Blue Monday

Won’t you be my neighbor?

I’m really sad. See, my neighbors are moving out. One of them left yesterday and the other one moves in a week or so. I live upstairs in a subdivided 1914 house and they’ve been living on the first floor. They have been the Best Neighbors Ever and I’m really going to miss them

We’ve eaten dinner together, argued about politics, shared leftovers, cared for the cat, taken in each others mail, forgiven each other’s trespasses, indulged each other in the flaws of our shared space. My boiler is in their basement, their kitchen is right below my bedroom. The house is near void of insulation and the noise travels. It’s a less than ideal arrangment and requires people who are considerate and trusting. You have to get along with each other if you’re going to live in this kind of house.

This week the real estate agent comes round to figure out how much the first floor is going to list for. Later, they’ll pound the for sale sign out front. I’m hugely anxious about this. What if my new neighbors smoke? J. is a tyrannical ex-smoker, he can’t stand to be near second hand smoke, it makes him crazy. What if they’re Republicans and they put a Condi/Arnie 2008 sign in the window? I would die from shame. What if they’re just inconsiderate louts who slam the door at 2am?

Okay, odds are they will be decent folks and yeah, maybe I’m worrying over this needlessly and/or excessively. But my neighbors, who, over the past two years, I have grown to adore not just as neighbors but as friends, are going to be a tough act to follow.

Another cuppa CAFE?

This weekend, our local paper ran a spread on why we’re so crabby about gas prices, seeing as they have tracked pretty consistently with milk over the past decade. They talked to various folks at the pump who were tanking up their ridiculously ineffecient vehciles while complaining about the price of gas. You, with the Volvo Cross Country? And you with the Ford Explorer? SHUT UP. Honest to god, I am sick of hearing you whine about gas prices while driving around in your huge ass wasteful machine.

Until we get it in to our thick collective heads that gas is not a right, that driving is not somthing protected by the military, that cars are a luxury item that have to be paid for, we can not address our fuel issues. Get a grip, already! Gas costs too much? Hello, stop driving all over the freakin’ place! And if you insist on doing so, drive something effecient, okay?

Join a carpool. Take the bus. Cash in your mega vehicle. Don’t do ANY of that, just stop driving so much, stop buying so much gas. Do something, already, but quit your whining at the gas pump.

I can’t help but think about those propaganda campaigns during WWII about conservation – save something for the war effort! You know the stuff I’m talking about. You know how our president keeps telling us we’re at war? Wouldn’t this be a good time to foster that kind of thinking? Instead, we have a new energy policy that doesn’t even include an increase in CAFE standards. They’ve got to be joking with that.

Something Fishy

Apparently we’ve just whacked back our salmon habitat by some crazy percentage – 80% – because the National Association of Home Builders experiences economic hardship through salmon protection. I mean, by not being allowed to build on protected habitat. If you’ve shopped for housing at all in my area, you know by now that your average condo on the hill is going to set you back at least 300,000. A building near us recently sold off their one bedroom basement units for 199000. I am having a hard time feeling the hardship of the homebuilders. Ever since I read that book about the salmon, I’m easily annoyed when policy chips away at their habitat. It’s not that I’m some rabid fish lover (though I do like a nice grilled Copper River, who doesn’t!) it’s just that the salmon are only one part of the ecosystem that includes our big trees, our beautiful rivers, clean water, tree hugging hippie world view ad infinitum.

Maybe I should go back to bed.

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