GLUTTuttuttONY and waste!

We went to an open house today in a wildly expensive yet predictably bland neighborhood where the homes are all named after British cities. (Sorry, England. I don't think you're boring.)

I know, what is the matter with us? We still live with boxes (boxen!) all around and our walls are so bare as to be banned by international laws regarding sensory deprivation. We have enough student debt to endow several tenured chairs and it beats us down and ties our butts to a tight little budget with long ribbons of receipts from the discount suburban life store. And still we leave our greasy noseprints on the window of affluence and wanton expense.

DEAR STUDENTS: LOAN PAYBACK SUCKS IF YOU CAN EVEN GET A JOB. YOU MIGHT AS WELL JUST GET DEPRESSED NOW.

ANyway.

The upside of the ridiculous house drooling (because even the expensive-bland is pretty sweet) was that the leaves here have gone berserk. Sadly, it's raining in Portland and soon they'll be so much fruity pebble debris; what a shock that is, right? Today it was still pretty and we drove around for a long while in our portable gutless living room (aka the hamster van).

We would have stayed out longer, but we had to get back for the DirectTV guys. You know how that is, how prompt they are. So they get here and notice that we have not one but TWO extravagant stories in our townhome. It's crazy unusual, right? And since we failed to notify them of the freakish nature of our home, they didn't have a ladder tall enough. Does rolling your eyes burn any calories?

That wasn't even the oddest thing about their little non-installation visit. One of them complimented my practising (Wagner pbbbbbt), then explained he studied cello at Juilliard for a while in '93.

And now he's a skinny scruffy install man who may love his job, but still! STILL! (I told you playing auditions sucks.)