The River Flows South (Just Like Downtown Progress)

Got up this chilly morning and went downtown for the Greater Dayton Downtown Area Plan Update.

I believe in downtown. I believe the city and region need a dynamic center if the Miami Valley is going to succeed and prosper again.

But, seriously, wake me up a year from now. After the interstate, bridge and other infrastructure projects are completed or near completion.

I’ve attended three townhall meetings and two Urban Nights this year and have seen these same conceptual drawings.

I get it. We’re sitting atop a huge water source; need to attract young professionals; green buildings and sustainability; renovate historic buildings; bike-ability; walkability; and all the other abilities that will make downtown (and I’m getting tired of the over use of this word) vibrant.

All hail the urban playground that will come!!! May its many amenities be sufficiently pleasing for members of the beloved creative class to migrate here and deliver us all unto greater prosperity! Amen.

But you have to build it first. Everyone is anticipating great things, but this seems so premature, like looking at blueprints and already planning the menu for the first house party.

I would’ve been okay with this as a little progress update or a brief detour on my way to Second Street Market if this had focused solely on downtown. But when the attendees broke off into little discussion groups, I listened to a city planner go over a large map with a colored highlights marking areas of renovation and future interest. Fine. But what bothered me was how far south the city planners’ vision extended while highlights west and north of downtown were confined to just along the river.

True, building accessibility between the University of Dayton campus and downtown would be important. Yet all the south end neighborhoods in between were highlighted as well; and the city planner started using a marker to detail additional projects that were all slated for-you guessed it-south of downtown.

And as a north-of-downtown resident I felt excluded…again. For years I’ve been hearing about plans for improving downtown and the surrounding areas, but the greater percentage of them all seem concentrated south of 3rd Street. I would’ve felt better if the map included highlights of all the park land and bike paths stretching north along the river and all the way up to Triangle Park.

After all, green spaces are supposed to be an important part of the downtown vision and it does run along the river. Also, considering all the infrastructure projects west and north of downtown targeting improved traffic flow, I was looking for an indication what positive impact this might have on major streets such as Salem Avenue, North Main Street and Riverside Drive; and how far north might it spread.

So I voiced my lack of enthusiasm. Then I went back and forth with the city planner who kept insisting there were plans for northside neighborhoods like Five Oaks and Santa Clara on another map. And then he tried throwing the argument back on me by asking what have I done to improve my neighborhood.

I’m already aware that a great percentage of the scheduled vacant property demolition slated in northside neighborhoods hasn’t started yet. Nor do I expect revitalization to spread uniformly in all directions. But after our discussion, my impression is that the city planners haven’t put much thought into North Main Street beyond the interstate project.

Perhaps the northside is seen as a little too ghetto to be included in the yuppified playground of a new downtown and will remain a casualty of a shrinking population until companies locate here and new residents look for cheap real estate.

I had a little better time at the table discussing downtown’s green future and efficiency projects. My suggestion that landscaping from many of these soon-to- be demolished properties be salvaged and reused in the dozens of proposed parks and public gardens gained a favorable response. (Well, except for this one woman who followed me from the other table and didn’t seem pleased with how I had spoken to the city planner.) There are many fully grown boxwood, barberry and other bushes and shrubs that would each cost well over fifty dollars apiece at a garden center. Why let all those healthy plants get crushed and ground up by bulldozers?  The same equipment that tears through brick walls and beams could easily scoop out a large bush or shrub and set it aside for transplanting elsewhere.

But I’m tired of talking. Just build it already. Then we’ll talk.

My Life Would Suck Without You Video: A Little Too Deja Vu-ey

I just finished watching the new video for Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You”. The song itself is okay, but the video? It isn’t what I expected. I’d read it was “cute” and “fun”, which sounds like the real Kelly Clarkson. The Kelly in this video? Not so much. What might have been an attempt to portray the “fun” of a dysfunctional relationship ended up being a disturbing glimpse at two people who shouldn’t be together. It’s more like “My Life Is Guaranteed to Suck With You In It”.

The Kelly in this video is an immature mess straight out of reality tv. (A “Beautiful Disaster” perhaps?) It seems whenever the Kelly in this video gets upset she basically drops her boyfriend’s belongings in the toilet or out a window for kicks and then laughs in his face about it. Sure, Video Boyfriend tries fighting fire with fire by throwing some of her clothes out the window. But CrazyVideoKelly is more than up to the challenge and ready to up the ante by sending a goldfish bowl sailing out the window. But not before the timely intervention of Video Boyfriend, who stops the damagefest only long enough to scoop the little fish out of the bowl and into a glass of water. That is, I think it’s water. Maybe it’s vodka. If not, he’ll probably be chugging the stuff regularly in order to cope with this emotional child’s tantrums.

I can see this guy at the next tenants meeting. “I’m sorry for those of you who slipped on the broken glass and aquarium gravel in front of the building last week, but my girlfriend was having a really bad case of the Mondays.” And the tenants would say, “Actually this meeting is an intervention. Dude, you’ve got to get out of this relationship!”

Seriously, I was hoping the younger version of Kelly at the beginning of the video would show up during the fight in the apartment much like in the “Because of You” video and show Kelly how unhealthy her outbursts are, and there are better ways to resolve conflicts.

But, heck, all the near-fatal car accident at the end seemed to do was get her turned on.

I kept asking myself what had the guy in this video done to deserve this treatment. The men in other Clarkson videos like “Low”, “Never Again” and “Since You’ve Been Gone” deserved some retribution. But this guy?

Would he be thinking his life would suck without Kelly? What song would sum up his feelings? The Offspring’s “Self Esteem”? Perhaps there’s a song out there titled, “Stop Treating My Soul Like Toilet Paper”.

I also thought about the trashing of personal property in this video and “Since You’ve Been Gone”, and it made me see the latter video in a whole different light. What if the relationship Kelly had had with the ex in “Since You’ve Been Gone” had been much like the relationship shown in “My Life Would Suck Without You.” Suddenly, Kelly isn’t a woman scorned as much as a hot mess that had been dumped because the guy found a more stable woman to be with; and Kelly just couldn’t resist trashing the guy’s stuff one last time.

When the guy comes home to a trashed apartment, he isn’t so surprised. He just thinks, “Oh, Kelly’s been here. I hope the goldfish managed to survive this time.”

Well, Latte-da, Mr. Coffee Snob

Cart-jacked at Wal-Mart

So I stop in at Wal-Mart this evening for a few items, and before I head to the express lane I stop to get  a bag of ice out of the freezer in front of the registers.  It seems more practical and efficient to get the ice beforehand where it can be scanned instantly instead of having to ask the busy checkout person to add the price of the ice to the purchase total and delay the line.  So I park my cart about twenty feet away from the machine.  I don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression that I’m trying to waltz out of the store without paying.  I reach in, get a small bag of ice and walk back to my cart.  But it’s gone. 

It took me only a few seconds to get the ice.  At first I thought someone had taken my cart by mistake and I looked around.  But then I noticed my cans of tuna, pint of Ben and Jerry’s and box of shower curtain rings had been put on the full shelf of a sales display.

And I’m left wondering who…

a.) …thinks I was abandoning my cart and leaving the store.  The ice machine is beside the exit, but watching me walk away from the cart it would be pretty clear I’m walking toward the ice machine a few feet away.

Or…

b.) …can’t walk about thirty feet themselves and get their own damn shopping cart by the entrance.  Was it the impulse thrill of cart larceny that overrode this person’s common sense?  Seriously, my cart was unattended for only a few seconds.

c.) ….they saw the few items I had and thought I didn’t need the cart as much as they did.  Oh no.  They were going to do some Wal-Mart consumer size shopping, baby.  In hindsight, I think it might’ve been a pair of women I noticed heading down the card aisle.  Maybe it was a situation where one of them realized soon after they’d entered that they’d need a second cart, and, golly, those extra feet to get a second one is such an arduous journey.  The store wasn’t crowded.  There was no shortage of carts, so it wasn’t like trying to find a brand new Prius.  There were plenty of carts available.

But I’m also wondering…

d.)…even if it’s possible that the cart-jacker thought I was exiting the store, what kind of person empties a cart and leaves a pint of ice cream on a shelf to melt and make a mess?

But then again, I’m not selfish, inconsiderate tool wad.

Don’t let the furnace eat my checking account!

I don’t know if I’m green-minded, thrifty, or just plain stubborn, but I’ve been keeping my house thermostat set at fifty degrees. Maybe it’s a combination of all three, but I refuse for that massive, energy-inefficient heating contraption called a furnace to rumble to life and start chomping on my checking account.

Remember Spot, the Munsters’ family pet that lived under the staircase and roared and breathed fire? That’s been my growing perception of my drafty old home’s forty year old furnace as natural gas prices have soared over the past few years.

And yes, spray foam insulation in the walls and vinyl window replacements would make a big difference, but I’m never in the vicinity when suitcases full of money fall out of the sky. If I were then home improvement would be high on my list. Until then I spend the colder winter days dressed in layers and boosting the indoor temperature up with two electric space heaters.

It’s not too bad. When outside temperatures are in the high to mid-thirties the house retains enough warmth to be comfortable. But when temperatures dip into the twenties I don’t wander too far from the larger space heater, or I stay on the sofa covered by a heavy blanket. And earlier last week, when temperatures were in the teens, I surfed the internet with a blanket draped over my shoulders and the space heater right by my side.

All the while the furnace slumbered. Of course, I couldn’t do all my house cleaning under a blanket or wearing a coat, so my kitchen and bathroom suffered.

When last weekend’s artic cold front pushed through the north and Midwest and slammed temperatures down to zero and below, I was grateful I had made plans during Christmas to return to Indiana and help paint the house Mom had recently purchased for her expanding sewing business.

Unlike me, Mom doesn’t live in an old house and can run her energy efficient electric furnace and keep her house comfortably warm. But even the empty house I was painting had the thermostat set at fifty, but still felt more comfortable than mine. Maybe because the house is much smaller and doesn’t have high ceilings.

Not that I wasn’t tempted to leave a space heater on while I was away. But, no, I didn’t. I could tolerate the monster awakening for a bit. With temperatures in the single digits or less, it was bound to turn on. But when I returned I promised myself I’d find a way to put Spot back to sleep.

January is almost over. February is only one more month, and then the worst of winter will be past.

And is it worth all this trouble?

Well, today I got my annual property tax bill in the mail. $1,917! But you know what? I’ll be able to pay it in full. I won’t receive an unemployment check for another two weeks, but I’ll still have enough money to buy groceries, fill my gas tank and rent a few DVDs. Back in November, two months before the layoff, I took all I could afford and paid extra or made a few additional installments on car, mortgage, phone, internet, and utilities, so the next time I pay a bill will be in March. One bill I might have to write a check for? The heating bill. But it might end up being a small check. My tax return which I thought might have to go towards helping pay property taxes or covering my January or February heating expenditures can now go towards paying off my car.

So these next few weeks there might be some mornings where I’m wearing my heavy coat indoors while sitting close to a space heater. But it’s not so bad. The big difference between being in a cold house and being in debt is that it’s a lot easier to get out of the house.