I think of the equity in my homes as my 'cushion'. It is like losing or gaining in the market. When the market when down, I 'lost' gobs, before I slowly gained it back. But, I didn't really lose anything but potential. It's just a number on a piece of paper, unless I was going to sell it. Equity is the same thing. To me, it initially is just how much my indebtedness is reduced. It becomes a real entity only when I turn a house over. And because of that, equity is a very mobile and dynamic thing. Telling someone how much their equity is, even when consider all the factors, is a number good for TODAY, only. Borrowing against it to the maximum current worth of a house is a very risky proposition. Using it to justify a purchase if you actually have the money at hand, but wonder if it is well spent is another horse altogether. Knowing the numbers can stop somebody from throwing money at a house when it's obvious they'll never recoup it. That given, if they still want their upgrades well, it's their money. I was selling one of my houses the last time I watched this program and how seriously the owners seemed to take the $ value the appraiser suggested. I thought immediately of my listing agent, who threw out a suggested sales price I knew was not going to happen. I listed at 20% lower than she suggested, and then dropped the house another 10% to the amount I figured I'd get before I listed it. I still made a profit, but not a killing. What if someone on that show is told their house would list at X amount. Well, list price and sales price are two different numbers.

It's after 12:30 here and Claude and I are up waiting. We have some clouds, but I just went and checked and the moon is big and bright and clear. It should at least be visible off and on. The eclipse starts here just past 1:30, and that's when I'm waking Sophie and Benjamin up (Oliver wouldn't be impressed!) The plan is to put on warm clothes and go out periodically over the course of an hour or so. In between, we'll warm up with hot chocolate and cookies inside. Then, hopefully, they'll get back to sleep relatively quickly. I'll pay for the lack of sleep tomorrow, but it'll be worth it. I think it's something neat that the kids will remember!

What it's like for me here..it's hard to write about it, I mean in this format of short(or even long, in my case) posts. I grew up with this radar though..I sense things..I've a pretty good compass of good and evil. It's hard to understand a country-any country-until you lived there. Books help of course. good books I mean. Yet still. Sometimes even physical presense is not enough-you need to really spend years somewhere. I'm afraid to count how many years I am here-and it's only now I feel that I'm closer to understanding all the complexity. So no wonder people here can't wrap their mind about things that happenned ocean plus away. I'll try to be brief..not about US for now, but about Chernobyl times.. They told only because they couldn't afford not to tell, at some point. They always seem to feel they have a lot, a lot of disposable resources. Like people, for example. I don't mean the country, there are good folks everywhere-I mean the state. the empire. There were many things they never told about. Including catastrophes and accidents. Some things that they deemed not comme-il-faut, that hurt their image and their proclamations, simply didn't exist. They existed-but they were swept under the carpet with such efficiency one hardly had time to blink. All the numbers of people they deliberately killed, repressed, deported, misplaced, etcetera-it all can be easily googled. And it's tens of millions. all of it sounds surreal. yet it was incredibly real. Here they were just, well..they weren't even in an active mode of evil. They just kept silent because they could, and until they could not. As for the writing..no..I didn't think about it, at least not in terms of describing big societal things like Chernobyl There are many very fine writers. And I just recently read some memoirs of different people who knew Leo Tolstoy-and it seems I share his opinion about writing. Which was approximately "don't write unless you feel you completely and utterly can't resist anymore" (he also thought, like me, it should be "useful'. The whatever you write. For the mankind. But we strongly disagree on poetry..me and Leo Tolstoy. lol) also I do write, in a way..it's too much of me here even in this thread)) Re Tired, I've been to Lvov-yes, it's a very beautiful city. I was with my schoolmates, we had a class trip there. I remember it very fondly.

A related item i found yesterday: If any of you recognize the name William Safire, you'll remember him as a self-educated expert in the English language, words and word usage. For many years he had a column On Language in the NY Times. One position he held (that I won't necessarily forgive him for) was as a speech writer during the Nixon administration. Among his many accomplishments, he created the memorable phrase "nattering nabobs of negativism" that Agnew used to attack critics. Not an honorable task but a great phrase all the same. Back to the moon, Safire wrote a brief statement for Nixon to read to the press IN THE EVENT he needed to announce that the lunar lander was stranded and unable to return its two astronauts to Earth. Here's an article about it from the Washington Post and a copy of the speech. For me, the first sentence is an unbelievable creation of a genius, simple and very moving. The rest is pretty special too. I hope you like it. Safire's speech for Nixon, just in case needed.