An Absurdly Perfect Question

What an absolutely absurd question I thought to myself as my fully conscious brain began cogitating upon dreamy things half remembered...

Many years ago, long before I could drive (around the time I briefly lost my virginity), I slept under an open window and the crisp evening air would flow in carrying the scents of jasmine and chirping crickets.  The cool moonlight would suffuse the room in the peculiar silver glow of night-time.  At times, half-awake and with the perfect arrangement of cool pillows and bedding, I would float in fluffy comfort, smelling the cool breeze and listening to trains pulling their interminable cargo to some far-away place.  Moments in time that lasted between minutes and ages, each sublimely peaceful and subtly magical...

Yesterday, I had taken a day off of work to spend some time with Emily, and that morning, after Shaunna had gone to work and I was still 3/4's asleep, I felt her crawl into bed with me.  Emily often sleeps with us, but last night, she had slept in her own bed, and she had made a nest of pillows, right under the open window.

"How did the moon smell, Emily?" I mumbled.

To my squirrel-like brain, in the peculiar and whimsical state of partial wakefulness, that was a completely meaningful way to ask how she liked those timeless snippets of magic under the open window.

Now, thinking more about it, I simply cannot fathom a better way to phrase the question.

An Insanely Great Flight

What a fantastic day it was to go flying! The skies were almost crystal clear, with a high cirrus layer (higher than we would get). Abe, a friend of mine (also a pilot) and I took a Cessna 172S, tail number N372TA, for a flight to Chiraco Summit. I did the flight plan, and included a flyover of the Salton Sea Airport, which was not too much out of the way. Once at Chiraco, we would enjoy a $200 cup of coffee and, perhaps, a sandwich at the diner, and discuss the route back.

Since the 172S has a Garmin G1000 "glass panel" which I am not "checked out" in (the club requires a check out/sign off before they give you they key), I can't currently fly this plane without Abe, but he does a good job teaching me the equipment. We run through the checklist, which is a bit more involved than a standard C172, and Abe explains the various differences. I let Abe handle taxiing to runway 28R, while I set up the navigation way-points on the Garmin. Once in the run-up area, I take over the airplane and do the runup, which mostly differs from other C172 in that you have to know where on the displays to find the numbers you re looking for.

Takeoff is smooth, and it's great to be back in the air after nearly two months. On the way out East, I always love to fly over El Capitan Reservoir, and this day was no exception. There were a lot of boats on the lake, and I felt sorry for the little ground based life forms stuck to the surface of the Earth down there, but they just don't know any better, I guess.

From El Cap, we climb to 7,500 and make a drunken beeline to KSAS (Salton Sea Airport). The Airport/Facilities Directory indicates there are 2-inch rocks on the runway, so we did not plan on landing, but I wanted to check it out. Once over the Julian mountains, the Salton Sea was clearly visible, and Borrego Springs was off to our left. As we approached KSAS, I began a descent, but kept my airspeed up (as we were not planning on landing). Abe took the radios and began the standard CTAF (Common Traffic Advisor Frequency, used at untowered airports) callouts; "Cessna 3-7-2-Tango-Alpha, ten miles east of Salton, 5,000 feet, will be flying over the airport", etc. As the airport grew more clearly visible, we were both impressed by the desolation -- a few houses off in the distance, a few trailer/campers, and a whole lot of dirt. Salton is a town full of stillborn roads and avenues. You can see the city that might have been, but most of the roads have no houses on them.

This place was looking strangely interesting, as we approached our flyover, and I decided to join the landing pattern (though we were the only aircraft in the area, all airports have a standard pattern) and do a low pass over the runway for a visual inspection. As I was flying the plane, I flew to the left of the runway so Abe would have a clear view of the surface. I do love to fly low approaches! Flying about 30 feet AGL, we were actually about 50 feet below sea level (KSAS is -84' MSL), at about 80 knots, Abe gandered at the runway for a bit and said "I don't see any big rocks -- looks fine", and we decided to land. Abe made the next radio callout, indicating we were on upwind, and immediately the radio cracked to life with a single word: "LAND!"

Abe and I looked at each other, and pondered this mysterious communication. Clearly, this was either from some drug dealers who wanted to shoot us and steal our plane, or simply from a lonely local. If you have seen the Salton Sea, it's easy to understand how the locals must be lonely. Abe then got back on the radio and asked for some warm cookies when we landed. The landing, my first in two months, was very nice, if I do say so myself. I performed a soft-field landing, which was a good choice, as the runway from 30 feet looks a lot less rocky than the runway does at 5 feet! After landing, we got out, walked around, took some pictures, and Abe gave some water to the desert.

It was time for our next leg, Chiraco Summit. But that will be another episode...

The Jalepeno Burger

One of the best burgers I have ever made, if I do say so myself.

Of course, the patty is the engine that drives the burger. If you mess up the patty, it really doesn't matter what kind of chassis you put on it; a bad patty turns a burger into, at best, a sandwich. At worst, it will tear asunder the fabric of the universe and unleash Abbadon.

A good burger must be a big burger. A half pound of beef, at least. Any less, and the burger is either too thin, or too small in diameter (in which case it is a slider). A good burger explodes with juice and flavor when you bite into it, and thin burgers can't even muster a dribble.

The patty should not be overworked -- form it quickly and keep it chilled until ready to grill. But you can season it... Oh yes... You can season it to hell and gone. For this burgerey experiment, I gently sauteed some very finely diced jalepeno and garlic, about 2 tbsp, and chilled the result, to avoid melting the fat in the beef as I mixed it in. To avoid overworking the beef, I gently crumbled the cold hamburger meat into a dish, then tossed in my seasonings: sauteed jalepeno/garlic, some paprika, sage, onion powder and salt. Then I simply hand tossed the pieces to mix a few times, then formed my patty.

When forming a luscious, big, beautiful patty, you must make a dimple in the middle. The burger will expand with juicy goodness on the grill, and if you don't make the dimple, you will wind up with a football shaped burger. A properly formed burger looks a bit like a red blood cell.

Metric Diving Australia uses the metric system. In this way, ten miles becomes something like 18 kilometers. That is why Australia is so large. If they used a normal system of measurements, Australia would be about the size of the Hawaiian islands. They also drive on the left side of the road, which is about what you would expect from an island full of English convicts. Of course, this is nothing new, as I have been there a few times now, but on this journey the metric system reared it's ugly head once more in an unexpected and evil way. A friend of mine, Alan, who lived in Australia (we met in Barcelona, Spain, obviously) recently decided to end his life, er, get married. He married a lovely mop named Peta, which in Australian sounds an awful lot like "Peter". When Alan first mentioned his new love, I began to think his last divorce was far, far worse than I had realized and began deciding how best to end the call quickly. Fortunately, he spelled out her name and gender for me, we remained friends, and booked my flight. Having been to Adelaide a few times, I decided to spend some time in Sydney before going to Adelaide for the wedding. After the wedding I would go in to Cairns (pronounced, inexplicably, as "cans") and the Great Barrier Reef. In the months prior to the trip I hurriedly got myself Scuba certified and cut my finger off. Once firmly ensconced in Sydney, I stomped around downtown and took in the sights, cooed my delight at all the native wildlife and repeatedly stepped in front of traffic. I also immediately sussed out the local dive shops and arranged for a dive Shelley Beach. Shelley beach is a ferry ride away from downtown Sydney, and is right next to Manly Beach (of course). In between Shelley and Manly is Baby Beach. On my first day of diving, our Dive Master began with a stern lecure titled: "If you touch this, you will die." The Australian East coast is home to a number of Deadly Things, it seems. There is the Blue-Ringed octopus, which if you touch, will kill you with one of the most toxic neurovenoms known to man. The toxin apparently leaves you fully concious and aware, but completely unable to move, speak or breath. Next is the Stonefish, the most venomous fish in the sea. Then there is the Lionfish, which is hardly worth mentioning here, as sometimes it is not even fatal. The lecture ended with the stern admonition: "Don't touch anything, but you'll probably still die." After suiting up, we trudged to the beach, waded in and swam out about 80 meters or so (metric, remember?) and began our dive. The other members of the group inserted their regulators, released the air from their vests and slid smoothly under the surface. Starting my very first "official" dive, I cooly released the air from my vest, promptly plummeted to sandy bottom and began looking for my regulator, all the while wondering how many stone, lion and blue-ringed Dangerous Things I had landed on. The dive master slowly drifted down, looked at me and made the sign of the cross (you can't communicate underwater except through hand-signs). After finding my regulator, verifying that I had not been stung to death and taken several breaths of sweet, sweet air I swam off to rejoin my dive buddies who seemed surprised to see me. The dive was simply incredible -- 15 meter visibility, warm water, and an incredibly diversity of colorful and vastly poisonous fish. We saw sea turtles, sharks and a motorcycle. It was like being Peter Pan, gliding effortlessly over the ocean floor, only not as gay. Throughout the dive, we all communicated with our dive master, through hand signals, to inform him of our air status. He seemed surprised to see me each time I reported my diminishing supply. A tank is normally filled to between 2500 - 3200 PSI. How long this lasts depends upon things like how deep you dive, how experienced you are, and how many poisonous fish have stung you. A new diver can go through air twice as fast as an experienced diver. Regardless of all these factors, however, the fact is you always have enough air to last for the rest of your life. In practice, we try to surface with 500 - 700 PSI in reserve. As my air supply dwindled to under 700 PSI, and we continued our dive, I begain signaling the dive master a bit more often. Each time, he gave me the "OK" sign. Each time he gave the sign, I assumed he meant we were almost there (back to the beach). At 250 PSI we were still swimming. Becasue I don't have a lot of experience, I have not established my air consumption rate yet, but falling back to my high-school math which I swore I would never use, I began to do some rapid air-consumption calculations. I started with 3000 PSI. We had been diving for 40 minutes. Thats 75 PSI per minute, but of course, that's an average -- the actual rate varies continuously with depth. So if f(x) = consumption at depth x, and my depth can be described as a function of time, d(t), then by taking the definite integral of f(d(t)) from 0 to 40 minutes... At 100 PSI I remembered that I don't remember my calculus well enough, and decided that 75 PSI per minute was an acceptable average. I now had an estimated ninety seconds of air left. I discreetly tapped the dive master on his tank and when he had slowly turned to face me, I signaled to him with one finger: "One hundred PSI". He nodded and gave me the "OK" sign. At 100 PSI, "OK" was not an answer I was prepared to deal with, and so I surfaced as slowly as my remaining air would let me. Back on the beach, I inquired of the dive master his reasoning for giving me the OK sign when I was at 100 PSI. He looked at me in some surprise and replied: "100 PSI? I though you had 100 BAR!". You see, in Australia, tank pressures are measured in bar, not PSI. But because I had brought my own equipment, my guage reported PSI. It turns out that 100 BAR is about 1500 PSI -- plenty of air to live.

Kurt Almighty For those of you who enjoyed my prior flood, you will be pleased to note I have already had a “flood” in my new condo. If you're wondering, Kirsten is my sister, who does not love me. It seems as if every apartment I have lived in San Diego has been flooded at some point. From Mt. Ada Rd. which leaked during a rain, or even a thick fog, to my Noahnian flood at Legacy, I cannot seem to escape my fate. The day after my entire family, with the lone exception of Kirsten, left I awoke in my usual moving-up-4-flights-of-stairs induced deep-body ache and staggered meaningfully towards the kitchen to wreak cleanliness upon the devastation that was my new kitchen. The kitchen was left a truly brobdingnagian mess by my ravenous kin, with the lone exception of Kirsten, and I put my aching muscles to work repairing the epic destruction. Utilizing the ancient Chinese art of Tetris, I filled the dishwasher. The resulting load warped space and time in the vicinity of the dishwasher to such a degree that my microwave clock was running noticeably slower than the clock on my Tivo. The result was that a carefully planned route around my living room would lead to me arriving upstairs before I actually closed escrow. Those of you who have seen my fearsome stairs will understand why I did not toy with time travel, not even to kill my mother. Having loaded my dishwasher in such a relativistic manner, I began the wash (Quantum cycle, of course, with extra heat). Shortly thereafter (or, due to the extreme warping of space-time, it may have been before) there came a knocking, a knocking upon my front door. “Tis some solicitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my front door.” While I pondered, weak and weary, over many a stair of which I was leery, the knocking began once more… Currsing mightily I plunged downstairs and into the thicker air. Upon my doorstep stood a repairman, who looked beleaguered, and implored “leak!” and nothing more. Crap. So they began examining my shiny, new condo and discerned that the leak must be coming from improperly connected pipes in the dishwasher. The remedy was straightforward – rip off the toestops, punch holes in the drywall and set up a number of fans and dehumidifiers which running in concert sound an awful lot like a Harrier jet engine at full throttle ingesting a lot of very surprised ducks. At this point, I am concerned that my condo is violating FAA regulations somehow. The current situation is that the jet engines and ducks are probably going to be here until Monday. The drywall and paint should be repaired by Thursday. And finally, with the lone exception of Kirsten, who was not here, I blame everyone for causing the leak.

Promenade -- Whew! So the granite was installed, along with the sink, and some holes were drilled for all the little gadgets that a sink needs. Of course, I was pretty excited about having granite in my kitchen -- so excited in fact that I almost cracked a smile. In all the exitement, however, I didn't notice how close the holes were to the back of the counter. More importantly, I did not notice how close they were to the bar's overhanging granite. I went back the next day and performed some simple measurements and to my dismay discovered that the back edge of the bar did indeed overhang the holes by a small amount. I took some pictures showing the amount of overhang and asked them to install the faucet right away so we could find out if it would fit. They were pretty quick to respond and did get everything installed -- and it did fit! Now, there's not much clearance between the faucet and the granite, but I figure as long as I can run a rag between them, and the neck of the faucet does not rub against the granite, it will be fine.

Promenade -- Loans and Rates I have, which may come as a shock to some of you, pretty good credit. So getting approved for the loan was not a problem, and rates are still pretty good. Not as good as they once were (my last mortgage was 5.75%), but I expect to get a pretty good rate nonetheless. My original GFE's quoted a rate of 5.875% (with one point, as of 5/14/2007), but when I signed my first lock a month-and-a-half later, the rate had jumped to 6.25% (again, with 1 point), and 6.875% without. So I signed a rate-lock agreement in late June with 1 point (1 point = $3,500) which capped my interest at 6.5% with a "one time" 60-day float-down. On October 29th, I was within my 60-day one-time float, and was able to lock at 6.375% with no points, so I get my $3,500 back. Now, in talking to the loan agent, I asked what would happen if rates were lower still when it came time to close, and her reply was that I had already excersized my one-time float down option. Hmmmm... During my previous home buying experience, I had called the lender daily for rates and locked every time the rate was lower. The previous lender had the same terms as this lender (one-time float down), but I got several float downs during the 60 days before closing. In fact, once, my broker had failed to obtain the lock I had asked for, and the next day the rates went up. I called the bank directly and explained what my rate was supposed to be and they fixed it. This caused my broker some degree of consternation, as I was not supposed to talk to the bank directly. Ooops -- my bad. So I know rate locks can be negotiated almost daily. Yet this lender seems to be taking a pretty hard line. Her explanation was that it was a "buyers market", so the loan agents were extra accommodating. This was in 2001, when housing prices and demand had been skyrocketing for years. I thought that was a "sellers market", but what do I know. Nowadays, houses stay on the market for months, even after several price reductions. To my way of thinking, this is when the loan-agents need to be very nice to help close the sale. Again, I am just dumb, I guess. I explained to her that if the rates are lower when it comes time to draw up the documents, I would expect to get the better rate -- my lock or the current rate if it is lower. She indicated I would forfeit my point deposit if I did that, and I indicated she would lose the sale if she did that. As things now stand, I have a 0-point lock at 6.375% and a "finalization meeting" around November 29th. We'll see what happens, but either way, 6.375% is not too bad.

Promenade Update -- Options I am in the process of purchasing a nice, 1,420(ish) square foot condo in Kearny Mesa. I like the location -- not too far from work, the route does not include massive traffic problems and it is closer to the beach than I am now. For about two years after I sold the house in Escondido, I rented an apartment and watched prices come down. In the first year, I saw some condo-conversion projects drop around $100K, and in the second year I saw some drops in the $10K - $20K range, but then prices seemed to begin holding fairly steady, so I put my deposit down on this unit in May of this year. I continued to watch prices and as there were no more dramatic changes I continued with the options orders beginning a few months ago.

The first set of options I had to pick were counter tops and appliances. Of course, I upgraded the hell out of the kitchen, choosing granite (verde peacock) counters, a $1,200 sink, gooseneck faucet, convection oven, cooktop with a 15,000 BTU "power boil" burner and a "precise simmer" burner. I also requested that they use the leftover granite from my slabs to surface the "tech desk" option, which is next to the kitchen and in the same visual field as the kitchen. After speaking with my sister-in-law and mother, I also went with the more expensive front-loading washer/dryer units. If my whites aren't whiter, by God, they will pay.

Next came my low-voltage and other electrical options. For some reason, there are never any lights in the bedrooms, so I added recessed lighting to the living room and the third bedroom, which will be my den. I did not upgrade the 2nd "guest" bedroom as I don't want guest to get very comfortable and stay for any length of time. I had requested that they not roof the guest room, but the builder gave me some lines about "codes" and refused to do so. Oh well. I also added a few additional electrical outlets to the garage, including a 20-Amp dedicated circuit (for a refrigerator). For the low-voltage options, I added 6.1 ceiling speakers, cable and data to the garage, extra data ports to the office and upgraded the connection center so I could tuck all my network equipment inside it -- the default connection center would have been to small to do much with. Next came the flooring. Oh my. I wanted to get tile in all the "common" areas, and areas that would be heavily trafficked, such as the hallway leading to the bedrooms. For the stairs I chose a two-toned rattan carpet. I also chose a rattan carpet for the 2nd/3rd bedrooms. For the master bedroom, I chose a wonderfully plush, soft carpet that you could sleep on without a bed. Now, the initial quote came back at $18,152. After almost coughing up my skull, I began looking for ways to reduce that cost. One item that stuck out was the nearly $3,000 to carpet the master bedroom, which is not that large (11x12 or so). The led me to wonder if they were charging some huge amount per square yard for their carpet, and if I wouldn't be better off installing the flooring after close of escrow. However, in order to do that, I needed to know how much they were charging per square yard. Now, they could not (more likely: would not) give me square yardages for individual rooms, only square yardages for the flooring they would install. For example, since the two bedrooms and stairs were initially all to be carpeted in the same rattan carpet, they could tell me that would take 73 square yards, but the could (would) not tell me how many square yards were for the stairs, and each room. This led me on a cat-and-mouse game of asking for quotes with different carpeting in each area, so I could deduce how many square yards the charged for on a per-room basis. When I did get all the square yardages for each area, I subjected the numbers to exhaustive mathematical analysis (I multiplied the square yards by 9). I then began measuring the rooms in my unit and through an arcane process to complex to discuss here, I converted the linear measurements into square feet. This led me to a number of startling discoveries:

• The total square feet of carpet I was to be billed for was 1,863 sq. feet. The unit is only 1,420 sq. feet.
• The master bedroom was being charged as 48 sq. yards. That is 432 square feet. An 11'x12' room has 132 square feet in it. The little connecting hallway and closet area are not over twice as large as the master bedroom. Were they going to carpet the walls?
• Oddly, the discrepancy between the proposed square yardage (48) and the actual size of the area involved is damn close to what you would get if you multiplied square yards by three to get square feet. A more careless geometer than I may very well do a quick (and wrong) conversion that way, as the more common conversion of linear yards to linear feet is indeed accomplished with this multiple.

To make a long story short, after wrangling for about a month, they continued adjusting measurements until the final price was $13,775 -- $4,377 less than the original quote had been. The only difference between the original quote and the final quote was that I opted to have the "free" carpet installed in the master bedroom closed, an area that might be as much as 20 sq. feet.