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houses and clocks
mmm, pancakes. I'm starting to hit that sugar high. 8)
Now I'm done with my breakfast I should be getting the laundry prepped and get out of here, but I haven't posted much of any content in days so I think I should make the attempt. Let's see if I can focus well enough with the sugar coursing through my veins.
Yesterday we talked with the loan officer and she confirmed our suspicion that the bank will let us get a loan for a much more expensive house than what we really want to make payments on. She was careful to stress that she never recommends buying something as expensive as you possibly can, because you might have other things you want to do with your money than pay for housing. I'm of the opinion, personally, that this is one way people fall into debt - get a house that's more expensive than they really want to pay, then use their credit cards to get the other things they want to spend their money on, then get a second mortgage on the house to pay off their credit cards. A vicious circle. Which is probably why the weird house with all the gables (I almost typed 'bagles') which we looked at is on the market at all. They'd had it since 1983 and now they need to sell before it gets foreclosed. Although I guess I can't deny the possibility that there was some debilitating illness of a family member and their debt came from medical bills or something, that doesn't seem the most likely story.
Anyhow. Clocks! There's been an ongoing thing about clocks and brain function at work. I was talking with CeeJay and Duffy on day last week..ish (I'm not sure when, really) and the subject of Alzheimer's came up. CeeJay told us that one of the ways they check to see if you have Alzheimer's is to ask you to draw a clock. Duffy pulled off a piece of paper towel so that we could start experimenting.
Another guy hopped into the conversation and began drawing - he drew Big Ben.
I drew my clock, and just tried to do a basic clock face, to make sure I really could. All the numbers were there and fine, and CeeJay proceeded to mock and ridicule it as "completely messed up, you've obviously lost your mind," as one expects from him.
He drew furiously for a minute, and then displayed his clock - a carefully detailed digital face - and announced, "If you draw the kind with hands, it means you're old and you have Alzheimer's." (And then he asked me where the Roman numerals were, and I said that if I used Roman numerals I was 150 and definitely had Alzheimer's.)
Then a few days ago we were discussing the current status of our long-since departed coworker, Casper, who chopped up the guy with the machete a few months ago, and doing the requisite "Does anyone yet know just what went wrong in his brain?" (At least he IS in the mental hospital, and the guy he attacked - a guy he worked for after he left us - is not pressing charges because he totally knows that this was complete mental break for Casper, not something he'd normally have done or something even necessarily personally aimed.)
CeeJay concluded, "There's no knowing. If it could happen to Casper it could happen to anybody. It could happen to you. In fact, it probably already has. We should have you draw another clock. Your last one was all messed up."
It wasn't, I swear!
Friday I got another co-worker, who was complaining that she might be losing it, to draw a clock, and she admitted that she very nearly started at the top with a 1. Duffy said she could just turn the paper a little and pretend it was in the right place, but she said she'd caught herself and put a 2 next to it to make a 12 so that nobody would notice.
Off to laundry, now. :)
Now I'm done with my breakfast I should be getting the laundry prepped and get out of here, but I haven't posted much of any content in days so I think I should make the attempt. Let's see if I can focus well enough with the sugar coursing through my veins.
Yesterday we talked with the loan officer and she confirmed our suspicion that the bank will let us get a loan for a much more expensive house than what we really want to make payments on. She was careful to stress that she never recommends buying something as expensive as you possibly can, because you might have other things you want to do with your money than pay for housing. I'm of the opinion, personally, that this is one way people fall into debt - get a house that's more expensive than they really want to pay, then use their credit cards to get the other things they want to spend their money on, then get a second mortgage on the house to pay off their credit cards. A vicious circle. Which is probably why the weird house with all the gables (I almost typed 'bagles') which we looked at is on the market at all. They'd had it since 1983 and now they need to sell before it gets foreclosed. Although I guess I can't deny the possibility that there was some debilitating illness of a family member and their debt came from medical bills or something, that doesn't seem the most likely story.
Anyhow. Clocks! There's been an ongoing thing about clocks and brain function at work. I was talking with CeeJay and Duffy on day last week..ish (I'm not sure when, really) and the subject of Alzheimer's came up. CeeJay told us that one of the ways they check to see if you have Alzheimer's is to ask you to draw a clock. Duffy pulled off a piece of paper towel so that we could start experimenting.
Another guy hopped into the conversation and began drawing - he drew Big Ben.
I drew my clock, and just tried to do a basic clock face, to make sure I really could. All the numbers were there and fine, and CeeJay proceeded to mock and ridicule it as "completely messed up, you've obviously lost your mind," as one expects from him.
He drew furiously for a minute, and then displayed his clock - a carefully detailed digital face - and announced, "If you draw the kind with hands, it means you're old and you have Alzheimer's." (And then he asked me where the Roman numerals were, and I said that if I used Roman numerals I was 150 and definitely had Alzheimer's.)
Then a few days ago we were discussing the current status of our long-since departed coworker, Casper, who chopped up the guy with the machete a few months ago, and doing the requisite "Does anyone yet know just what went wrong in his brain?" (At least he IS in the mental hospital, and the guy he attacked - a guy he worked for after he left us - is not pressing charges because he totally knows that this was complete mental break for Casper, not something he'd normally have done or something even necessarily personally aimed.)
CeeJay concluded, "There's no knowing. If it could happen to Casper it could happen to anybody. It could happen to you. In fact, it probably already has. We should have you draw another clock. Your last one was all messed up."
It wasn't, I swear!
Friday I got another co-worker, who was complaining that she might be losing it, to draw a clock, and she admitted that she very nearly started at the top with a 1. Duffy said she could just turn the paper a little and pretend it was in the right place, but she said she'd caught herself and put a 2 next to it to make a 12 so that nobody would notice.
Off to laundry, now. :)