32 thoughts on “June 2, 2018: Ownership”

  1. I will most likely go through my entire life without owning a home. We lived in apartments until I became a pastor. Since then, we've lived in parsonages. If God grants good health to Mrs. A and me and the conference doesn't get mad at me, I probably won't retire until I'm around seventy. It won't make much sense to buy a house at that age, so we'll probably go back to apartments again until the inevitable move to assisted living and then a nursing home.

      1. Maybe it's because I deal with this sort of thing a lot, or maybe it's my age, but I don't consider that depressing. It's just reality. I think it's better to recognize what's coming down the road and accept it rather than live in denial of it.

        2. Yeah I've seen over a hundred people die and hundreds more prepare for it, so I can talk about it pretty frankly too.

    2. I was once lamenting the fact that we were in an apartment longer than I wanted to be, and how I felt like I was letting my kids down because we didn't own a home. The friend I was talking to pointed out that for most of the world, not owning a home is a completely normal thing. Thing of all the big cities in the world, and the huge number of people who live in them, and figure a huge percentage of those people live in apartments... basically, homeownership is a perfectly fine goal, but it's also a fine thing to never aim for.

      1. J and I do not plan on ever owning a single family home. Maybe a condo some day? But we don’t have kids and we won’t be holding large family gatherings, so honestly it would just be more space to clean for us.

  2. Unfortunately, we've spent on the order of $30K the last two years to do repairs of construction defects (that were "to code" at the time), not covered by insurance, naturally enough. Fortunately, because of the market, our house has roughly doubled in value since we bought in 2000. Unfortunately, that same market means that when we downsize to a single story (for aging in place) we will probably have to pay more than our current house is worth (damned Bay Area people paying cash at above-asking price!).

    1. we will probably have to pay more than our current house is worth (damned Bay Area people paying cash at above-asking price!)

      Portland and Seattle homeowners the past 30+ years have beers for you to hold...

      1. Yea, well, I live an hour inland. So I am not crying a river for folks who live in fancy coastal towns when they decide to come my way to buy.

        SF needs to do less NIMBYism and more housing construction.

        1. It’s kind of funny to think of Seattle and Portland as fancy if you go back even as recently as 15-20 years. We all blame it on SF, so I’m happy to agree with you there.

          2. I suspect that Portland's and Seattle's housing and crowding issues go back a bit further than 15-20 years. People in Oregon and Washington were complaining about too many Californians transplanting back when I was in grad school (late '80s and early '90s).

              1. Well, same has been true for California coastals. We looked at town houses in the UTC area in San Diego in our last years there. $250k for like 1,000 sq ft.

                San Diego has gotten way more crowded in the intervening decades, but it was already on that path.

            2. I am sure people complained about it (the Lesser Seattle movement was in the 80s, I believe), but people complain about a lot of things, like Joe Mauer being a pussy singles hitter. Seattle added 6,000 people on net from 1960 to 2000. They lost from ‘60 to ‘80 and only got back to their ‘60 population around 2000. It’s not to say that there were no changes over that time, but it wasn’t really crowded in any real sense. Moving from Minneapolis to Seattle in 2004, the housing market and cost of living was essentially the same. Since then the economy has diversified and the pressure from northern California has only increased.

  5. More fun with random statistics from games I've attended (and have a record of):

    Most plate appearances by a player with a 1.000 or higher OPS: Corey Koskie (1.045 OPS in 83 PA's)
    Most at bats without a hit: Tie, Brett Gardner and Mitch Garver (both 0-for-13, they've also both walked once and Gardner added a sac fly)
    Most at bats with a batting average above .400: Roberto Kelly (16-for-39)
    Most at bats with a batting average above .500: Justin Upton (10-for-19)*
    Most at bats with a batting average above .600: Alex Gonzalez (11-for-16)**
    Most plate appearances without a homerun: Kurt Suzuki (131)***
    Most plate appearances with an OBP below .200: Greg Gagne (.143 OBP in 35 PA's)****
    Most innings pitched with ERA below 1.00: Scott Erickson (0.41 ERA in 22 innings)*****
    Most batters faced while striking out every batter: Wade Davis (2)
    Most batters faced while walking every batter: Mike Henneman (2)
    Most batters faced while giving up a homer to every batter: Brad Rigby (1)
    Most pitches thrown while only throwing strikes: Tie, Danny Duffy and Zach McAllister (9)
    Most inherited runners without allowing any to score: Matt Guerrier (9)
    Most hit batters: Juan Rincon (4)
    Most wild pitches: Tyler Duffey (4)
    Most innings pitched with ERA above 7.00: Ricky Nolasco (8.58 ERA in 35.2 innings)
    Most innings pitched with ERA above 9.00: Ian Kennedy (9.28 ERA in 10.2 innings)

    *Bossman Junior also is 4-for-8 when I've attended his games.
    **This one, not this one
    ***Denard Span and Ron Coomer are the other two players with at least 100 plate appearances and no homeruns
    ****Dan Gladden has a .188 OBP in 32 PA's. It should be noted that I definitely saw both of them play a lot more often in games for which I have no documentary record (or specific memory) of attending, so these numbers are not entirely accurate
    *****Erickson allowed 3 unearned runs and 1 earned run in games I can recall attending. Most memorably, he committed multiple errors in one inning while pitching against the Twins at Camden Yards shortly after he had been arrested for domestic violence prompting one nearby O's fan to yell, "Go back to jail!" Joe Nathan had a 0.93 ERA in 19.1 innings)

    2. This is awesome. I've tracked the games I remember, but I didn't keep my stubs when I was young so I'm missing a couple dozen I'm sure

      1. I'm pretty confident that I've got every game I've attended since 1996 (I've found my scorebooks dating back to then), but the games before that are pretty hit and miss. For example, I know I was at Scott Erickson's no-hitter and at the game when Ron Karkovice hit an inside-the-park grand slam, and the game where Bo Jackson homered into the right field upper deck, but games less memorable have been lost.

  6. speaking of spending money on a home, the lawnmower finally died, though not how i had foreseen. i figured the motor would sputter out or die in a fit of glory, but no, the part where the handle was attached to the mower snapped off. since the company that made it is long defunct, guessing it won't be easy to replace.

  7. The MS150 starts a week from today if any of you are willing to donate in support. Advance forecast says it will "feel like 90" on the second day.

  8. R. I. P. Bruce Kison, underrated pitcher for the Pirates throughout the '70s and for the Angels in the first part of the '80s, at the relatively young age of sixty-eight.

  9. Got whole squids from Whole Foods for the first time today. Made it. Meh.

    A lot of ink, everywhere. There are some plasticky things you have to carve out. And the skin. Not worth the hassle.

    I'll buy the cleaned squiggly's and tubes from now on.

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