Warm Puppy

Things seem at last to be working out. I have tenants for my house, a prospect of a place to store the Pachyderm, a real estate lady who is willing to, and sounds capable of, taking care of the house while I'm gone, and the stock market is up a little bit.

I have to buy mattresses and furniture for the Irish girls from Trinity College Dublin who will be here. But they (the mattresses and furniture) will be in the nature of an investment. I learned from Mark and Wendy about a website called VRBO (Vacation Rentals By Owners) which brokers renting one's house by the week or month to out-of-towners. With the euro so high, Europeans can spend a lot of dollars without spending many euros. Next summer I will be ready with plans and furnishings to rent the house all summer long.

The exciting thing is the astronomical rents people are getting for weekly rentals. When I saw the same sort of thing in France I thought they were pretty reasonable until I realized the rents quoted were per week, not month. VRBO is the same thing only in the US. I had thought one had to be European to have the effrontery to charge so much. I just have to work on being pointlessly rude and I will become a Frenchman. (Not true. The French are actually quite polite, but that is the stereotype, based on harried Parisian waiters in August. Many of them were student leftists working summer jobs, and who used to all be Maoists. Ancient history now.)

I will live in the little apartment and become my own concierge. Or, if I can really get everything to break my way, I could leave next summer too and rent the little apartment in return for conciergerie of the big one.

Anyway, I am elating too much too fast. For now it will suffice to just get my act together to get out of here and go bicycling in Canada and not get hurt along the way. I expect to be out of here by Monday. Or so.

I even put up a venetian blind in the front room. I was frustrated at Home Depot because the window measured 32.75 inches and the nearest size they had was 33", no 32" anywhere. Grrr. I was too annoyed to just let it go and just before giving up on having the thing cut by the never-to-be-found employees, I noticed in eensy-beensy tiny little type that the "actual size is 32.5" " Whatever. I happily bought it from a self-checkout machine that kept describing me as an unexpected object in the bagging area. Then came home and put it up. Now the sun is no longer daily reducing my red front room rug to a red rug with an ochre corner. Hooray!

The secret of happiness they say is to be easily amused. I think I'm there.