Fiberoptic cable, more exactly. While the water pipes remain frozen and the toilet remains broken, the fiber guys were here as soon as the deadly cold withdrew. Â (It is now zero degrees Celsius here, the freezing point of water. Or perhaps melting point of snow, although I see no sign of that. Â It’s generally been -3 to -1 most of the week. Feels almost like spring, but the frozen water pipes probably don’t feel the same way.)
So the irony is that now I have super fast Internet access, but not water. Â I am a pretty computer-oriented person, but I think it should be obvious which of these is the most important. Â So, I won’t be moving in until the water pipes are thawed. The landlord believes that there is no damage except for the broken toilet, which he has promised to get replaced. Hopefully he is right. Â This means we won’t break up the floor. Â This means it won’t cost any of us a fortune. But it also means the pipes probably won’t thaw until the ground under the house has been above freezing for a few days. Â (Having a comfortable room temperature for a few days certainly does not seem to have made an impression.) Which could, in the most extreme case, be until spring.
Luckily the landlord at the old place is no longer in any hurry to get me out. Â So if that’s the way fate wants it, I may stay there until spring. Â This is attractive in the sense that I get to continue ferrying stuff over, one carrying bag or backpack at a time. Â It is repulsive in the sense that I have to pay rent for two houses all winter. Â This seems a likely outcome since I have been less than impressed by the economic sense of a friend who ended up owning two houses for several seasons. Â It is not something that makes me look down on people, exactly, but I would not hire them as an economic advisor either. Â So it only makes sense that I get to walk a few months in their shoes, in a manner of speaking.
I can almost afford it, too. Â I will have to borrow a little each month, but it is not like I have to borrow the whole amount for the old rent. Â I used to have enough left over to buy a new computer every few months, remember. So it is more an attrition than a disaster.
No, the really bad part is that you can’t access my home server from the super fast optic cable. Â You know you want to listen to my music, or watch anime that was never officially released in English. Â But for now, not only is my main computer down, but the remaining machine is connected to a router that randomly decides that the Internet is not a good place for young computers to be, and so you just get an error message when you try to connect to trine.itlandm.operaunite.com/ . Â Of course, you can always try again later. Â But it probably won’t be stable until I move here.
Speaking of which, it is time to log out and wander off to the bus again. Â At least I get some time for brainwave entrainment this way. Â I did say I wanted a longer commute, right? Â Actually it isn’t much longer in time, since most of the road is quite good and there are fewer stops. Â But a little more it is. Almost exactly 40 minutes, which is the length of one LifeFlow entrainment track.
I assume I am the friend with two houses to whom you refer …
Well, if you want to admit it yourself… ^_^
We all have our strengths and weaknesses, but I don’t think I’ve ever claimed to be an economic advisor. When our house finally sold (in the horrible market), we did end up with roughly twice what we had invested in it. Take ten or fifteen thousand dollars off that for two years of rent, but factor in the fact that the reason we had two house payments for that long was because we moved from a district where we were miserable to a district where we are very happy and we consider it money very well spent. We had enough to put down on this place and get a low fifteen year mortgage payment, get a new vehicle with low payments to replace my old high-mileage one, get a storm shelter added to this one, replace the septic system out here, and buy some cattle (which should eventually pay for themselves with their calves and their beef, as well as provide agricultural property tax status), pay off our credit cards and take a vacation, plus have a little left over for a small savings account in case of dire emergencies. All in all, we’re ok. We don’t understand the intricacies of economics, but we’re ok and have had faith through the lean times that we’d be all right in the end, and sure enough we have (hopefully) come out the other side smelling like a rose!
Hey, no need to get the quills out, God is already giving me flak for doubting you guys, right? Otherwise I would not have mentioned it.
I don’t exactly have the quills out . . . not exactly! One just tends to be a little defensive over such things! Financial ignorance is not anything to be proud of, especially when you’ve finally gotten it behind you and it is unexpectedly aired again! Still, though, I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Moving was worth it, a hundredfold, even if we hadn’t come out as well as we did. Starting over from scratch, even at our advanced age, would very nearly have been worth it, just to get away from the direction our previous district was going.
Incidentally, the book I am reading (The Philosophy of Progress) has quite a bit about the importance of optimism. It is evidently too important to leave to the optimists! And it’s even your kind of optimism, the one where you do your best and then hope for the best, not the one where you hope you won’t have to do anything.
Optimism is a good thing. The faith/Faith that you can, indeed, keep going through almost anything and that things will get better is a strong shield and comfort. Of course, though, you have to do what you can to make things better. Passive optimism seems like a fairly certain path to disappointment for most people. I suppose it could work if you are very, very detached and disinterested in the external world, but in that case I’m not sure why you’d bother being either optimistic or pessimistic, because whether the world improved or became worse would matter little to you. Is that not true?