Vancouverborg and Cormorants Down Bound on Lake Superior

I’m going to spill my guts here and then regret it tomorrow, because then I won’t have anything left to say. The photo is unrelated to the rest of this post, but it still looks nice. We know now what we will be doing this holiday weekend, dog sitting. Jack, the neighbor’s white furred, blue eyed, part pit bull will be under our care due to a kennel snafu. As partial payment to our good deed, we learned some juicy neighborhood gossip.

A couple of weeks ago, the day I flew out to Seattle also happened to be the day that was Anne’s first day of school this year. She was fluttering about nervously, as one would expect anyone to do on their first day of school. She was going to be working the Special School District. We then both noticed that the property kiddy corner to our back property line had a new lawn ornament in its backyard. It was a huge yellow ‘steam shovel’. Sorry for the anachronism, Mike. How they managed to park it back there, with only the narrowest of driveways to traverse remains a mystery to me. There was no mystery about its intended purpose though. It was there to tear down that now condemned house.

The story of this property is a long and sad one. In the almost thirty years that we have lived in our house, I have only seen the woman that owned this property once. It was in the predawn hours of a near summer solstice morning. I was launching on one of my early AM bike rides when I saw the owner walking along side her house. I probably should be thankful that that was the extent of my involvement with her. My numerous neighbors that over the years have shared a property line with me and her have many stories to tell of their involvements. There are two items to illustrate: the windows have always had tinfoil covering them and the son once used a chainsaw that he transported on a Metro bus, to mow down a neighbor’s fence.

The city first condemned the property and then foreclosed on it. The now vacant lot went up for public auction this week. It turns out that both the neighbors who share a property line with me and this now vacant lot ended up bidding against each other. The neighbors beside us, who we will be dog sitting for lost. The new neighbor behind us is a SLU student and according to her father, likes to party. Her father owns both properties now.