This old house is worth much more than it looks..

Mike's Pith & Wind - This Old House
This ole house is a-gettin' shaky
This ole house is a-gettin' old
This ole house lets in the rain
This ole house lets in the cold..
Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer
Ain't a-gonna need this house no more.
Stuart Hamblen 1954.
The recent auction and sale of the house that I’ve lived in for the past twenty-seven years wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it’s an unwelcome distraction nonetheless. My father, which art in Rotorua, rang me this morning (at a civilised hour too) to find out what had transpired, and was amazed at the price the property fetched. I don’t think the property market is quite so driven by hysteria in Rotorua, or it could be that Australia remains relatively unscathed by the WWR (World-Wide Recession).
So, the sale of ‘my’ house is inconvenient, but it’s probably a ‘good thing’ and even well-timed in the overall scheme of things. I’ve become accustomed to accommodating my disintegrating abode’s idiosyncrasies – the shower that produces only a tantalising trickle of hot water, the ‘spare’ room with the subsiding floor, the sewer that barely functions for four or five months before it infuriatingly backs up.
In fact, it was the malfunctioning sewer that brought matters to a head. I knew as soon as I gave my landlords’ address to the new neighbour over the back fence that it was only a matter of time.. read more

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Dick's Toolbox - Getting to the bottom
Having not eaten solid food for two and a half days, I am both rather hungry and possessed of a low grade headache. The reason for this voluntary fast is that I have to have a colonoscopy - one of those medical moments where I pay to have either, or both, public television stations send three wide-angle high-definition TV cameras, make-up artists, catering vans and assorted bystanders up my delicate rectum for a look round.
I assume this invasive procedure will happen, even though I intend to be as unconscious as medical technology can make me. There are moments when drugs are truly a good thing.
However, for all I know the assembled team of medical experts might do nothing – they might stand around drinking cocktails for an hour, leave ships in bottles in my appendix, read more