Pre-Moving: Cat Deprivation, Redundant Books, and Expiration Dates

I'm moving in with my fiancee this holiday weekend. My cat has already moved in with her. Susan says my cat is spending all her time in my future home office. She hides under the futon if Susan tries to pet her.

Meanwhile, I'm at my apartment alone, trying to pack, but I can't function properly because I have no cat here. What made me think it was a good idea to leave Stardust with Susan for three days? I'm sure Stardust was happy to avoid another pair of long car rides, but how am I supposed to function for three days without my cat?

Also, I would like to list here, for the sake of the historical record, the only fifteen books that Susan and I own redundant copies of. It is astounding that two people who each own as many books as Susan and I do have managed to own only fifteen of the same specific books. They are:

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams
Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past edited by Martin Bauml Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chancey, Jr.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the 17th Century to the Present edited by Lillian Faderman
The History of Sexuality, Volumes I and II by Michel Foucault
The Mismeasure of Man: The Definitive Refutation to the Argument of The Bell Curve by Stephen Jay Gould
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
Word's Out: Gay Men's English by William L. Leap
S/he by Minnie Bruce Pratt
The Sophie Horowitz Story by Sarah Schulman
The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
The Girls Next Door: Into the Heart of Lesbian America by Lindsy van Gelder and Pamela Robin Brandt

Seven novels, six nonfiction works, one literary anthology, and one prose poetry collection. Nine of the fifteen are specifically queer - a shared interest that helps explain why we both own them. One of the others is a politically left-wing, anti-prejudicial nonfiction work, and another is a novel by a Chinese-American woman writer whose work has been included in many efforts to make the traditional literary canon more inclusive. The James Joyce one made its way into both of our collections because it's so firmly entrenched in the traditional, uninclusive canon. The two Douglas Adams ones are firmly entrenched in the pop-cultural canon, and the remaining one . . . well, I don't have the slightest idea why we we both happened to own the Wally Lamb novel.

We also have two CDs in common - Come Dancing by The Kinks and Transformer by Lou Reed. We'd have more than that if I counted the ones where one or both of us has the cassette instead, but I haven't had time to count those yet.

In other news, it is also astounding how much stuff one can get rid of just by going through one's kitchen and bathroom cabinets looking for expiration dates. Why did practically every single perishable item I own expire in 2006? Probably because I last moved in late 2005.

Home Prices in Detroit

This is how bad a mess our economy is in. Here are some current housing prices in Detroit:

$99 total (less than $1 per month) for a 2-unit condo, 2,352 Sq Ft

$300 total ($1 per month) for a duplex, 2,544 Sq Ft on 9 Acres

$4,900 total ($22 per month) for a 5-bedroom house, 2,165 Sq Ft

$7,900 total ($35 per month) for a 5-bedroom house, 2,974 Sq Ft on 0.14 Acres

$8,925 total ($39 per month) for a 5-bedroom house, 3,500 Sq Ft on 0.19 Acres

People paid real money for those homes, at one time. People probably spent the majority of their life savings on those homes, at one time. Now the homes are worth less than many used cars are worth.

Meanwhile, the median sale price for a home right here in Sacramento County dropped to $185,000 in November, down more than 50% from the August 2005 peak of $387,000. People spent their life savings on $387,000 houses in 2005, and more than half their life savings just melted away; they got nothing for it.

Granted, a large number of people buying homes in 2005 put no money down, and have paid so little since then that going into foreclosure won't cost them any more money than they would have spent on rent. But some minority of people saved their hard-earned money and paid 20% down, which in 2005 in this area would have been around $75,000. And then they paid responsibly each month after that, so now perhaps they've paid $150,000. But half the value of the home has melted away. That's $75,000 of some family's money, just carted away in the trash.

As a non-homeowner who would like to buy a house in a year or so, I'm happy to see prices coming down into more reasonable territory. But how can you not be disturbed by the thought of how much money some people lost during this bubble? And how many years sooner could I have bought a home myself, if the bubble had never happened at all?

View from My Apartment Balcony in the Fog This Evening

My mother spent 25 years longing to escape the Sacramento Valley tule fog, before my parents retired to their current house above the fog line. Now she sends me photographs of her view down onto the top of the fog, because she can't get enough of not having to be underneath it. I, however, would sorely miss the tule fog if I ever moved out of the valley. I wouldn't miss much else about the valley (the native plant life is far more intact in the foothills, for example), but I'd miss the tule fog. And the weird orange color it gives to the sky at night, when it picks up the yellow incandescent street lights and bounces it around everywhere, not letting it go. This is the view from my balcony right now.




I'm only moving to another part of the Sacramento Valley, though, so I won't have to miss the tule fog. It will still be there for me every winter, all winter long. I just won't see it from this particular balcony anymore.