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auto-parts place as last-minute hardware store
Thursday, July 6 2017
This morning I drove out to Home Depot on my way to making repairs at the brick mansion on Downs Street (one of our three rental properties). I knew I would have to fix the hatch that closes over the stairway to the basement door, so I bought things like metal brackets and hinges. I also bought some hanging planters for expanding the tropical blackeyed susan (which nearly died from lack of watering over the winter but is now lush and beautiful and includes seedlings from seeds it produced). On the drive down Albany Avenue towards the brick mansion, I realized at the last minute I'd forgotten to buy epoxy to secure a string keeping the latch arm from falling out in the gate to the back yard. Luckily, such small forgotten items can easily be bought at the Advance Auto Parts (this wasn't first time I'd stopped there for something I meant to buy at Home Depot). At the brick mansion, I managed to fix the basement hatch door by just reattaching the hinged support arm, which had snapped off. Meanwhile, one of the new tenants (a replacement for the one we evicted) was out in the garage using one of her two looms (she's a textile artist). It made the quiet repetitive noise of a machine made almost entirely of cellulose.
On the drive to the Tibetan Center thrift store (where I would find nothing worth buying), I stopped at Barnyard Feeds to buy two cases of Triumph-brand cat wetfood. "Triumph" looks a little too much like "Trump" for my liking; last time I'd bought wet food, B. H. Obama was president.
On the drive back home on Dug Hill Road, "Semicharmed Life" by Third Eye Blind came on the radio. I've heard the song dozens of times, hating it more with each listen. Today, though, I paid better attention, realizing that it was super-polished combination of post-grunge and hip hop, which seemd to add up to less than the sum of its parts.
This afternoon Gretchen tried to take the Subaru in for inspection again, and again it failed, this time because the OBD-II error codes had been cleared too recently. I was hoping the ordeal with that damn thing would be over, but it's not. While in town, Gretchen showed apartment 1R in the brick mansion to various suitors (the current tenant is moving out in a few weeks), eventually getting a young woman in California to agree to take it based on a video chat. [Unfortunately, she would call Gretchen the next day and back out of the deal at the last second, after Gretchen had told other prospects it had already been rented.]
Another bit of unexpected bad news was learning that we'd never paid the $6700 real estate takes on the brick mansion that was due back in January. The city never sent us a bill until the other day, when we got something (in the landlord mailbox at the brick mansion itself) printed on blue paper, indicating it was the nth in a series of warnings. [Later we would learn that we owed $500 in interest for being so late. David (of Susan and David) would be dubious that any initial tax bill had ever been sent, that it was all a scam to collect interest payments on landowners who don't proactively pay their tax bills.]
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