And the Meadow Wood Saga continues

Two years after being priced at $2.7 million and still unsold, 13 Meadow Wood Drive reduced its price today to $2.6 million. While ordinarily, I’d expect this kind of market-clearing whack to quickly move a house to the “sold” column, I’m not so sanguine about this one; it had expired unsold in November 2018 at $1.8 million, so its reappearance two weeks later at $2.7 caused a bit of head-scratching here at FWIW’s world headquarters.

Then again, it’s been a long slog for this poor house; it began at $3.5 in 2011 and has been on the market ever since, at various prices, all to no effect.

You’d think that the foreclosing bank would be growing weary of the place by now, but judging from its action today, it’s still got game.

But now, no more long weekends in the frozen Chosin

Tommy Bahama’s place way up at 586 Round Hill Road and way down to an asking price of $9.995 million — it started in 2014 at $17.950 — is pending.

Worried about serving that perfect Thanksgiving dinner to the 20 new friends you've invited?

James Lileks to the rescue with timely dining tips from the past

Lileks thoughtfully supplies this follow-up:

Dorothy Malone's wikipedia bio says "1901 - date of death unknown." Somehow she faded away. 

This was Mr. Ferguson's sole appearance outside of his corner of the world and time. If he existed at all, that is.

Gran’pa Jack, alas, was not a Camel smoker (actually, he didn’t smoke at all, but …)

And so a slow, fluttering downward begins

The owners of 24 Highland Farm Road paid $3.350 million for it in October 2017 and after “completely rebuilding and renovating it” according to its current listing, put it back up for sale this past September for $11.495 million. Today, they dropped that price to $9.750.

I dunno, it still seems like a big, 1987 house, new bathrooms or not.

A modest bidding war in Milbrook

85 Overlook Drive, listed for $1.765 million, has sold for $1.775. I assume it’s a land sale. If a builder paid this much then hats off: he’s a far more optimistic fellow than I.

That didn't take long

Three weeks after hitting the market at $4.295 million, 20 West End Avenue, Old Greenwich, is reported pending.

I mentioned this house back when it arrived on the scene on October 30; I liked it, and while some readers agreed and others disagreed, the only people whose opinion really counts in these matters, buyers, have spoken.

Thank god we can still dispense death in Connecticut

Greenwich Time headline: Experts: Amid COVID Pandemic, More Patients Travel to Connecticut for abortions

Never mind that “more patients” turns out to be all of two, both CT residents who flew back to have their wombs scraped; it was the irony of the headline — a deadly disease jeopardizing easy access to abortion — that caught my eye, an irony that obviously eluded Hearst’s editor.

Pending on Stanwich

510 Stanwich Road, currently asking $4.950, and originally put on the market in March 2018 at $6.250, is reported as pending.

If memory serves, this was a modular home built by the late Jess Dall, who conducted business under the name Scholz Master Builders. And Jess built great houses; it was he who convinced me that he could get better quality control from trained factory workers and computers than a (then) $20-hour guy with a skill saw working in the rain. Besides, so much custom work is put into this range of modular that you’d be hard-pressed to discern a difference.

What to do while your dial-up modem loads?

14-hour wait at grand opening of Aurora, CO In-N-Out Burger.

Biden beat Trump 61% - 36% in Aurora, if that’s relevant.

Why let private enterprise solve a problem when there's a perfectly good pool of taxpayers to fleece?

Starlink

Maine is pushing ahead with its government internet program that will bring high-speed internet to rural communities. And of course, though the spending has been going on for several years, now they have COVID to add urgency to their spending.

“Internet access is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity,” [Governor] Mills said. The need for expanded access is even greater during the pandemic, when many students are learning from home because of schools being closed to limit the spread of the virus, she said.

In the meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service went beta last month and is expected to be worldwide by the end of 2021.

And not surprisingly, other competitors are rushing in (or up).

The fly in the ointment there is that Starlink and other satellite systems will break the monopolies held by existing providers. And that explains why Maine’s and other rural states’ similar programs that provide taxpayer-funded subsidies to cable companies are being run as a consortium of government and the cable companies that have paid them for so long. Even if these state projects prove useless, unnecessary, or futile in the long run, I’m unfamiliar with any government program that’s ever been canceled on those grounds; witness, e.g., the ethanol mandate, or the Democrats’ and their military-industrial friends’ newfound affection for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We will stop no project before its time, and that time will never come.