2020 YOU SUCK

Hay Holiday Letter of Truth

Being negative and making fun of my mistakes used to be fun and funny for a Christmas letter, but 2020 was just an all around shitshow for all of us, so this feels a bit off, tasteless, and dated. But that's how I roll. Bear with me as I try to be positively negative about all the crazy and stupid of last year.

Remodel Shenanigans

It started out innocently enough, as all remodel projects do. Blow out a few ridiculous '70s walls here and there, remodel the kitchen, remodel the master bathroom, add a window in a dark room in the basement, and paint everything. Probably won't cost more than $100,000 and be done in four months. 

The old remodeling adage is "double the money and triple the time." That turned out to be perfectly accurate. Note to self; time should be quadrupled. Add a heapin' helpin' of scope creep (replace every window, remodel every bathroom), toss in some covid slowdown, add some asbestos remediation, and here we are. 

Julie and I have been living in her condo in Mill Creek during the remodel. The house is basically done, and it is nice, but we are moving back in the day after Christmas----without appliances, more than a year after gutting it. Oven, microwave, and cooktop are back-ordered, like most appliances of late, due to covid shutdowns of the manufacturing plants. We got sick of waiting, so we will move in and use the stove in the rental unit in the basement. And the house still needs a new roof and heat pump.....and is not within walking distance of great Pho, Fred Meyer, and the bus, like the condo is. Oh sigh.

Better To Be Pissed Off Than Pissed On

When we move JP and Rafi and granddaughter Lilah are going to move into the condo so they can clean up and sell their Lake City condo and get a house. While they realize there is no carpet on the stair landing, they may not fully understand the reason why. They also will discover that the flooring needs replacing in the powder bathroom and the baseboard trim in the entry is swollen badly, all because of this monster:

Oh yeah, she may look cute. But don't let that fool you. We gave her the benefit of the doubt initially. Oh poor baby you must be sick. Took her to the vet; nothing wrong. Oh poor baby you must be emotionally upset because everyone is home 24/7 during covid and here's some calming herbs. Oh poor baby Darrell is a scary man---he won't raise his voice at you in the house anymore for PISSING EVERYWHERE. That must be why you are pissing everywhere. Well, none of those things worked. What worked was taking her off her diet. It was a urine manipulation for more food. #vindictivepee She got fed more and the peeing immediately stopped. Now she weighs twice as much as that picture, can barely jump up on the counter to get water from the sink, and the house doesn't stink like a feline urinal. Anyway, JP and Rafi are gonna have to deal with it, because the cat is staying with the condo.  That's life in the city. Deal. We are trying to arrange a four way cat trade with Kelsey and Rachel. Not going well. I initially wanted $250,000 and a draft choice to be named later, but will settle for someone taking the cat. Please, JP, do not let Rafi see this Christmas letter, it can only be bad things.

Broken Lock

Covid has been a complete pain in the ass for the apartment business because of the eviction moratorium. First, evictions are a large percentage of the joy. Second, the quality of potential tenants has fallen off a cliff. In a weak moment I let a woman move into one of my buildings (the one with awesome tenants and no drama) with a charity paying her rent. She was personally below the typical standard, but had guaranteed rent, so no need to evict during a moratorium I thought. 

Oh yeah the rent gets paid, but she has issues, and her criminal son immediately moved with his girlfriend(!) into the tiny one bedroom apartment and they began running his drug dealing and stolen goods fencing business in my building. Yup, power tools, yelling, banging at midnight, overflowing dumpster, debris all over, fights with "customers" in the parking lot at 3am. The other tenants of course really appreciate all this. Warnings and threats from the people paying her rent don't help, and there is literally nothing that can be done with the eviction moratorium still in place. Tenants are scared of this punk, but the only exception to the eviction rule is if there is a credible threat of bodily harm that can be brought before a judge. We don't quite have that threat level, say the lawyers. 

This woman told me she did not want to use the laundry room after I coincidentally had broken lockboxes on machines after she and her friends were seen in there. So I changed the combination lock on the laundry room door to keep the riff raff out. I gave the new combination to all the OTHER tenants. Not twelve hours later someone took a crowbar to the door.  Because rather than make a phone call for the new combination, when you really need to do laundry, naturally you would just take a crowbar to it, amiright? Way easier.

After I heard this I went to assess damage to the door, lock, and machines, and stepped inside the room. The door closed behind me and locked (despite being broken). I was locked in my own closet sized laundry room. Thank you 2020. 

Port Angeles 

Kelsey and son-in-law Sean moved from Missoula to Port Angeles this fall. Guess who hauled two trailer loads of stuff from Montana? Yeah that's right, the same guy who is going to get one hell of a lot of help moving day after Christmas. 

Tucson

I bought a condo in Tucson this spring to rent and use. Furnished it, and have made a couple trips down there to clean up after tenants and hang out. I was gifted a one year warranty on the place. 

Being skeptical I have always thought these warranties were kind of a scam, but not going to turn down something free. The condo had two nasty old 1986 air conditioners and two water heaters. One water tank began leaking. It was replaced for the $75 deductible. One AC quit and was repaired for the deductible. The other AC then quit and was completely replaced for the $75 deductible. The dishwasher quit and was replaced for the $75 deductible. Only eight months in I can only hope the other water heater begins leaking soon, because I'm beginning to get sick of all this winning.

Going Rogue

Blade has been living in New York for about five years and finally got a New York driver's license. He is thrilled whenever he can drive---because subway. Anyway fresh license in hand he is driving his girlfriend's Nissan SUV somewhere in Pennsylvania and a car cuts right in front of them. I kinda wished it was his fault, because this story would be way more interesting. Yeah they were fine, but stick to the subway.

Reno

So there I was, flying to Seattle on an Alaska Airlines 737 at 40,000 feet last month. I have mostly driven to Tucson because covid. For this trip it was fly. Wearing an N95 mask and a face shield I start smelling this horrible burning plastic/electrical smell. Suddenly the pilots pull the power but don't put the nose down and we get into a tail wagging situation in coffin corner (look it up if you care, not getting into all that), like the yaw damper is off and I'm thinking what the hell are they hand flying for? Then the spoilers come out and we begin a high dive. Truly an emergency. We level out at 14,000. I'm following along on my iPad in ForeFlight so I can see exactly what we were doing, speed, location and altitude.

The smoke is really nasty, people are coughing, pulling their masks off, and looking scared. No announcement.Flight attendant moves a woman up next to me who rips off her mask and can't stop shaking, thinking we were gonna die. I can literally see Reno airport 15 miles distant, clear skies. OK let's land this bad boy, or depressurize and lose the smoke. NOPE. They get on and announce we are going to Sacramento. SACRAFREAKINGMENTO!! That's 25 minutes away. The pilots had on smoke goggles and oxygen and were good. We had just deal in the back. We land in Sacramento and no one from Alaska Airlines or SFD asks if we are OK. Basically here you are in the terminal, one announcement and there you go.  Covid masks may work for virus, but not for inflight fire. The news reports said there were "no injuries"....not sure how they know because no one asked us. My lungs hurt for a week. 

Alaska sent us all a discount code for $200 on a future flight. I thanked them for that and asked them in email why we didn't just land in Reno, I would have preferred landing in Reno and breathing 25 minutes less smoke to their $200 coupon. The response? Well (paraphrasing) "they made the decision to land in Sacramento because of a longer runway".  I looked it up. We landed on an 8600 foot runway in Sacramento. Reno is 11,000. This all reminds me of the 2000 Alaska accident when they used to have annoying prayer cards tucked into every meal, but neglected to grease the jackscrew and killed everyone on board over California. "More grease, less prayer card" was the phrase I gave them twenty years ago.  Maybe their 2020 theme could be, "Land the fucking airplane NOW, idiot." 

https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2020/11/23/plane-makes-emergency-landing-at-sacramento-international-airport/

5-2 Wedding

So my sister got married this spring. Normally that's not worthy of the Christmas letter, except it was a Zoom wedding. Right as they were going for the kiss their internet connection went down. Classic. The best part is her name is Five. Yeah, it's her nickname, and she doesn't particularly like it, but being her second wedding it is very easy for me to remember her anniversary: May 2.  5-2.  Could not have asked for a better date for my sister for her second wedding. Good job guys.