I love the Wall Street Journal and I think it's the last of the interesting newspapers in America.

There are moments, however, when I realize much of it just isn't written for people like me.

Last week, I clambered up into the attic to see if there are enough 2x6 redwood braces up there that I could use to refurbish my small deck. Redwood's expensive, although it wasn't in 1956, when builders used it to frame this house. Swapping cheaper pine out for those braces wouldn't compromise the house's structure, and I'd get a great-looking deck for next to nothing.

Measuring the boards up there involved a lot of sweating and stretching amid dusty ducts, glass fibers, and mouse droppings. All for maybe a couple hundred dollars in savings on a home improvement and, perhaps, a good story here at Rittenhouse, provided I didn't break my neck or a ceiling panel in the process.*

Then I read the following story in the WSJ:

I've written here before that there's not much on the Internet that causes me to laugh out loud ... but that paragraph did, in two places.

Poor guy only had half his home's value available for refurb, and can't afford to move closer to the kids' private school.

I guess gas prices are eating him up.

It appears that, in today's "housing crisis," I'm in some middle territory, between upscale tragedies like Mr. Salinger's and the government-engineered deception that led too many lower-income people to shoulder up mortgages.

I still like the WSJ. I've just found another facet—unintentional humor—that I hadn't noticed before.

* Or maybe that'd make the story even more interesting to you, my sadistic Houseketeers.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 06:14 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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