So: we are at my in-laws new house, which is amazingly I don't even know. It is 6000 square feet. It is the literal southeast edge of Denver, so that you look out onto in-progress development construction and beyond that, just plains and essentially Kansas.
It's only 4 bedrooms. It's the worst floor plan I can imagine. Or, not bad exactly - the floor plan doesn't decrease functionality - but very, very weird. There's two living areas, one upstairs and one downstairs, and two bedrooms upstairs, and two more downstairs, and the rooms are biggish but not absurd. You'd think that would add up to maybe 3000? Maybe? So the rest is these endless little nooks of things like: hidden bar to nook to storage. Big walk in closet stuck in here. Nook with workspace there. So on and so forth. It's very, very different than a 6000 square foot house built fifty years ago with the endless rooms. This has fairly few rooms and then just essentially endless accessory-rooms.
And if you're on the upper deck, you're maybe ten yards away from the upper decks of the neighbors on either side. These giant houses use up every last inch of the plot of land.
The view here is a quaint agricultural valley on one side and the ridge on the other.
50th anniversary edition.
Happy Thanksgiving all. Get stuffed.
I pulled out my parents' folk records. No Arlo, but AJ is pretty amused at what I am spinning.
All three girls went with Lee ("because enemies should be kind together on Thanksgiving," Nia says) and so I'm baking apple crisp and in the early stages of making my grandmother's pea soup. I'll take a bath soon, then get back to sorting laundry or take a nap, probably eventually wander over to the gay socialist bar to hang out with friends and comrades a bit. It feels like such a luxury not to have to celebrate, though I have many reasons to feel grateful.
Just a quiet little thing here. But bittersweet: the kids are moving to California in 3 weeks or so, obviously taking the baby with them. It's been the best year ever.
You could just stick the baby in a cabinet until they get tired of looking for it and have to leave.
This image has probably been linked before but it's on-topic.
A contemporaneous rendering of the massacree in a different medium: A surprisingly detailed article in the Berkshire Eagle at the time: "Youths Ordered to Clean Up Rubbish Mess." with familiar elements.
Because they couldn't find a dump open in Great Barrington, two youths threw a load of refuse down a hillside on Thanksgiving Day.
...
Special Justice James E. Hannon ordered the youths to remove all the rubbish. They did so Saturday afternoon following a heavy rain.
Police Chief William J. Obanhein of Stockbridge said later the youths found dragging the junk up the hillside much harder than throwing it down.
...
Chief Obanhein told the court he spent a "very disagreeable two hours" looking through the rubbish before finding a clue to who had thrown it there. He finally found a scrap of paper bearing the name of a Great Barrington man.
10: Fuck you Minivet. After I took the trouble to scan and edit it....
But I'm thankful that you posted it first, bless your heart.
Also as I had posted here recently discovered that for a short time Alicia's Restaurant was directly beneath Norman Rockwell's studio in Stockbridge (but I don't think it was at the time of the song). And officer Obey posed at least once for a Norman Rockwell drawing (not the famous one at the soda fountain).
Barbie has a dog that had puppies. But the puppies drop out ventrally, instead of posteriorally.
Anyway, Mattel doesn't know where a dog keeps her vagina.
Have a lovely thanksgiving everyone. Except the FCC, obv.
19: If you watch kid shows, the commercial will come on and you can shift the discussion to dog anatomy.
Happy Thanksgiving, genociders.
My family arrived after that was mostly done.
Just cleaned a shitsplosion in the bathroom. I think Dad was glad to bring Mom home for dinner but not quite prepared for this level of incontinence plus a clogged toilet. Happy Thanksgiving.
Apparently those are overrated.
26: I was, too! Now she is back at her facility and I have serious reservations about whether I can stomach the pumpkin pie.
I'm thankful heebie and a passel of regulars have kept this going.
I'm not sure what the collective noun for a group of commenters here is. Where's nosflow when you need him?
So the rest is these endless little nooks of things like: hidden bar to nook to storage. Big walk in closet stuck in here. Nook with workspace there.
Lemme guess. The master bedroom has two separate ("his" and "hers," natch) walk-in closets that are each the size of a decently-proportioned bedroom in the NYC area; and the en suite master bathroom has one of those double sink console things going on?
I haven't been in the master bedroom. But our guest room nearly qualifies. I'm pretty sure this house does not have any proper closets that aren't themselves rooms. Maybe one in a bathroom?
I'm now trying to think whether my (1881) house has closets plural. Yes, one in my bedroom and one under the stairs where tools and cleaning supplies get stored. But I do feel there has to be middle ground!
I hope everyone's Thanksgiving went off as well as mine did. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Oh, ydnew, that -- and similar -- is such an awful part of parents entering their second infancy.
Delighted to hear that LB had a good one.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Heebie, I thought your in-laws lived in Montana. Is this a move? The modern houses on steroids thing is freaky.
The plan was to retire to Montana, so they built their retirement house on the lake, and so on. Then Jammies' dad got bored after about two weeks and started consulting again, and then that turned into a fulltime thing, and he's been operating out of Denver for the past year or so, and Jammies' mom joined him this past summer, when they bought this sprawling crazy thing.
(So they still have the Montana house, and a lot of family up that way. Jammies' sister is basically down the street here, though.)
Can I have the lake house if I promise not to get bored?
Do you have post-secondary course work in Appreciating Fresh Water?
I didn't say I wouldn't get bored with the house. I just won't get bored in the house.
Ugh, one of you just wrote a thing about Arlo being a quasi-Trump supporter. I don't know what to do with the art of monstrous men.
Sorry. I think he's more of a Ron/Rand Paul guy and a "I dunno about Trump but the Democrats are bad" kinda guy.
S'okay. Just don't update me on Ponyboy as an adult.
Heebie is spending Thanksgiving trapped in the McMansion Hell blog?
I've been trying to figure out if these are McMansions. On the inside, yes, definitely, and yes on scale. The exteriors in this neighborhood aren't gaudy enough, though. They've got the McMansion version of a ranch house thing going on. Also no in acreage. This is definitely a developer who is maximizing impervious cover.
Well, once water goes under the ground, who knows what the fuck happens to it.
Anyway, I always thought of large houses on small lots as being part of the phenomenology of the McMansion.
From the dimmer of the xfit coaches on FB:
"Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by STRIKING" - WILLIAM SPRAGUE
I think that's a really bad way to shape iron, actually.
Well actually, heat is just molecules striking each other.
We got sent home with leftovers, but, as I just noticed, no gravy. How am I supposed to eat turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes with no gravy?
55: don't McMansions lack acreage by definition ?
62: Monstrous. We left my father with gravy, because we love him.
64: oh, perhaps. It certainly qualifies morally.
62. We ate all the gravy elsewhere, then had turkey, stuffing, etc. as portable leftovers. Always pre-deploy backup gravy from a jar, as there is never enough gravy. (Yes, not as good but then, one does what one must.)
49: I know he turned into a libertarian. My diagnosis is Daddy Issues (which, fair enough. Woody sounded like a terrible father).
We did manage to have a small political spat on Thanksgiving despite everyone being pretty-well aligned (it was after dinner at least). The point of contention was over the rightness or wrongness of closely following political developments in general, and specifically on Thanksgiving evening. I was gladly in the next room reading one of the Culture books (physical copy from the Carnegie as the two electronic copies of CP and TPoG were both checked out ... hmmm).
Fuck. Sorry, I meant to try to fix that.
I actually still prefer physical copies (because old). It just delayed my starting by a couple of days.
That's good because either I can't fix it somebody else has the second copy.
Flashmobs, without the silly dancing.