Apparently water delivery requires some special security regulations regarding address changes. I can’t do it through my online account. I have to call.

I first sent in the online form that allows me to choose the subject “Change my delivery address.”  I’m e-mailed back. No can do. Call us. Not sure why they bother to allow that subject to be selected on the form.

You can imagine the call. Lots of voice prompts asking me questions, then finally a voice informing me I’m finally at the right place, but I’ll probably have to hold for 25 minutes. To change my freaking delivery address?

I email again explaining that if they can’t change my delivery address, cancel my service. I’m not going to hold for 25 minutes.  Of course, no one reads the email. They send me the same automated message: no can do via email. Maybe they have a saved voice imprint that they check against my voice during the call to ensure I’m not a neighbor trying to steal Vera’s water?

This company seems to have some serious problems with technology. For one thing, the site is in Flash.  Every few times I go there, it requires me to do a software update.  Now, I have the $1200 Adobe professional suite with Flash, but apparently that’s not going to work for them.  OK.  Now shut down your browser to install this.  “It’s Easy!” they inform me.

Not easy enough. I have built and managed hundreds of website. There is no reason for their site to require special downloads. It’s a freaking site for ordering water!

It just seems the customer does not come first at Arrowhead. They need a new IT department and a new customer service attitude.

OK. Moving brings the rant out in me.

I just can’t go back to the wretched service of Yosemite Water.

Now there are Republican ads calling Sotomayor a friend of terrorists (still trying to get that tack to work). They are calling her “radical” – of course her judicial record is anything but.

The word “perseveration” keeps coming back to me. Having grown up around someone with Asperger’s syndrome, I know what perseveration looks like. For those who don’t, here’s the Wikipedia definition:

Perseveration is the uncontrollable repetition of a particular response, such as a word, phrase, or gesture, despite the absence or cessation of a stimulus, usually caused by brain injury or other organic disorder.

If an issue has been fully explored and discussed to a point of resolution it is not uncommon for something to trigger the re-investigation of the matter. This can happen at any time during a conversation. This is particularly true with those who have had traumatic brain injuries.

Those with Asperger’s syndrome also display a form of perseveration in that they focus on one or a number of narrow interests.

I am wondering if the happy little Wikipedia elves shouldn’t add a line in here about super-right-wing-nut Republicans.  They keep revisiting these ideas over and over, even after their repeated failure and even after being shot down by the majority of Americans.  Is it that they believe if they say them often enough they’ll find a sufficient number of sheep to follow?  I suppose it’s possible this could work, but their arguments are so distasteful and obnoxious that they make a mockery of intelligent discourse in American politics. I am convinced these are the people who truly hate America. They claim they are the ones who really love America, but what they really love are their batshit crazy ideas.  I’m not sure there is a group that shows more disdain for Americans, and what is America but Americans?

Culver City California

Not a huge step up but definitely a better location and a little less Appalachian feel to it.

San Franciso, CA

Definitely a big step up from 2006. You can now get significantly more than a small shack for this price.

San Diego, CA

You saved yourself a good 200K and got a nicer place if you waited 2 years for the bubble to deflate from 2006.

Clearwater Florida

In 2006 you could get a really nice house at this price. Now you can get a McMansion that requires lots of extra dusting.

Boca Raton, Florida

Pay less to get a lot more in Boca now. Aw, you should have waited!

House has been around for a few years, but could be considered the forerunner of addiction-centered characterization. Hugh Lori plays Dr. House, a brilliant diagnostician with a nasty Vicodin-popping habit. Although the reactions of his co-workers are unrealistic at best and downright absurd at worst (what hospital would allow one of its doctors to obnoxiously rub his addiction in everyone’s face?), the story of his descent into debilitating addiction is compelling. At the end of this past season, House’s hallucinations motivated his best friend to drop him off at a psychiatric hospital.

The latest addition to addiction drama is Nurse Jackie, another hospital-centered series that reflects the growing issue of drug addiction among health care workers. Nurse Jackie is even more centered on addiction as the driving force. The central focus of her life is to obtain pain medication, usually through by lying to and manipulating family, friends, and co-workers.

The show truly captures the lengths to which a prescription drug addict will go to feed the need. She pretends to be single so she can develop a sexual relationship with the hospital pharmacist who slips her pain medication when she complains about her back. She barely conceals her lack of concern for how a new automated medication dispenser will eliminate his job – in her mind that machine is just going to make it so much harder to get her OxyContin and Vicodin. She conceals powdered pain pills in re-sealed sweetener packets. She scrounges in the sink drain with a jerry-rigged, gum-ended stick to find that one last Vicodin she accidentally dropped.

Nurse Jackie shows great compassion for her patients, but realizes at one point she almost killed an unconscious patient because of a careless mistake. Compassion only goes so far when you are a drug addict.

Many other TV dramas weave alcoholism and addiction through their story lines. Saving Grace has its fill of alcohol-fuel sexcapades, and even TrueBlood dabbles in addiction to V, the blood of vampires that in the novel makes humans stronger and more attractive but in the HBO series makes them hallucinate and experience euphoric states.

Rescue Me, the New York Fire Department drama starring Dennis Leary as lead character Tommy Gavin, offers a family legacy of alcoholism – father, uncle, son, sister. Tommy Gavin recently decided he is no longer an alcoholic; his heavy drinking was merely a reaction to the stress of 9/11 that set him on a self-destructive path. He makes an awkward speech at an AA meeting one week after receiving his one-year chip for sobriety: they are all a bunch of whiners and he’s going to go drink now. The next week he questions himself and asks a friend, “Do you think I’m an alcoholic?” She punches him and says, “No! You’re a high-functioning alcoholic.” Okay, that settles it.

The HBO drama Weeds follows the story of a marijuana-dealing suburban mom, while Californication shows the unintended consequences of compulsive sexual behavior.

There is no question that addiction has become a prominent theme throughout TV dramas and plays smaller roles in countless other shows, from the drug-addicted Iraq war veteran on Brothers and Sisters to the alcohol-abusing mother on In Plain Site. The persistence of this theme likely reflects some of the stresses and challenges of the real world right now. Certainly alcoholism and drug addiction can be just some of the consequences of a damaged economy where ordinary people suddenly find themselves on the precipice of financial ruin. Addiction is not caused by a bad economy, but severe stress can push someone with addictive tendencies into more abusive drinking or drug use. Addiction is a progressive disease, and stress can kick that progression into high gear.

Police, reporters, news vans, and the usual suspects crowded near Grauman’s Chinese Theater where Michael Jackson’s star on the Walk of Fame sits.  A line stretched down the street to see the star.

Hoardes hawked t-shirts and memorabilia and crazy soapbox preachers yelled out cautionary tales while Superman, Marilyn Monroe, Spiderman, and Jesus looked on.

Niko the husky makes a new friend

This fearless little Boston terrier decided Niko was his new best friend at the dog park. Much hilarity ensued.

Over four months on the market but still no taker, you might ask why they are refusing to budge on the price when they paid a mere 14K for the place. I immediately thought, “ATM.”

One day during walk I peeked in the yard and a woman yelled from her truck, “You can go around the house and look. No one’s there.” I was curious – it was the first house in the neighborhood to drop below the half million mark.

The place is tiny – no yard, driveway, or garage

The woman proceeded to confirm my suspicions, but with a twist. The elderly woman who had recently died had had the ownership wrested from her by a son, she told me. He’d taken out the “equity” at the top of the bubble – half a million dollars.

Now that he had officially “inherited” the house, he still owed the loan, but the house was worth far less.
Frankly, he’ll be lucky to get 350 for it.

Hope he enjoyed it while it lasted.

Three years ago they paid over 700K.

Here’s an example of how the price drops tend to hit certain parts of a neighborhood first.  While the Carlson Park area seems to be showing some resilience still, those areas not within walking distance of downtown Culver City are really feeling the changes in the market.