Domestic tranquility

So, since I moved to the Pacific Northwest, I appear to have fallen down a time wormhole.

Or possibly I mean a black hole.

I’d pegged the metro Seattle area as pretty much the mother ship of the PC industry. So I expected to have at least the techno-amenities I was accustomed to in the Old Dominion. (I’d also assured those who, on hearing of my move, intoned, “I hope you like rain”, that I’d lived for three years in London, so the rain didn’t bother me. & I expected the architecture in Seattle to be better.)

Silly me.

I’m currently parked in rented digs that remind me of Britain’s National Health Service: probably cutting edge for its time; but its time was 50 years ago. It’s in the style known here as “a rambler”; back where I come from it would be called a rancher, but whatever. Single-story, three-bedroom, one bath, carport, 1100 sf.

The owners are four brothers, who inherited it from their mother not quite a year ago. They “fixed it up” & put it up for sale for $250K over the assessed value. That would be $680K. Surprisingly, it languished on the market for several months before my agent showed it to me & we asked if they’d be interested in renting it for the nonce.

(See above about ONE bathroom.)

Well, yes—they might indeed be interested. After much to-ing & fro-ing through agents to the Brotherhood, we finally worked out a deal (of sorts).

Another thing people assured me back in Virginia was that I’d love Seattle because, “the people are so laid back.”

Evidently they were talking about service providers.

It took more than three weeks to get a landline, a couple to get cable.

Verizon didn’t have The Rambler on their grid (see below), so I had to get connectivity through cable (to which I’m opposed on principle, but what can you do?). Comcast had to run the line out from the street & drill a hole in the wall to give me TV & Internet. Seems The Brotherhood had ripped out the connection when they “updated” the place.

I should have paid attention to that, because after three weeks of grotesque calls to Verizon (before they finally realized, “gee, we don’t SERVE that area”…), when the Qwest technician finally showed up (after more surreal calls, but over a period of days, not weeks), he also had to run a new line out from the street—into the “Bell Systems” box, which obviously dates from the 50s as well.

I signed up for delivery of the Seattle Times—it’s not a first-rate newspaper, but it is the local rag, & I always try to support journalism. However, it’s been two weeks since I subscribed & I still haven’t had a paper show up in my driveway.

Then there’s trash… After three-&-a-half weeks & three calls, I finally have bins for trash pickup. I’ve told them that I’m only paying for service I can access. Since I’m informed that the Russian mob runs the company, I may end up sleeping with the fishes in Puget Sound.

I wonder if they’ll be as lackadaisical about delivering the cement overshoes as they are about giving me bins. (BTW, this being the capital of Green-ness, I have three wheelies: trash, yard waste & recyclables. Plus a little plastic container for “food scraps”. I feel like I’m back in WWII; should I start a Victory Garden?)

Actually, I need that container—a garbage disposal unit wasn’t part of The Brotherhood’s idea of updating The Rambler. In fact, a lot of their choices seem odd to me:

• The circuit box is in what I take to be the master bedroom; it’s completely exposed, no cover.
• The sole bathroom has two sinks. The Brotherhood installed new faucets (those butt-ugly “brushed nickel” finishes), but one of them doesn’t return to true. Instead of fixing it, they simply instructed me how to leave the handle so it doesn’t leak.
• They installed a new shower head, which comes to the bridge of my nose. (I’m 5’6”) Plus, it leaked; I had to haul out my trusty channel locks & tighten it. This means no one ever turned on the shower head after installing it, much less thought about actually, you know, using it.
• The counter in the bathroom is 36” high. Think about it.
• There are also only two towel racks in the sole bathroom; they’re 15” wide.
• They installed new linoleum in the kitchen, but can’t have done anything about the under-flooring. When you walk on it, it kind of bounces. (’Kay, I know I need to lose weight, but still.)
• The redone kitchen has a total of five drawers; none is wider than 8”. (For the Y-chromosome-challenged, go look at the drawer where you keep your silverware.)
• The three bedrooms have single wall uplights; the bulbs in them can’t be more than 8 watts.
• Neither did the Brotherhood bother with updating the actual electrical outlets; there’s barely one socket per wall. I have drop cords & power strips snaking around the hardwood floors like strings of spaghetti after a college pasta party (without the tomato sauce). I hope to God I’m not creating a fire hazard.
• When they redid the kitchen, for some reason they left a 110-volt outlet for the dryer (for which, with a washer, I had to negotiate). Even I know that’s totally whacked.
• Perhaps my favorite is the wall o’ windows they installed in the living room. Not one of them opens.

I have to say that I haven’t roughed it like this since I lived in the UK. No garbage disposer? (At least I do have the dryer, so I don’t have to spread my wet laundry around the living room once a week. Which is good, because it would probably take a couple of days to dry.)

But it’s not all domestic bliss. The whole area is…interesting.

Traffic’s every bit as bad as the metro DC area. But their carpool lanes are completely, well, bizarre. Instead of being consistently on the left side, on some highways (not all) they’re on the right, & they start & stop without apparent reason. Which means that you’ll be driving by yourself perfectly legally, & then all of a sudden you’re in a diamond lane & you have to get out to avoid being nicked. Plus, there’s all the turmoil when you want to exit & have to cross at least two lanes to get off.

Seattle hasn’t discovered air conditioning, yet. I arrived at my temporary housing, an apartment in downtown Bellevue, on 18 July to find it a veritable oven. I frantically ran round the place looking for controls to turn down the heat & turn on the AC. But the heat wasn’t on & there was no AC. The week I moved into The Rambler we had temps in the 90s. No AC, no opening windows in the living room, can’t open the doors because the cats will get out. I thought I’d moved to Hell.

Then there’s alcohol. After just about 20 years living south of the Mason-Dixon line, I was so looking forward to being back on the Left Coast, where (among other things) I could count on being able to buy a bottle of liquor in a free market instead of state-run stores (in states that permit anyone to buy & use a gun but consider taking a drink to be tantamount to dancing with the devil; as if dancing weren’t enough of a crime in itself).

Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that, while you can purchase wine & beer hither & thither, if you want a bottle of single malt, you have to find one of the dreaded state liquor stores. Well, boo; but what the heck—I found one on the Web & took a pass through it. In 27 seconds.

Washington has managed to accomplish what I just flat out hadn’t thought possible: they’ve made Virginia look positively progressive when it comes to attitudes toward booze. The stock & selection in these places is paltry in comparison to what was available in Virginia. Not that I’m a huge drinker, but I am a Californian, & I’m accustomed to having choices. & variety.

& the ABC stores in the Old Dominion were actually getting better. They opened a second store in Reston (population about 20K) within walking distance, & I killed about 15 minutes there one day waiting for the local hand-made pizza place to open. I just walked up & down the aisles, looking at all the types of tequilas & rums & whiskies for sale.

The operative term there was “aisles”. Of which there are none in any of the Washington state liquor stores I’ve seen.

I don’t know whether there’s a fear that state residents will tie one on if they’re allowed free access to booze & use their lumberjack & salmon fishing tools to go on a rampage, or what. But I assure you that the amount of liquor available in the stores I visited wouldn’t fuel a single frat party.

Something else that gave me pause: one of my employee benefits is free membership in the poshest gym I’ve ever belonged to. You need a map to make your way through the building; they have more personal trainers on staff than a medium-sized city has police officers; there are on-site medical services, a restaurant (‘scuse me, a “bistro”), a florist, a shop & a full-service spa. (One of my colleagues describes it as a casino, & it definitely has that ambiance, with its multiple rooms of phalanxes of exercise machines.)

So I was somewhat gobsmacked to find this sign above the water fountains throughout the place: “Washington State law prohibits spitting in drinking fountains.”

Thing is—if you have to remind people of the blindingly obvious requirements for the basics of decent public behavior, a mere reminder probably isn’t going to do the trick. Plus, I don’t know whether Washington state has a huge problem with people spitting in drinking fountains unknown in other parts of the country, or whether I’ve been drinking water from dual-purpose fountains/spittoons.

Well, I guess it’s going to be a new adventure. I should probably buy a plaid flannel shirt & workboots to blend in with the environment.