Things you hear in the shower in the wee hours of the morning.

As per the usual, I was listeng to MPR in the shower when Marketplace Morning Report came on. It was about the mortgage crisis (of course), and in almost a passing fashion they mentioned that Moody's was predicting a 30% reduction in home values by 2009.

30%!!!

I'm gonna have to pull out my secret librarian powers and try to corroborate that one, 'cuz it just seems too remarkable to be true. A 30% reduction in home prices would send the Twin Cities market back to some time in 1999 or 2000!

While prices have gone a bit crazy in the last few years, it's hard to imagine that a median home in the Twin Cities is actually only going to be worth about $145,000 in two years. If you imagine that a home should cost about 3 times the buyer's income, that would put the median home at cheaper than the median household income in this town can afford. Now, that just doesn't seem quite right . . . especially since a big chunk of the bottom of the income scale doesn't buy any homes.

And if it were true, we're in for a shaky few years. My guess is that there is a huge chunk of the home-owning crowd who has at least 70% of their home value in the form of a mortgage or other loan. Loosing that much ground would send thousands of people upside down in the lending sense. Would banks foreclose? What a mess that would be.

To be honest, even in the most heated housing markets on the coasts, it's hard to imagine a 30% drop in prices. If you could buy a house in Santa Barbara for $6-700,000 there would be a mad dash - and rising prices once again.

So, I wonder how the other parts of the first world who have crazy housing markets are doing. Do they watch news reports of our downturn and wonder about their own fates? England has already had a run on a bank (how It's a Wonderful Life of them), and Australia's booted their PM. Seems it could just get more turbulent at any moment. . .

North American Union?

Seems that the Ron Paul crowd is all worked up about the possibility of a North American Union. They're out in force to ridicule a recent article posted on Newsweek, which doesn't take the threat of a European Union-style multinational government very seriously.

So, they're concerned about a government based on border-crossing highways, a single currency, free movement of goods and people between states, and a unified system of tarrifs? Well folks, we already got it. The Founding Fathers thought it up.

Maybe these folks miss the days of Michigan and Ohio fighting their own wars, or multiple currencies across the many colonies. Can't say that I do.

I gotta wonder, what exactly do these folks think would happen if we joined a union with Canada and Mexico? (Not that it's likely - there's too great a social and economic divide to even imagine it right now.) Personally, I think an open border and single currency would be a real boon to the Mall of America, since it would be easier for Canadians to spend money there . . . especially when the dollars are proportioned as they are. Besides, we're already crawling with illegal Canadians. They're hard to ferret out!

The Cake that Broke my Oven

Here's the guilty cake. It was pretty tasty, though.

The Green Thumb Strikes Again!

Apparently, ignoring plants is one of the best things you can do for them. This orchid was handed to me after it had given its flowers to a wedding bouquet. (It had also been damaged when a closing door snapped both the stems and the sticks supporting them.) I stuck it in my east window along with all of my happy African Violets and basically forgot about it, except for weekly waterings of course.

It spent all summer growing a new leaf, and I periodically wondered if it should be repotted, if the stems should be trimmed off, or if I should move it to a new location. But I never bothered to do anything.

And now, if you look at the stem on the left you'll see that it's growing a new stem. It looks like I may actually get blooms! And the cats must find the taste horrible, since the orchis has no nibble marks, unlike the snake plants that are contantly ragged and stringy from chewing.

Plus, the mini African Violet looks like it's getting ready to bloom again. Boy, there's nothing like an east window. I'll post pictures of them both in bloom if they ever get there.

Mazel Tov, Snow, Burns, Broken Ovens, and Alarms

Today, while waiting for the light rail, I noticed some interesting graffitti in the shelter: someone had scratched "mazel tov" into the plastic window. It made me laugh a little.

I was in the shelter because it's showing like mad out there right now. Which concerns me a little, since I baked the equivalent of 4 cakes yesterday (they are in the form of one two tiered cake and one sheet cake). Those cakes need to be driven to a party, and there better be at least 50 people there to eat them!

In the process of baking those cakes I was burned by a hot pan I was trying to hand to mom. And I was so focused on finishing the cakes that I didn't stop to run cold water on the burn.
Why was mom involved with the cake baking? Because my oven died. Right after I finished baking the first 10 inch layer (I thought it took a long time to bake). I guess I should have expected this - it was a "hot" oven by about 76 degrees, so obviously something was terribly wrong with it.

So now I get to shop for a new stove(we fixed this one once before - not again when a new one is only a bit more expensive than a repair bill). Hopefully I won't set off any alarms in Sears like I did this morning in the Skyways.

I tried to take a peek at what was in the window of the Nina Bliese Gallery, and suddenly the alarm is blaring. No one seemed to care, so it may still be squeeling away when I finish my reference shift.

Now all I have to do is successfully transfer a two tiered cake to Rosemount and decide what finish I want for a new stove. But that means I have to figure out what I want for countertops too . . . ack, so many decisions!

I'm on Facebook now

Yep, there I am. I've been thinking about doing it for a while, because it seems that as long as everyone is so gaga over it, I might as well know what it is.

What it is, is a mess. There doesn't seem to be much of anything there that you can't do in other ways (what is a wall except a cross between email and IM?), most of what is there is pretty lame, and once you have much on your page, it's suddenly as messy as my dining room table after I've left Nick home alone for a week.


So, we'll give it a go and see if it's still worth any time once the novelty of getting new friends wears off. Perhaps I'll fall in love with Scrabulous. For the moment, I'm still feeling that banking is the online activity I like best.

Stupid 2.0 is more interactive!

Yesterday was the SLA libraries 2.0 talk from Stephen Abram. Not much new, and I always leave these sorts of 2.0 talks wondering "who cares?" I mean, it's just more ways to be just as we are. So, now I have a facebook account, on top of my IM account, on top of my personal blog, on top of my work blog, on top of my Bloglines account, on top of my Flickr and YouTube accounts, on top of my Citeulike and Delicious accounts. And does this actually make my life easier/better/more interesting? Not really.

And does it make us any smarter, or at least better informed? I'm still waiting to see evidence of that. I think of my great grandfather reading the Congressional Record on his farmstead in rural Montana, and boy, that's a lot more informed than your average Delicious user. Just think, in 1860 when the Confederates attacked Fort Sumpter everyone thought the war would be quick, easy, over in a month or two. Now, after the invention of the telephone, the interstate highway system, email, cell phones, IM, Twitter, and on and on, the vast majority of Americans believed in March 2003 that war would be quick, easy, over in a month or two. Seems to me we just get to spread our flawed opinions in a slightly faster, and more digital manner. So we learned of the 2005 Tsunami in minutes and it took hours for people to hear about the eruption of Krakatoa? Did that really change anyone's response? (Oh, I would have cared, but this news is six hours old!)

French class seems much more informative and useful. And it's SOOOO 1.0. We actually sit around a classroom, read from a textbook, and attempt to form sentences in front of each other. C'est la vie! (Which reminds me, I do intend to practice my tiny bit of French in a blog post one of these days. Beware French speakers, there will be butchering of your tongue!)