Kidnapped By The Russians

What a surprise it was to find so much snow on the ground this morning! As much as I didn’t want to shovel anymore this year, out I went and got it done, and of course it was plenty heavy which is normal for this time of year. Of course by the time mid-afternoon arrived, most of the streets and sidewalks were already dry.

When I got back to office from shoveling, I did some follow-up phone calls that came in after hours last night, along with printing out some changes to the closing that was supposed to take place tomorrow, but of course later in the day, I was notified by a corporate lender that it was getting postponed, and mostly due to an appraiser’s oversight. As much as I worked to get that over-due closing completed tomorrow, it’s now re-scheduled for mid-afternoon this coming Monday. It seems nearly every time I get entangled with a corporate bank, there always has to be a fly in the ointment. You can bet I’ll be ready to dance the jig after that home sale is completely closed.

Before I was alerted of that delayed closing, I’d already driven up to Manly to remove the lockbox from its front door, along with pulling my for sale sign. Oh well, it needed to be done sooner or later, so at least that was the last little chore to be done on my part, other than delivering the transfer docs to the lender on Monday and picking up the seller’s proceeds check.

That postponed closing did put me in somewhat of a bad mood for the remainder of the day, and knowing what had caused it, I worked at keeping myself busy with whatever I could find that would keep my mind off of it, so I headed to my computer to get caught up on the news feeds. There were several good articles on Deutsche Welle which is that German owned newspaper that’s in English which is found at www.dw.com. Since I’ve followed that newspaper for a number of years, I’d say they’re journalism is getting all the better. They’ve even streamlined their website which is now more user-friendly.

One of their videos was about the number of Ukrainians who took shelter in their neighboring countries, along with the million plus Germany took in. I was impressed to find Czech Republic having taken in over 500,000 which was quite a feat because that number equaled about 5% of their total population. Because the Slavic languages are so close to each other, it’s not that hard for them to assimilate, versus having to learn either Romance or Germanic languages which are very much different.

What really made me sad and angry, was hearing about the number of Ukrainians who were most likely transported by force into Russia. Every time I begin thinking about those 100,000 – 200,000 children that were basically kidnapped by the Russians and sent to heaven knows where in Russia, I begin to internally boil. Can you imagine what those children have been going thru these many months? At least they now have an arrest warrant for Putin because he ordered those kidnappings. As much as we all want to think positive, I’m near certain those children will be mentally scarred for life.

I later went on Youtube and watched some of those random interviews of people out in the general public of Russia, and after listening to the responses of those middle-aged to older people, there’s no question nearly all of them have been propagandized into believing the West is evil, Ukraine is full of Nazis, and Putin is only defending the Russians against their so-called Western aggression. I keep having to stop myself from thinking they’ve got weak and child-like minds, but then I have to remind myself that Putin has been in near absolute control of the medias for many years, so after being bombarded with so many lies, I guess they simply believe it all to be true. How many times has someone insisted what they read online or viewed on the television to be the absolute truth? I personally know a few who believe Fox News offers only the real news which is coming out of Tucker Carlson’s mouth. Go figure.

My mid-afternoon appointment to show a home to the young gentleman I’ve been working with, didn’t go as well as I was expecting, and only because of how cheaply updated it was, along with its funky floor plan. Now if I were the owner of it, I would’ve scraped it off and built new, instead of pouring all that money into it. Like I said before, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Before leaving, I did assure him I’ll be working very hard to find the best fit to be had for the money.

My two active listings located at 232 – 25th St. SW, and my listing up in Manly at 304 N. Fairview, have recently been getting more attention, so hopefully now that Spring has arrived, we’ll have the both of them sold. I’m still shocked 304 N. Fairview isn’t under contract yet, but of course, it’s not lipsticked like the many others that’ve sold. Whatever happened to all our young visionaries? Personally, I’d much rather purchase something for less, and then make my own improvements, instead of settling on a home that’s move-in ready, but not exactly befitting of my personal tastes.

I had an extended conversation today with a gentleman regarding the many hundreds of dead and dying Green Ash trees our City is faced with removing, and for the strangest of reasons, he didn’t know much if anything about it, which was one more example of how little people pay attention to the goings-on in our City. I personally don’t envy the job those workers are going to have in safely getting them cut down and hauled away.

Most don’t remember a terrible accident that happened when a chain that was wrapped around the limb of a tree, that snapped and went thru the cab of that multi-use City machinery. I can’t remember if he died or survived that terrible accident. Of course we now have a County worker who was accidentally killed by a wood chipper. So very sad.

Tonight’s One-liner is: A left-wing idiot is just as dangerous as a right-wing idiot.

Related Property:
232 25th St. SW Mason City 304 N Fairview Manly
Joe Chodur

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