Ghetto Central AC

Okay so you can take the boy outta the ghetto but ya can't take the ghetto outta the boy I guess....
Even though its been freakishly cold here in July I knew that it was only a matter of time until we were sweltering in 100 deg heat. With the babies being here for the nanny share I didn't like the idea of them overheating in this poorly insulated old house, so I came up with this idea for...

Ghetto Central AC

Bought a highly rated, by Consumer Reports, Kenmore window unit at my local Sears. Have to admit I was impressed, they had it in stock and it was waiting for me on the loading dock when I drove down there.

I purchased a 12,000BTU model which is slightly bigger than I needed to cool the two front rooms of the house...My plan was to push the cold air to other areas of the house to attempt to get this one window unit to cool like 800 sq ft.

Just an example of the ghetto-tastic-ness of the install. I didn't want to screw in the metal sash locks so I just tapped a couple of shims in between the sashes instead. Just with this, I can tell you, that AC isn't going anywhere unless someone tries to hang on it from the outside or something...

Went to home despot to buy some fans and they had this knock-off of the 'Voranado' fan for under $20, I bought two. This one is clamped to the book shelf and pushes the cold air from the TV room (where the AC is mounted) to the front room or the babies room. It's mounted high enough that the kids can't get their fingers inside the guard. These little knock-offs do push a decent amount of air. With just this fan pushing the cold air into the front room the temperatures between the two rooms are pretty equal.

Next is this big fan we got from our friend Big D. This fan stands in the door way and pushes the cold air out of the TV room and down the hallway and into the bathroom and the bedroom. This fan pushes a lot of air and you can definitely feel the cool air flowing into the bedroom. It doesn't end up super chilling the bedroom or anything but it does seem to keep it cooler.

But, how to get the cool air into the kitchen? Which is the hottest room in the house because of all the east facing windows? This is the super ghetto part....

When I was at Home Despot buying the fans I also bought this box of 10" insulated ducting. Now if you're doing a real heat-ac job you should never, ever use this flex duct... Flex duct is only used by lazy, low quality heating contractors.

My thought was to thread this ducting through our chimney chase and into the TV room. One thing I didn't picture correctly in my head was how dang big the stuff is...

I was able to wrestle it down into the chase without damaging it.

Here's a shot of me cutting it...

And this is what it looks like right now...GHETTO!! I've got to figure out a way to put a grill on it and maybe cut the fabric around the ducting... Most likely scenario is that our cat Henrietta will climb inside here and get stuck...

At the other end of the ducting I pulled it out and taped it to the other 'voranado' fan. The fan sits on the floor of the TV room and pushes the cool air up the ducting and into the hot kitchen. It works surprisingly well! With more cool air exiting the kitchen duct than I thought. The kitchen end of the duct sorta points at the hot windows which is probably not the best way to go. But, standing at the sink (all the way across the room) you can feel the cool air...it won't exactly blow off your toupee but you can feel it.

Our bedroom has the same problem as the kitchen, lots of west facing window that really heats the room up in the afternoon. While at Home Despot I noticed that they had these window fans for ~$25 bucks... I installed one in the double hung window of our bedroom and put the screen on top.

One great thing about living on the island is that pretty much no matter how hot it is during the day it always drops into the 60's at night. With this setup I turn on both fans and they push a lot of cool outside air into the room and the hot interior air is exhausted through the screen. This really cools the room down quickly and allows me to sleep cause I can't sleep when its hot. If you've got a hot room and double hung windows I reccomend this highly.

I've ran the 'central AC' for a couple of hot days and it really seems to work. The kitchen is still the hottest room in the house but where it would be in the mid-80's now its in the high 70's-that's with the AC set at 72.

The first day I tired this I had the ceiling fan running in the TV room and I was not impressed with the results. Next day I kept the fan off and much more cooler air was pushed to the different parts of the house. I guess with the fan not mixing the air, the air was stratifying and the fans where able to push cooler air out.

Anywho, now the babies, and sitter and us don't have to bake indoors anymore.

KnifeCatching 1310 San Antonio Ave Barred Again!!!

Read This:The following review is just my opinion and only my opinion I am not a professional house appraiser or inspector and I am not a structural engineer. The opinions expressed in this review are based on my own inspection of the property, the publicly available facts from aggregator sites such as Redfin and Zillow and the online permit database for the city of Alameda. I am not responsible for incorrect or missing data that appears in these sources. In fact, its probably best that you just ignore everything you read here as the lunatic ravings of an unbalanced mind.

Up for review today is 1310 San Antonio Ave. According to public facts its 4-2 single family home of 1907sq ft on a 4000sq ft lot built in 1906 on sale for $825k Its weird that the public facts show it as a 4-2 when its being listed as a 3-1.5...you hardly ever see the listing as smaller than the public facts. Check out the super fab sellers website here for lots of pics.

On To The Review
Oh wait, got banned again by those lovely folks at Alain Pinel Realty. They really appear to have their panties in a twist about people independently reviewing the houses they have for sale...

I'll say this again, in my opinion, anybody who is selling a product which they are refusing to be allowed to be independently reviewed must be hiding something....

1310 San Antonio Ave. was a bit of a heart breaker for the missus. She's been eyeing this place for a while. It looks good from the street and its literally 2 houses down from the super fab Franklin Park. It also has what looks like a nice front porch. As a 4-2 with a 3 car garage we where excited that maybe this could be the house for us...too bad the super-neato folks at Alain Pinel Realty see fit to bar legitimate buyers.

On the being barred thing:
I'm wondering if its even legal. Its an open house advertised in the paper...we're real buyers with a pre-approval letter yet they won't let me in to see the place? The realtor said, 'The home owners have asked that I not allow you in.'.....seriously WTF... What if the home owners said, 'Ya know, don't let any Jews into the open.' How would that fly? Maybe they should post a sign on the door that reads, 'Intelligent, knowledgeable buyers need not apply.' I feel like I'm being discriminated against cause I have a strong opinion.... Just for kicks, I think I'll try to find out what the ACLU has to say about this.

Mini-Review:
Anticipating that I would be banned the wife and a friend went along first to check the place out. Here are their thoughts on the place.

The two rooms on the ground floor look nice and are of a nice size. The kitchen is 'weird' with it being separated into two rooms. The front porch is indeed good sized. The top floor bedrooms are teeny-tiny and what looks like a cool 2nd floor porch over the bottom porch can only be accessed through a window?!?! There is one bathroom on the 2nd floor and only a room with a toilet on the 1st. They both thought that the kitchen and bath needed to be 'refreshed' as they looked old and well worn to them. The entire lot is covered in bricks! From the looks of it probably the bricks from the original foundation...but the front yard, side yards and back yard are completely bricked in! Sounds like just the thing for kids to play on...'low maintenance yards' isn't that supposed to be for elderly folks? I estimate that between the house and the garage is maybe 20' tops....so no backyard.

Net-net, too small with no yard for $825k.....but, its got location, location, location...so maybe it'll sell for asking. The place next door's (1312 San Antonio) been for sale for ever and its a 3-2 and they've dropped the price from like the mid $800's down to the higher $600k's and it still hasn't sold. 1312 has a new realtor and if ya ask me they really blew it not having it open same time as 1310 was. There were a lot of people coming to see 1310 and most of em woulda probably toured 1312 also. But hey, maybe 1310 is worth more than $150k more than 1312 which hasn't sold in months.....

The Real Story *
Suspecting the insidious threat of the Reptile Realtors I hurried to Franklin park to attempt to astrally project myself into the house. Luckily, with the house only being 2 doors down from the park I was able to 'assume the position' under my favorite tree and project my astral self back into the house...what I found, dear readers, will shock you to your very core! Even after reading the relevations revealed in my review of 1525 Gibbons Dr.

Have you ever toured a house with your baby and have the Realtor showing it say something along the lines of, 'I just love babies, please, let me hold him while you go look through the house.' Does it ever appear that they are just a little too eager to hold your child? We used to hear it all the time when we brought our daughter to open houses when she was younger. We, of course, never handed our child over to a stranger. I always wondered if ANYBODY would take the realtor up on their offer.

Well, it turns out some people do...in my astral state I actually saw a mother hand her daughter over to the realtor so she could look through the house unencumbered. I don't want to make any value judgements here, but this woman looked like the type of very wealthy mother who looks at a baby as more of a fashion accessory than anything else...musta been the au-pairs day off. At this point I didn't know if this was a human Realtor or one of the heinous 'Reptile Realtors'. The realtor cradled the baby gently in its arms and smiled broadly...showing a lot of teeth...Then the Realtor smiled even broader showing even more teeth...double row's of evily serrated teeth!

I was frozen with fear. Was this vile creature going to eat this baby? Could I get back to my body in the park and back to the house in time to save the baby? Just then, the baby's mother appeared from a doorway and smiled at the Realtor, who returned a perfectly normal, human, smile as the babies mama headed upstairs. Now, knowing that the upstairs of the house is teeny-tiny I hoped the mother would be back soon before anything happened to the baby.

This time the Reptile Realtor didn't smile broadly but its long, long reptilian forked tongue flicked out of its mouth. The creature played its freakishly long tongue over the sleeping babies face. I thought maybe the vile creature was trying to tickle the baby? It played its tongue down the babies arms, on its legs, on any exposed skin.....then I noticed that the RR was drooling!

This beast from another world was tasting the baby!!! I'll never forget the look on its face as it was tasting that baby....like when you take a bite of REALLY good chocolate and let it melt in your mouth and smoosh it around with your tongue....

The creature barely had time to compose itself as the babies mama came down the stairs and scooped the baby up and was off without even a word to the RR. I guess that 2nd floor really isn't impressive.

So, dear readers, I implore you, never, ever, let a Realtor hold your child for ANY reason!

I was hoping to follow this RR back to its lair, but again, my daughter wanted to play on the slide and awoke me from my trance like state.

To Be Continued?

*Of course this is satire.

Troubles in Stair Land

Went down to the city today to check if they allow open risers on exterior, secondary stairs...nope not allowed exactly. They can be semi-open but they have to pass the 4" sphere rule. Which means that a 4" sphere can not pass thru the opening.

While I was there I browsed through the selection of hand outs and picked up their stair guidelines sheet. It looks different than the one I have.....I started reading the copy and....and....
They changed their fricken stair requirements!!!
The new minimum tread depth is 10" and the new maximum riser height is 7 3/4"!!!
Dang, I'm screwed, I thought.

To Review: A total rise of 81" and a total run of 99 1/4" is the sorta captive conditions I am trying to fit. That gave me 11 risers-stairs with individual run of 9" and a individual rise of 7 4/11". The rise is still within spec but the run is not....dang I'm going to have to go to 12 risers-steps.

I asked my question on the breaktime classic forum about the one less tread than riser thing and a nice guy produced these drawings for me. This one shows the last step being the deck. He gets a run of 9 15/16" and a rise of 7 3/8".

This is what it would look like if the last step is part of the stairs. Using this method he gets a rise of 7 3/8" still and a run of 9 1/32".

So to squeeze the most individual run in the smallest total run I did to do the top case and make the deck the top step.

Stair Math Part 2
Now its a little different. I still have a total rise of 81" but the run will be whatever it will be.
I will need to increase the riser count to 12 and then I get a individual rise of (total rise)/(# of risers)=81"/12= 6 3/4" of rise. To get the new total run I'll use the new smallest run allowed of 10" and I get. Total run= (individual run)(# of treads)= (10")(12)= 120".
Dang my new total run is 20 3/4" longer!

Referring back to the top picture that means that the new stairway will have intrude into the side yard by almost 2'!! And I'll have to pour a new concrete bottom step for the stair to land on....bummer...

But Wait All Is Not Lost

I just remembered that this is not a normal stair job, this is a normalization!
This deck and stairs where built before we owned the house without permits so we have to get them normalized. As part of that process I had to have my immediate neighbors sign papers saying that the deck had been there at least 10yrs.

Then, a city inspector came out and agreed with that number and he called out a couple of things that needed to be fixed to meet code, the stairs being one of them.

But here's the rub, officially the stairs only need to meet the code in force at the time they where built!!! That means that I should be able to use the earlier allowed rise/run and have my stairs land on the concrete retaining wall as planned.

Of course when I asked which codes where in force 10yrs ago they looked at me like I just asked them to explain Einsteins Theory of General Relativity....so, I think I'll have to work on that aspect....

I guess now the question I have to answer is, if the steeper stairs will be walkable enough or if they will be so bad that it will be worth the extra effort of pouring a new bottom step and the intrusion into the side yard to get a more comfortable walkable stairway?

Hmmmmmmm?

Knife Catching 1831 San Jose Ave

Read This:The following review is just my opinion and only my opinion I am not a professional house appraiser or inspector and I am not a structural engineer. The opinions expressed in this review are based on my own inspection of the property, the publicly available facts from aggregator sites such as Redfin and Zillow and the online permit database for the city of Alameda. I am not responsible for incorrect or missing data that appears in these sources. In fact, its probably best that you just ignore everything you read here as the lunatic ravings of an unbalanced mind.

Whoa, boy where to start on this house.....I guess I should start by saying that this 'review' is going to be different from the rest, as this place is apparently not having any open houses? Several people have asked me to review this place anyways so here goes...

Knife Catching 1831 San Jose Ave.
Today's house has the official specs of; A single family home of 2072 sq ft, on a 6600 sq ft lot with 5 bedrooms and 2.5 baths and no garage! built in 1880 on sale for the low, low, low price of $1.39M last sold in 2004 for an even $1M.

I have to get this off my chest real quick before we delve into the meat of the review....
What Kind of Crack Are These People Smoking????????
Okay I feel better now.

This house actually had us all excited when I saw the 'coming soon' add in the local paper. Its in a good neighborhood, on a good sized lot, and its plenty big, Annnnnd when I did a permit check it showed that the new owners redid the foundation!!! , redid the kitchen, one bath, and upped the electrical service to 200amps and installed a 100amp sub-panel! Wow, sounds great for us doesn't it! Annd since 3 similarly sized homes on similar lots for sale in the same area have had to reduce their prices to below $800k and they still haven't sold (as far as I know). We where excited that this house would be in our price range....now the coming soon adds don't show prices typically.....boy howdy, where we shocked when we learned the price....wow, what a disconnect from reality.

Unabashedly stealing the pics from Google cause a review without pictures just doesn't seem right. The house shows well from the front with a nice yard.

Here's a view from space where you can get an idea of how big the backyard is. This house is actually the back fence neighbor to another house I reviewed at 1832 San Antonio Ave.

Google thinks its next to R&B cellars...maybe the current owners and their realtor did a little bit too much wine tasting their before they settled on a price?

Here's Google's version of a birds-eye view. No trees in front of the house which is kinda sad but it looks like there's plenty of tree-age in the back yard.

Okay, the house is listed on a bunch of the pro sites, Zillow, Redfin, Trulia and Realtor.com.

The pictures and copy are all slightly different but I want y'all to look at the Realtor.com site. Click on the 'see all 20 pictures' link and go through them all paying close attention to what the last couple of pictures are showing.

Looks like a nice place no? Very similar to 1832 San Antonio except with an updated kitchen and updated mechanicals.

From the permit record this is the description of the work that happened for the new basement-foundation. Sorry for the screwy formatting this is a cut and paste right from the pdf. The part in red is what you want to read...

Permit Type Status Applicant Issued Date Finaled Date
CB04-1012 Combination Building Permit FINALED GUTLEBEN CONSTRUCTION CORPORATION 11/23/2004 06/29/2005
Work Description: (ALL WORK IN BASEMENT) R/R FOUNDATION, BRICK TO CONCRETE; EXCAVATE BASEMENT TO 8'2" CEILING HEIGHT FOR
STORAGE ONLY (ONE LIGHT, ONE SWITCH AND ONE PLUG IN STORAGE AREAS); DIVIDE LAUNDRY AREA & INSTALL
UNDERGROUND PLUMBING FOR FUTURE FULL BATH; BUILD NON-BEARING WALLS TO CREATE UTILITY ROOM & WINE
STORAGE ROOM; ADD 2 STEPS TO EXISTING INTERIOR STAIRWAY; INSTALL NEW WATER HEATER, FURNACE & SUMP PUMP -
NO EXTERIOR CHANGES (BLDG/ELEC/PLUM/MECH)ext

Now remember those last sets pics from the Realtor.com site?

Here's some add copy that help explains what's going on in the basement.

The media/game room on the lower level includes a kitchen, wine cellar, and guest bedroom and bath that could be used by an au pair.
So, what do we have here then? The scope of work description is very clear that the basement is just meant for storage, laundry and a wine cellar. That's the only way the city will let you basically build a basement you have to tell them in writing that you are not adding living space....

Looks to me like that bottom level is now an illegal 2nd unit, complete with kitchen, bath, uh, looks like a couple of bedrooms...all done with out permits! It appears they snookered the city...wonder if I report it if they'd actually do anything about it?

Conclusion:

This looks like a nice house in a decent neighborhood from what I can tell of the listing pics. One thing the pics don't tell you is the number of crappy apartment buildings on this block. We rode our bikes down it and I think we counted 8!

The only thing that makes sense to me is that with the illegal bottom unit the current owners are thinking that this is a 3000sq ft house and trying to price it accordingly? But still, even at 3000sq ft and no garage that $1.39M price just seems insane to me. Maybe, and I'm just guessing here, the current owners pulled a ton of money out of the house during the height of the market and that's what they owe on it? There is just no fricken way in a million years that place is going to appraise out. No Way!

So the current owners bought the house for $1M near the peak of the market, I'd guesstimate that the foundation work was probably $150k. Now that the market has REALLY fallen since '04 how do they get a valuation of $1.4M???? How damn it, How? What am I missing?

Unlike the other very similar houses in the same neighborhood I reviewed recently 2132 San Antonio, 1832 San Antonio, and 2157 San Antonio I think that this is a good ~$800k house...think they'll take that for it? Keeping in mind the HUGE potential can of worms you're buying with the unpermitted living space in the basement and no garage? Am I totally wrong in thinking that anyone who can actually afford a $1.4M house is going to probably have a fancy car or two and they're going to want to keep them off the street and in a nice, safe, cozy garage?

I did hear through the realtor grape vine that the owners are willing to make someone a serious deal!

I think honestly this listing has to take the cake as the most dissconnected from reality of any house I've ever reviewed.

New Stairs for Old,..New Stairs for Old...

STAIR MATH!!

So its our 3 yr house-iversery today and I'm feeling a bit bummed cause we haven't really done anything on the house for a while.


So I hit on the idea to finally redo the stairs off of our back porch. In order to get the deck 'normalized' I need to rebuild the stairs with code compliant guard rails, width and rise-run which it is not compliant with now.

As you can see the back stairs are a bit wonky being supported by a tacked in place post and that weird cross beam.

The ugly bottom of the stairs. You can just see under that ramp the two anchor bolts that I need to use for the 2by4 'kicker'

Here's a shot looking up at the underside of the deck. That 2by12 with the notch taken out of it is going to be a problem. The house movers cut that notch so they could get a beam in there to support the deck-house. The deck has 2by6 joists as you can see which are not deep enough for the stringer or carriage to land on. I'll probably have to remove this and the horizontal board and reinstall a fresh pressure treated 2by12 bolted to the framing.

To figure the total rise and run I used a plumb bob and my laser level. Yay for laser levels they save a lot of time...but they don't work in bright direct sunlight...

The plumb line seen here represents the edge of the deck or the start of the run. The level is clamped at the height of the finished landing or the top edge of our fancy retaining wall. I used the laser level to determine this so no need for the magically straight and long piece of framing lumber. Right now the exterior ground is a couple of inches lower than this level but when finished-landscaped it will be even with it.

So I can measure up from the top of the level to the top of the deck boards to get the total rise.

Then I marked on the level where the plumb line landed. From there I could measure to the outer edge of the retaining wall to get the total run.

Annnnd here is what I found. A total rise of 81" and a total run of 99 1/4" So here's where the math comes in.

Stair Math: The cities code for stair cases is the minimum individual run for the stair case can be 9" and the maximum individual rise can be up to 8". I've got to figure out how to fit a stairway that does not exceed those numbers into the given constraints of total rise-run.

If I guess that I am going to need 10 risers I get (total rise)/(number of steps)= 81"/10= 8 1/10" individual rise...that's too high a riser by 1/10th of an inch! I don't want to risk an anal inspector so I'll have to make 11 risers work. That gives me an individual rise of 81"/11= 7 4/11". 4/11"? geez that sounds convenient! Dang. The math for the individual run works out better thank goodness... individual run = (total run)/# of risers= (99 1/4")/11=9 1/44" individual run. I think I can fudge the landing 1/4" so I can use an even 9".

Here's what I don't understand. The stair building section in my Taunton deck book says that the total # of treads will either be = to the number of risers or 1< # of risers depending on how the stringers are attached to the deck framing. Cept it doesn't really explain that at least not to me? So hopefully I'll have 11 treads and 11 risers right?

So it looks like I can make it a code compliant stairway without intruding into the side yard! It'll be steepish but we had a similar layout for the back stair on our last house and it wasn't too bad.

Here's a shot looking up the stairway. The distance between the guard rails needs to be at least 36" but this was built with only 35". What I'm wondering here is, if I even need the guard rail on the right side. If I can delete it than I can make the stairs wider and I won't have to mess with that short little return section. If the stairs are going to go within say 1" of the finished house siding why do I need a guardrail there?

I could bolt a handrail to the siding though..if I need two handrails?

So, once someone confirms my math I figure I'll need 3 12' 2byb12's for the stringers and using a 1" nosing my treads will be 10" deep. For the treads I'll have to use a 1by8 and a 1by3 with a 1/4" of spacing in between to get the 10" actual...that'll look weird.

I still don't have any idea about what type of guard rail I'll need but I figure I'll use 3 4by4 posts, one on each end and one in the middle to support it.

Does anybody have any ideas on easy guardrail designs? I plan to build the entire thing out of brown pressure treated wood. (hope they make 1by3's in pressure treated.)

Any helpful input would be greatly appreciated.

Garden Report June 19th

Okay here's a post that should not cause any controversy....unless there's a National Association of Heirloom Tomato Growers' that are going to object to my lack of gardening skill...
All the tomatoes are doing well and getting bigger with lots of flowers on them. The sunsugar even produced a ripe tomato already! I felt that the tomatoes are big enough to take them off of their stands and I even tied a couple of pieces of string to start training them to use the deck rail as a trellis. Its been super-crazy windy here the last couple of days and I was a little bit scared that a couple of the bigger plants would get blown over.

Here's the Green Zebra. This was the smallest most sickliest plant of the bunch when I first bought them. Now look at her! Shes' the biggest and healthiest with a good amount of flowers. Are they called blossoms also?

Here's the Pineapple. Its the 'rangy-ist' with several long uh shoots I guess? This is one of the plants I tied to the fence for support.

Here's a shot of the sunsugar Cherry tomato plant. Its the bushy-ist and has by far the most flowers. I'm hoping to train it to grow all over that little enclosed nook its in.

Just for the heck of it here's a shot of the first ripe tomato of the season. This tomato is an over achiever as there aren't even any other tomatoes on the other plants.

The Basil and Pepper pot. So, I guess I screwed up here and didn't pinch off the basil. Instead of having big bushy plants I got tall scraggly ones with a ton of flowers...

The Basil-Pepper pot after I did my pinching. Hopefully I can turn the basil back into a bushy form with a lot of leaves. But look how great the peppers are doing. They look totally healthy with lots of flowers.

I can not wait to make salsa with these tomatoes and those peppers..yum, yum. And of course there's the basil-tom-fresh mozzarella with balsamic vinegar salad that we love.

Hurry up and get ripe dang it!

Okay now back to our regularly scheduled inflammatory rhetoric...

Knife Catching 1525 Gibbons Drive.

Read This:The following review is just my opinion and only my opinion I am not a professional house appraiser or inspector and I am not a structural engineer. The opinions expressed in this review are based on my own inspection of the property, the publicly available facts from aggregator sites such as Redfin and Zillow and the online permit database for the city of Alameda. I am not responsible for incorrect or missing data that appears in these sources. In fact, its probably best that you just ignore everything you read here as the lunatic ravings of an unbalanced mind.

Well I honestly was not ever planning to review 1525 Gibbons Drive. We can't afford a house on Gibbons but it is a pipe dream for us to live there so we wanted to go check out the house just for the hell of it. But, being barred from entry and being told that the house owner specifically asked that I not be allowed admittance has rubbed me the wrong way.

To reiterate, my opinion is that people with nothing to hide wouldn't have a problem with an impartial review of their house. I've decided that for every open house that I am barred from I will write a fictitious and satirical review.

Knife Catching 1525 Gibbons Drive.

Unbeknownest to the homeowners and Realtors I have the ability to astrally project myself to where ever I please. After being barred from this house we went to Franklin Park and as the wife and baby played in the sandbox I took a nap in the shade and was able to astrally project myself to the open house in time to view it. Since I can not take pictures in that state my review will have to depend on my ability to form pictures in your minds with my words. But to help, here's a link to the listings website full of pretty pictures and verbiage.

I was able to 'get' to the open house just minutes before they ended for the day. As I moved around the house I thought to myself that the house was nice enough....what I saw after the doors where closed and all the looky-loo's where cleared out is what I feel I must talk to y'all about...before its too late....

The Realtor went into the backyard and pulled a small metallic device from his pants pocket. As he did the air in front of him shimmered and a small, I'll have to call it a craft, appeared. The craft was saucer shaped and was shiny and mirror-like as if it was made out of liquid mercury. As the Realtor slowly approached the ship a section dissolved to form a doorway. I noticed that with each approaching step the Realtor's human features seemed to be slowly melting away
and where being replaced with reptilian features. Actually if I had to peg it, I'd say that he looked like a meaner, scalier version of a sleestak with a double row of razor sharp teeth like a shark. As it reached the saucer door the transformation was complete and I gasped with astonishment. Just then the now Reptilian Realtor whipped his head around and started tasting the air with his long forked tongue. It was as if he could sense me some how and I froze in fear. After what seemed like an eternity the fearsome creature turned and entered the craft.

Half scared outta my wits but knowing that I had to 'do' something I followed the Reptilian Realtor into his ship. Upon entering I was shocked to see that the inside of the craft appeared much, much larger than the outside!?! I'd guess the exterior dimensions at about the size of a big SUV but the interior room I was in was at least 40' on a side. I followed the strange creature to a large table in the center of the room where there were already several of the creatures seated. They fell silent as the Reptile Realtor I was following took his seat at the head of the table. From this gesture I assumed he was their leader. The creatures started talking in the strangest language that I'd ever heard. It sounded like a cross between the Australian aboriginal pops and clicks with different styles of snake like hissing. Just hearing it made my blood run cold.

The creatures seemed to be discussing some sort of plan. The head creature would wave its hands around in front of him and different graphics would appear in the air, hovering over the center of the table. They seemed to be discussing some sort of plan...but for what I did not know. I did notice the strangest thing, every once in a while a complete sentence in English was uttered. The first time I heard it I thought I had imagined it but I listened more intently and heard the same couple of phrases over and over again...

'Its a great time to buy.' 'Its a great time to sell.' 'Don't worry about the brick foundation.' Where the phrases I heard repeated the most it almost felt like some kind of religious mantra...otherwise, it just looked kinda like any old boring work meeting with the boss but with way fancier PowerPoint.

One of the underlings at the table started to get animated and gesticulate wildly. I think he was trying to 'get the floor'. With a nod from the leader this underling jumped up and starting fiddling with the controls on a nearby wall panel. Two cylindrical objects about the size of a porta potty but made out of the same liquid mercury metal as the ship lowered from some hidden recess in the ceiling. From the pod closest to me I could hear muffled screaming and banging! 'Who or what could be in there', I thought. The technician fiddled with some more knobs and the liquid metal on the pods started to disappear into a door shaped opening. I was so excited that I moved around to in front of the doors to get a better look. As the door dissolved lights started to fade up from inside slowly revealing.....Oh No!!!! I was being pulled away from this incredible scene and back to my body resting comfortably under one of the big pine trees in Franklin park.

I awoke back inside my own body with start to my incredibly adorable 14 month old shaking my tummy with both hands and saying, 'Da! Da! Da Da' for it was time for me to take her on a slide ride.

As I scooped up my daughter I thought, 'Wow this explains so much, why I was barred from seeing the house and why some Realtors use those annoying phrases all the time. But what was in those tubes? What exactly is this 'plan' they are working on? I guess I just have to wait for the next open house I'm barred from to get another piece of the puzzle.'

To Be Continued....

Okay okay so I'm no Bill Gibson....heck I ain't even a Bill Shatner when it comes to writing Sci-Fi..but hopefully you found this amusing.