Forget Larry, Let’s Talk About Flirting

Over at the Elgin Street Muse blog, there is quite a bit of talk about flirting. Manny Blue mentioned that flirting is a four season activity. Anonymous wanted more instruction. Conch Shell felt it was more of a pre-relationship thing. I like that Aggie concluded that we should just be doing it, and not over thinking it. Certainly, to me, it is an every day activity.

I flirted with an enchantingly pretty young woman this morning. The barista at a Starbucks. She had wild, radiant hair that had strands pulled up in a few places and that were held up by coloured elastics and pretty little barrettes. She wore shiny shell and silver jewelry, and at first I thought she looked a bit like a fairy tale princess - like the one in The Princess Bride. I noticed that the chalk board on the counter that names the baristas had a drawing of two Mermaids (one blonde with wild hair like my barista). When she handed me my coffee, I looked her in the eyes, smiled amiably, and told her that she did indeed look like a mermaid. She broke out into a lovely smile, and thanked me sweetly.

I flirted with a scrumptious young man this afternoon at a Bridgehead. I liked how he had a bit of an old fashioned look about him - as if he had just walked out of the late seventies. Maybe I just wanted to believe he looked that way, because that is when I would have been the age that I suspect he is now. I asked him if he would make my latté pretty like the last time. Last time he made a half-moon design in the foam. We chatted about how in Vancouver they make all kinds of nice designs in the latté foam. He had my undivided attention. He mentioned that a friend of his was being flown from Vancouver to somewhere in the States to compete in foam decorating.

“I’m really not very good at this,” he apologized.

“In Vancouver someone made a heart in my foam.” I mentioned.

“There you go,” he said handing me my latté, “but I don’t know what it is.”

“Look,” I said, turning the cup around for him to see, “it’s a tulip.”

“Oh, wow, so it is.” He marveled at his art.

I winked at him and said, “Now I can tell my friends that a nice young man gave me a flower today.”

He smiled and blushed.

Ms Army Pants witnessed the flirt with the young man and was told about the flirt with the young girl. She called me dirty.

“You’d do anything for sex wouldn’t you.” She accused.

“It’s not about sex,” I protested. “I am much too old for either of them. It’s about connecting, it’s about having conversations, it’s about making people smile…” I explained passionately and honestly.

“No, you’re just dirty.” She insisted.

In like a lion, out like a...

-- Photography and mint sauce courtesy of the lovely and multitalented Pandora...

Ottawa Housing Market: Up or Down?

The spring housing market is upon us, and I have some friends who are now looking to buy property, and I thought I’d turn this discussion to thoughts on Ottawa’s real-estate market.

Garth Turner, who has just published, “The Greater Fool: The Troubled Future of Real Estate” says no-one should be buying a home now. Others disagree. Loads of economic forecasters say the market will keep rising, although perhaps slower than before. Others say we could be in a condo bubble. Others that condos are solid because of our aging population base. Others say the U.S. economic meltdown will soon hurt our own housing prices. I also find myself wondering about all those people who rushed, as speculators, to buy in Calgary/Edmonton. Forecasts now are that these markets have flat-lined.

It’s a gamble. An old house on my street (Central Ottawa) just sold for well over $500,000, and I thought it was worth about $350,000. These new owners must think it’s worth it.
Well, for those of you who want to buy, but really, really don’t want to lose money – and are not made of it -- here’s my thoughts (okay, I’m no expert, but nonetheless):

First, don’t go into the suburbs. Everyone’s into minimizing their carbon footprints, and that means inner-city neighbourhoods are in. For several years now the city core neighbourhoods have been climbing in value faster than the outlying areas, and I think this trend will continue and intensify. (Besides, studies tell us that suburb life makes people fat and a little less happy than they would have been, country homes excluded).

Second: if you can at all manage it, buy a house that actually has a yard. There are $600,000 properties out there with no yard, and there are $300,000 ones with beautiful back yards. As the city grows, that urban yard will become much more valuable, plus it gives you room to expand (when you can afford it) without having to move.

Third: If you must buy a condo, see #1 and be even more stringent. That’s uber-urban core, and by this I also mean the hip-urban core of areas like Westboro and the Glebe. Places where there’s not a lot of crappy homes/old warehouses that could get torn down for future condos to compete with yours (and glut the market). I’d say, make sure your condo is within a 10 minute walking distance to three coffee shops. Let’s say that two will suffice if said condo is also within a five minute walk to water.

Fourth: Try not to be directly on a busy street. Don’t buy on Main St., or Parkdale, or Holland, or Scott, if you can avoid it. It might seem like a good deal now, but it’ll be hard to sell in the future, especially if there’s a downturn, plus all that carbon-monoxide and extra stress will take years off your life. Not a good deal.

Fifth: Don’t buy somewhere where you can clearly hear the Queensway hum. Again, it’s not just noise pollution, it’s also that carbon monoxide stuff taking years off your life.

Sixth: Do buy in the “annex” neighbourhoods, the poorer cousins to the rich ones. So: Dow’s Lake, Bronson-West/Little Italy/Hintonburg (Mechanicsville), which annex the Glebe and Wellington Village/Westboro. Preferably seek out a neighbourhood that has a cool and already vibrant “High Street”. A main drag that looks like it could develop further. For the strong-willed and smaller budgeted, I’d also suggest Vanier, but close to Beechwood, not MacArthur.

What do you think, are prices going up or down? What Ottawa neighbourhoods are the best ones to buy into now?

A brief celebratory interlude

This week has been afflicted marked with a number of small, intimate celebrations of an unspecified annual observance for an unspecified member of the Elgin Street Irregulars. Let me put this into perspective by stating that when you've been running around sticking your semimythical nose into things for the number of millenia that I have, multiplying all of the person-years by seven to arrive at a rough canine equivalent doesn't bear thinking about. So we won't.

But it would be remiss of me not to thank all who joined me to balm the abrasions and toast the small victories of another year. A big howl-out to the IO, Audrey, Aggie, 4th Dwarf, Pandora, the Chair, Conch Shell, Harmony, Painted Stick and Zoom. And especially to Woodsy the wood elf, who, when I said I'd like nothing better than a chocolate-point Siamese cat, got it mostly right. It seems to be very similar to white chocolate, and it does look sorta like a cat. One with very oddly fixed pink-and-purple eyes. And may I say, it's soooo beeeyootiful!!!! Ahem. Thank you. As you were.

A modest proposal

This has been the winter of my discontent. Apparently, I'm not alone in this feeling. But it's not just winter. At our last emergency meeting the Irregulars voted to support Larry O'Brien in the belief that this will be good for our karma. Would it be bad karma to point out that there was vociferous undocumented dissent during that debate -- namely, mine?

But noooo. Everybody ignores the damn doggie. And now look at us. Having huge amounts of trouble figuring out what the hell the guy is good for, so we can 'support' him without messing up our already-tottery karmic imbalance even further. And we're not the only ones.

Yet, strangely, I believe I have found a solution that may be able to satisfy us all, the fluffy-bunny supportive types, as well as (ahem) any semimythical totemic animistic sorts who hearken back to older, possibly harsher spiritual systems. (I have to say that considering that Easter originally celebrated nailing a guy to a board, and these days is an excuse for rendering joltingly-gratuitous violence unto Marshmallow PEEPs®, any claims that my roots are uncivilized and backward seem a tad blinkered.)

When I took the problem to a longtime semimythical totemic animistic friend of mine from my old stomping grounds back west, he went straight to the nut: "You're looking for a use for this guy so you can support him in good conscience, right? And winter's been going on way too long, right? So multitask. Make him a human sacrifice to the spirit of winter, so it'll screw off and let spring back in. And the bonfire warms everybody up in the meantime."

Is this guy good or what?