One Down, Eleven to Go.

Can you believe that January is already over?!? Where did it go? Maybe if I were to measure it in inches of rain it would be much more apparent... perhaps I can use my soon-to-be patented living room bucket rainwater measuring system.

So how has everyone been doing on his or her resolutions? Forgotten already? We're doing pretty well-ish. Our nutrition is still in good practice as is our exercise dedication, our pursuit of all things home remodel is going well if a little slowly, and we've put more focus on our church experience. In fact, we're currently going through a membership class to become members at Silverdale Baptist Church; Tuesday nights for 4 more weeks (of 6 total).

Cleaning has not gone as fast as hoped and we've really not stuck with our supposed "grounding". However, I have accomplished the first hurdle, which was to empty the large closet just off the entryway. That was a full dump run in and of itself. The downside is that what wasn't thrown away is scattered across the living room and the downstairs guest room. There were only so many hours in my day off yesterday so I didn't get things put away yet. Oh, and Christmas decorations! EGADS! That is one tremendous pile of sprawling stuff.

Lilah will be tackling the office and the craft room (formerly known as the "Blue" Room--which is more of a marketing change since the blue room is in truth still blue), transporting the bulk of our books to the dining room shelving or boxing them up for the eventual move out during remodel.

Ah yes, the remodel. Well, I think we scared our real estate agent; he never called back, which is to say he never called at all after his visit. And in truth, while I'm still overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the project, I'm now pretty certain that I'm ready to go forth and stumble... err, conquer. So, seeing as I have no $450k offers in hand (and seeing that my neighbors house is not selling for $423k like hotcakes), I propose to forgo the easy sell and do this the hard right way.

Hope all of you are doing well and I'll try to keep you mo-betta posted in the future.

Another Quick Copout

Yes, I know I've given you nothing of substance in too long, and I know that you've probably already gotten 9 copies of the following email joke in your inbox from all your various "friends"... but it's too DARN funny not to share, and I'm really busy at the moment trying to get things concerning construction and renovation addressed, so here: enjoy this in the mean time! (many thanks to Ron V for the humorous emails that have kept me sane!)

Now that Vancouver will be hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics, these are some questions people the world over are asking! Believe it or not, these questions about Canada were posted on an International Tourism Website (frightening). Obviously the answers are a joke; but the questions were really asked!

Q. I have never seen it warm on Canadian TV, so how do the plants grow? (UK)
A. We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around and watch them die.

Q. Will I be able to see Polar Bears in the street? (USA)
A. Depends on how much you've been drinking.

Q. I want to walk from Vancouver to Toronto; can I follow the Railroad tracks? (Sweden)
A. Sure, it's only four thousand miles; take lots of water.

Q. Are there any ATM's (cash machines) in Canada? Can you send me a list of them in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Halifax? (UK)
A. What did your last slave die of?

Q. Can you give me some information about hippo racing in Canada? (USA)
A. A-fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe. Ca-na-da is that big country to your North ... oh forget it. Sure, the hippo racing is every Tuesday night in Calgary. Come naked.

Q. Which direction is North in Canada? (USA)
A. Face south and then turn 180 degrees. Contact us when you get here and we'll send the rest of the directions.

Q. Do you have perfume in Canada? (Germany)
A. No, we don't stink.

Q. Can you tell me the regions in British Columbia where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)
A. Yes, gay nightclubs.

Q. I have a question about a famous animal in Canada, but I forget its name. It's a kind of big horse with horns. (USA)
A. It's called a Moose. They are tall and very violent, eating the brains of anyone walking close to them. You can scare them off by spraying yourself with human urine before you go out walking.

Q. Will I be able to speak English most places I go? (USA)
A. Yes, but you will have to learn it first.

NOW, YOU HAVE TO ADMIT... THAT WAS FUNNY!

An Internet Jem

I don't know who wrote this or how long it's been around (I'm sure the dates change to suit the email string... I'm leaving it at 2002), but enjoy:

The Ark in 2002

It is the year 2002 and Noah lives in the United States.

The Lord speaks to Noah and says: "In one year I am going to make it rain and cover the whole earth with water until all is destroyed. But I want you to save the righteous people and two of every kind of living thing on the earth. Therefore, I am commanding you to build an Ark." In a flash of lightning, God delivered the specifications for an
Ark.

Fearful and trembling, Noah took the plans and agreed to build the Ark. "Remember," said the Lord, "You must complete the Ark and bring everything aboard in one year." Exactly one year later, a fierce storm cloud covered the earth and all the seas of the earth went into a tumult. The Lord saw Noah sitting in his front yard weeping.

"Noah." He shouted, "Where is the Ark?"

"Lord please forgive me!" cried Noah. "I did my best, but there were big problems. First, I had to get a permit for construction and your plans did not comply with the codes. I had to hire an engineering firm and redraw the plans.

Then I got into a fight with OSHA over whether or not the Ark needed a fire sprinkler system and floatation devices.

Then my neighbor objected, claiming I was violating zoning ordinances by building the Ark in my front yard, so I had to get a variance from the city planning commission.

I had problems getting enough wood for the Ark, because there was a ban on cutting trees to protect the Spotted Owl. I finally convinced the U.S. Forest Service that I needed the wood to save the owls. However, the Fish and Wildlife Service won't let me catch any owls. So, no owls.

The carpenters formed a union and went out on strike. I had to negotiate a settlement with the National Labor Union. Now I have 16 carpenters on the Ark, but still no owls.

When I started rounding up the other animals, I got sued by an animal rights group. They objected to me only taking two of each kind aboard.

Just when I got the suit dismissed, the EPA notified me that I could not complete the Ark without filing an environmental impact statement on your proposed flood. They didn't take very kindly to the idea that they had no jurisdiction over the conduct of the Creator of the universe.

Then the Army Corps of Engineers demanded a map of the proposed new flood plain. I sent them a globe.

Right now, I am trying to resolve a complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that I am practicing discrimination by not taking godless, unbelieving people aboard!

The IRS has seized all my assets, claiming that I'm building the Ark in preparation to flee the country to avoid paying taxes.

I just got a notice from the state that I owe some kind of user tax and failed to register the Ark as a recreational water craft."

Finally the ACLU got the courts to issue an injunction against further construction of the Ark, saying that since God is flooding the earth, it is a religious event, therefore unconstitutional.

I really don't think I can finish the Ark for another 5 or 6 years!" Noah wailed.

The sky began to clear, the sun began to shine and the seas began to calm. A rainbow arched across the sky. Noah looked up hopefully. You mean you are not going to destroy the earth, Lord?"

"No," said the Lord sadly. "The government already has.

Here's one for you, Nineteen for me...

So I was reading an interesting article I linked to from Digg.com, the social news forum, about the top ten reasons that the American Tax System will collapse in the next 10 years. The author stresses that while the Tax system may collapse, this will not be a catastrophic event for our economy, and in fact we may all be better for such an event and the replacement system that would result.

Highly speculative, to be sure, but there was an interesting bit I'd like to quote.

To put this in perspective, the taxes paid into the government each year are based on over a trillion judgment calls by people interpreting their understanding of a tax code consisting of several thousand pages of paper that they have never personally read… or care to read.

--Thomas J. Frey

You can find the full article here if you're interested in reading all ten reasons. Some of them are very convincing. Some a little far fetched. But I will mark my calendar and await 2016 to see if Mr. Frey was correct.

Here's hoping!

:j

Welcome 2 Noah's Ark; now seating parties of 2

Rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain. I should keep going just to give you an idea of the sheer monotony of the amount of rainfall we've gotten. The ground is just saturated. The ground is melting all over the place taking houses and roads with it in one fell swoop. I'm hoping the city of Bremerton over-designed my retaining wall because the sheer force of the hydro-dam pressure from all this water has got to be astronomical! One crack and the whole wall will go and my house will be in the middle of the road.

Sunday it stopped raining briefly, though I did see just a drop or two on the windshield, but apparently that wasn’t measurable precipitation, so we’re off the record run of consecutive days of rain. None-the-less, come Monday the rain was right back at it and at it and at it and at it…

We did some cleaning this weekend. We, Lilah and I, are officially grounded from all activities until we get a handle on the clutter in our house. Being inclined toward pack-rat-ness, the both of us, we tend to hoard things that we no longer need. I have boxes stacked six feet wide by four feet high in the basement that I’ve never even opened in the two and a half years we’ve been in our house. That’s prime EBay material there! We started our de-cluttering project this weekend by buying some new shelves. (he he he, more stuff, isn’t it ironic?) But these were a great purchase; our old shelves were made with particleboard and were falling apart after only a couple of years. When we bought those old shelves there were like $60 or $70 bucks apiece and they’re only 3 feet wide by 6 feet high, and pure junk. Well, at Costco we found these solid cherry wood shelves that are 7 feet wide by 8 feet tall (guesstimate) with Glass inlay shelves on the top and wood shelves on the bottom with two built in lights… they’re amazing! And they’re CHEAP! Okay, they’re not as cheap as the fiberboard junk, but they’re only a little over twice as much even though they’re easily twice the size and 100 times the quality. Ron Popeil couldn’t give you this good a deal! Seriously, if we were building a library, I’d go and buy like 10 of these because the quality is better than anything you could build for this price point. It’s amazing.

Okay, enough slobber! We also started on the big closet in the living room and made a significant dent in getting rid of the old. Dishes we’re no longer using are going to the Goodwill, stuff we no longer want is either going there or to the dump. It’s a huge cleaning task, but I’m excited about getting rid of all this clutter. That and the house project is going to keep me busy to no end, so if you want to get a hold of me, you’ll know where I am!

Talk to you soon. :j

More Questions with a Dash of Answers

So I headed over to the City Council meeting last night, of which none of the council members actually attended.

The short and sweet of it is that this particular meeting was not to discuss building height, but rather to discuss how to make buildings between 40 feet and 60 feet blend in with existing architecture. The Community Development Leader was there to take suggestions on how to make existing buildings not feel overwhelmed by larger, bulky, 5 story condos. Amazingly enough, between all the grumbling and malcontent, a couple of good ideas were given. Most notable was the requirement to bring all new power-lines subterranean and encourage existing systems to do the same. Another suggestion was to require that multi-unit residences put all parking underground. This is not so much to keep cars off the street—thought that is a major consideration—but rather to keep properties from being demolished solely for the purpose of parking. Other considerations tossed around by the attendees involved building set backs, fascia design, color and window criteria, etc.

The important sentence above is the one that goes “between 40 and 60 feet”. In other words, this tasty bit of legislation does not apply to homes being built or remodeled that are less than 40 feet in height, or more succinctly, me. It does prevent me from building a 10-story condo, and I’m still pretty steamed about the methods employed to swipe this development opportunity from the residents of this particular neighborhood, all because of a Bremerton City Council member who happens to live in this particular neighborhood. Grr!

However, none of this is the exciting news. Nay, the exciting news came in the form of a 5-minute conversation I had with my neighbor at the end of the meeting, where-in he told me that a house directly behind me, and without my beautiful view, has just gone on the market for $429,000. (see picture below) This house is in better shape than mine, is brick, and slightly larger. However, their overall lot size is smaller than mine, and their view is of Downtown Bremerton and only in the winter when the leaves are off the trees, where as I get Mount Rainier if the sky is clear and I always have waterfront views and views of the Manette Bridge.

This has birthed a whole new way of thinking. The short question is: how much can we sell our house for as-is? The gradient of this leads to how little can we spend to maximize our potential profits if pre-sale improvements are required? Talking with the developer to the immediate north of me, his project is still a solid two years from breaking ground. If Lilah and I were to start our full-retsore project in April , and it takes a full year for us to complete, that could still potentially keep us in our house for another year before we could realize the beginnings of an (albeit dramatic) increase in value that his project will bring. It could take as long as FIVE years to fully realize the million dollar value that this neighborhood will command. Do we stay and wait? Do we sell now to an investor for some immediate profits that are none-the-less a good deal less than that five year mark?

These are some questions I don’t have the answer to, and our intent to add children to the equation doesn’t simplify it one bit. I do have a real estate agent from our church coming over on Friday to discuss some of these questions with me. I need to make a quick decision as to our intent because my Construction loan is in limbo and we need to finalize or back out.

Click HERE to follow to the MLS for the property behind me. If the picture has disappeared, it means the house has sold… Yet another portion of the equation. They’re asking $429k, but it remains to be seen how much they will actually get.

Ah, the drama!

Tidy-Ho

Well, tonight is the big night for the neighborhood zoning meeting. I'm all a flutter. This isn't the last meeting; I know of at least one more to be held before any final decisions are made, and I wonder if I should wait to opinionate until after I hear the general mood of the people or if I should just stand right up and let'em have it. I know there will be people on both sides of the issue, but how many and with what fervor?

In other news, Lilah and I did our first Sunday School Class with the 4th and 5th Grade boys. It's an interesting challenge because we're not actually teaching for a full class. Unbeknownst to us, we're in the middle of a paradigm shift at Silverdale Baptist: in the very near future these young boys will be apart of their very own Kids' Church. So while we get them for about half an hour, the rest of their time is spent learning how to be "Park Rangers" that monitor the other children attending the "Kids' Church".

Finally, I've updated some of the links over to the right. I added two new blogs that I've taken a liking to: Tequila Mockingbird which is very well written story telling of a woman in Washington DC and the other involves cooking from an Engineer's perspective. No need to say any more, I'm sure.

Take care everyone. Until we blog again.

:jnl

A Round of Applause for...

LILAH! Please join me in congratulating Lilah Troxel on her stunning success at passing her Actuarial exam test #2!

Yeah Lilah!

:j

Just when you thought it was safe.

So I spent some time talking to you all about the zoning issues in my area and how I thought that this wouldn’t really affect me. I could have been wrong. Here’s the beef:

As of a while ago (say about a year back, maybe three) the building height restriction in my area was 140 feet. Yes, that’s a freakin’ sky scrapper in this neighborhood and no one ever built that high, but you could’a if you’d been so inclined (and loaded). Then someone somewhere suddenly, (and as far as I can tell without asking anyone if they cared or agreed), reduced that building limit to 35 feet. This is as dramatic as it sounds, but it was a height based on the tallest building in the proposed area.

Everyone still tracking?

So, along comes the Bremerton Revitalization. Hundreds of Millions of Dollars are being channeled into the West Side of Bremerton and real-estate prospectors rejoice. But wait, 35 feet? When did that happen? I can’t get any developers to be interested in building a condo that is only 3 stories tall! This is a problem for condo builders, but not so much a problem for me as I own only one lot and would be just as happy rebuilding my house.

Still, someone realizes this height limitation might be a little unrealistic and so there is a proposal currently being discussed to raise the height to 60 feet. Developers probably still aren’t happy because in construction theory there’s a cut-off line for stick construction: about 4 stories. Any higher and you need to go concrete construction, which exponentially increases your building costs and to recoup those costs you need to build as high as you can. 60 feet is an ugly region; it’s higher than 4 stories but less than the recoup costs of concrete.

Additionally, 60 feet just sucks for me and is the potential “big” problem I discussed earlier. Here’s why. Say they raise the building height restrictions to 60 feet and the developer to the left of me builds 5 story condos and the land lord the right of me sells to a developer who builds 5 story condos and hey lets throw in some 5 story condos across the street… sound unreasonable? It’s not. The guy to the left of me is a developing fool with 10 abutting lots. He’s been the major push to get the height limits raised as it suits his best interest. The guy to the right of me owns 4 adjacent lots and that would attract a sizeable offer from a developer, maybe enough to get him to sell. Across the street is nothing but rentals and it’s waterfront… won’t be long before that’s chopped and redeveloped.

That leaves me with several problems. First, and most obvious, is the loss of my view… exactly what was supposedly being protected by the original height limitation. Also, this is a city zoning ordinance, but it won’t hold if there is a major economic boom here in Bremerton; that means if I spend money to remodel my current home and then the height limits are raised to 140 feet again I’ve got a house that is worth less than the property it stands on—i.e. I wasted money on a remodel.

The way I see it, there’s only two solutions. The first is the money-maker: raise the limits to the limit. 140 feet would put up a 12 story building on my lot that would bring in millions of dollars, literally. The Penthouse view would have views of Mt. Rainier to the South, Seattle to the East, the Cascades to the West, and the Port Washington Narrows to the North—that’s a heck’uva view!

The second solution is to limit the height of the buildings to 35 or 40 feet. But to do this I feel it is essential that the city give grants to residents who are willing to restore the neighborhood and the houses they live in, they city should lock their property taxes so that residents won’t be ousted from their homes because they can’t afford them, and someone should guaranteed loans for renovations. If the quaintness of the neighborhood and the residential feel is really important to Bremerton and Kitsap County, then they need to vest their interest by becoming involved and ensuring the residents that the city won’t turn tail and change decisions a couple of years down the line when it’s more advantageous to them.

There are no million-dollar homes in West Bremerton, yet; but it’s only a matter of time. Kitsap County has set the wheels in motion with the new conference center, the million dollar condos being built on the waterfront, and the attracting of new businesses to the area. For them to quash the individuals rights to develop is folly. I plan to write a letter to the editor of the newspaper discussing such and there is a meeting on the 9th of January on this very issue that I plan on attending.

I’ll keep you posted.