Thursday, October 02, 2008

You may live in a mansion or you might live in a dome

I went to dinner at 74 and Zaftig's house. Their daughter, now two or so, is a spoiled brat and they have no discipline strategies at all, so her shouting was kind of annoying after nine hours of kindergarten. But they're loving parents, and 74 cooks the best filet mignon I've had outside of a $100 five-star steak house. Very delicious and bad for you potatoes au gratin, too. Their little baby son is a cute chunky fellow who doesn't cry much.

At work, I've been going over the kids' addresses with them the last few days, so they can learn to recognize and recite their own. Driving to 74's, I noticed that a lot of the kids in my class live within a few blocks of him.

74 and Zaftig are friend with a German guy and his wife who have two children about the same ages as 74's. They share a couple of nannies between the four kids, and take turns having the nannies take care of the kids at each other's houses. Anyway, the German guy told me he had an offer to buy 100 run-down and foreclosed houses in Ohio, Michigan, Louisiana, and Georgia, for a total of $100,000. He was seriously considering doing it, either to sell the best ones at a small profit (say two or three thousand per house) or to have a friend manage them and become a slum lord.

My friends live in different social strata than I do.

Anyway, we watched the VP debates. They are a stain upon our national character.

1 comment:

Churlita said...

That is a different world. I don't have much contact with it, but my daughter's have a lot of friends who live in rich people's land.

I can't imagine what they think when they come to our tiny two bedroom apartment.