by Eszter Hargittai on July 28, 2004
Since things seem to be pretty low-key around here, you’ll excuse me if I vent a little. Last night I got a call from a kind neighbor letting me know that it seemed as though one of my windows had shattered. I was in the office finishing a paper to meet a deadline so the timing wasn’t perfect, but really, is there ever a good time for that kind of a call? I decided to head home and check things out. To my dismay I found this (or for a bit more artistic version, this). It is completely unclear what may have caused it. My best guess is a bird although there are no traces anywhere (the neighbors were on their balcony when all this happened and didn’t see anything except for the window starting to break up into pieces after a loud bang). This is definitely one downside of home ownership.. and a clear example of why one must always have some money on hand in a checking account. In addition to the lost $$ a really annoying part is the logistics of sitting around waiting for the glass company and the anxiety produced by not having any idea about the costs. Any upsides? I got to meet some nice neighbors and also learned that I have double-pane windows (a very good thing in such a situation, indeed).
So now I’m left wondering whether I should cut back on some of the fun stuff I was going to do in Princeton and NYC in the next few weeks.. to balance out the costs.. or just accept the fact that trying to save on any of what I was going to do would make not a dent in this additional expense so I should just deal with it and move on. Uhm, yeah, probably the latter.
by Chris Bertram on July 28, 2004
Congratulations to Norman Geras, who “has now been blogging for a year”:http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2004/07/first_anniversa.html .
by Brian on July 28, 2004
“Brian Leiter”:http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/archives/001738.html passes on the sad news that John Passmore has died. “Here”:http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10266391%255E30417,00.html is _The Australian’s_ obituary. If any others appear I’ll try to update this post with links to them.
by Kieran Healy on July 28, 2004
Hello from a motel in “Little Rock, Arkansas”:http://www.littlerock.com/, which turns out to have free ethernet. (The motel, not the city.) Today’s route ran from near “Salem, SC”:http://www.sciway.net/city/salem.html, up “I-85”:http://www.ncroads.com/interst/ih085.htm to “Spartanburg, SC”:http://www.cityofspartanburg.org/ where I picked up “I-26”:http://www.ncdot.org/projects/I26Connector/ to “Asheville, NC”:http://www.asheville.com/, where you hit “I-40”:http://www.interstate-guide.com/i-040.html. The drive across the “Smokies”:http://www.nps.gov/grsm/ was beautiful, though there were some brutally heavy rainstorms. Then I drove across the whole of Tennessee, lengthways. The first city was “Knoxville”:http://www.knoxville.org/. I swear the smug looking guy in the fancy sportscar who cut me off around there “looked familiar”:http://www.instapundit.com. The longer it went on, the flatter and less interesting Tennessee became, and the more I was forced to resort to strategies like singing in the car in order to keep myself awake. Well, to be honest maybe I didn’t need that much provocation. Here’s “forty seconds’ worth of video”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/trip/day1.mov from a day’s worth of driving. Tomorrow: On to “Amarillo”:http://www.amarillonet.com/! I wonder if we have any readers in Amarillo.
