Okay, not everybody knows our housing situation, but in a nutshell, we live in a rented adobe house on the side of a hill, with a sloping dirt “driveway” leading up to a dirt road that eventually runs into a paved road and into town. There are other homes nearby on three sides. We’re not out in the sticks exactly, but the sticks begin just 100 yards away, with miles and miles of untouched mesa, forests, and mountains. If you walk up to the mailbox and look south and west, you can see for 90 miles. It’s pretty damned nice for being small and funky. And funky isn’t a concept. You don’t know funky till you live in a 100-year-old house of mud!
Right now my wife is on the phone with an important private call. The details don’t matter, but I needed to give her some privacy. It’s a very small house, so I had to take my TiBook and absent the premises. Normally I would go next door to her studio, but I’m expecting the UPS guy with my new MacBook (!), which requires a signature. The upshot is that I’m now sitting in my ’87 Ford pickup truck just outside the front door. Who knew I had an office on wheels?
Rainy day view w/ good ole truck
The boosted signal from my Buffalo Technologies Turbo G wireless router comes in just fine, thank you, even while I’m slouching in the cab. Internet in the truck, nice! I have the windows open, and I can hear a woodpecker at work in the tall elm tree a few feet away. My coffee is sitting on the dash. (No it isn’t, I just finished it.) I’m in the shade and it’s about 65 degrees.
I’ve even been able to take care of business. I decided I needed to see a dermatologist for a little nastiness on the tip of my ear, so I looked up the guy my wife sees in Los Alamos, called the office on my cell phone, and made an appointment, all from the cab of an ’87 Ford. I could get used to this. I always feel secure sitting in this truck (must be the six-ply tires). And get this: we have no health insurance, right? So when I asked the doc’s receptionist if I needed a referral first, she said (in essence), “only if you have insurance,” because that’s what some plans demand. But because we’re insurance-free, I got in immediately. Whoa! No wonder health care costs so much: most policies are really physician-income-increasing plans, geez!
Something is mortally screwed up in this country, all right. Happily though, not inside my F-150.
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