Whiskers

There's some ongoing debate about who has found the nastiest crud at their rental property.  This won't make any best of lists if I were to start canvasing the internet, but I felt it might win a local award within my sphere of friends.

I fixed the vanity on the first floor at the rental and it required a whole lot of Ka-boom while I was McGuyver-ing the drawers to make sure they stayed on their rollers.  A lot because in the drawers and all over the bottom of the vanity was this.  While I may be wrong, given what was mixed with it, this seems to be whiskers that are biodegrading.  A lot of whiskers biodegrading.  There was shaving creme in the drawers to back up that supposition.  As well as whiskers mixed in various states of breaking down.  If I had thought of it sooner, I would have taken a more balanced picture that caught the passage of time.  But I was sort of grossed out and this represents a lot of end-state whiskers from the bottom of the vanity.

The cleanup smelled awful!  My brother, who seems not to have the best sense of smell walked in while I was cleaning drawers, pre-warned that it didn't smell so good, and said, "That smells bad!"  I worry that I was subjecting my lungs and immune system to aerosolized whiskers and nasties all to save $300 on a vanity.

Here's the back of the vanity.  Looks like mouse poop, but it's primarily clumped up bits of hair.  The back of the vanity is still sealed with caulk, so I'm not exactly sure how they got all this to the back (it was clean when we switched renters last).  The drawers don't even go all the way back on the sliders.  they stop about three to four inches short.  So there shouldn't be anything back that far.

It's all clean now.  Beautifully so.  Bars are fixed.  And lining paper put in just to ensure that I don't have to worry that enough cleaner to pickle my hands still wasn't enough to kill every whisker-eating microbe who called the vanity home.

In the Spirit of Thanksgiving

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, which will be here soon, I made this beautiful hand turkey while cleaning rental property (yesterday and today - I think we're at 8 days of full day work and counting to get it back in rentable condition).  All it took was a roll of paper towels and any window on the property.  Although I had to wait until the third wipe down to get the best effect.

Eryn wanted nothing to do with it, even though I made it just for her.

Reason 1000 or so not to own rental property

I think we're truly slum lords now.  If the big "bitch" on the wall wasn't proof enough, perhaps the fact that there's so much trash next to the house is (I did pick up trash when I was there in the fall.  This is new trash).  And no, the renter didn't send us a photo of the graffiti.  I heard about it from my neighbor (who owns the rental house next door) who drove Eryn and I to coffee this morning when he caught us walking because Pooteewheet had both sets of car keys.  His ex-wife (who helps with the rental properties) sent me the photo. So tomorrow I get to talk to the Apple Valley police and then try to find matching paint that will no doubt peel off because it's too cold to paint. But will at least obfuscate the word.  I'd have been down there today, but my new project at work was kind enough to have a prod issue and a developer on pager unreachable by pager.  I'm not looking forward to de-bitching in the dark.

Trash

I've been listening to SuperFreakonomics on CD and the theme of the book has been incentives and how they change human behavior. In illustrating incentive-related behavior, the authors talked for a while about trash and how some cities are charging based on the amount of trash you produce. Rather than lead to less trash, the incentive leads to more highly compressed trash (I think they called it The Seattle Smash), trash in the woods, illegal burning, and invariably people on fire from illegal burning.

This reminded me of a rule we have with our renters. We pay for garbage disposal. Many times someone who is trying to rent has said to me, "I notice you pay for garbage. Can you just adjust the rent down $50 and we'll find our own garbage disposal service." Invariably I say, "Absolutely not." They argue. They tell me they always use such and such a service. They tell me about their brother who owns a service and they can't rent unless they can use his service. They tell me they can save me and them money by rotating services or hauling the trash themselves.

But my brother and I have that rule for one simple reason. We don't want trash in the basement and the garage. If you let renters pay for their own trash, it's the first thing they'll decide to stop paying. Not the cell phones. Not cable tv or DISH. Not high speed internet. Trash. And it will end up in some part of your house, or in a pile in the corner of the yard under a tarp. Because all those other things exhibit personal gain, and trash is just an inconvenience. So we remove the incentive/disincentive aspect.

We apply the same rule to water because we live in Minnesota. Our pipes are not an incentive trade off option. At least not in the winter.

Dirt

Eryn and I spent yesterday after work moving dirt at the duplex. Ah...it seems like only yesterday that I was moving the leftover clay from the front yard to the weeded area in the dog pen to cover up the waist high weeds. And now I'm moving it from the area that won't even grow a weed to the open-sided shed in the back so that I can plant grass for the new tenants. I wonder when I'll have to move it from the open-sided shed to somewhere else?

Actually, in this picture you can see a weed or two, but they weren't faring well. The roots from all those trees, on the other hand, were doing fabulous! Every shovelful was an exercise in wood cutting.


I tried to get Eryn to measure her scoops and beat herself with each wheelbarrow, and then explained that was part of managing people. Then I challenged her to a most scoops contest and explained that I was able to claim 10-20% of each of her scoops as it was my project. I'm hoping this convinces her to be her own boss when she's older.

Black Lust

Our renter whose lease we chose not to renew has moved out. I spent a chunk of my day at the duplex catching up on some of the items the city inspector asked us to fix (please keep in mind, there are always issues, no matter how much work you do they'll find a new batch each year). However, as a bonus for today's festivities, our renter was nice enough to leave us an absolutely filthy half of a house, including a pot of cooking oil my brother spilled on himself (which is technically more disgusting than the pile of porn mags falling out of the drop down ceiling on him - but that was the last renter on that side), and a fourth of a garage full of junk: two mattresses, two huge dressers, chairs, mirrors, lights, skateboards, rugs, luggage, electronics galore, maxipads, bras, Hennepin County library books, etc. If she doesn't come to get any of it in 60 days, I encourage you to be the first to ask me for the bootleg copy of "Black Lust". We didn't position it next to a holy book to make a point, they just happened to be in exactly the same area. And, just so I don't disappoint any takers, I don't know if Black Lust is porn or a religious DVD condemning lustfulness. I wasn't willing to touch it for long enough to put it in a DVD player and find out..

Demolition

I had the day off today. I spent it, all of it, breaking up a sidewalk at the duplex we own. My arms, despite quite a few advil and tylenol, are achy, and my hands don't really want to grip things. They're not so keen on typing, come to that - it's like they're permanently closed around a 10# sledgehammer. The cement the city laid in 1960 was the worst - it's full of little pieces of red rock - hard as hell, and it rung, absorbing the force of the blows. Evil.

Some people, like Tall Brad, recommended a jackhammer. But by the time I got going, I didn't want to waste any time going to look for one. And this just points out that my back is still in great shape, unlike all of my friends. Not only did I break it all out of the 40' or so of front yard sidewalk and curb area, but I barreled it all around to the back and the dumpster as well.

So I drank about 12 bottles of water and a soda, and got a good tan, but we'll see if I can move tomorrow. For dinner, I ate my burrito outside so I wouldn't offend any sensibilities, but afterwards, at the liquor store, I noticed I was getting the once over a couple of times. And all flirty, not like I smelled horrible. Sure, the Parrot Bay samples lady probably just thought if she smiled I'd try her new Smirnoff's drink, and she was probably pleased that I only looked at her chest long enough to read "Parrot Bay" (that's what memory is for), but then on the way out the store, a pretty woman caught me smiling at her daughter and almost tripped over herself saying "hi" and trying to open my door for me. I credit the fact that I was so sweaty I'd ruined the Home Depot receipt in my pocket. I no doubt smelled of virility and good baby potential. Maybe it's obvious my back is in good working order and I could wrestle an antelope were it necessary. Christy once told me I smelled nice after working out, so maybe I'm still shedding a healthy odor.

Unlike on 66th as I left the duplex. I told Jen it smelled like someone had dumped a dirty diaper genie on the car after it had been sitting out in the sun for a day or four. She thought perhaps with all that construction, they'd manage to puncture a sewage pipe, which makes perfect sense. I almost gagged as I switched to recycled air and prayed it would recycle fast enough to get rid of the odor.

Here I am taking a lunch break. Pooteewheet was nice enough to bring me some lunch. Down by the curb, I took out sidewalk to the left and right as well. That's the city junk from the 60's. We're the only house in the neighborhood still to have it. The neighbor across the street put his piece in himself for a wheelchair drop. I had to rake and scoop up all that leftover stuff as well.


The 10 yard dumpster, pre about 3 slabs and the post-raking material. At the end, I was having trouble getting the shovel up there to dump it out and kept spilling on the ground when I hit the side of the dumpster. It was pretty obvious it was time to quit.