Someone is tuckered out.

We have an annual pass for the Oregon Zoo. We can hop the train from our house to avoid the parking hell.

Farmers Market. Gorgeous day out here.

One super shady practice by Oregon realtors is the almost universal inclusion of unfinished basement space in the overall square footage in home listings. I often see houses listed at double their actual livable square footage. Buyers should do their due diligence and get the actual livable area from the county tax assessor. Often this info is public and sometimes it’s online. In the Portland area, you can look up any property at [Portland Maps](https://www.portlandmaps.com).

My property abuts two roads that don’t connect. My yard is often the shortest path between two
points, for kids coming and going to school, or adults trying to catch a train at the MAX station.

My camera catches people cutting through my garden all day. Recently, some kids trampled my acorn squash.

Instead of putting up a fence, I decided to clear away some landscaping for a path around my garden. It doesn’t take a degree in urban planning to know these two roads should’ve connected.

I’ve never been much of a pop music fan, but I can’t help but rock out when [Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart](https://music.apple.com/us/album/try-sleeping-with-a-broken-heart/341321353?i=341321615) by Alicia Keys comes on.

I grew up in a very poor neighborhood in Saginaw, Michigan. I lived in a 900 square foot house with 7 other people. 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom.

My mom was a teenager when she had me. My mother and I, and later my two brothers, all lived with my grandmother, also a single mother, who still had 3 kids of her own at home.

Yet, by some stroke of luck, our part of the neighborhood was included in a very good school district. Six houses separated us from a very poor inner-city school.

Sometimes, I’m amazed by what some of the neighborhood kids grew up to become given their home environments, especially compared to some of the kids who were inside the city’s school district. Several kids who grew up on my street, including myself, have graduate degrees. One of my closest friends as a kid is an attorney in Chicago.

It’s sad to think schools can have such disparate impacts on kids. The families on either side of the line weren’t any different from ours in terms of socioeconomic status.

As a humanitarian, as a city planner, I wish we could solve the problem of our schools. Good, properly funded schools would go a long way toward solving so many of our societal ills. I think a decent education, along with affordable healthcare for all, are human rights, and the bare minimum any wealthy society should provide to its citizens.

Apologies for swapping instances, yet again.

My waffling stemmed from an inability to cross-post to my own instance from Micro.blog.

I’ve ultimately decided to go with a different host, so I’m hoping this one sticks.

I didn’t get to drywalling the kitchen ceiling yesterday. As I was squaring up some existing drywall in preparation for placing the patch, I noticed another small leak in the drain pipe below the master bath. My wife was just finishing up giving the kids a bath, and a small amount of water was coming out from the top of the P-trap. This appeared to be an error the plumber made when they built my house. Small annoyance, but I’m glad it showed itself before I closed things up. Homeownership, man.

Me: *Stands for 6 straight hours working on drywall and plumbing in a ceiling*

Apple Watch: “Time to stand!”

“Sympathy for the Devil” is kind of a mess, musically. A beautiful mess.

I was never much into serated pocket knives, but I love this Little Native. My first Spyderco.

Just got home a little bit ago from a barbecue at my in-laws’ house. They had a Costco size bag of those Ruffles chips with homemade French onion dip. The kind I can’t keep at the house or I’ll obliterate them. Oof, I always have so many food regrets coming home from their place.

Exposé, Mission Control, Stage Manager….

I still use Hot Corners. Nothing can break me of it!

Here’s a photo of me (center right) and my brothers with my stepdad (~1992), rocking an undershirt in public at Niagara Falls. He was 30 when he took on 3 kids who weren’t his own. Happy Father’s Day. 

I don’t know if it’s a result of my upbringing, or just a desire to do something with my hands in direct opposition to my desk job, but I love DIY home renovation. And boy, did I ever buy the right house to feed that desire. The last 7 years have been a lot of work just to get it to “passable”.

Few things bother me more than land use planners peddling the same ideas or practices over and over again that don’t work in the real world.

Fun fact about me:

I was named after my dad, but he left my mom when I was 2 years old. Later, he changed his last name in an effort to not be found. So I have a “II” suffix after my name for someone who no longer exists.

NYTimes:

>Your special introductory rate is changing from $6/mo to $25/mo

NYTimes after I start the cancellation process:

>Please accept our special offer, reducing your $6/mo rate to $4/mo for the next year!

They must know I was happy paying $6/mo, right? Right?

Doing my meal planning, I decided it’s been too long since I’ve had poutine. A lot of places in Detroit had this on the menu when I lived there, but I’ve only ever seen it once here in Portland. Not something you want to eat everyday, but it’s ok to have some comfort food once in awhile.

Started the gardening year late, but I think we’re gonna be okay. My tomato plants have grown quite a bit since transplanting. Just pruned the bottoms and put the side supports up.