We needed to go to (south) Florida to take care of things and get the house ready to sell, because we don’t seem to be able to rely on anyone long distance. In my experience, if unsupervised people here don’t do things half ass, they do them quarter ass. As the old saying goes, a sunny place for shady people. I had to fix two toilets today that had needed it for months, among other things. And how many south Florida people does it take to change a light bulb? Apparently an infinite number, if they don’t actually own and live in the house.
Anyway, Patricia also was badly in need of a vacation, so I’m writing this after a relaxing home-made dinner of sockey salmon with pineapple salsa and chardonnay procured at (amazing that they finally exist here!) Trader Joe’s, overlooking the Atlantic and listening to a nice wind riffle through the palms. One of the disadvantages of the east shore, of course, is no sunset over the ocean, but it was still pleasant to watch day turn do dusk from our balcony. For those curious, here is where we are staying. Old Florida style, but modernized enough to be quite comfortable so far. We plan to sleep with windows open to the sound of the ocean, though in a couple months, that will be less advisable.
A chardonnay from Trader Joe’s?
We call it “three buck chuck”. ^_^
No, it was a higher-priced one. And has it gone that high? I thought it was still $2.50.
A year or so ago my local one had Stoli heather vodka on sale for something like $8 a fifth. They must have bought a warehouse of it in a bankruptcy sale or something. So I gave quite a few out as gifts.
“And how many south Florida people does it take to change a light bulb? Apparently an infinite number, if they don’t actually own and live in the house.”
The change in lightbulbs is equal to the speed at which money is leaving your wallet, times the natural log of the ratio of the mass of the house while filled with realtors/property managers/contractors to its mass after quitting time. So unless you’ve got an incredibly high specific expenditure or a realtor who’s a real heavy hitter, nothing will change.
I was going to call the mass of the empty house its dry mass, but it’s in Florida.
What? No Food Lion? No Piggly Wiggly?
Nope. This is Publix country.
Oh, you were under the impression that Palm Beach County is in the south. No, it’s deep southern New Jersey and the sixth borough of New York. To get south from here, you have to drive nawth.
As long as your shopping at Publix, try a [url=http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/retail/locally-bred-tasti-lee-tomato-hits-publixs-produce-aisle/1186149]Tasti-Lee tomato[/url].
I ordered some plants from Burpee last year and they are excellent.
This actually highlights a broader issue with Corporate America: when you contract out part of the business you are running, you give up a lot of the quality control you used to exercise over the product you bring to market for consumers. Sure, you’ll have contractual agreements, but you have nevertheless ceded the QC of some aspect of your business to someone else. Then you get to scramble to try to cover their lapses. SpaceX has seen this first-hand, which is why I have a lot of respect for their vertical integration business model.
It’s why I’m having increasing issues with USAA. Sure they’re the best for a lot of products, but the increasing spinoff of service delivery to subcontractors has me deeply troubled.
I just used USAA for a mortgage. To the extent it wasn’t a disaster; it was because we caught many of the errors, to include request for information that was meant for other applicants and fixing the monthly payments to match the items that were reportedly included in payment. Setting up payments within USAA was transcendental.
I have a long distance rental and I pay my sharp realtor there a $250/year retainer to keep me up to date on the best local service vendors. She owns several rentals in that sand state town so she’s on top of the situation. That retainer easily pays for itself every year.
Sure, if you can count on her. Our experience is that (as I said) south Florida is a sunny place for shady people. It’s hard to find people you can trust.
I was referred to the realtor by a local church. I originally bought the place as a winter getaway for my 80-something parents but they’re in their 90s now and can no longer travel to use it so I’ve rented it out for the past few years. Parents belong to a liberal United Church of Christ in their town so I just called the UCC in the sand state town and got a realtor referral. And although my parents never did go to church down there, I ended up with a sharp and ethical realtor.