About 9 years ago, my wife and I sold our house. You know the drill. The kids are on their own, the school taxes are ridiculous and you’re rolling around a big house with nobody home. So we sold and moved one town away to a beautiful apartment in not such a good school district. Lower taxes, no hauling the garbage to the curb on one night, hauling the recycling on another, no slipping on the snow and ice in the winter, no mowing the lawn, the front steps, etc, etc. It’s a win win. Except, when it isn’t. I’ve already referred to my favorite exchange from the past, “We don’t have room for four sets of china,” followed by “we don’t have room for four tv’s”. So we compromised, we have 4 sets of china and 4 tv’s ( a couple of which never, ever get used), and very little room to hang clothes and put away kitchen appliances and fancy serving platters which only get used once in a blue moon, or once in a Rosh Hashanah, or once in a Thanksgiving (okay, I said we don’t need all those platters and she said we did and I must admit she may have been right on that one). But where to hang stuff is an issue, especially pictures.

We have an open living room/dining room/kitchen kind of set up. It’s great for conversation because there are no walls dividing the rooms. We also have several big picture windows to enjoy the view. But that’s the problem. And who thought of the name “picture windows” anyway? You can’t hang pictures on them. It reminds me of something the comedian Steven Wright once asked, “Why do we park in the driveway and drive on the parkway?” Now there does happen to be an answer to this perplexing, first-world question. You can now download all your digital photos in a single digital picture frame which then changes every 30 seconds or so to a new photo. In fact, some very good friends bought us such a picture frame as a house gift. But please don’t tell them, we still haven’t figured out how to download the damn photos!

Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next week with the conclusion of Al, Joanne and the virtues of apartment living.

Andy and John