Picture of the Week.

Baby Steps.

So I had my first "freelance" article published this week. I don't know if I'm allowed to reprint this without permission, but until I hear otherwise, here it is...

Feels pretty good to be me today.

My Hometown.

By Patrick Canole, (NRHS Class of ’93)

Flashback - Lancaster in the 1980s... Apple orchards... Trees... Wide-open spaces... The only traffic light in town is a blinking yellow light at Five Corners. Growing up here, I thought to myself “Wow, what a boring town.” Now that I’m a little bit older and a little bit wiser, I think to myself “Wow, what a beautiful place to raise a family.”

Twenty years later, there are still a few trees, but the apple orchards and wide-open spaces are on the endangered list. Every time I come back to Lancaster to visit, a few more apple trees have been cut down. There is another open field that has been turned into a housing development. This is not the sleepy little middle-class town that I remember from my youth. Despite all these recent changes, it remains one of the most beautiful areas in central Massachusetts.

I grew up in Lancaster. I love Lancaster. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to buy a house here. Changes in the real estate market and the types of new houses being built have combined to put towns like Lancaster well out of the reach of most first time home buyers.

It does not look like I am going to be able to raise my kids the same school system that I grew up in. Despite a continuous supply of new development, none of these new houses are remotely affordable for the first time homebuyer. Nobody builds small or medium sized houses anymore. It's McMansions for everyone. Twenty years ago, if you wanted a house bigger than 3000 square feet, there were a few places on George Hill Road that could accommodate you. Now they seem to be the rule rather than the exception. A quick scan of the real estate listing for the area show most new construction is happening in $400,000 and up range… That is nosebleed heights for most of us.

According to a recent Boston Globe article, house prices in Massachusetts are 6 times what they were in 1980. But incomes in the area are only three times higher than 1980. Think about that for a minute. That’s a pretty drastic change.

If you bought a house in the area years ago, congratulations. You have probably made a pretty good return on your investment. But if you sold it tomorrow, could you afford to buy something else in the area? Didn’t think so.

If the housing bubble were to burst tomorrow, I am ready to buy a place. But I would really rather not spend $250,000 on a fixer upper right now (and honestly, within an hour of Boston, $250,000 does not buy you that much anymore).

Just to give you a for how much money a quarter of a million dollar mortgage is for the first time home buyer - $250,000 at 6.5% for 30 years is $1,580.17 a month... If you're making $35,000 a year, (a decent salary for your twenties… certainly nobody’s definition of poor), that is more than HALF of your pre-tax income. You would need to take up a second job to be able to eat and pay back your student loans. And we haven’t even talked about property taxes yet.

I grew up in a middle class family. I appreciate the sacrifices my family made to send me to college, and I have tried to show my appreciation by working hard and taking advantage of the opportunities given to me. I work. I have a good job. But I am still worried about where the mortgage payment would come from if I were out of work for any length of time. I have no idea how my friends who teach or work in the non-profit sector are going to buy a house. I stay up at night and worry about these things. Honestly.

And if we are not in the midst of a housing bubble, God forbid, I am prepared to wait things out until the baby boomers all retire and move to Florida. Other than that, it is going to take a winning lottery ticket or a significant inheritance just to come up with a down payment.

I have written letters to my local politicians and newspapers, but frankly, no one really seems that interested. Affordable middle class housing is not nearly as interesting an issue as tax cuts or prescription drug plans for seniors. And my generation tends to forget to vote.

I understand how supply and demand works. But I think we could be doing a better job with the supply. I also understand that change is inevitable. If we’re going to lose our wide open spaces to housing developments anyway, why not consider affordable housing laws and multi-family units whenever possible? While this might have a negative effect your property values in the short term, it will be much nicer than having to fly to San Antonio to visit your kids. It is important that Lancaster maintain its middle-class roots.

I hope that people my age are given a chance to live in this region and not forced to move west simply to maintain the standard of living we were grew up with. We are not looking for a handout or a free pass. We are just asking for the same opportunities that our parents had. Lancaster is not going to be nearly as nice a place to live when your teachers, police officers and newspaper writers cannot afford to live in town.

Movie Nudity Categories

It's time to update our traditional movie nudity categories (and we're only counting mainstream American movies here... no porn, foreign films or Vincent Gallo movies).

In addition to the "up-and-coming actress nudity"(pretty self-explanatory), "child TV star trying to show she can be a bad girl" nudity (Elizabeth Berkley, Alyssa Milano), and "aging actress looking to prove she still has it" (Diane Lane), we now have "nudity to earn an Acadamy Award" (e.g. Halle Berry). Hopefully,this is the start of a new trend.

There's also the "Julianne Moore" category (actresses who will get nude whenever there's a camera on them (includes Laura Linney and young Ashley Judd)).

Have I missed anything? Do we need another category here? And how should we classify Katie Holmes in "The Gift"?

Hmmm... The "picture of the week" seems to have become the "picture of every other week"...

More blue flowers!

If my knees didn't hurt, I could run a little more.

If I could run more, I could lose a little more weight.

If I lost a little more weight, my knees wouldn't hurt.

It's all about flow...

I'm surrounded by engineers at work and I can safely say that I'm the only one in my immediate area who showers on a daily basis.

My whole part of the building smells like coffee and bed-head in the mornings.

It'll be a treat to open the windows again once the air conditioning is turned off and let in some fresh air...

...until we have to turn the heat on again. Bluh.

Pictures from the New York State Fair.

We spent Labor Day weekend in Buffalo doing some additional leg work for the wedding. We met with the DJ. We met with the officiant. But neither one of these visits would make for a particularly interesting story...

The highlight of the trip for me was the domed ceiling above the dance floor at the reception hall. Now, it may have just been the acoustics or the room, or it may have been mic'd up somehow, but it had the most amazing echo chamber effect. Since we had the room to ourselves, I immediately put my hands together to make "hand fart" noises (I'm a very mature 29 years old...). The response sounded like a glorious chorus of farts. I could have spent the whole afternoon right there...

I'm eating a lot more turkey lately.

(That's not really news, just a warning.)

How do you discipline a fish?

We seem to have a biting problem in our fish tank. The alpha-female ("mom" - mother to the other 5 swordtails) has taken to chasing other fish around the tank and nipping at them.

The other fish haven't picked up on this behavior yet, but I fear it's only a matter of time.

Fish are a little different than other pets. You can't really put a fish in time-out. You can't teach a fish the meaning of "no". You can't squirt them with the spray bottle. You can't put them outside until they're ready to behave.

Withholding food certainly wouldn't help with the biting problem. They'd start eating each other.

She may just be ready to give birth again. She usually starts acting really weird before she has babies.

Anybody want a naughty fish?