Required Reading

Matt Taibbi has written another article about Wall Street specifically Goldman Sachs. He wrote another article April in Rolling Stone which is also worth going back and reading if you haven't already.

Scary. I fear he is right on.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/28816321/the_great_american_bubble_machine

Salem Oregon unbuilt development

We were out driving around looking for our small farm to buy, and came into Salem from the Eola Hills to the West. We found this housing development which did not seem to have slammed to quite as abrupt a halt as the one in Merced, but there is a lot of infrastructure that was put in and not much being built right now.

We check the sales data regularly in Linn and Benton counties, and the residential real estate market above $300,000 seems to be getting worse not better -- in terms of what sells (not much this year). In terms of how much people still think their property is worth, it's rather discouraging. But we are being patient.

Merced Foreclosures

My sister lives in Merced and we went to visit her last week. Greg and I were sightseeing a little, and we came across the "skeleton houses" in the Bellevue area. My brother-in-law explained that Merced was booming even more than the rest of the country because of the new California University campus. So it got hit harder when the bubble popped.

Here's a closeup of a boarded up house:

There was a lot of work done on the infrastructure: roads, sidewalks, street signs, streetlamps, stubbed out utilities but houses were never even started:

More infrastructure:

There were a lot of coiled wires for utilities for future houses -- but who knows when they will ever be built?

Yachats Valentine's getaway

We had really good luck this weekend. We liked all the restaurants we ate at, particularly the "Drift Inn" and the "Luna Sea." Saturday we drove south and looked around and went to the Heceta Head lighthouse. Sunday I was feeling kind of punky and it was foggy and gloomy. G said: "Come on, we said we were going to walk on the beach today." So we went to the trail 804 at the Smelt Sands park. You walk 3/4 of a mile on this path and end up on a beach that is 8 miles long and goes all the way to Waldport.

We got started and miraculously, the sun came out and the wind went away and for our whole walk it was warm and sunny at the beach. In February. In Yachats. Didn't get too many tidepool photos after an unfortunate fall on slippery rocks. Luckily the camera & phone survived. We had a really nice couple-hour walk along the beach (not the whole way to Waldport & back.)

The little house is not the place we stayed -- it is a little old 2-bedroom place that you can see from the place we stayed. It is for sale for $999,000. There is a cave in the cliff where, when a wave hits it just right, it makes a huge plume of mist. The one on the photo is just a small plume of mist, but by the time I ran back to the house for the camera and got back, the tide conditions had changed and we didn't see the huge plumes any more that evening.

A picture of me & the Heceta Head lighthouse. The old keeper's house is a bed & breakfast and you can stay there.


The sand patterns.


The little old million-dollar house and the mist plume

Yachats

Going to Yachats this weekend. We are staying in a house right on the cliffs. The weather should be typical Oregon weather but the sun might come out for a little while on Saturday, according to the forecasts.

Should post SOMETHING . . .

Got back home Monday night after uneventful 13-hour drive, estate sale was a success but WAY too much work, didn't get to spend enough time with youngest daughter & grandkids, got sick again, worked this week anyway, recovering, haven't heard from anyone in the last couple days, hope everyone's OK.

Almost as much trouble as a horse

This is what my Dad used to say whenever I would complain about car repairs. This weekend's activity was centered around the failure of the battery on my Passat. The car was getting more difficult to start and finally G decided to look at it. Turns out not to be easy -- the battery is under this big piece of plastic that has to be taken out in order to get to it.

G opened it up on Saturday and found that the battery was bone-dry. The electrolyte level was -- GONE. Because of the undisturbed dust and the fact that the screw that undid the port to check the fluid level was pristine (had never been turned), it was obvious that the fluid level in the battery had never been checked in the nearly 8 years since I bought the car new.

He filled it up with water and we drove the car out into the country looking at some 5 acres to charge it up, hoping to resurrect it -- but it was not to be. Yesterday it didn't get driven because we were out in His car looking at farms. This morning it started but took a while -- wheeawheeawheeawheeastart -- so we took it to the mechanic that we trust here in Corvallis, who put in a new battery this morning. Lucky they were open today.

This vehicle has been completely maintained by the VW dealer here in town, even at a little extra expense, and I relied on them to perform the routine services they were supposed to. VW does say that the battery shouldn't need maintenance under normal circumstances, but the service manual states that at the 20K and 40K mile services, the electrolyte fluid levels should be checked. THAT never happened.

This opened up a whole other line of inquiry and it looks like the brake fluid has NEVER been changed even though it is supposed to be changed every 2 years. So next week the car is going back in to our new mechanic to have a few things checked over . . .