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Small Talk: Ughngnggh! Ugghhnnn!


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2 hours ago, nachomama said:

Had a tree guy come look at some branches that are coming over my shed from the neighbor's yard. I just want about 3 feet clearance so they're not whacking the top of my shed. So he immediately says
" I cant' do nothing with this"

Nice of him to announce his incompetence so early in the process and get all that needless wondering out of the way quick.  There’s always something you can do - it just so happens that some of those somethings may be more time-consuming than others; if you can’t bend a particular branch out of the way enough or rope it up in such a way as to swing clear of the shed, for example, then at the least you can take it off in chunks too small to damage the roof should they fall on it.

(When my father was a young man, before he joined the Army he did timber work for the TVA - cutting or topping trees for to make way for power transmission towers - and he taught me a thing or two.)

Edited by Nashville
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Gravity is not my friend so I sure aint climbing. And these are just the branches, they're not bigger than 1" diameter so it's not heavy duty, the only wierdness lies in the shed. You can't climb the shed and stand on top of it. That sucker aint sturdy. It's also not climbing 60 feet in the air. The pole saw gives a reach of about 10 feet so you might could make 1 swipe and get the clearance needed. I've been quoted $575 which I aint got. Hopefully this guy comes through for me, otherwise place your bets on which toes n fingers I lose.

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29 minutes ago, Nashville said:

$575 to remove a 1” branch less than 10’ off the ground???  I am DEFINITELY in the wrong business.  😂

They're calling it 4 hours work, more than 1 branch (what's the width of a shed? 15 feet? so like branches spread across 15 feet) but they are the dangling participle of branches they are not 6" limbs that require those spike shoes and the belt and the big saw. In my neighborhood I could quite frankly shoot the branches...I may the only person lacking a gun. If I put a hedge clipper on a rope and swung it I could probably take out the branches...but also my neck. I did once slice my thumb with these itty bitty clippers and it was so funny, I just saw a couple drops of blood and got all woozy. I'm ok with small blood...other people's blood but 2 drops of my own and I was like SWOON.

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Mr. Max has done all our tree cutting except 3, which were leaning towards the road.  We called professionals for those.  I think we might have paid $800 total for all three trees, from different tree guys.  $575 is insane.  Although, one company wanted to charge me $1,800 to take down a dead pine that was close to the power line.  I think I ended up paying $400 for that one.

Mr. Max just likes to do things himself, and most of the time, there's no issue.  Then there was the time he was up in a tree, cutting branches with a small electric saw that bucked and caught his coat...his long sleeved shirt...his t-shirt...his chest.  How I wasn't widowed, I don't know.  He came in the house, "Can you clean this out?" which was a chewed up section of skin about two by two.  I was pregnant with Rugrat #2 and had a real hard time not adding more disgusting matter to his wound.

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My sister had the neighbor up in her tree and he fell out. Ooops, he was ok-ish but still I have no requirement to fulfill any tree climbing bucket lists.

12 hours ago, madmax said:

He came in the house, "Can you clean this out?" which was a chewed up section of skin about two by two.  I was pregnant with Rugrat #2 and had a real hard time not adding more disgusting matter to his wound.

eek. My niece and I took a spill on a motorcycle (it was one step above a mo-ped so it's not badass) She was singing songs from vacation bible school and wiggling so to demonstrate how one should not wiggle I wiggled the handlebars and we went splat. anywhoo....niece pops up smiling and says "wow that was close" and then immediately begins gushing gallons of blood ... to which she screams bloody murder and takes off towards home, running like a bat out of hell. I meanwhile pushed the motorcycle home. Basically a teeny tiny, itsy bity cut on her head but apparently head wounds have dramatic effects. It's been 30 damn years and homegirl never lets me forget "remember that one time you almost cracked my skull? I still have a scar" said scar is a millimeter. If I recall every time she came to visit we tried to kill her. We were pulling her in  a wagon behind our bikes and tipped her over. We were playing "circus" where we were laying on the ground, bouncing small children on our feet and sort of cannon-balling them towards a pile of leaves and she hurt her wrist. I smacked her in the face with a volleyball...I swear none of these were on purpose.

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11 minutes ago, OoohMaggie said:

Whatever happened to neighbours tree neighbours responsibility?  Give them a choice, hand in pocket or ass in the air 🪜

I think the rules here are once it's on my property it's my business. Yes I can ask the neighbor if he'd allow access to cut the tree on his side...that would be neighborly but I just didn't think it would turn into  this much trouble. It should be no harder than trimming bushes.

I am an introvert and anti-social, I do not know my neighbors names. I would absotively go knock on the neighbors door if I had no way around a $500 fee, I'd ask nicely to enter their side of the yard to cut this tree if there was no way around it. I've spoken to this guy, he seems nice. I'm not entirely sure what's going on in the house though. I don't know if he's got sister wives or what but there's like 5 cars that park there and about 6 women and just him. I never ever ever ever ever ever ever see the women. His truck and a red car are the only ones that ever move. There's a white suv thing and another car that I have never seen budge from their spot. I have randomly seen a short redhaired woman get in the red car. And 2 asian women once walking a dog in the front yard. If I had to guess I'd say he stays in a man cave out back, I always hear him sitting at the outdoor table and listening to music from inside the shed. (I'm in my spare room doing my dialing and he would be about 5 feet away)

14 hours ago, heisenberg said:

I will also have to cut trees.  But some cie can cut the trees and pay themselves with the wood,  or you have them do planks with it after the cut.  You need a place to let them dry but it is worth.

We burn everything we cut down.  He has a wood burning stove in the garage and I actually heat my house with a wood burning furnace.  We have the space to split and stack it to dry.  

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8 hours ago, nachomama said:

Basically a teeny tiny, itsy bity cut on her head but apparently head wounds have dramatic effects.

Yup, lotsa little blood vessels in the scalp & face = lots of bleeding from relatively minor abrasions.  
Never really thought about it before, but I guess my family is generally a little more rough-and-tumble than most; so long as vital organs don’t get perforated or things get lopped off that we might need later, we generally just throw some peroxide and band-aids on it and call it done.  I think I and maybe one uncle are the only males in the family who still have all the fingers and toes we came in with, and that’s probably more due to luck than anything else.  😄

 

8 hours ago, OoohMaggie said:

Whatever happened to neighbours tree neighbours responsibility?  Give them a choice, hand in pocket or ass in the air 🪜

7 hours ago, nachomama said:

I think the rules here are once it's on my property it's my business.

Individual state laws can vary, but in the U. S. the general rule is it’s your responsibility once it crosses over your property line.  Neighborly etiquette used to be you’d discuss it with the applicable neighbor first, but “neighborly relationships” don’t seem to be near as common these days as they did 40+ years ago; as a society we’ve steadfastly gravitated towards increased isolation, and folks just aren’t as friendly or social with their neighbors any more.  A somewhat disturbingly large number of my friends have said (at different times) they’ve never even met their neighbors - which invariably makes me think nobody’s going to know if they pass away at home unless/until the smell gets bad enough. 🤭🤢🤮🧟‍♂️

3 hours ago, Nashville said:

A somewhat disturbingly large number of my friends have said (at different times) they’ve never even met their neighbors - which invariably makes me think nobody’s going to know if they pass away at home unless/until the smell gets bad enough. 🤭🤢🤮🧟‍♂️

Sadly, I don't know any of my (few) neighbors.  Every house around in my area except ours is a rental and very few of the renters last more than a year.  By the time you get to know a neighbor, they're gone.

We did know the neighbor across the street, but she had a stroke and moved to assisted living.  Her house was sold to pay for her care, and now it's a rental, too.

When we lived in company housing as a kid, obvs you knew your neighbors, my dad worked with your dad etc. We were all stranded out in the middle of nowhere, various places I lived were 90 miles from town (Utah) and most were about 30. We went to the grocery store about once a month so you def borrowed a cup of sugar etc from somebody at some point. It was nice although never lived there as an adult. I don't know how it was on the wives... can't tell if my mom would be "good" or "bad" in this situation. They had party line phones so basically anyone could be listening...my mom was. My mom wrote a "column" for the local paper, gossip technically but it was fairly boring gossip. "Mr. and Mrs. Jenson traveled to Wisconsin to visit his mother. The Baxley's welcomed a healthy baby boy, Timmy 6 lbs 4 oz. blah blah birthday party or potluck" (no my mother didn't get this news from the party line, she did interview the neighbors but I'm sure she heard the good stuff on the phone) They had a recreation hall so if you had a birthday party or book club/sewing get together you didn't have to have 60 people in your house. The community was about 90 families. They threw a company bbq/picnic every year and christmas and halloween parties so there were activities, somebody was always a girl scout or boy scout troup leader.

I wanna say sister wife dude is named Richard but other than that I can only tell you what the girls name is whose car I hit with mine when my car died. so...I'm the evil neighbor. If they wonder about me ...the never see me, on weekends I'm working from home so I don't leave. There's never lights on in my house. I'm creepy.

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14 hours ago, madmax said:

Sadly, I don't know any of my (few) neighbors.  Every house around in my area except ours is a rental and very few of the renters last more than a year.  By the time you get to know a neighbor, they're gone.

We did know the neighbor across the street, but she had a stroke and moved to assisted living.  Her house was sold to pay for her care, and now it's a rental, too.

That’s the way it is all over.  There’s about two dozen houses on my street; we’ve lived here for a little over 30 years, and in that time the percentage of rentals have gone from around 5% to something like 80%.

All around Nashville and the ring of surrounding counties property values have skyrocketed so high, out-of-state speculators buy everything hitting the market - paying STOOPID money, and driving up prices even more - and rent the properties out while they hold the deeds for market appreciation.  Doesn’t a week go by we don’t get at least 6 or 8 mailers offering to buy our house - sight unseen, as-is - for (currently) about 6x what we bought it for.   This used to be a community of “starter homes”, but just-starting-out young families have been totally priced out of the market.  We’ve thought about selling, but don’t know where we could afford to buy a replacement home without moving halfway across the state.  😕

I get flippers wanting to buy my house and yes technically twice what I paid for it but still not what zillow claims its worth. I couldn't sell it for what zillow claims but I need a number somewhere in between. But my property taxes are eating me alive, and I have no issue with selling or moving but like Nashville, where the hell am I going? I should have had my house paid off by now but when my sister's husband died I refinanced and got set back some. I do not live in a fancy neighborhood but I"m bordering on a fancy neighborhood and we've got some up and comers, most of the houses are kinda craftsman era bungalows so they were starter homes as well. I'm behind a park and the baseball stadium so I'm near things. If you cross over one street you are in Ardsley park which is where the money is. I would like to get out of the city taxes and possibly this particular county but my job isn't worth the commute to go about 45 minutes out. If I do eventually just go full time with the stay at home job then I can go anywhere.

3 hours ago, nachomama said:

But my property taxes are eating me alive, and I have no issue with selling or moving but like Nashville, where the hell am I going?

Nashville has had a really ugly version of this going over the course of the last dozen years or so, since (a) a rapid succession of tornadoes and floods necessitated significant rebuilding - particularly in several notably historic and HB neighborhoods - and (b) the New York Times slapped the “It City” label on Nashville:

  1. Hungry hungry hipsters from NYC/LA/etc. looking for their latest toehold grip on relevancy started stampeding into Nashville, got reverse sticker shock at the (to them) rock-bottom property prices, and started laying out truly stupid money snatching up every piece of property they could find - in many MANY cases offering significantly over initial prices to avoid getting into bidding wars with the other Transplant Elites.
  2. Post-tornado and post-flood significantly damaged properties in the historic and HB neighborhoods become premium targets in this epic land grab; first-gen landgrabbers can buy a storm-ravaged property for $40-50K, scrape off the existing dwelling, and plop down a McMansion on the same footprint which appraises out to $500K.  What was a city-rebuilding effort transitions into a massive gentrification juggernaut.
  3. Word gets out, the 2nd and 3rd hipster hordes descend, and the inflationary effect mushrooms.  That $500K McMansion?  It now specs out to over $2M; the first-gen-ers sell out to the successive waves and move out to the surrounding counties, and the effect continues - and skyrockets.
  4. But wait a minute - every decade or so the county clerk reappraises property values for property tax purposes, and guess what?  Very literally overnight, overall property tax rates for the majority of Davidson County spike 34% on the average - meaning half the neighborhoods saw increases higher than that, especially in the HB communities; these neighborhoods have traditionally been severely short-sheeted for decades in the city’s infrastructure support and improvement budgets, so the associated property values were already initially depressed far lower than most of Nashville (which is part of why they were particularly attractive to the gentrification vultures, btw).  This also means the new increases are correspondingly magnified for those who hadn’t already sold; local media news reports regularly feature elderly pensioners in the HB neighborhoods who are suddenly faced with trying to pay these massively inflated property taxes on a fixed income.  Most can’t.
  5. So - many individuals and families who have lived in the same house for generations suddenly can’t cover their property taxes.  Their only options are to sell out to ravenous developers (who will bulldoze and rebuild as soon as the moving trucks are clear), or forfeit their homes to the city for nonpayment of taxes.  The vast majority knuckle under and sell, and the vicious circle continues to grow unabated.

End result being gentrification-whitewashing of Nashville’s historic and HB neighborhoods, with the former low-income residents either moving in with other family (when possible) or being displaced to the nearest affordable housing, sometimes 50 miles or more from their former homes - and oftentimes, their social support nets and/or remaining family.

And this is still going on, and still (unbelievably) accelerating.  Everybody keeps saying the bubble has to burst sometime - but some of us original residents have been holding our collective breaths for years now, with no end in sight.

 

(Sorry for the Great Wall of Text, but this is a REALLY sore subject for me)

 

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On 3/24/2022 at 7:05 PM, Nashville said:

End result being gentrification-whitewashing of Nashville’s historic and HB neighborhoods, with the former low-income residents either moving in with other family (when possible) or being displaced to the nearest affordable housing, sometimes 50 miles or more from their former homes - and oftentimes, their social support nets and/or remaining family.

And this is still going on, and still (unbelievably) accelerating.  Everybody keeps saying the bubble has to burst sometime - but some of us original residents have been holding our collective breaths for years now, with no end in sight.

This is what's happening to me too, mine may be the ugliest, not re-stored home on my block. Yes I get offers every day from flippers, they want to low ball me put $25-50k into the house then unload it for $150 more than they paid. Eventually I'll accept an offer, I'm doing my darndest to pay down what I owe so that what they give me actually affords me the ability to purchase something elsewhere. Currently the outskirts are not good, the 2 people who work with me that live way out in the country I hear every day what the highway project is doing to them for their commute. It takes me 10 minutes to get to work, it should take them 30 (we arrive at work at 8 am so technically they should be beating rush hour traffic) but they're having 45min -1.5 hour commutes because of the highway construction. If I did just the work from home job then obviously no commute. I just don't think the full time is all that stable. I feel like I could buy an rv and just vagabond it.

I'm liking sling or firestick although I think I need batteries. My firestick remote wasn't working yesterday so hopefully I'll get some batteries after work. Because I discovered I might not even need sling. You can download an app for virtually any channel. CBS, BBC, AMC, BRAVO, ACORN etc and watch almost all shows on demand. You'd have to keep track of all your own stuff. Sling gives you a DVR so it would catch your recurring shows, Killing Eve etc. So far I've kept basic cable and that plus the sling is still what I was paying before. Eventually if I decide I don't even need sling then off we go. I think I really want acorn tv, my friend Becky and I have an obsession with british tv and they have a good many british mysteries that I want to see. Foyle's War, Agatha Raisin, Anything with James Nesbitt. So hopefully my firestick is back in action tonight, I didn't even fling it at a wall or anything. Didn't slap Chris Rock with it either.

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When Craig Ferguson had a talk show he went on and on about how wonderful Foyle's war was. I think I managed to see 1 episode but it was completely random. So if I subscribe to the Acorn I can watch from the beginning. What baffles me is BBC america shows 99.99% STAR TREK! WTH? It's the place to import me a show from the UK and it's almost 24/7 Star Trek. I found an app on my firestick called "Fawesome" and it's got a lot of Scottish and Irish shows. Love me a Scottish detective!

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3 hours ago, nachomama said:

Can I move in with you? Or let me know which one you’re buying, so I can go for the other.  ❤️❤️❤️

Very bizarre dream this weekend. woke me up laughing. I dreamed that I was in Sunday school and some girl used the analogy "I'm sure Laura Ingalls Wilder only pooped about 50 times a year" which apparently I couldn't think of a response for until later in actual church service. I turned around to whisper to this woman "I'm pretty sure LIW actually pooped more than 50x a year" unbeknownst to me some lady that normally sat there had a microphone wired to her pew because she felt like she needed to be heard during the singing. so basically I shouted throughout the church about Laura Ingalls Wilders pooping habits. I wish I could  explain this, I haven't the foggiest Idea where my brain goes.

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12 minutes ago, nachomama said:

I THINK I REMEMBERED THE HORROR MOVIE.

Where the Frat bros killed a girl. Fred Frikkin Astaire was in it! and John Houseman. "Ghost Story" from 1981. And Alice Krige is the chick they murdered, who was also famously in Sleepwalkers where they were cats and she had an incestuous relationship with her son.

I watched the trailer and that does look very familiar.

1 hour ago, nachomama said:

I THINK I REMEMBERED THE HORROR MOVIE.

Where the Frat bros killed a girl. Fred Frikkin Astaire was in it! and John Houseman. "Ghost Story" from 1981. And Alice Krige is the chick they murdered, who was also famously in Sleepwalkers where they were cats and she had an incestuous relationship with her son.

I remember the movie, but I didn't see it. Alice Krige later went on to play the Borg Queen. 

9 hours ago, Superclam said:

Based on my reading of the LH series, they ate a lot of meat & grain, but probably not so many vegetables. They definitely drank coffee. Hard to really know her pooping habits. 

😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

I know I’ve not been here as long as most, but I do believe that’s the first emoji I’ve ever seen from Nacho, that’s where I’ve been going wrong, no poop jokes and with me being British as well 😩🙄

A cup for Clam 🏆👏

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Have you ever automatically discounted someone's opinion/post on a message board because you didn't like their username?  Maybe it reminded you of someone else?

Not on this thread, but on another thread on this site, there's someone with a handle that is very similar to that of a manipulative bitch on another site I used to frequent.  I can't even read her posts without cringing.

On 4/7/2022 at 8:33 PM, madmax said:

Have you ever automatically discounted someone's opinion/post on a message board because you didn't like their username?  Maybe it reminded you of someone else?

I have done the opposite, if a user name I liked, maybe kind of an inside joke...I assume I'm gonna like that person, if they then start being cuckoo.. well then.

What are some cult favorite shows you love that got cancelled? I'm famous for this, I love these shows that have zero hope of making it because they're just too out there. I loved Firefly 15 episodes. That's relatively well known. Wish Joss Whedon hadn't turned out to be a putz. Another one I love is Keen Eddie. Now this one very few have heard of. 2003 ish Mark Valley and Sienna Miller. It's like a half british show. This Boston cop screws some kind of international drug bust up and as his punishment he gets sent to England and he rents an apartment which is currently occupied by Sienna Miller. It's her parents flat and she hasn't told them she got kicked out of school so they come up with some kind of sharing agreement. Hijinks ensue. Anywho obviously he rubs everyone the wrong way as a "Yank" I love his partner though, Julian Rhind-Tutt. Basically I love absolutely every single thing about this show and only 4 actually aired. One of the episodes is about a champion race horse ...thieves decide to steal it's sperm to propigate new champion horses. However, they do not have the means to procure the semen. So they hire a prostitute...they show nothing...but the implied idea was you know...anywho the horse keels over dead! So then more hijinks. They yanked it off the air after the horse episode. But I'm telling you it's absolute perfection, I loved it soooooo much.

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The two biggest for me are Firefly and Adventures of Brisco County, both on FOX.  When a show came out on FOX called Drive, my son said I wasn't allowed to watch it because I was a curse for FOX shows.  Well,  Nathan Fillion, fresh from Firefly, driving a classic Dodge Challenger?  I couldn't resist.  I  think it lasted 3 episodes.

There was also Journeyman, Terriers, American Gothic, Grandfathered, Boomtown, The Job.  So, so many...

 

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