why the f is everyone calling me Jason? You don't just assume someone's name is Jason without asking them first!
And how do you know I live in Chicago?
yeah tomorrow doesn't work so good. I appreciate the offer but I have to be home because some guy is coming over to adjust the heating system. and I'm really sick. Getting better, but it's just insane how much snot I'm producing. and I'm tired. I should maybe try to map out which radiators are on which circuits, but it's hard to give a shit when you're sick. Especially since this whole house is a money pit anyway. I'm trying to explain to my buddy that he needs to find a financial adviser so the adviser can tell him what a fuck*ng stupid idea this house is. problem is my friend is in the habit of not heeding much outside council. which is why he bought this house without asking my opinion for example. A few months after he bought it, I come over and I'm looking at it for the first time, and I notice that this one room is in fact separating from the house. It's apparently a porch that got converted into a bedroom. So my friend remarks that wow!--I'm very sharp and observant. He didn't notice that until the property inspector pointed it out. I'm like... what? You can see an abundance of fuck*ng daylight coming in through the wall, and you didn't notice that??? So eventually I wound up climbing into the attic to investigate the various animals that were living up there, and I find that there is this insane mix of new and old-ass wiring, and every single junction box has wiring spilling out of it, and half the connections are made with electrical tape instead of wire nuts, and I'm like, damn, this place is a fire waiting to happen. The gutters are separating from the roof, the eaves are separating so squirrels can get in no problem, the siding was redone, so it's new siding that is covering up an impending disaster. I fixed the eaves along one short stretch and when I was done I found the siding wouldn't fit because the siding was fitted for the eaves such as they were. My friend finished a room in the basement. It could have easily been a rectangle, but instead one corner is like 115 degrees while the other is 65 or so... I'm like... WTF? You didn't notice this? pipes are leaking, but he merely built the sheetrock around them... and get this... he installed... no electrical... so later on he hired someone to retrofit some electrical in the room... I'm like... wtf... turns out it's illegal to build anything in the basement anyway, because the basement is a few inches shy of 7 feet...
all this and more can be yours for a mere $1400 a month. (*taxes and utilities and other fees not included) The mortgage is presently almost 50% underwater... I'm like... dude... I know it will be bad for your credit score, but you probably need to walk away from this shit ASAP. In the long run it will be good for your credit, and your financial situation. But of course, rather than worry about reality, go ahead and just keep on keeping on or something? I dunno. That's the American dream I guess, in it's truest sense... To blindly go where everyone has gone before. And to use 500% interest payday loans to pay for it.
And the worst of it is, my friend's immigration status is iffy, so each year he has to get an authorization to work letter renewed from the INS, and each year, they are well over *6 months late* sending it (because they're the government in general, and they're the INS in particular,) and each year his employer would get all nervous about it... and I'm like... under these conditions, you bought a fuck*ng house? And then sure enough last year the INS never got around to sending the letter, and so it wasn't until he got fired from his job for failing to provide proof of authorization to work that he finally got on the INS's ass to get that authorization sent, which they finally did I guess, which of course didn't get him his job back, so now he's working a different job that sucks more. Afterwards he's like 'I probably could have gotten on the INS's case earlier than I did about the letter.'
It's like dude... where is your margin of error in anything in your life? You have zero savings, in fact you have every credit card maxed out, you take out payday loans, you buy a house and are totally unable to afford even the most basic of maintenance, and the house is so run down that the only people who will agree to rent it are going to people who have no other options, who have no reliable income. It's in a gang infested neighborhood, the whole neighborhood looks like property values will only go down.
I'm sympathetic to the difficulties inherent in adjusting to a new life in a new culture, but I mean shit, this guy is clinical.. ADD or something.
anyway, I moved in with my friend for the hell of it - I pay him a little for rent, and I thought maybe I could help him learn how to fix the place up. It didn't work out that way, I did wind up doing some stuff for him, but I don't think he acquired any skills in the process, and not even the shadow of a hint of a cogent overall plan for renovating the house (much less the financing for it) has emerged. Well, I learned a little bit more about electrical codes and I learned about some issues associated with older houses that I wasn't aware of, and most of all I learned that to tear down even one small section of old-school plaster wall is some shit that you do not want to get involved in if you can help it.
so that's why I'm too busy to meet for coffee. my buddy has some maintenance plan with the gas company and they are going to come over and adjust the radiators so this one room that is too cold will be hotter. The tenants on the 2nd floor were complaining about it. If it can be adjusted it's probably something simple but I ain't about to mess with that shit - the whole system is teetering on the point of collapse... all rusted, leaking, the radiators caked with layer upon layer of paint and dirt and grime. The tenants have slowly slipped from paying my buddy rent up front for the month (always a week or so late) to paying it piece meal one week at a time. My buddy got a job now where he's on the road a lot, so I have to collect the rent. I'm like, whatever. If they show up with the money, I take it from them, and I write them a receipt from a receipt book, but I don't go knocking asking them for it. My buddy has a phone, and the tenants finally got their phone turned back on too, so now my buddy can harass them for the rent over the phone, but that ain't my fuckin' deal. So every other week or so I'll go drop whatever they gave me in my buddy's bank account. But really I haven't had to do that too often because they simply don't pay rent that often, and my buddy is usually home every other week or so anyway so mostly I can just give it to him. My buddy usually doesn't write them a receipt when they give him rent, I guess because that would be a level of organization that would help avert problems, and when you have ADD you don't want any sort of organization in your life. So I have no idea how far behind they are on rent, but I don't ask either. It ain't my thing.
Author
Topic: ACHEWOOD AND TOUAMB AND (Read 22546 times)