How the other half lives

I was sitting in Sam's the other day reading Martha Stewart Living, which I'm sure would horrify Martha. There are very few Good Things at Sam's Club.

In the magazine I learned that in Martha's world, we don't get out flower pots from Lowes, we get our flower pots from artisan flower pot makers in rural Vermont or Connecticut who create each pot by hand in a gorgeous rustic barn. These lovely hand thrown pots also come with the name of our manor house engraved in them and while they are pretty, they are hardly winter tolerant and they have to be brought inside. She does admit that amassing a collection of these  beautiful, collectible flower pots is an "investment".

On the other hand, in  Diana's World,  my pots are made by Chinese political prisoners in  ugly, fortress prisons and the pots come engraved with their point of origin. My pots live outside year around and I use them until they snap apart in my hands or they get icky with bugs at which point I either recycle them away or if they are really icky, I throw them away. I do admit that amassing a collection of these cheap, ugly plastic bins is hardly an investment.

Speaking of spending a lot of money for something.  I went to another open house in the nab. I have been watching the property slowly getting renovated over the last couple of months or so and  I noticed in the days before I left for vacation they had  started trying to dial up its non-existant curb appeal. It looks like an orphan piece of base housing but I guess that a more charitable way of describing it would be "mid-century gem".

It's more like a diamel.  I noticed in the literature that they talked up the living/dinning/kitchen spaces and the large deck without mentioning the really, really, really little bedrooms. The place is tiny, but it is a really nice place and they did a remarkable job with it. It does have covered parking and a nice yard and if you are looking for downtown living you could do worse for a lot more.

I had a nice chat with the realtor and I mentioned in passing  that the night her neighbors down the street  needed to dump a body, they went right through her yard to dump it at the end of my street, she countered that they had fenced the yard. And then I asked how how much they were asking ... When I stopped laughing, I told them they weren't going to get that and that it was priced close to my neighbors renovated house that only sold after it was on the market for ten months and the price was reduced $50k from the original asking. The realtor countered with an apocryphal story of a slightly larger house a block over that went for the same price in only four days. I countered with that a block over it was in a historic neighborhood and people are stupid. In the neighborhood she's in, she's going to have to pray for a real moron.