Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Murder by Death: the Clue edition

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I am continuing apace on my Nano novel, although many thousands of words ago I accepted that this was a practice novel and not something that I want to spend any time upgrading into a real novel. When a friend asked if I was at least enjoying the experience, I said:

I am, even though it’s not a keeper. At least, in nothing like its current form. I am doing various things in it, though, like switching viewpoints, and doing flashbacks, and having scenes with multiple people in them that I haven’t done as much in the past. It’s one long practice session!

Currently I seem to be killing off half the character list and setting up the other half as suspects. Almost anything is ripe for comedy, but murder just isn’t funny as far as I’m concerned, the book’s descent into furious black comedy seems to be my way of accepting that not everything is meant to be published. And writing is never wasted: you always learn something from it (or should).

Oh, and next time? Outline.

Bay Area housing prices

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On the route to Sophia’s school there’s a house that I love to look at every time we walk by it. It’s surrounded by a stone fence, about five or six feet high, with an iron gate on to the street. There’s a giant playset for kids — as high as a two-story house, made out of redwood, with lots of Habitrails for crawling around. And the house itself (the adult Habitrail) is gorgeous on the outside. I looked it up on mlslistings.com, and discovered the house is as big as it looks, with 5500 square feet and more than a half acre of land. I would love to see the Open House on this one.

Asking price? $4,750,000.

But — believe me, I know how this sounds — I can completely understand that price. That house is quite a package A 100-year-old mansion, sitting on a fantastic plot of land, in an enviable part of an expensive town.

The house two doors down from us just went on the market. It’s 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, less than 2000 square feet. It’s beautiful inside, from the photos, with lots of stone work. And apparently it has more land that I would have guessed from the outside, but probably not a bigger lot than we’re on.

Asking price: $1,675,000

Two words: holy. crap.

The above-the-fold in the San Jose Mercury News today was the Bay Area’s current median house prices.

Santa Clara County’s sizzling housing market cooled a little bit last month, but the median price of a single-family home jumped to a record of $714,250, bucking speculation of a downturn or bursting bubble.

That’s a 19 percent increase from October of last year, when the median price was what now seems a modest $600,000.

The article goes on to say that things are cooling down, the market’s reaching equilibrium, the same overnight-craziness isn’t apparent.

On the up side… if you do manage to cash out of a California home, you can go almost anywhere else in the country and buy the side of a mountain.

On the down side… what’s the monthly payment on a $714,250 house? Who the hell can afford that? And how far are people going to have to drive in order to live somewhere affordable? Or more affordable than this, at any rate?

We’re not in this house for the immediate value it holds — we love this neighborhood, love the walkability of it, are happy as little clams to be here and have the kids here.

Which is good because… when things come back to earth, it’s going to hurt. A lot. And we won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

Apropos of nothing

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  • I hardly ever write by hand these days, and yet I still pore over catalogues from the Fountain Pen Hospital as though I were going to get something from them any time soon.
  • I have discovered, much to my shock, that for NaNo I’ve been doing 700-1000 words per hour. Given my typing ability, I would expect I could do five to six times that. However, having to think of what I’m going to write slows me down a lot. Also: getting snacks from the kitchen. Big time sink there.
  • If you mix together orange and cinnamon essential oils in your diffuser, it makes your office smell like Christmas. And that, friends, is a happy smell.
  • I wonder where the best place to buy Torani syrups is. The supermarket I go to has a small selection, and I really want vanilla, to make homemade cream sodas. I have found the motherlode of Torani! BevMo formerly (Beverages & More) has a)the gigantic bottles of Torani in b)every possible flavor for c)less than Lunardi’s and other supermarkets charges for the small bottle.

    Today I also discovered that Williams-Sonoma has an extremely good-looking seltzer water bottle that would make my need to buy endless plastic bottles of carbonated water obsolete. I’m putting that on my Xmas list.

  • I’m going to outline. I am. I am going to do a thorough, tested, bounce-the-quarter-off-the-hospital-corners outline. Because seriously. I can type a hundred words a minute when I get going, if I know where I’m going. And if I work on the outline for last year’s book to tighten it up, I think it will be ready to go. This year’s book? Maybe, maybe not. But I am having fun with it, even if half the scenes are more the characters being clever than being, you know, on point.
  • Great writing soundtrack: Pirates of the Caribbean Also perfect: The Killing Fields, Mishima If anyone has any suggestions for other great soundtracks to pick up, let me know.
  • Great new exercise music album: Confessions from a Dance Floor I know, I know, but… what can I say? I like Madonna. And every song is 150bpm; good for dancing, good for elliptical machines. However, the lyrics to “I Love New York” are so stupid I cannot believe someone did not take her aside and say, “Um, fix this.”
  • And if anyone has any other 150bpm music they’d like to recommend, let me know. My iPod Shuffle makes going to the gym possible.
  • The iTunes Music Store: E. Vil.
  • Why am I spending precious writing time looking up books on afternoon tea? Seriously?
  • The average caloric intake of those little Fun Size candies we give out on Halloween? About 100 calories each. One little bite worth of candy, 100 calories. That’s freaking amazing. It’s a wonder that I wasn’t 500 pounds as a 9-year-old, because believe you me, I ate all the candy in my Halloween bag every year.
  • We’ve been portioning out the candy from the kids’ Halloween bags at one piece per day, two if we’re having “Dessert Night.” And they still have full bags. Good God they got a lot of candy trick-or-treating. I think at the New Year we’re just going to have to draw the line and pitch the bags. “You’ll get some more next year. Who’s up for Cold Stone?”
  • There’s 8 pounds between dress sizes? Really? I don’t mean to sound sarcastic — I just have no idea how the fashion industry determines these things. The European system, measuring in non-changing centimeters, seems a lot more reasonable to me. No fudging for them!
  • According to this month’s Vanity Fair, Kate Moss is 5’7″ and weighs 100 pounds. That’s not thin, that’s criminal. How on Earth did she get her body to support a baby?
  • Shopping with the kids in the mall? I’m sure people all over the mall were calling Child Protective Services on me.