Category: Random

The NY Times, in their emailed morning news articles, had the story of a pair of players in a former string Quartet who are being forced to give up their instruments to settle a bankruptcy debt. They declared bankruptcy after they lost a legal battle against a former quartet member. Their instruments (and bows) are valued at $166,o00.

From the NY Times article:

“I don’t have words for this,” said Clyde Shaw, the quartet’s cellist. “The letters and notes I’m getting from around the country – the musicians in this country are shocked. They are floored by this decision. It upsets the world that we live in.”

I don’t pretent to be an expert in bankruptcy law. It’s my understanding that the agent in charge of bankruptcy liquidation may not seize the tools necessary for a person to continue their livelihood. That being said, is it really that critical to downgrade from a $166,000 set of instruments to ones rated at (say) $40,000?

In a lot of respects, I’m a musical moron, and this is probably one of them. How much of a cellist’s livelihood comes from people who pay to hear them, yet cannot distguish the difference between a one hundred thousand dollar instrument and a five thousand dollar one? If it’s a high ratio of people like them to people who really hear the difference, then who cares, really?

I guess the thing that jumped me most from this article was the implied difference between these people’s musical instruments and another person’s house, which might be seized in a bankruptcy case. Class warfare, anyone?

For the last few months, a developer has been bulding a twelve-home subdivision down the road a bit. They have signs up advertising them for “from the high 700’s” and we’d been meaning to mosey down and take a tour, just to see what a house of that price looks like.

Very impressive, although it’s more impressive from a sheer space perspective than from a “quality” perspective. These houses were thrown up at the maximum rate possible, but they still look nice. The house we toured had a HUGE master suite with a walk-in closet bigger than existing master bathroom and closet combined. This is a 5 bedroom, 5.5 bathroom monster with more space than we’d know what to do with. Our existing house and furnishings would be swallowed up by the ground floor with plenty of room leftover for other furnishings.

On the first floor is the master suite, as mentioned, and a sitting room, a dining room, a room we’re not sure what it would be for. The kitchen suite with a setup that is not precisely well-designed for cooking, the maid suite, the three-car garage, and of course the deck outside. The second floor has three bedrooms, each with a bathroom; a room overlooking the backyard that we decided would be a craft room, and of course all of the cathedral ceiling space the downstairs is taking up. The basement has a bedroom suite with bath, a “media room” which I personally think is badly designed for acoustics. a utilities room, a wine cellar, and about 4 other rooms that we don’t know what they are for.

Suffice to say, this almost $900k house was amazingly big, but I don’t know what the heck we’d do with the space. If we had another person living with us, plus a live-in housekeeper, and a family, we just might fill it, but otherswise, I don’t know…

The Joys of Home Ownership. I think this may become a recurring series. Today’s fun fiasco was the cause of much rejoicing, let me tell you.

Item A: Whoever designed our bathroom floor was a foolish person. They did not understand the cardinal rule of hydrology: “Water flows downhill.” If/When we redesign our bathroom, we will not have a tile floor around the tub, toilet, and shower that has a 3/4 inch lip higher than the attached carpeting for the vanity.

Item B: When your toilet, which is situated as the closest fixture to said carpet (unlike the tub and shower which have built-in, designed-for water catching devices) decides to deposit the contents on the floor, thusly soaking adjacent rug, mat, tackstrips, plywood with the a nice stew of bacteria, it’s a pain in the butt.

Item C: When I go into business for myself, it will be a disaster recovery business. Granted, the soaking of fifteen square feet of carpet with black water is not a “disaster” but it does qualify along those lines when a homeowner does not have access to the necessary equipment to deal with the important parts of the incident. Namely, the unpleasant portions of the water which are happily lodging in the crevices of wood, tile, and carpet.

Item D: It’s amazing how ironic this incident was, because my office flooded last weekend due to the coffeemaker supply line breaking on Friday night and leaving the better part of 3,000 gallons of water to be discovered on Sunday. We just got rid of the dehumidifiers and centrifugal fans today and now I’ve got one in my bedroom. Yee ha.

As I said, ” The Joys of Home Ownership.” No longer can I merely call the landlord and let him/her deal with the problem. However, it’s nice to be able to know exactly what you’re going to do about the problem, subject only to your skills and pocketbook.

Tomorrow, we can talk about termites!