Of course like nearly everyone else, my first chore of the day, was to get the snow that fell overnight, shoveled off the sidewalk at the front of my office, along with getting another pass-thru created from street to sidewalk which I had opened yesterday, which the snowplows had so kindly filled back in over the evening hours, and since I was out there before dawn broke, there was a huge flock of those evil Downtown crows in that giant hackberry tree down the street that were making very annoy noises. Well, I could only take so much of it to where I stopped shoveling, walked back into my office and found something that would make a loud noise, which I did. When I walked out there and gave that metal pan a good whack with a hammer handle, they went a-flying. Thank goodness I didn’t have to listen to their squawking while I continued with my shoveling. Just for the record, starlings and crows are my most despised birds which are continuing to multiplying under our noses.
After I finished up on my front sidewalk, I headed out to get the other shoveling chores done, and while at the last site, I noticed that the rain and warmer temps we had last week, created some long stretches of very slick ice, and you can be sure I was being ever-careful while shoveling. Well, I must’ve fulfilled my own prophesy because I had this “feeling” I was going to take a fall this winter, and today I did. In spite of my being careful on that ice, just as I was getting ready to walk to my car and get some chicken grit, I went all the way down, but thankfully I didn’t get hurt, and likely because I had my long wool winter coat on, along with my thick stocking cap. Thank goodness I only managed to hurt my pride. Yes, I did get that sidewalk loaded up with grit, just so no one else would be taking a nasty spill. Truth be told, I’ve never seen that sidewalk so heavily covered with ice, which was one more confirmation of how this global warming is affecting North Iowa.
I had a fun experience over the Noon hour at a flooring company where I had to go and purchase two extra bundles of flooring which I was needing to finish up a project, and while there, one of the workers mentioned something about foreign languages, and especially German, so of course buttinsky me, had to start rattling off some of my favorite sayings in German, and in spite of that young man having taken four years of that language, he didn’t understand as much as I thought he would.
Just so he didn’t think me fluent in that language, I made sure he understood that it’s been years since I carried on a conversation in German, which is why I’ve forgotten many of the nouns and verbs. Yes, I still understand their sentence structure, and pronunciation of words, but I’d have to have a dictionary in hand to carry on any sort of elementary conversation. More than once he mentioned how well I pronounced the words, which prompted me to inform him that my German instructor also gave me high marks in speaking the language. Yes, those were a very, very many years ago, but curious me just had to go online to one of those free language testing sites several months ago, and by the time I went thru the first phase of it, the “bot” told me that I was ready to proceed onto a much higher level. To think today’s conversation all started when one of those guys were kiddingly saying something about possibly having to learn Chinese, and then ending up with me saying some very naughty, yet hilarious things to them in German. Too funny.
My afternoon when flying by in a whoosh to where I was about five minutes away from being late for another appointment, but I did manage to get everywhere I needed to be without having to speed. I did have to pull to the curbside more than once, and only because I was getting text messages from other agents regarding the availability of my new listing at 16111 – 245th St., so just for everyone’s information, we already have two offers on the table, and still more showings tomorrow and Saturday, which is why the seller decided to leave the window of time for offering open until Sunday evening at 8:00 pm, which would give every interested buyer enough time to make their decisions.
My last showing for the day, just happened to be that property, and after the buyers had given it a good looking-over, I believe there’s some interest in it, so we’ll see what tomorrow brings. Yes, that home’s got some really good features which can’t be overlooked, and especially its location, condition, and price point. Now tell me, where can you find a 1,200+ square ft. three bedroom ranch with 1 3/4 baths with an attached garage, for $112,500? After seeing all the lipsticked pigs that’ve recently sold for many thousands more, I’d say it’s priced to sell. But the real bonus, is it’s not in our City limits which means a person isn’t being held hostage to some of those silly ordinances. Yes, you could have a goat, a pig, and a nice flock of chickens if you want.
As many times as I’ve been wanting to mention this, I finally made sure I stopped to take the above photo of the graffiti I’ve seen around town, which is usually found on Alliant Energy’s electrical boxes in and around our Downtown.
When I first noticed it several years ago, I didn’t understand what it was all about, until I finally realized that it was “Vision 2020” which was written not only upside-down, but also backwards. Now who and why would anyone want to go to all that trouble to spray that on those metal boxes? After I discovered what was actually written at the time, I went online to see if there was some special significance to it, but nothing was found. With that said, if any of you know more about it, please fill us in. Truth be told, I’m surprised Alliant Energy hasn’t got all of that either painted-over, or stripped-off. For whatever reason, every time I come upon one of them, it catches my eye, and I’d say there’s at least a half-dozen of them around.
Tonight’s One-liner is: If you have ten thousand regulations, you’ll end up destroying all respect for the law.