For condos/townhouses, sales dropped 59.3% to 1,875 in South Florida. Throughout the state, sales of condos/townhouses declined 50.3%. I sold a neat bay front unit in February, for less than I wanted but for a lot more than I could now. For all the good real estate stories I had, this was not one of them. The Worst board of directors - really put the 'da' in Florida. And all the construction down there trying to stave off the sunny day flooding was worrisome.
For leisure, I just finished listening to "Churchill: Walking with Destiny" which the WJS says ""Unarguably the best single-volume biography of Churchill . . . A brilliant feat of storytelling, monumental in scope, yet put together with tenderness for a man who had always believed that he would be Britain's savior." I drive a lot, and like long tombs, and this one was 50 hours plus. The thing about Churchill is that he failed as much, as he succeeded - just so happened that he succeeded at something monumental. The book argues his success was impossible with the trial and errors of his failures.
Happy 4th by the way.
I'm reading a 1400 page book by Norman Mailer about the mid-50's CIA call Harlot's Ghost. I like it, but it's a long book, maybe the longest I've tackled. Sometimes as I make my way through it I wonder about the opportunity cost of this book, and what else I'm not reading, but I typically finish every book I start just out of habit and discipline.
I'm also meandering my way through a drawing course on the Great Courses site. It's going slow, but it's good. I've always wanted to sketch well, and I think I have it in me, but as of right now, not putting in the time to make a real difference. Other than reading, which I do voraciously from all formats - computers, newspapers, books magazines. Whenever I think I'm smarter than half the people I run into, I always reflect if it's just the fact that I read more, a lot more, and hence thus have a lot of other people's intelligence to pull from.
And I'm watching a Great Courses lecture on the Great Plague of the 1400's where half the people in Europe died. They say that came from China too!! Fucking Trump. I always like to go back and read similar experiences in history when we hit a bump, be it a plague, a recession, a boom, or a bad president. Few things don't have historical parallels.
Trump's such a non-reader that when he defended the 'builders of our country' during his speech in South Dakota, defending them against the current BLM movements, he probably didn't even realize that that is the exact point of the awakening - that the people who actually did some of the building, or actually most of the building - were never recognized, compensated, allowed to decide for themselves whether they wanted to build anything, etc...
If it wasn't such bad humor, I would call this breakfast I had at the Otesaga in Cooperstown last week "White Privilege', and in normal times you could get away with it, since joking about difficult moments in cultural history used to help solve the problem, define it, and bring some sort of insight into the issue, but that's dangerous right now. I think I can and will do it, since at the sparsely populated hotel there was an indian family, a black family, me and my bearded friend John and this really loud guy who was talking about the nudist retreat he and his wife just returned from. It's my blog, and if I want to write about stream of consciousness thoughts, then I will.
I made Lucas ride around with me for a few days last week and he was introduced to the wide variety of tasks that make up my day. We also opened up his first bank account at Jeff Bank, my bank for the last 20 years. He dumped $1300 bucks he had accumulated - $650 from chores, and the other $500+ from savings bonds from the 1980's I had forgotten I had. The Savings Bonds were interesting because they cost $125 and 30 years later they were worth $550. The beauty of compound interest, even at 1.5%. George Kinne, the president of the bank stopped by to welcome the new client, as did Bryan Flynn from the commercial lending department.
That's me on the right. No hair cut for months, too much drinking showing in the obvious spots, though some is that is because I found I love French Vanilla coffee creamer.
Issac and Nancy at a farmhouse I renovated in 2004 and was all packed ready to move in with my wife until Nancy came by and made a full price offer, much to the chagrin of her husband. They are both retired now, and act like it, not wearing shoes, and in no hurry to go anywhere.
I hired the star running back and star qb from DVHS to give 4 weeks of private training from last years championship eagles team. Should be fun.
Whenever lucas has friends over I always make them do a cross fit like workout. Lucas does it most days. Rowing, jump rope, burpees, and some weight work. Some of these kids haven't seen a shirt in weeks. We are laying pretty low this weekend, and I'm very impressed with NY's ability to crush the curve. Cuomo followed the science, and I'm not a big fan, but he nailed it.
And a big bear visited the other morning. Literally just him and me, 3' apart, separated by a think sheet of glass. A big bear.
Not sure if I posted this story about the PPP program from the River, a local source of great micro journalism.
https://therivernewsroom.com/ppp-lifesaver-with-a-lot-of-headaches/
And the WSJ inclusion -
https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/the-housing-market-around-new-york-city-is-booming-140181
I could go on and on about the real estate market, but it is so busy with buyers that hardly any hyperbole could be considered exaggerated.
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