2010 Hay Holiday Letter of Truth

2010 Hay Holiday Letter of Truth (R-Rated):
That’s right, the annual Christmas letter where you get nothing but the unvarnished truth about how life totally blows. No boastful seasonal BS, colors, lights, and feel good crap here. In hindsight, 2010 was a year of karmic retribution. Come with me for a tour of the past year…

I seem to be piling them up like cordwood lately, so I will just number the exes for clarity. This first story involves #1. Sorry for the length of this, and the detail, but I intend to send this to my lawyer, disguised as Christmas wishes, because he is less likely to charge me to $275 an hour to read an update that way. Merry Christmas Eric, ya big schmuck! Merry F-ing Christmas to the rest of you too!
2010 began with the ongoing saga of the Child Support Issue From Hell. From June 2009, continuing into 2010, I was paying child support for my oldest, who is 20, due to court and lawyer errors from 2006. The way things were going I expected to be paying child support until my daughter died of old age, since the normal stop-paying-when-kid-turns-18-and-graduates-from-high-school rules did not apply. In case you were wondering, we had what is called an undifferentiated order…..basically an open order to pay child support with no end date specified, and the normal legislative rules thrown out the window. In other words, child support until death.

Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, Department of Child Support (DCS) didn’t have the authority to change the court order, or interpret the intent of the law, or apply their administrative rules, only enforce the order. The court refused to correct its mistake when alerted to the problem, so I appealed to #1 at the suggestion of DCS. DCS has never been married to #1. Had they been, they would have known not to give me that bullshit advice!

I corresponded with the head of DCS and everybody down the line trying to get this mess straightened out. Meanwhile I was getting letters telling me I was a deadbeat dad, threatening to trash my credit, seize bank accounts, tax refunds, take away business, professional, driver, boating, and even the coveted fishing license! The DCS brass pretty much told me that they were feeling me, that they got it, that this was total BS, and if I didn’t pay a dime more they would not pursue me for payment unless and until #1 filed a formal enforcement complaint, which I thought was a somewhat damning illustration of their view of what was happening. I guess this was their “don’t ask don’t tell” policy toward enforcement.

While the governmental agencies involved cannot comment due to confidentiality reasons, I can. Heck, I name names and case numbers. It was King County Superior Court Judge Mary Yu. She is an elected official, which I thought worth mentioning. Case #98-3-00933-4 SEA. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Of course #1 wouldn’t negotiate in good faith, she stalled, and wouldn’t sign an agreed order. She thought she was going to collect child support for our adult offspring forever, so I guess she figured why cooperate when she can do exactly nothing and collect the money? I made her several offers for an agreed order and she refused all of them. So I had to hire a lawyer, serve her, and to go to court to get out of paying child support I should not have been paying in the first place. Guilty until proven innocent. Great system. Thanks for nothing once again Judge Yu. Well guess what? The court (different judge) agreed that I should not be paying child support on a 20 year old!! This new judge retroactively refunded all support back to high school graduation more than a year prior! The new support levels on the younger children were then set at a rate lower than I had offered #1 in negotiations when she had outright refused it. Ha! How’d that taste!!! Oh, and here’s the best part---she had to pay my attorney’s fees for forcing me to bring the court action in the first place. Bahaha!!

It just keeps getting better though. She failed to pay the attorney’s fees directly as ordered, so the judgment went on her credit report. My new buddies at DCS gave me credit for it anyway. Fast forward six months----she was refinancing her house, the mortgage company pulled her credit report, saw the judgment, told her to show proof it was paid. Turns out there were some problems doing that and it took her a long time to get it straightened out. Her refinancing fell through, and I got the last laugh. She paid her lawyer, paid my lawyer, got all the money taken away, then got less in future support than I offered her. Karma is my friend!

After this ongoing legal cluster fuck was finally resolved, hold on to your hats now, #1 and I are taking the kids to Hawaii in January. Hawaii. The five of us. You simply cannot make this stuff up people! And why did that occur? Well read on…..

A Horse Is a Horse Divorce Of Course
It was a fine horse trailer. Nothing was wrong with this particular trailer. But all of #2’s friends had gooseneck trailers. A gooseneck trailer has a fifth wheel that connects in the center of the bed of the truck like a semi, rather than connecting at the rear like a conventional trailer. She had to have a gooseneck trailer because she heard it was easier to back up. She had been talking about getting a gooseneck trailer for about a year, and I kept saying huh? A smaller trailer? Are you high? I would follow that up swiftly and clearly with “no, no, and hell no”. I may have even thrown in a “FUCK NO” or two for good measure.

A little background: The horse ranch was snuck in under the radar, the direct result of emotional blackmail (“I am going to buy it, with you or without you”), at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, and involved the literal pissing away of $300,000 (translated: THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS). Said flushing of money was done in her mental vacuum, with the economy in the dumpster, while simultaneously remodeling 11 apartment units that we had just acquired. After getting in a series of fights with the prime tenant in the barn and having all of the 20 boarding customers bail, while boarding rates were crashing, while still spending money on fancy fencing and paddock panels, and more mini-horses, and who knows what else, and, while struggling to pay the bills, she still wanted a gooseneck trailer. I just kept up my mantra of no, no, and hell no. No, no, and hell no doesn’t work with #2, who gets what she wants, regardless of who is standing in the way, or the actual financial facts.

She bought a gooseneck trailer. I told her simply and clearly, “take it back”. We cannot afford it I explained. She kept it. Of course this meant she now had to buy a truck to pull the gooseneck trailer. So she bought another diesel truck, this one four wheel drive (our fourth vehicle). I ignored the entire situation and kept completely quiet, hoping this would be the last hurrah of the spending and we would get beyond this, dig out, and move on. She brought the truck home. I said OK, I will support this, but for the love of God and all things sacred will you please stop spending money? Please. Just. Stop.

I then personally changed all the fluids and filters in the new truck so she would be good to go, and tried to make peace.

My truck needed to go to the shop for some work a few days later, so I asked if I could use the new truck to get to work. She said, “that’s my truck, you can’t drive it.” We got in a bit of fight over that. And I moved downstairs.

Living in the basement, paying the two mortgages on our house, paying for her gasoline, her car repairs, her land and cell phones, her mother’s cell phone, her satellite television, her internet access, her power, her propane, much of her food, her line of credit that paid for the horse ranch improvements, the mortgage shortfall on a rental house that she had to have four years prior (co-owns with her daughters--yet I paid for), I continued to watch her take the profit from the apartments and spend it on horses. All of her paycheck and the thousands of dollars in apartment profit went either into the horse ranch or “her” retirement. All of it. I became slightly bitter, as you might imagine.

She moved out two months ago. She said she moved out because I yelled at her. That’s what she tells people why we broke up; I yelled at her. Yes, I did. I think she actually needs quite a bit more yelling at, but what is the point?

The irony in all this is that after getting the truck and gooseneck trailer connected she couldn’t back it up any better than the old conventional trailer, and that is because of one thing that simply cannot be bought: She lacks the spatially superior male brain!!

Epilogue:
I have learned many things owning a horse ranch. Here are a few of those things, along with some questions:
a) Country music sucks worse than I ever could have imagined. Now I know why they used it as torture at Gitmo.
b) Women cannot back up trailers to save their lives. They simply do not get it.
c) Why do horse people get pissed when you mention that horse meat is leaner, more flavorful, and more tender than bovine? Hypocrites. It’s legal in Canada. One is your best friend in the world and the other is dinner?
d) Horses are actually exceptionally stupid neurotic animals. I really had no idea just how neurotic.
e) An animal that requires a tractor to move its shit simply produces too much shit.
f) Horse show definition: Horses showing their asses to horse's asses showing their horses.
g) There are about a thousand different words for the way horses walk/run, like Eskimos have a thousand words for snow.
h) Why is it that horses literally piss gallons into the paddocks every day (and on the walls of the stall and on the floor, roll in it, and rub it all over themselves), but if I were to whip out my tiny little pecker suddenly “that’s gross, use the bathroom”? WTF!

Garage door security

Several videos are widely circulating on the net about garage door security. One perp shows how he can break into a garage (with clear windows in the front) within six seconds. He simply slides a coat hangar over the top of the door and pulls the carriage release, thus allowing the door to release. Not having windows, or having obscure windows eliminates this issue, as does wire-tying or zip-tying the release to the carriage as shown in other videos. Interesting stuff:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMz1tXBVT1s

Anal Sex, Country Music, and Snowboarding

Why do all male country music stars wear cowboy hats? It's true. I dare you. Show me one that doesn't. So if a guy is a good singer, a very talented singer, and he decides suddenly to be "country" for whatever reason, I guess he needs to get a cowboy hat. He could not make it without the hat. Hell, he could be born and raised in Brooklyn or the mean streets of Detroit and suddenly his voice gets a twang, he gets an NRA sticker, and he loves horses. The male country singer's hat is quite likely the most contrived accessory I have witnessed in my entire life. It's like country is the WWE of music. All hat, no cattle. The guy could be a really talented singer, but then they tack on that false Oklahoma twang, don the hat, grab a twelve string, and it ceases being music and becomes simply a parody of itself.

Snowboarding. All the cold, half the speed. I feel sorry for those schlebs scooting along on their butts, or walking one boot on the board one in the snow, carumph carumph carumph. Those of us that have learned to stand erect generations ago simply pole on past in the flat areas. Then those boneheads need to unbuckle from the board to get on the chair! Getting off the chair is possibly the most ungraceful thing I have ever seen---a half run/half fall down the ramp. What's up with that anyway? It's like some kind of second class citizenship that these people actually choose.

Anal sex and snowboarding are actually very similar. Let's say you want to get laid. You go to great expense and effort to wine and dine the object of your affection. You also go to great expense and effort to pack up all the gear for a day in the mountains, drive up the hill, buy your tickets, etc etc. In either case, when you have the choice, when you have spent a lot of time, money and effort striving toward a particular endeavor, why would you settle for second best? I rest my case.

Paint Paint Paint The Roof

The roof had a ton of dew on it. From the street it looked like a new black roof. It even looked like a new roof when I climbed up and walked on it. It was actually about seven years old I figured after looking a bit closer. It had a bit of moss and was kind of an ugly reddish color, so the owner pressure washed it. The pressure washing took the protective granulation off wherever the wand made a swipe back and forth. Small pieces of moss were still visible in places. He took elastomeric deck covering and painted it over the roofing, then took black paint and covered the grey colored elastomeric. Both were hardened and laying in the gutter where it had run off. This technique put protection over the missing areas of granulation and the color was changed to a uniform black color. Sounds like a good plan, huh? Maybe. Probably not. We'll never get to find out though, since he decided to sell the house.

He claims he was sold this material by a well known roofing supply house on recommendation of a roofer. We called. The owner of the supply company knew nothing about any kind of product approved for painting on composition roofs. The other well known supply house in the area was called. Nothing again. The real estate agent called three roofing companies to come out and give their opinions. At least two companies rushed out there and wanted to see it out of curiosity if nothing else. None would give it a five year roof certification, despite outward good appearance, and none had ever heard of painting a composition roof. I washed my hands of it completely, as there is no protocol for a painted roof. It could fail in a week, it could last twenty five years, we have no way of knowing.

So there we have it, an otherwise good roof, ruined by good intentions.

A True Palace

Here's what happened when we turned on the power to the well. A geyser!

There are four wires attached to that breaker that turned on the well pump. It should have only one wire attached. One wire was so loose it was flailing around and sparking. The breaker was buzzing and zapping. I love this job because it is so entertaining sometimes

When you really gotta go

Doesn't everyone need a toilet in their garage?

Dryer tales

A tenant of mine called and announced the dryer was squealing horribly and she needed me to come over and fix it. It had a horrible burning smell, so she shut it off. I showed up at the house and found she had three bottles of detergent stacked on top of the dryer. One bottle was a brand new three gallon thing that weighed more than several third world countries. I pulled the bottles off the top of the dryer and fired it up. Worked great, no smell no sound.

What happened? Dryers have rubber belts connected to pulleys at the motor and around the drum. The drum pulley is very large in diameter and close to the sheet metal top. If you sit on a dryer that is running quite often you will hear a horrible noise and smell burning rubber. I learned this by mistake years ago while climbing over a dryer that was running. Two bottles wasn't enough to push the top down enough, but the third large bottle was, and the squealing started.

Zinsco Cutler Hammer

Zinsco brand electric panels are a documented fire hazard. Installed mostly in the 1960's and 1970's, they do not trip at short circuit, and have an annoying habit of welding the breakers to the bus bar, so the breaker is still hot when in the off or tripped position. I have seen the neutral bar literally glowing orange from heat. Bad news. And there are a lot of them in the Seattle area, and in fact all over the country.

So yesterday I am at Magnolia doing an inspection and from across the room I see a Cutler Hammer (CH) panel cover screwed to a Zinsco box. I thought my eyes were going bad. I walk over and open it up. Some genius decided to gut the Zinsco panel, and place CH breakers inside. I really thought I had seen it all.

CH panels are wider, but not as tall as a Zinsco. The CH cover didn't cover the box. So they took the bottom part of the old Zinsco and trimmed it, then put the CH cover over the top. Of course the screws didn't line up since the CH cover was now on the Zinsco box, with part of a Zinsco cover between. So they drilled through the cover panel with self-tapping sheet metal screws. Into a box full of wires. I would say that this meets the true definition of a cluster fuck.

An electrical panel is what we call a listed device. It has been tested by regulatory authorities to meet certain parameters and is approved for residential buildings if installed according to instructions. You don't take the listed breakers and bus bars out of device and haphazardly throw them into a random box on the wall and mickey mouse some cover for it. Needless to say there was no electrical permit for this work.

In order to cut power the meter had the seal completely cut out, and the meter removed. They did the work and plugged the meter back on. City Light has not noticed the lack of meter seal. They could have been stealing power the entire time unbeknownst. It wasn't even artfully snipped, just pulled out. In order to get a meter seal you need an inspection, then you need City Light to come back out and reseal. This one aint getting no inspection, tell you what. With no meter seal City Light can literally disconnect the power. Nice.

Huskies Rule Baby!!

I am so steamed I am about ready to bust!!! For several reasons.

My friend Michael Kern took a job recently as director of the William Ruckelshaus Center. http://pcc.wsu.edu/ The center concentrates on public policy and collaborative problem solving, or as they put it, "voluntary collaborative approaches". Michael is the perfect person for the job, having studied and worked in public policy his entire life. I am not really sure what public policy is, but whatever it is, he is good at it. Chris Gregoire and Dan Evans and other well known and respected people are associated with the center. More to come I am sure. Blah blah blah. I'm not interested in that, nor is that what really pisses me off.

First let's just clear the air. "Voluntary Collaborative Approaches" are what you do when you are cruising for a hooker. Of course the center has other pretty words they have strung together too. Dilbert would be so proud:

"Policy development in multi-party dispute resolution, facilitation and mediation with public involvement and education to resolve complex and often controversial natural resource management issues". No, that wasn't an exact quote, but you get the gist.

Well whatever those words mean it is totally legit, since William Ruckelshaus was one of the few highly regarded, respected, and universally loved figures from the Nixon era. But during that same time period his son, Bill junior and I were beating the crap out of each other in 8th grade at Chinook Junior High in Bellevue. For a short wiry guy he had one hell of a fist. I could out-wrestle him, which was pretty amazing because I weighed 92 pounds at the time. He may have weighed 75 soaking wet. Lets just say I weigh well over double that now. I digress. Plus he was one hell of a good basketball player. Fast, good shot, good passer. Better than me there too.

So here's the second problem. This center is a collaborative approach between WSU and UW. WSU and UW do not collaborate! Are you kidding me?

Michael now has a WSU email address. Did the world spin on its axis? Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would see that! Michael is a die hard Husky.

So I tell Michael he is a turncoat, the worst kind of sell out, and tell him that despite all the respect in the world for the old man I would like nothing better than to smack Bill junior in the schnoz. And you know what Mr. Public Policy says?

"Nice to hear you could out-wrestle a guy half your size. If I’m going to foster cooperation on tough policy issues, what better way to begin than for a two-time Husky and lifetime member of the alumni association to work for WSU? You need to get over your tired prejudices."

Tired prejudices? Look I am OK with Muslims praying in lower Manhattan, I'm good with illegals picking my strawberries, and I have begrudgingly accepted the fact that women have the vote, but Husky and Cougar cooperation? Puhleaze. Not gonna happen

Read The Label

Looked at fixer in West Seattle yesterday. Sometimes you really do not need Superman's Xray vision or Sherlock Holmes' detective skills to do this job.

On one of the furnace service stickers dated January 2008, it clearly says "water in oil, blew out line, need new tank". Water getting into the buried tank means oil getting out. Receipts for subsequent oil purchases were seen, but no new tank. When questioned about this, the owner of the soon-to-be-foreclosed home said she didn't think it was important. Probably not if she wanted to have a mini BP in her backyard! And it may have been leaking for years undetected, like about half of all tanks. Yikes. Except in this case we have written proof of her knowledge of the defect. Of course being foreclosed makes it a bit more difficult to negotiate this, disclosed or not---a blood out of turnip kind of thing. So the prospective buyer was going to check on the PLIA coverage (State Department of Ecology Oil Cleanup Insurance Program) and possibly go for it, since the house was a smokin' deal.

Fireplace Glass

Within the last week or so I have run across two people who have damaged their gas fireplace glass in an attempt at cleaning. Fireplace glass is not like your household window, it is typically a high heat ceramic glass, or in some cases, tempered glass. Abrasive cleaners will scratch it, and Windex and other cleaners will not remove the whitish haze that appears. This haze is a mineral deposit left behind after the vapor is removed during gas combustion.

Wood and pellet burning fireplace glass also gets nasty dirty with creosote and must be cleaned, but again Windex won't cut it. Razor blades will eventually get creosote off, but they must be kept very wet while scraping the surface.

Viagra, I mean vinegar, and water is the best home remedy and will help cut the white haze as well as work fairly well on creosote. Of course adding water to the Viagra makes it hard to work with, but it does last a long time, and is ready at a moment's notice. Oven cleaner is also useful, as is salt and baking soda. The latter two might come in handy if you wanted to do some baking in the fireplace later.

Of course, as with all things, commercial cleaners are available. Amazon and Wal-Mart and fireplace stores carry fireplace glass cleaners.

When in Easton...

This article has been changed since initial publication July 17, 2010. Please see the postscript at the bottom.

Jason Dollemore and I have been friends for thirty years, so we can abuse each other pretty easily without any hard feelings. We have this unique ongoing game of one upsmanship. When we go out to eat neither one of us can seem to find our wallets, so we sit there, pushing the check back and forth across the table, sometimes for hours, trying to wait each other out, making the waiter feel really uncomfortable. The hope is the other will finally relent and pay because they need to be somewhere. Thankfully the cheap SOB lives on the other side of the mountains so I don't have to see him very often.

With that back story in mind and his recent job loss he decides to buy Easton. Easton, Washington, that is. The entire friggin' town, minus the saloon! We start out with the 4000 square foot general store. Then add the gas and diesel pumps, the propane sales, the firewood sales, the towing business, a restaurant, a four unit no-tell-motel that sits on top of the store, a huge shop, an impound yard, oh, and a falling-down rental house thrown in for good measure. So who does Jason call for a building inspection? Yeah, me. I figured after talking to him I could knock this thing out in three hours, you know, an afternoon's work and some entertainment wrangling over the bill for dinner that night.

Well I get into it and it turns out he is buying a building that was built by Native Americans about the turn of the century. Turn of the 18th century. The rental house was guarded by an attack dog who answered to "Cujo", and it had so much leaking sewage on the ground I thought I was at Brightwater. This POS rental house had more additions off the back than I have exes. At least three. Maybe four. I lost count in both cases. Six electric panels, several walk in freezers, two death trap furnaces exhausting god knows where, one crappy air conditioner, four or five falling down decks, a men's room, a women's room, an employee restroom, metal roofs with huge chunks just simply missing, and open parapets. Oh this is making me ill just writing about it.

It was hot and I was sweating. After listening to me complain for half an hour, Jason brought me something to drink from the store. A lukewarm Snapple. Diet Snapple! When I got done at close to 9pm he rewarded me a with a Pepsi. At least that one was cold.

The deal was Jason PROMISED he would take me to dinner afterwards to the finest Mexican restaurant in Cle Elum with no haggling over the bill. I told him I was mighty hungry. He told me to order whatever I wanted. I ordered the menu. The entire menu.

So after a lukewarm diet Snapple, a cold Pepsi and Cle Elum's finest Fajitas, he wanted a long formal report with pictures so he could beat up the seller. He had already beat me up, so why not the seller too? After about six hours of writing up the report from hell, I sent it to him. Figured with all that I could have him buy me dinner for life and get free reign of the store.

So two weeks later me and my parents and kids were traveling to Spokane, and naturally we stopped in Easton. I walked in the door and asked if he had any shopping carts cause I was GOING SHOPPING. I guess we were all tired from the drive and not really hungry, because I got a pack of gum and my dad got an ice cream bar. The kids might have gotten a bag of chips. Pretty weak.

Total tally was this huge inspection traded for:

(1) Berry Trident Gum

(1) Small bag of Lay's Potato Chips

(1) Ice Cream Bar

(1) Lukewarm Diet Snapple

(1) Cold Pepsi

(1) Veggie Fajitas

Since I really need to put the screws to Jason, next time you find yourself driving over I-90, go to the south side of the freeway towards town, stop at the general store, pick up whatever you want, and simply say,"put it on Darrell's tab", as you walk out the door.

Postscript: Jason Dollemore tragically and unexpectedly died January 22, 2011, at his home in Easton, mere months after purchasing the store. We are all devastated beyond words at this horrible loss of a universally loved 45 year old man. This blog entry is now my treasured tribute to his life and what he meant to his family and those lucky enough to be his friend. RIP JD: 3/15/1965 to 1/22/2011. He got to me once again, simply by dying. I can just hear his cackle----because I bought last time! He had the ultimate last word. Dying is no excuse you cheap bastard!

What the hell is going on here?

Today was a new experience. The place was in Monroe. This house was the new breed of fixer, the type where a someone buys a totally thrashed repo'ed house and does a bit of work to it and flips it for what seems like a bargain price. One in Tukwila last week was purchased for 84, and they turned it over for 199. This particular house was bought at about 100 and flipped over at 220 after painting and roof and remodeling the inside. Typically these flips are done by non-professionals, and it shows. Just like the flippers in the go-go years, flippers are notorious for poor quality work, general lack of construction knowledge, and, hate to say it, but maybe some cover up here and there too.

It was a rambler. The external perimeter walls inside had horizontal drywall cracks 18 inches up, some more visible than others. I had no idea why these cracks were everywhere, but not on the interior walls. Drywall comes in four foot high sheets, therefore the first break is at four feet. What drywall finisher wants to bend over at 18 inches and finish a joint, then finish another at five and half feet?

Built in 1972 my first thought was maybe it had aluminum wiring and was completely rewired, since the receptacle boxes were all at 19 inches (as typical). Nope. I opened up the old panel and it was all original copper, plus the interior walls were not touched. Then I saw the water heater, down two steps in the garage. The tank was new in 2006, but the tank after only four years was rusting all along the casing seams. After only four years! How is that?

Then it hit us. This house had flooded! I pulled a cover plate on a TV cable on an outside wall and saw new insulation below, and old above. I then pulled a cover plate on an interior wall. No insulation, but full of a black colored mold. The very ethical real estate agent made a beeline for the neighbor's to find out the truth that wasn't being told in the disclosure. Neighbors are always very good at that. My client then turned to me and said, "OK we're done". I never got into the crawlspace for the rest of the story.

The presumption is that the internal walls were not insulated, so after the flood the owner didn't think it was necessary to remove the drywall. Insulation held moisture at the outer walls so they cut in and removed it. The water heater was trashed by the flood of 2006 when it was brand new. Water got into the lining and the tank insulation held the moisture, which rusted it out.

It Was The Tequila Talking

Massachusetts has the toughest law. In that state (please don't ask me to spell that again), real estate agents cannot refer inspectors. Period. Whether real or perceived, the conflict, or potential for conflict of interest is too great, so they outlawed it. Here in our soggy corner, the local multiple listing service has a requirement that agents must disclose the full extent of each relationship with those that they refer to clients. Good idea I guess. I think maybe. Possibly. Sometimes. At least it would make for some interesting reading, wouldn't it?

So yesterday while doing a job I am discussing this with the agent that referred me. When we met at the condo me and the agent hugged, and the client hugged the agent too. No grab-ass, just a meaningful hug. That's just how we roll.

"So Mary," I said in front of the client, her boyfriend, and her two year old kid, "did you disclose the FULL extent of our relationship?" I was smirking (trying not to) and so everyone else started smirking as I was trying to set a tone.

"Purely Professional", was her measured response followed by her trademark cackle.

I paused thoughtfully and came back with, "yeah, except for that one night, many years ago, remember Mary? Lonely, moonless night, the grey Subaru, Renton Avenue....ringing any bells for you?"

Mary is very good, very quick, and I give her credit: "Darrell, that was the tequila talking that night, and in no way reflects on our professional relationship."

Furnace Ed

I was invited years ago to speak in front of a group of furnace techs as part of their continuing education requirement. Me? I'm just a home inspector, what could I possibly teach 50 furnace techs about their own business? I was scared to death, thinking they would rip me apart. Ed Besch invited me to do this, and Ed is no dummy, nor did he want to embarrass me.

He wanted to make a point with these guys and figured I could do it.
Ed is one of the most highly respected heating consultants anywhere (being director of the Oil Heat Institute for years among many other accomplishments), as well as being a genuinely nice guy that I consider a friend. If I had half the furnace and boiler knowledge he has forgotten, I would be happy. In fact I would be happy to somehow cling to one corner of his resume and catch things as they fell off!

Ed wanted me to talk about how furnace techs tend to get myopic. We had had this conversation before, so he knew it was a pet peeve of mine also. Furnace techs unfortunately get caught up in the minutiae of furnaces, overlooking integrity of the heat distribution piping, sealing of the vents to the floor, the cold air return system, combustion air, duct cleanliness, exhaust venting, the tightness of the house, and many other factors that play critical parts in occupant safety and comfort. A house is a system. A holistic system that interfaces with the occupants and the external environment. While it has individual component pieces, it also has the greater whole. A forest for the trees kinda thing.

Here's how it went the first time I became aware of this inherent myopia: Some poor schleb homeowner called a heating contractor to come fix a problem with water running out of his furnace exhaust pipe onto the basement floor. So he did what any good heat tech would do and cut a hole in the bottom of the exhaust and ran a pipe down to a newly installed condensate drain pump. Total damage $250 and change, issue solved. Problem is he neglected to even look up on the roof, so he failed to notice the cap on the furnace's metal flue pipe was missing. Rain was pouring down. A six dollar cap would have solved the problem.

Houses Are Just Like Women

The plumbing tends to go bad after a certain number of years. Leaks and drips inevitably occur.

Whatever your taste you can find one--short, tall, narrow, or wide. Big, small, or in somewhere in between. Well maintained, or in need of remodeling.

The latest way to find one is on the Internet.

Houses and women can both be abandoned and dumped on the open market.

The most attactive models receive multiple offers

They come in all colors of course. And if you don't like the color, that can be pretty easily changed too.

Young ones don't have the cracks, squeaks, or character of the old ones. We tend to appreciate both more as they age.

Each can have great bones.

Flashing is always desirable

Nothing like a set of well built hips.

Belly bands tend to be slimming.

Try to keep away from high maintenance models, they will only cost you money.

Foundation first, then the paint.

Most guys want to park their car in the garage every night. More than one car in a garage at a time can lead to problems though.

The drapes and the carpet should match. Many believe no carpet at all is the healthiest way to live.

They both keep you warm at night.