Body-text fonts, pt. 35: Monotype Baskerville

After three phone calls to city officials, a heavy snowfall, a thaw, and another freeze, the unhappy (or happy?) cat remains in a cardboard box outside our house. We removed it from our curb. The house across the street is for sale, and we don’t want to deter prospective buyers.

Reader, come, buy this house and be my friend.

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I’ve reached the eighth of nine scheduled books by E. M. Forster:

• Where Angels Fear to Tread
• The Longest Journey
• A Room with a View
• Howards End
• The Celestial Omnibus
• Maurice
• A Passage to India
• Aspects of the Novel
• The Eternal Moment

These will be enough for now. Someday, I may read Arbinger Harvest and Two Cheers for Democracy.

It hasn’t been an unpleasant project. And yet Forster has slipped into the perhaps unenviable category inhabited by Stephen King and David Lodge, of novelists whose discourses on the novel are more pleasurable than their novels. There’s some delightful stuff in Aspects, not least the quotations. This one, from Moll Flanders, has me itching to read that book.

Aspects’s above edition (Pelican/​Penguin) can be read here; a PDF with Aspects’s original pagination is here.

House hunting, chapter the last

Since Monday night, I’ve been limping due to a painful blister upon one of my toes. (The cleats are to blame.) I haven’t been able to run or even mow the lawn.

How is such a small injury so debilitating? This feels less like a flesh wound, more like a broken toe.

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It’s just as well that I’ve been confined to the house. Lightning has been striking nearby, and violent winds have been blowing; yesterday they blew the screen off Samuel’s window and carried it as far as the neighbor’s fence. Karin brought the screen inside and propped it against a kitchen wall next to the onions, potatoes, and Gerber meals.

I limped around the yard and picked up fallen branches as a prelude to the mowing that I was unable to do.

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Soon, I’ll have to mow the lawns of two houses: the one we live in now, into which my parents plan to move; and the one across town that Karin & I just bought.

Yes, we now own that house; although, due a technicality, we haven’t finished buying it, because it’s still possible for us to add to the down payment – which, indeed, we plan to do.

For now, I’m glad to have a place in which to live, and that it was providentially priced. Of the houses we bid on, this was the cheapest by $30,000; we obtained it for what most houses like this one would’ve cost before prices skyrocketed.

Also, among the houses we tried to buy, this one had the most bedrooms.

What is more, this is the only house where we were greeted by a neighbor. He offered to mow our lawn, for a fee. We might employ him until we move in.

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While we waited for the sellers to finish signing their documents, our realtor showed us this grim YouTube video of what the housing market has been like these last months. I guess he felt comfortable sharing it because we came away with a decent deal instead of an overpriced heap of rubble. This wasn’t due to any virtue on our part, however. All we did was lose the expensive bids and win the cheap one. Providentially.

A renewed athleticism

Thunderstorms and flash flood warnings tonight: no pickup soccer, despite the fervid wishes of the twenty or so nerds who like to run around on an unpainted, undersized field with lots of gnats. My muscles are getting more used to the sport. Alas, I’ve had a three-game goal drought. That’s what comes of playing fullback while lacking the will to cover more than twenty yards.

Hmm. Facebook says people are playing right now. Well, good for them. I am at home in bed.

I have been running again; that, too, is increasingly easy, though the concrete surface of Mishawaka’s running trail is painfully hard. The trail goes along a scenic riverfront. Unfortunately there are many geese, and the crows have been attacking me.

Tomorrow the building inspectors will look at the house we intend to buy, and so we’ll find out if it’s habitable.

House hunting, pt. 2001, a specious odyssey

We have a winner! And the winner is us! You’ll have noticed that on the real estate websites a certain property is listed as “pending.” That would be due to Karin & me.

Actually, I am more of a winner than Karin, because her commute will lengthen by approximately ten minutes each way. But we’re both winners in terms of price – and in terms of the house itself, which we like.

We’re winners, that is, if the sale goes through.

Samuel also likes the house, but he is less discriminating. Our other friend Sam, Sam the architect, saw the house and said its construction was sound.

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I finished reading The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, which was pretty lightweight despite its frequent allusions to classical literature. It had many funny scenes with loquacious landladies and back-alley women, and a truly horrifying deathbed scene. Marco Denevi, who wrote the excellent Rosaura a las diez, is said to have been influenced by Wilkie Collins; but I shouldn’t be surprised if he also studied The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.

House hunting, pt. 1066 and all that

Karin & I took Samuel to the St. Joseph County fair, and, for the first time, he saw cows, chickens, horses, hogs, goats, and kangaroos. Then we drove across town and walked through a well-kept house with fifties decor. Martin, Mary, and David were with us. Everyone was very positive about this house, and so, a few hours later, we made as handsome an offer as we could; it was refused.

Tonight: two more houses.

House hunting, pt. 26

Yes, we are still looking for a house to buy … I just haven’t been writing about it.

This evening we toured one of the nicest houses we’ve visited so far. It’s listed at about $15,000 less than the maximum that we can bid. Even so, I expect that the winning bid will exceed that maximum. The house appeared on the real estate websites last night, and today shoppers toured it nonstop. When we visited at 5:45, the realtor for the 7:00 showing was outside, shooting a video of the street. Samuel got away from us and ran back and forth in the front yard, so he probably will be featured in the video.

The house appeared to be rented out to some musicians. There was musical equipment everywhere. I scraped my leg on some instrument – possibly, a snare drum.

More house hunting

This is turning out to be one of the most unpleasant things I’ve had to do.

Not long ago, after an evening during which Karin & I visited five houses, I woke up around 3:00am and lay in bed for two hours with what felt like electric current speeding through my body. I finally gave up and went to the living room.

Jasper took it as his cue to spread out on my lap. He must have comforted me: I promptly fell asleep.

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Tonight we toured another house. It was inexpensive; it seemed comfortable enough to live in; it was in an unkempt neighborhood, next to two abandoned houses. It seemed like a good “backup” option. We decided not to rule it out. On the main level were a couple of large, open rooms through which Samuel ran back and forth. “That’s the boy I know,” said our realtor, who is finally warming up to him (the realtor is a bit of a sourpuss).

We toured an abandoned house on Wednesday. Our realtor wouldn’t go inside with us. We found rotten food, dead mice, etc. I wouldn’t allow Samuel to run around in that house, though he tried to squirm out of my arms.

The house itself wasn’t bad, but the one we saw today was better, and it costs about the same amount.

Tomorrow, two more houses.

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In Texas, David is reading War and Peace with his book club. I said I’d read it at the same time; but, obviously, I’m finding it impossible to keep up, what with all this worrying about houses.

Before all of this, Karin & I had been planning a little vacation, but that’s on hold. I don’t think we’ve said a word about it since we visited our first house.

House hunting

You’ll recall that we have been living in my parents’ house while they’ve remained in Ecuador. Well, their arrival isn’t imminent, but neither is it far off. And since real estate is likely to get more expensive in the next year or so, Karin & I have begun shopping for a house.

It isn’t pleasant. Shopping for books is pleasant: no single book has the potential to bankrupt you. Not so with houses.

Also, I know something about buying books. I know very little about buying houses.

To me, most houses look pretty good. I’m oblivious to many inconveniences. I’m even more oblivious to problems that would diminish the resale value of a house.

Karin & I visited two properties this week. Samuel was delighted to run around in them. One of the houses looked out upon a busy street. The other had broken glass on its basement floor, and there were pitbulls living next door. So, this is something else to worry about: Will this property be a death-trap for our son?

Already we see manifest what I’ve read about, that many cheap houses are bought by large companies and quickly “flipped,” i.e., cosmetically improved and then resold at a much higher price – often to buyers who wish to earn “turn-key” rental income. Meanwhile, buyers who actually need a dwelling are priced out. There oughta be a law …

When I was ten years old, I was rich, I was an aristocrat. Riding around in taxis, surrounded by comfort, and all I thought about was art and music. Now, I’m thirty-six, and all I think about is money.

Was Wallace Shawn really just thirty-six in My Dinner with Andre?

Was I really just eighteen when I saw that movie?

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A good book I’d never read until this month: C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms.