Category: House & Home

HOW Much?

House & Home, Lifestyle

This one made me shake my head.

Chicago is one of the most expensive cities to reside in the United States, with Angel Reese revealing she’s also a victim of those high costs, as her WNBA salary does not cover her $8,000-a-month rent.

Oh, the poor thing.

This is something I happen to know quite a bit about, because as Longtime Readers will recall, I used to live in Chicago.

“But where did you live, Kim?  That makes a difference.”

Connie and I lived in a 10th-floor apartment in Lakeview, a few blocks from Wrigley Field, which afforded us views of both Lake Michigan to the east, and the city skyline to the south.

Dawn over Lake Michigan.


That’s the John Hancock Building in the distance on the left.  Both pics were taken on a glum fall day soon after we’d moved in.

The apartment itself was massive:  around 2,800 sq.ft (3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms), it also had a basement lockup storage unit, free use of the laundromat, also in the basement, and 18-hour/day garbage pickup from the trashcan outside the goods elevator out the back door.  It was also beautiful, with bay windows and solid brick.masonry walls which were so thick, they actually impeded the wifi signal.  There were only two apartments on each floor.

It was so beautiful that when we had a couple of clients over for drinks during a conference, one — a wealthy owner of a chain of grocery stores — looked over at his wife and said, “We could do this”, and she nodded in agreement.  It was truly a place to be proud of, and only the business need to move to Dallas after 9/11 got us out of there.

At the time (early 2000s), the monthly rent for this wonderful apartment was $3,700 and even with our combined incomes, the only way we could afford it was due to the fact that we’d sold both our cars when moving from the suburbs, and the resultant savings on car payments and insurance (about $1,200 a month) made our apartment affordable.  (And the proximity to both train- and bus routes, not to mention the ubiquitous Chicago cabs, made car ownership irrelevant and unnecessary.  On the few occasions when we needed a car — to venture out of state for a client meeting, for example — there was a Budget rental office four blocks away.)

Anyway, I went online and checked on the current (2024) rentals in that building, and they’ve gone up, all right:  to $4,200 per month, just over half of what that WNBA tart is being charged.

Which begs the question:  what kind of apartment is she living in, at that rent?

I don’t know, but I can guess: some swanky modern high-rise apartment in the Loop, Streeterville or Near North neighborhoods.  Or maybe even a lakeside penthouse apartment just north of the Golden Mile.  Whatever, it’s probably too big for her, and definitely not worth what she gets paid as a WNBA player.

The point about living in Chicago, as we discovered when we looked into it, is that yes, you can pay a lot of money to live in the city;  but if you just lower your expectations a little and make a small compromise here and there, you can find affordable digs a-plenty.

Our apartment in Lakeview was just such a compromise, and I think that everyone could agree that it was not too great a sacrifice to have made.

The 20-year-old Angel Reese has clearly never bothered to look into such a compromise because her several sponsorship deals pay the bills, and not her WNBA salary (which is less than a fifth of my and Connie’s joint income at the time).  In ten years’ time, her career at an end and the sponsorships having vanished, we’ll no doubt be reading about Angel Reese having to live in her car and eating dog food — unless, of course, she manages to snag some rich dude who can afford her.

Not the best outlook, but hey.  According to the article, she has a (paid) “financial advisor” who, on this basis, ought to be fired.

Urban Island

House & Home

Okay, here’s a place that for some reason has taken my imagination:

Another view:

It’s in England — it could only be in England in that location — and in the chilly north (York), which would make it even less desirable.  Also, from its description it’s in terrible shape inside, and in typical Brit fashion it has only one bathroom, but ignore all that for the moment.

Like I said, for some reason it has a strange appeal for me.  The “no neighbors” thing is one attraction, and yes, there will be terrible traffic noise so having a garden is not that much of an attraction.  But it’s surely a better deal than one of the houses / apartments across the main road, which have all the same noise but not any privacy, with two shared walls and cramped living conditions.

Could you live in such a place, or is it the stuff of your nightmares?

I meant this to be posted yesterday, but in my sickened state I cocked up the date, so here it is.

Accumulated Knowledge

Advice, House & Home

Background:  I once worked for an ad agency that had among its clients Vidal Sassoon, and from them I learned all the secrets of the trade.  Below is just a sample.

At its most basic level, shampoo is just a detergent.  Like all detergents, it takes away oils and greases.  Unlike your average kitchen dishwashing detergent, however, it’s very “gentle” — which means it has been severely diluted and therefore, on a cost per fluid ounce / milliliter basis, it outpaces Biden-priced gasoline.  This is particularly true if you buy the “premium” brands (e.g. with French names).

Technically, you could use simple bodywash (also expensive) or even a bar soap like Zest to wash your hair, although it’s a little harsh if your hair is normally thin and fragile.  However (and this leads into our sub-topic), what really counts, if you care for your hair at all, is not the detergent you use but the conditioner.

This is way more important than your shampoo, and a good conditioner will make your hair healthier than will some VO5-type budget conditioner — although, as with all things, budget conditioners work extremely well for some people because their hair responds to it better than to others, even expensive ones.

The more aggressive / cheaper your shampoo, the more money you’ll have to spend on conditioner.

So what do I use?  The cheapest shampoo (generally to be found on the bottom shelf at Kroger, with the lowest cost per ounce) and a mid-range conditioner like Pantene Pro-V.  But I have thick, healthy and wavy (not curly) hair, and I never use a blowdryer.  Also, I wash my hair about every other day, and use conditioner once a week only.

YMMV.

Addendum:  if you’re bald or wear your hair in a don’t-care buzz cut, you are obviously disqualified from commenting on this section, in that your opinions are like those of a cave-dwelling hermit about TV shows, or John Kerry about guns.

Not The Optimal Choice

Advice, House & Home

Today, I want to address the topic of:

Knife Sets

First, the dirty little secret:  not one of the brands which offer their cutlery in “sets” / blocks are very good, in that a “set” of knives tries to do everything well, and only partially succeeds.  Price is not an indicator of quality because inevitably, one (or more) of the components is not fit for function.

I have one of these, purchased before I knew better.

My summary:

  • the bread knife is terrible — it hacks the bread because the serration points are too sharp — and now I use a budget bread knife bought at the supermarket instead.  (The included paring knife is New Wife’s favorite kitchen implement:  we have two.)
  • the carving knives are quite good, but lose their edge rather quickly when you’re cutting things like cooked meat (ahem), so now I grudgingly use an electric carving knife for that purpose, and use the block’s carving knives only for cutting and trimming raw meat and veg.
  • the scissors are total shit — they fell apart (literally) after about six months.  I replaced them with a Kitchen-Aid pair (note the price), and they’re coming up for their sixth year of (ab)use, without complaint.
  • the block’s steak knives are also crappy:  they tear the meat rather than cut it.

Takeaway:  the Son&Heir worked in the kitchen at both Chili’s and Pappadeaux, and took note of what the pro chefs used there.  So when he finally moved into his own place (after sharing with buddies for years), he bought one sinfully-expensive carving knife — I mean, chef-quality — and uses two cheap paring knives (both Zyliss, see above), one serrated, one flat-edge.  He claims that those three take care of about 99% of his kitchen cutting needs.  (“What about the  remaining 1%?”  Dunno, he didn’t tell me;  knowing him, probably his Al Mar folder.)

The only reason to have a knife block at all is so that the knives’ edges aren’t damageded by clanging against each other in the drawer.

Frankly, if I were starting again, I’d get one of those wall-mounted magnetic numbers, and use it to store my own sinfully-expensive carving knife, a couple-three Zyliss utility knives and the Kitchen-Aid scissors.

For steak knives, I’d go with Victorinox because, duh Victorinox (see also:  Schmidt-Rubin rifles #Swiss quality).

Speaking of steak knives, I once had a set of Laguiolet knives, (bought in Paris and modeled, it’s said, on the Pyrenean shepherd’s knife), and they’re awful.

The blades are excellent, but the handles are too thin and they turn in the hand rather disconcertingly.  I think I gave them to Goodwill or something.

Frankly, I’d rather get a set of steak knives separately (as opposed to included with the cutlery set) and just store them in the box they come in, like this one:

Finally, I have a small cleaver for when I lose patience and just need to hack something apart (e.g. pork knuckle), and I have this one, which has a touch-up sharpener built into the sheath:

Five years of serious (ab)use, and counting…

I don’t have a butcher knife and don’t know much about them, but the Bearded Butcher guys use Victorinox, so there ya go.

Feel free, of course, to add your thoughts on this topic in Comments.

Change Of Season, Change Of Mood

House & Home

We’ve had our first cool days here in north Texas — not the cold snap of a week ago, but that gentle cool of autumn.  So I had to change the wallpaper on Ye Olde Laptoppe, from this:

…to this:

Unlike the earlier pic, I know where this one is (because I took the pic myself;  open in new tab or window to embiggen, feel free to copy).

It’s just outside Belfast, Maine, looking out over the Passagassawakeag River (yeah, I know;  stupid Indian name, they could have just called it the “Belfast River”, but noooo).

I wish we had mist here in the Dallas area… or decent rivers, for that matter.