Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum it's summer and the windows are open

Well, not really summer, but the temperature was over 80 degrees here yesterday. First day of the year with all the windows open, and I could hear all the neighbors outside, which means they could hear me practicing. Made me feel a bit self-conscious. After a long winter, it's going to take some getting used to. But I'm NOT complaining!

It was great yesterady (I'm near Elyria on the westside). So far the only time one of my neighbors has mentioned hearing me they were telling one of their kids I was starting to sound good. I don't think I sound so great yet, but its still nice to hear someone say I do!

I know what you mean about being self-conscious. I realize that until I was almost 40 I had always lived in an apartment or duplex, so I was always acutely aware of the neighbors hearing the piano. My husband and I sold our duplex a little over ten years ago, and I still appreciate the ability to play without thinking I was performing. It makes practice so much more relaxed.

Last year I got my beloved new Estonia 168, so that ended the era of open windows for us. It's just too humid here for the piano, which sits by a window, and in the spring when it's not so humid, the yellow pine pollen is so heavy it literally makes small drifts on the windowsills. It's a small sacrifice, though!

Nancy

I live within spitting distance of two pubs with live music. If I can put up with them, they can put up with me.

it as so nice yesterday. It was 80 degrees! And today it started out in the 60s and was humid and by the end of the day, it was around the low 50s and raining. Sighs.. Wish the weather would make up its mind

I've been practicing most all day. I've gone from sweatshirt to tee shirt to yanking shirt off and back again.

I had the window open on Friday. It was 14C here (~57F). That's a darn fine day here. 80F would be our hottest day of the year. It might reach that on five or six days over the entire summer. The forecast high for today is about 5C (~40F).

And where I'm from 80 in the summer would count as a "cold snap."

Having grown up in the "deep" south, I can appreciate the term "hot and humid!"
It was 30 degrees here this morning, but the sun was welcomed by cloudless blue skys and rumor has it we will see 60 degrees today...yahoo!

"...and in the spring when it's not so humid, the yellow pine pollen is so heavy it literally makes small drifts on the windowsills."

I had forgotten about this, after so many years of living in California. The whole world: streets, cars, yards, everything, looks like it's been dusted with sulfur. Then there's another 'season' when the cottonwood seeds are released and blow through the air by the zillions.

Easter Sunday today and decided to go for a ride in the Arizona desert. Low 90's, still VERY cool!

Beautiful picture, Mr. S-H. It's pretty obvious you don't have a humidity problem with open windows in Arizona!

Nancy

I went windsurfing yesterday without a wetsuit and it was wonderful.
Mike White

Humidity is like kryptonite to me. Literally!. I actually live in Arizona on purpose due to my very bad joints. The absolute lack of humidity is a blessing and literally enables me to move.

We are usually in or near the single digits (other than monsoon season....July and august) and other than the extreme heat in June-Aug, Arizona is an incredible place to live. Why?, because you really don't need heat, you can go waterskiing and snowskiing on the same day within a few hours of each other and the housing deals right now are just unbelievable.

A neighbor who paid just over 1 million for their Mcmansion home in '06 now is having a tough time selling it. The home is listed @ $350k! and these homes are stunning. The best of the best of everything but there is a 10 year surplus of existing home inventory and the deals here is almost obscene. In our "exclusive" community, nearly every home owner walked away from their home due to being so upsidedown. The banks are now stuck with thousands and thousands of beautiful homes, most built within the last 3-4 years.

If you "literally" want the deal of your lifetime, you should see what you can get here in Arizona...(Las Vegas too). The deals are shocking.

Oh yeah, just a couple of hours drive and you are in Laughlin Nevada which has the colorado river to go boating. The water is as clear and clean as the carribean since it is "one-pass" water.

We stay at a 4 star luxory hotel when we are there (Harrahs) and don't mind the room rates of........$22.00 per night. Not a bad deal considering some times we get free buffets and a $25.00 gas card which literally pays for one night since my VW jetta wagon TDI gets 50mpg.

Nancy, let me shop for property for you, we could even be neighbors!

Well, thanks to this post I spend an hour last night looking at houses for sale! Wish I hadn't just bought a house! Looking at MLS, it said there were 3800 foreclosures in Scottsdale. Wow.

Some really beautiful houses....

Jealous of all of you having warm weather!

We live in the mountains of western WA and it's still chilly here... though the sun's been peeking in and out all day. Yesterday we had hail! Easter weekend we had snow!! But we live at about 1900 feet, so we're not typical of even this area in general.

Mr. Super-Hunky, I've been hearing about the real estate deals in Arizona and Las Vegas. Wowee. Having just moved across the country for the third time, I'm not eager to move again, but it's sure tempting!

Kim

I'm guessing there's a reason you can pick up McMansions for next to nothing, lack of jobs?

Not really, the developers and land investors (which is what I do/did.....stuck with!) always follow the baby boomers due to the size of the market. Short version, older people retire in warmer/dryer climates for health and lifestyle benefits. Arizona (and to a lesser extent Las Vegas) have experienced massive growth/sprawl over the past several decades. A positive appreciation value on homes/land was not only virtually guarranteed, but in the last decade could be extremely lucrative.

The gravy train was so bloated that here in Arizona with the previous lending laws (or lack thereof) it was literally an I.Q test if you *didn't* buy an investment home. It didn't really matter if you could afford it because even if you couldn't make the payments....(which you could since the rental market was very strong, still is), the home would be worth more....usually MUCH more than what you paid for it so you would just sell and make money. Lots of it.

It was not uncommon to purchase acreage just outside the currently developed areas, sit on it for 3-5 years and make stupid money when you sold it. You could buy a nice house in Scottsdale in the early 2000's for $300k-400k and sold it 3-5 years later near 1 million!. Not too shabby, especially when many times you had to put little or no money down (i.e no accountability) so there was no risk really. Just buy (sign the note) a home/land, wait some time and cash in. Only problem is EVERYBODY and I mean EVERBODY did this because it was legal and the money to be made was REAL.

Sooner or later of course all good things must come to an end but nobody wanted to jump off this bloated gravy wagon until it crashed. Which it did; head on!

So now we have something like 100 homes available for every ten people. Based on past annual state population expansion records (which are not the same anymore), we have a 10 year backlog of surplus inventory. Why?, re-read above!

There is no problem here, the area is beautiful, the weather is as good as it gets (if you like warm weather with no humidity, no bugs), we just have WAY too many homes available. Homes at all levels. You can buy million and multi-million dollar mansions for .35-.40 cents on the dollar. Even gorgeous 3000-4000 sf mini mansions that sold for $500k in 2005 are now priced around $180k. I'm not kidding!

If you have the ability to take advantage of this opportunity you should as I don't know if you will ever see such an imbalance is housing supply/demand = price again in your life time.

I would NOT suggest trying to use this situation as a get rich quick scheme by purchasing a bunch of homes and *hoping* for the best as it may or may not come but if you want a brand new-ish home at any level, the deals are simply irresistable.

Note: before anyone passes judgement on me, we paid cash for everything and while we did sell some property in the peak, we also got stuck with a bunch of stuff and will most likely lose our arse on them. Oh well,

Here in Texas we are in the idyllic time period where we can actually have the windows open. That will probably last about two weeks and then it will be 105 all the way through October. LOL

@mr-super-hunky: Interesting, thanks for the explanation.