We have multiple bakeries in our neighborhood. pHlour in particular is so good it should be criminal. Fortunately it is not directly on my way anywhere else, or I would be in real trouble.
pHlour’s motto is “Pro Gluten”, one which I can heartily agree with.
I’d had scones many times and never really cared for them. But the scones from this place are like crack.
You’ll pay about five dollars for something like this, and never regret it. Never ever. Other than, maybe, to wish you could have lived the rest of you life without knowing you missed one today.
But you still need hardware. So you have real hardware stores. The kind that were around when I was a kid. One in our neighborhood, Clark Devon (since 1924!), has brass rods and square aluminium posts, a substantial locksmith department, among many other neat things. They even cut and thread pipe – I think Home Depot stopped doing that twenty-five years ago.
And they have the coolest hardware store sign ever:
It even lights up at night:
And last time I was there, I got to see the woman in front of me wrestle a 1×6 on and off the bus. Not something I would recommend during rush hour.
There are those of us, perhaps on the spectrum, who like to watch the clothes go around in the dryer.
Our building provides a video feed of the laundry room on our tv. I can watch my clothes go around from the comfort of my own easy chair. I feel this is very thoughtful of building management.
Elsewhere on this blog, you can read about the time I got it stuck in the mud.
I probably haven’t driven it in two years, and it has been sitting in the carport for a couple of months. I told my wife that I needed to take it around the block a few times to charge the battery, avoid flat spots on the tires, etc, etc, etc. I jump started it with the Datsun and headed through the neighborhood.
I only got about half a mile before the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree and the car went into Limp Mode. Limp Mode is exactly what it sounds like. I ran a few stop signs and got back to my driveway.
The local BMW shop said don’t drive it. Have it towed. Since I pay for roadside assistance, I decided to use my towing benefit. I called the insurance company and told them I wanted it taken to the BMW shop three miles away. They said fine, the tow would be fully covered, no deductible.
Forty-five minutes later, a tow truck shows up and calls me on the phone. I go out and meet the affable driver and his dachshund. Cutest little dog. It hops out and runs around in my front yard. We get the BMW started and loaded onto his flatbed. I confirm which shop the car is going to and he takes off.
I go back inside. Five minutes later the phone rings. It’s the insurance company. They tell me that the towing company is not responding, the towing company’s secondary phone number has been disconnected, and they are going to have to contact a different tow company. I tell them that someone has already driven off with the car. Pause. “They never told us,” I am informed. Of course, I don’t have the tow truck driver’s name, license number, or any paperwork. I was just playing with his dog while he did the work. Very clever.
I do have comprehensive on the car. And since I was planning on selling the car next month anyway, I figure this could be a best case scenario.
We had a long-distance walkthrough of the condo we’re considering. For a two-bedroom apartment, it has a large kitchen with gas range (very important to CVH). Based on the dozens of condos that we’ve looked at online, I don’t think we’re going to find a bigger kitchen in our price range. And of course, the building allows cats.
We made an offer and sent our earnest money.
Posted inNews from Chicago|Comments Off on Put your money where your mouth is
Another condo came on the market in this lakefront highrise. Sixteen stories up. I think George Jetson used to live there. We arranged for our Realtor to give us a remote tour, but alas, once again, it went under contract before we could even see it.
Condos in downtown Chicago are a drug on the market, but it’s a lively market on the North Side.
There is another unit available in this building closer to the ground. We’ll see if we can get a look at it before it sells.
The Realtor walked us through the condo we were interested in with her cell phone camera. There were definitely some surprise things that were not featured in the pictures on Redfin. Extra stairs. Odd floors. In any event, the seller accepted an offer from someone else in the meantime.
For the past couple of years, we’ve been seriously considering moving to Chicago. Originally we were going to wait until 2022, but it’s looking like we need to move up that schedule to Spring 2021.
We’ve been looking at lots and lots of condos on Redfin this summer in order to get a feel for what’s available in various neighborhoods. We have found one for sale that we might want to go ahead and get now. It has lots of windows and appears to be on a pleasant tree-lined residential street in Albany Park (or Irving Park, depending on who you ask – it’s near the border between the two in any event). We’re going to get the Realtor to give us a remote tour with her cell phone.
