Dec. 15th, 2004

pictor: (Default)
I am thinking about how this may be a hoax....but the Globe and Mail is fairly reputable. If it's a hoax, it's a good one.

Rutgers researchers may have stopped HIV

and another one and here

I suspect it's a long way from release, if it in fact works, but *damn*!!
pictor: (Default)
Remember my housing assessment? Someone thinks my house is worth $399,000? I got an amendment in the mail yesterday...quite unexpectedly. It has been officially amended to ...

$66,000

That's right, a drop of $333,000. Fascinating. I just called them, and the lady on the phone said she can't be sure, but her educated guess is as follows (she is getting an assessor to check into it and call me back). $66,000 is the assessed value for the land (before the house was built) in June 2003. fair enough. What's the $399,000 then? She thinks is may be the assessed value for the the lot of land for all 6 townhouses, before it was subdivided into individual lots. This is possibly reinforced by the fact that they don't have an assessment of my neighbour's house complete yet, meaning, as an end unit, the entier land may have originally rolled up into us.

Now there is one flaw. $66,000 times 6 lots, is $396,000, close, but still short of the original assessment, and our lot is the largest lot due to the shape of the land. Arguably, our lot might be worth more than the other lots. Then again, maybe they just did divide by 6, along with a small adjustment. I look forward to finding out.
pictor: (Default)
Maybe it's because of the unusuual nature of christmas in my childhood, ie: no gifts, and no cards, just family, company, and a big dinner....I have never done this whole christmas season card, and the habitual family update letter. Every year for the past several years, we get many christmas cards, like 1 or 2 dozen, some of them have letters describing what the family has been doing over the past year, often with pictures.......and I have never sent anything similar to those people..or any people. Is that bad? For the first time, I am starting to feel like I have missed some expected christmas standard. Where is my letter say what is up in the life of Helen and Michael, what we have done, where we have been, are we in any new relationships, etc... I have 2 brothers, 2 sisters, 2 nieces, 4 nephews, and a fairly large number of friends, but I not "tight" with any of them really. I just have this comfortable casual approach to life, like I don't need to keep anyone in the loop...but maybe I should take a more proactive approach....to keep them in the loop. I mean LJ covers some of this, but even that is counter productive in that I sort of assume my information dissemination is covered. My family doesn't read it, not all of my friends read it, and more appropriately, it represents no special effort to make a point of including them. You all come to my journal, but I haven't made any effort really to include you, it was your effort, not mine. I think next year, I want to write a real proper christmas letter. It will have maybe some pictures, it will be in a card with a nice thought for the holidays, and I will send many copies of it. I realize I am bowing to tradition, which is something I usually strive to avoid, but I am thinking it's a good tradition, and I have just let it collect dust. It will be a good exercise, to make a point of having people's phone numbers and addresses so I can actually send them. It's great to know a lot of people, and be liked (as in no one minds me) by a lot of people, but if I am going to matter to people, if I am going to be someone who makes an impact in other people's lives, I will have to make more of a point of actually acting on that, rather than just let life happen.

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