We have a great book club in my neighborhood.  A group of ladies (ranging from 5-25) meets each month at a different person’s home.  Everyone brings something to eat or wine, both are which are consumed in abundance.  It’s a great, fun time, but book club for me has one problem: the books.

I originally joined book club to try to expand my reading selections.  I read–a lot–but I read a rather narrow range of interests.  Non-fiction (usually science related, although not always), or science fiction.  I thought I should expand my horizons a bit, maybe find something enjoyable I wouldn’t normally read on my own.  This was a good idea in theory.

I read about six books I would never normally pick, books that book clubs all over the U.S. are reading, books that get great Amazon reviews, books that have a consensus: they are good.  Most of these fall into the category of “women’s fiction”–whatever that means.  I pretty much hated every one of them.  They bored the crap out of me. A lot of the books feature extended sessions inside the protagonist’s head: what they are thinking about, their demons, what they think of events.  Romances, moral quandaries and the like. The thing is, unless there’s some crazy space faring science/alternate dimensions/worlds blowing up/black holes or the story is actually true and not fiction, I can’t bring myself to care much.  Perhaps this is a side effect of having to read so many boring Thomas Hardy novels in high school.  

So, I’m a book club failure.  I can’t decide if I should keep torturing myself by reading these books, just so I can attend the fun social aspect without looking like a loser, or if I should just give up and realize–I like what I like.

I’m from Phoenix, Arizona originally.  I went to middle school, high school, and got my bachelor’s degree at Arizona State.  I’ve lived in Colorado for the last 11 years.  When I go back to Phoenix now I generally find it one way. Depressing.

Every major metro area in the U.S. has sprawl, but in Phoenix, it’s an art form.  There are very, very few places you can get to without a car, and everywhere there now looks the same: beige adobe, red tile roofs, one endless soulless strip mall and big box bonanza after another.  I was in Phoenix recently to attend my best friend’s wedding.  We stayed at a four star resort in north Scottsdale (which was desert when I lived there).  There are houses all around this resort, but little else.  A trip to the grocery store is a 15 minute drive, one way (I timed it).  Most of Phoenix is this way, nearly devoid of character and totally slaved to the car, no human scale at all.

We saw a sign while driving to the grocery store that said “mixed-use development!!!” under this is said “retail AND office space!”.  This is what passes for “mixed use” in most of Phoenix.  My husband commented that is was similar to the “We have both types of music: Country AND Western” famous line.

There are a few bright spots, downtown Scottsdale is a human scaled area which is just now adding housing (VERY expensive condos but they are cool), the Willo neighborhood close to downtown Phoenix, Verrado–a new urbanist neighborhood in Buckeye (way the hell out west of downtown), and downtown Tempe which has housing in walking distance to offices and retail.  In Denver though, there’s a million walkable neighborhoods (new and old) with great access to public transit, not to mention the investment we’ve made in our rail line that will connect all the metro area.  I feel Denver is much more progressive, enviornmental, and human oriented city than Phoenix currently is.  I’m glad I live in a place that values me more than my car (at least in SOME places!).  

My husband’s comment watching our daughter listen to his iPod:

“We had to listen to the same band five songs in a row and then turn it over for another five songs”. LOL.

There’s an interesting essay in this month’s issue of Metropolis called Where’s Home.  It explores the meaning of this emotional idea in a country where people move–on average–every five years.  We are such a transient country I think in part because of two things: Hope springs eternal in the U.S. (a nice thing) and our culture, which focuses on the accumulation of things and being happy at all costs (the two things are not really related but the advertisers sure like us to think they are), the American idea of–You Can Always Do Better (not such a nice thing).

There have been people moving out of Bradburn since we’ve lived here the past four years.  A lot of that time it’s because of a job change and the people who are moving really don’t want to.  One lovely couple that lived on my street got a job offer they couldn’t refuse in a Midwest state and hated to leave but luckily found another new urbanist community in their new state and love it there also.  Other times moving is due to divorce or other sad life events.   But there have been a few that have moved because they just thought it was time, they wanted something different.

I have to admit when people tell me they are moving and I ask why (because I’m nosy like that, ask any of my neighbors) and they don’t say a reason that’s really beyond their control, it comes, like a reflex almost to me (I say it in my head, not out loud)–”How could you? Why would anyone want to leave?”.  Sometimes I joke our neighborhood is like “Hotel California” (the “you can check out but never leave” part).  I also silently think–if you can’t be happy in this neighborhood I can’t imagine you will be happy anywhere–which is of course, judgemental–different strokes for different folks and all that.

Moving often doesn’t allow for people to develop a true connection to place, which has a variety of negative effects–social isolation, less community involvement, less care for the environment.  I can’t help to think this is part of the reason so much of our grand country looks like unmitigated crapola–endless series of strip malls, big box stores, horrific, cheap housing that isn’t.  It looks like that because people don’t really care too much–they’re just going to move somewhere else soon.  Except there isn’t anywhere “else” really in this country–it all (with some exceptions of course) pretty much looks the same–crappy.

My  husband and I were watching CNN this weekend.  They briefly covered the wedding of one of the President’s daughters.  During the piece they showed images of the town it was held in and commented that the gift shops on the town’s small main street were sold out of items like mugs and mouse pads commemerating the event.  This struck me as odd as they are not royals and we are not England.  I said,

“Who would buy such an item?” and my husband replied,

“The same people who buy dinner plates with Marylin Monroe on them”.

I am a skeptic about absolutely everything.  I rarely take someone’s word, especially if I don’t know them or am unsure about their credentials to be making the claim they are making.  This has saved me thousands of dollars over the years. 

Yesterday I went to a quick change oil place and got a new pitch I hadn’t heard before.  They asked me how much I’d gone over my last oil change, which was about 1,000 miles.  They tsked and told me there was “built up gunk” in my engine and I needed to do an “oil flush” for an extra $15.  Then they showed me a sample of my motor oil which they said was “dirty” exemplifying the horrifyingly personal moral failing of my filthy engine.  I thought, “well, yeah of course it’s dirty it’s in a friggin engine, and isn’t that part of the point of getting an oil change?” but didn’t say anything as I figured it would be futile.  I told them I would consider the procedure for next time (translation: I think you’re full of crap and I’m going to go ask Dr. Google about this “required maintenance” before I fork over a dime).   They tried three more times in the 20 minutes I was there to convince me that not only did my engine need “flushing” but that my power steering fluid, transmission fluid, etc.. also required this car colonic–total cost: $200.

So I get home, and I do what I do with everything I’m not sure of: I research it.  And gee, guess what?  Found multiple sources stating basically this.  Saved myself $200 bucks with the BS detector.  A couple of other examples of skeptical savings:

1. Extended warranties.  Best Buy especially really pushes these, a very small percentage of people ever use them, they are not worth the money. 

2. Car rental insurance.  Agents telling you to get insurance are usually full of crap–your personal car insurance will almost always cover rental cars (make sure to check of course).

3. The “we can’t qualify you for the interest rate we first stated” trick at car dealerships.  They try to do this after you have taken the car home so you’ve gotten attached to it–don’t EVER take a new car home without the financing in place (and even then they may still try this), and know your credit rating before stepping in the door.  Better yet, don’t finance through car dealerships at all, secure financing through someone else, then go in to buy (don’t tell them you have the cash until after you negotiate a price however).

When I was a researcher at Colorado State University, I worked with a charming and affable gentleman who came from New Orleans.  Around this time one year, he brought a “King cake” into the office.  With all the office members save one–a graduate student who was out working in the field that morning–gathered around, he explained the King cake is a Mardi Gras tradition.  It looked essentially like a round danish with a hole in the middle.  The gentleman explained there was a small, plastic baby Jesus hidden inside, and whoever found it was supposed to bring the King cake next year.  We all had a piece and discussed fun, colorful traditions from our home locations.

Later that day I was working at my desk and I saw a flash go past the doorway–the graduate student who had missed the King cake explanation had returned from the field and was headed for our main office room.   As the little ticker in my head ran across saying “Oh, I should probably go tell him…..” I heard, “SON OF A BITCH!” from the next room followed by “WHY IS THERE A PLASTIC BABY IN THE DANISH!!!??”.   So if your coworker brings in a King cake–you have been warned.

I got an ITouch for Christmas and it is the most delightful and intuitive piece of hardware joy I’ve ever had.  Thank you Apple.

Me: God I had awful nightmares last night about [our kid] getting lost

My Husband: I had a nightmare too

Me: Really?

My Husband: You got served an undercooked steak in a restaurant

Three years ago when I first moved down to Denver, I went looking for a dentist as I hadn’t been in some time.  I looked up the providers my dental insurance covered and picked a female dentist that practiced close to my home.  I went to this dentist who told me I needed 3 new crowns, and 7 fillings.  She said it would take around 6 hours to do all that work and said she could offer me sedation for the long time it would take.  I was upset when I came home from that appointment, but I was also something else: skeptical. 

One of the crowns this dentist said I needed was a replacement for a crown I’d had put in two years prior,  so I looked it up (which I do with EVERYTHING).  Dr. Google said crowns usually last at least 10 years, and can last a lifetime.  This got me thinking: how do I know anything she told me is actually the case?  She could make up whatever she wanted about my teeth and just assume I would trust it since she was the trained dentist and I wasn’t.  With me of course, this is dead, dead wrong–I require proof for everything.  So I made an appointment with my old, trusted dentist in Fort Collins and drove up there to have him take a look at my teeth.  Guess what he said?  I didn’t need any work.  None. At. All.

This turn of events deeply shocked and depressed me.  What was more concerning however, was the fact that this dishonest dentist had her wall lined with pictures of the Medicaid kids she treated: how many of those kids got dental work they didn’t need so she could make a buck?  I reported her to the American Dental Association, but I’m sure they didn’t do anything about it.  I haven’t been back to a dentist since.

Recently a new dentist opened in my neighborhood.  Their office is a 5 minute walk from my home.  Multiple neighbors have gone and all have spoken highly of this dentist, so I decided to make an appointment.  When I was on the phone with the receptionist, I gave her my name and we were working out the details of the appointment when she said “Oh, hold on a second, he wants to speak to you”.  The dentist then got on the line. “Hi, I’m Dr. “X” and I recognized your name from [my neighborhood’s] internet board, I just wanted to introduce myself”.  I thought this was really nice and thoughtful, but I also realized something else: this person knows I know everyone in my neighborhood.  They also therefore know if they try to pull any crap like the last dentist I visited that I will tell everyone in my neighborhood and they will lose significant business.  I currently don’t have dental insurance so will be paying cash, but the social capital in my neighborhood is covering something much more important to me: piece of mind.