A few nice vacation sell off images I found:
Gordon // Neighbor's House // Attempted Suicide
Image by 666isMONEY ☮ ♥ & ☠
According to the Assessor's records, Gordon bought this house in 1986, a few years after I moved in next door. Landlord abandoned my house, I paid a lien for nursing-care off (the woman who built my house went into a County nursing home) & obtained ownership in 1991.
We were good neighbors, no need for a high fence. I considered Gordon a brother, he was a year younger than I. He developed a genetic, degenerative disease, which progressively got worse.
He would grunt & groan really loud. I asked, "why don't U take pain meds"? He said he disliked feeling dizzy from the meds. At night he got relief from playing his piano, drinking one beer and eating a marijuana-laced brownie.
He kept telling me, "I wish I could die." I told him I read an article in the "New York Times" where U can buy pentobarbital at veterinary pharmacies in Mexico (60-miles from home), it's recommended for suicide.
Two months ago, I took a short vacation. Gordon would watch my house & feed the cats whenever I was away. He told me he was going to live with his sister in June & would give the house to his friend, Christian. I told him, "Why go, I'll take U to the store and do things 4 U!"
When I got back from vacation, Gordon called. His tone of voice seemed kinda strange. He welcomed me back from my trip. It felt like his last goodbye. A week or two later, he swallowed a bunch of pain meds. It woulda killed him except, he took a bunch of blood-pressure meds with it. He also didn't tie a plastic bag around his head, like it says in the suicide manuals. Gordon called 911. Cops found suicide notes. They threw him in the nut-house after he recovered.
Christian went to visit him. I figured Gordon would come back home but he didn't, I never really got to talk to him again.
I told Christian to tell Gordon that two of my best friends (they're twins that I think Gordon knows) have been professional, in-home health care providers for the State of Arizona and Catholic Community services. One of 'em was a State Representative, they've been doing this work for more than 20-years, eat healthy, vegetarian foods, love cats and live only three blocks away. I'm sure Gordon's premium insurance company would pay for it.
One of Gordon's sisters, who is a fanatic "Christian" wanted Gordon to sell the house and stay with her. That's what Gordon did. He used a bitchy, nasty, pushy friend of his to sell it. I told her to let me know how much Ur selling it for. She said she would after she got it appraised.
Yesterday, this "CAT" front-end loader showed up and started dozing Gordon's front yard. I asked the workers, "When is the house going to be for sale"? They said, "It already sold." I was shocked 'cause I was interested in buying it. I said, WTF, "who bought it, are they friends of Gordon's"? "No, friends of Jan," the pushy, nasty friend of Gordon's.
Sure enough, records show the house sold for k on 18 June. I was pissed. Called Jan and said, "how come U didn't tell me the house was for sale, I would-have paid more?" She said the sister was in a hurry to sell, plus a lot of other stuff, including a bizarre, lie or misunderstanding about me. I'm thinking of filing an ethics complaint with the State Board of Real Estate.
I feel betrayed & hurt by Gordon. Hope he doesn't feel the same when his sister pushes him into a hospice to die.
Gordon had a bad attitude toward God. I figured one of these days maybe he would experience God. I asked Christian if he thought Gordon's personality changed after his suicide attempt. Christian didn't see anything but it's hard to tell. Gordon was also on anti-depression meds (Cymbalta) after the attempted suicide. Many ppl who have had Near Death Experiences, who have "seen God," have had dramatic personality change, where U no longer fear death but feel peace.
Gordon was a lot like me. We lived like hermits. He had one loving relationship he talked about that lasted a few years. Neither of us got married or had any kids.
Last thing I said to Gordon (one-minute phone-conversation) after his foiled suicide (besides, "Good-Bye") was, "I'll miss U!" Last thing he said to me (besides, "good-bye") was, "Well I gotta go, I'm busy with business." Kinda ironic 'cause I say that to a friend who calls me several times every day.
EDIT: Told my best-friend, Jennifer about this, she said if I owned the house she would-have rented it from me. Gordon knew Jennifer. Woulda been really nice to have Jen next door paying off my loan. Coulda-probably made a deal with Christian too so he could-have continued to use the guesthouse as a music studio.
After my last conversation with Jan, I sent her this email: "It seems unethical that U didn't get a bid from me to buy the house when I told U I was interested." She then left a crazy message on my answering-machine.
Talked to Christian the other day on the phone and thought, "Jan must be a lunatic!" Sure enough, read this court case [link removed] posted on the website of the AZ Court of Appeals, Division Two:
"The record and evidence established that [Jan] suffers from a delusional disorder that causes her to believe she is the victim of an organized conspiracy whose participants include her former husband, her former employer, the Tucson Police Department (TPD), and certain TPD employees. "After three psychological examinations and a hearing pursuant to Rule 11, Ariz. R. Crim. P., the trial court found [Jan] mentally ill but competent to stand trial."
EDIT (27 June): The company that managing the property is a reputable company that I don't think I will have a problem with. :)
EDIT (14 July): Removed last names, tags & link.
EDIT (18 June 2013): House sold for k shortly after pic was taken, some work was done on the house but not near enough work to justify the 5k Jan (through her real estate company) is asking for it now.
* This photo has notes, click the link below or click & mouse-over the pic to see 'em.
Map-link shows the neighborhood, within one mile.
Red's famous lobster stand
Image by Steve Guttman NYC
By ABBY GOODNOUGH in the New York Times
Published: July 30, 2010:
WISCASSET, Me. — The summer traffic backups in this village of old sea captains’ homes are infamous in Maine, lines of inching cars and trucks that seem to extend all the way into autumn.
The Sottnik family, on vacation from their home in Parker, Colo., eating lunch after standing in line for more than an hour at Red’s Eats in Wiscasset, Me.
An employee finishes assembling one of the lobster rolls for which Red’s is famous. The sandwich sells for .95.
Some blame gawking drivers, or the short, tight curve of U.S. 1 heading into town, or the lower speed limits in the historic district.
Others say it’s the fat, buttery lobster rolls at Red’s Eats, a seafood shack with a fanatical following that sits hard along the highway here, just before the bridge out of town.
“I’ve seen people stop their cars and jump out just to take a picture,” said Frank Risell, who owns a bed-and-breakfast in Wiscasset. “Day and night, it’s a problem.”
For at least half a century, townspeople have fervently debated how to solve the traffic problem.
They have considered putting a pedestrian bridge over U.S. 1, removing the parking spots along it or even spending 0 million to build a bypass around the town, an option that gained momentum this spring when federal officials approved a route for it.
But Mr. Risell is among a handful of people circulating an even bolder idea: moving Red’s, which, in various incarnations, has drawn crowds to the corner of Main and Water Streets since the 1930s.
“My message to Red’s,” said Morrison Bonpasse, who lives in neighboring Newcastle and leads a community group opposed to the bypass option, “is, ‘You’re a wonderful business, you’re good people, but please, you have to move.’ ”
His group, Route One Alternative Decisions, dismisses the proposed bypass as a waste of money — and eventually of gas, since it would take drivers on a longer route. In addition to moving Red’s, they want a pedestrian bridge or tunnel, off-street parking and other less costly alternatives. “It just seems like an awful lot of money to waste on a seasonal issue,” Mr. Risell said of the bypass plan. “In the middle of winter, you could go out and sleep on Route 1.”
Others, including Sean Rafter, a ninth-generation Wiscassetite, want a bypass but not along the federally approved route, which the Army Corps of Engineers in May deemed the “least environmentally damaging” of three proposed corridors. Mr. Rafter — who, like Mr. Risell, lives near that route — said it would keep traffic too close to town, ruin the view of the tidal river that borders it and displace too many residents who would have to surrender their land.
He, too, would like to see Red’s move. But state transportation officials, who have studied the traffic problem for decades, said the lobster shack was only a small piece of it.
“The vehicles are already pretty well stopped at that point,” said Kat Beaudoin, chief of planning for the Maine Department of Transportation. “So it’s hard for us to conceive that that is all of the problem.”
Debbie Cronk, who took over Red’s with her siblings after their father, Allen Gagnon, died in 2008, has refused to even respond to the idea.
“I don’t want to give them any ammunition,” she said minutes after Red’s opened on Thursday, a line of customers already snaking around the corner in sweaty pursuit of the .95 lobster roll. “It’s an institution. It’s an icon.”
Ms. Cronk said she would not reveal where she stood on the bypass issue because her customers were divided over it. She did, however, say that business has been “fabulous” this season, that Red’s was just written up in a Norwegian newspaper and that her new book, “Red’s Eats: World’s Best Lobster Shack,” written with Virginia Wright, was doing well.
Ms. Beaudoin said that some 25,000 vehicles passed through Wiscasset on peak summer days, compared with roughly 15,000 in the winter, and that the state hoped to move ahead with the bypass project.
“If we walk away today on the basis of Wiscasset’s dislike,” she said, “we are not coming back. We would have such a hard time reinitiating the process and getting through the environmental regulations. It’s not getting any easier, and the money is getting scarcer.”
Shopkeepers on Main Street, as U.S. 1 is known in town, are as divided as everyone else on the bypass. Some think it would hurt business to divert traffic around the town; others, like Robert Snyder, an owner of American Antiques & Folk Art, said it would save Wiscasset.
“We want people to come to town,” Mr. Snyder said, “but we also want the right kind of business. Nobody wants more and more and more tourists. Nobody would benefit from that — except maybe Red’s.”
Even Red’s customers, he posited, must not like “sitting there and getting truck exhaust blown in their face.” The shack is too tiny for indoor seating, so diners eat at picnic tables out back or stand on the street — a less attractive option not only because of traffic, but because precious bits of lobster might tumble to the ground.
Ms. Beaudoin said a completed bypass was 10 years away at the very least. Mr. Snyder said he no longer expected to see it in his lifetime, and Mr. Rafter, whose mother asked that her ashes be driven across the bypass once it was built, has wondered whether his own children will have to do him the same favor.
Outside Red’s, some who waited in lines of up to an hour this week said they would keep coming regardless of whether a bypass someday diverts drivers around town. Patrick McMenemy of Saco, Me., said he could not help stopping every time he passed through.
“You figure if the lines are that long,” he said, “it has to be good.”
I Think They're Missing the Point of "Wilderness Area"
Image by Clinton Steeds
So, if I recall correctly, there are only 100 off-trail passes given out each day at Temeculah Gorge. The passes sell out within the first half hour on weekends, and they can't be reserved ahead of time. Everyone else has to stay on a trail made of rubber and a walkway made of wood or face an enormous fine.
To me, this seemed to be telling nightowls/late risers, night workers, casual explorers, spontaneous visitors, and people who think that overplanning their vacations misses the point of vacations that they can go fuck themselves.
It took an hour of walking the trails before my sense of wonder at this amazing place overcame my sense of offense and deep insult so I could enjoy myself. Even now, nearly a year later, I find myself getting angry at this gross overmanagement, this idea that enjoying the outdoors without ever setting foot on earth would seem like a reasonable idea to anyone.
