Archive for March, 2008

Spring 2008

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

First day of spring, and time to move on to the next location. Kind of glad to be out of here; although it makes the commute to work easy enough, being on the shady side of a large hill makes for gloomy light conditions for much of the rainy season. Not a far move and closer than some, the next driveway down is a good neighbor and she could really use some help getting her home in a little better condition after being neglected for a while.

Part of it will be easy, there’s boxes to put into the quonset hut storage and cleaning up and straightening out sorts of things, plenty of experience doing that – some consider me an expert enough to make a business out of it. Just a little bit more difficult are the repairs, already got hot and cold running water going but the roof needs some looking into. It’s simple enough, rolled on asphalt and tar paper over sheathing but haven’t lifted the huge tarp up yet to see where and how someone previously has tried to mitigate the damage from leaks.

Hoping the existing sheathing and trusses holding them up haven’t rotted out too far, much bigger job if that’s the case and more than I could do in the couple of short weeks there before heading off to the next house and dog sitting gig. There are lots of gardens well fenced from the deer and the chickens make the best alarm clock, and with a bit of work (she’s into and can do gardening but too old for the other stuff) it’s a nice little spread in a bit sunnier location and lots of privacy.

A satellite dish is on the roof, probably a decoder around somewhere too because the local cable guys need to see a lot of work ($) done on the cable running from the road up the hill to her place and quite possibly may not be the best answer for media connectivity. A phone line was in previously as well so it may be easier to convince the Telus people to reinstall phone and internet service, and she wants her TV so use the dish for that.

Monday Morning Meltdown

Monday, March 17th, 2008

It’s still early in the morning on the West Coast and haven’t checked the markets yet myself but went to the blog for Sitka Pacific, some excerpts about the bailout for Bear Stearn’s and the first emergency meeting over the weekend since about 60 years ago:

“It is a serious extension of putting the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet in harm’s way,” said Vincent Reinhart, former director of the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Fed…”That’s got to tell you the economy is in a pretty precarious state.”

“We learned that Bear Stearns’s balance sheet on close examination was worth a 10th of its market value,” said Reinhart.

And way down at the bottom, “Think all that debt on the books of Lehman (LEH), Morgan Stanley (MS), Goldman Sachs (GS), Citigroup (C), Merrill Lynch (MER), Bank of America (BAC), etc., is worth what is claimed? Think again. More revaluations are coming.”

Squamish Eviction Notice

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

Turtle Island logoThe Squamish Nation did what they said they were going to do, and presented the Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Vancouver an eviction notice. They entered the church during Palm Sunday mass and in stood in front of the altar with a banner and stated their case all the while the priest in attendance carried on as if there was nothing happening. By the time they were finished, a strong police presence had shown up but no arrests were made and a copy of the eviction notice was tacked to the outside of the door.

On the TV news coverage I watched, one of the exiting parishioners comment on the scene was nothing but praise while another thought the whole thing was despicable, can’t please everyone.