August 20, 1997
Dear Everyone:
This week’s Letter is early because I will be
spending all of this evening at an ARMA
Board of Directors meeting (the things I get myself into).
The week before last, I forgot to mention that
there would be no Letter last week because we would be in
Ashland, but
you’ve probably figured that out by now.
Our annual pilgrimage to the
Oregon Shakespeare Festival was somewhat marred by the fact that, at
the last moment, Mother couldn’t join us.
With “Alice” and “Kelly” pulling out earlier this summer (just
because they had a baby, for gosh sakes!) and “Frankie’s” daughter
“Liza” not coming after all, we had gone from seven people in three
rooms to four in two to three in one.
What we lost in companionship, we saved in hotel accommodations.
While we were in Ashland, “Jeannie” became
enthralled with the saga of Babette and Allison, which appeared in both
the California edition of the
San
Francisco Chronicle (75¢) and the Ashland paper (front page).
It seems that Babette, a two-pound, long-haired
Chihuahua,
traipsed out through her little doggy-door and pattered onto the patio
where she was immediately gobbled up by a passing
boa constrictor
(Allison), who evidently mistook the patio for an hors d’oeuvre tray.
(I’m not making this up. See
attachment.)
Of course it’s tragic, not only for the dog’s
owner, but for the snake’s as well, who feels terrible about the
“horrible, horrible accident” (the owner, I mean; we don’t really know
about the snake). As for
Babette, who among us would not prefer to have
RIP on our
tombstone rather than SNACK.
Could even
Shakespeare
come up with anything so melodramatic, not to mention outlandish?
(By the way, they’re doing the
Comedy of
Errors again next year.)
Meanwhile, back at home...
At least two real estate agents have actually
brought potential buyers into my place, both times when I wasn’t at
home. No known nibbles as
yet. The Realtors stress the
importance of leaving all the lights on when a buyer might be by, so the
place looks brighter and larger.
This, of course, goes completely against my early
training (“Turn the lights off when you leave a room.
Do you think money grows on trees?”).
So ingrained is it to turn the lights off when I’m not in the
room that I have to consciously go back and turn them back on again.
I’ve discovered that leaving the lights on does make the place
brighter. It also leaves it
much warmer. So now I also
have to run the
air conditioning to cool things down again.
Can’t wait to see my next energy bill.
And another thing.
Leaving the lights on means they burn out more quickly.
I’ve had to replace six bulbs in the past three weeks.
Needless to say, the bulbs go out at precisely the worst possible
moment. (“Sorry I’m late,
Boss. Had to climb a ladder
and change the light bulbs before work this morning.”)
Note to anyone else thinking of putting their house
on the market in the near future:
Consider replacing all the bulbs at once.
With any luck, you’ll sell the place before they all go out at
the same time.
Love, as always,
Pete
Previous | Next |