler as well.
Assuming, of course, that the boiler and I were in the UK.
Why is it that so many people expect transit projects to pay for themselves, but no one ever expects highway projects to?
Just wondering.
The other day when I asked what could be better, I knew the answer. To start, I’ll let the video speak for itself and apologize for the quality:
Wow. Five years since that cold, rainy, surreal, wonderful night. It was definintely worth it.
For our fifth anniversary, we splurged on “real” rings to replace the $10 silver ones we very quickly bought on the way back from Fresno on that Sunday afternoon:
I love my boy.
The down side to being relatively friendly with your neighbors is that they sometimes feel comfortable showing up at your front door on a Saturday afternoon trying to abuse your inborn southern politeness by making you watch some godawful 15-minute video for the multi-level marketing program pyramid scheme they’ve just gotten involved with.
It really sort of pisses me off that this sales pitch was the first excuse she found in three years to show up at our front door, but I’ll probably forgive her as long as she doesn’t follow through on her threat to call me for computer advice, too.
My only complaint about the past twenty-four hours is the fact that we had to spend about eight of those hours without power, making the house a trifle chilly first thing this morning. But kudos to Duke Power for being fast on the repairs.
Sadly enough, this is the first decent snowfall we’ve seen since moving east almost four years ago. And at five inches, this really wasn’t all that major, despite all the media hype. I seem to remember a storm like this at least once a year when I was a kid, but to hear people discussing it on the news, you’d think it was the biggest snowstorm ever to hit North Carolina.