a quick fly by

Kate asked how to do a blog interview. Easy peasy. I send you the autographed book. You read it within the month (so we can get the Christmas rush, please.) and send me a couple of questions. I send back answers. Then you post them, along with a brief summary of the book (and encouragements to all your loyal readers to buy the entire series)on your blog. If you haven't read any of my books, I'll send you all three for your thorough study and enjoyment.

For eye-candy, here's a picture of der UberTreeHouse - the treehouse with double-pane windows, two glass doors and a front porch. If you plug in the extension cord, you have electricity, and if you drag the hose up there, you have running water. All it needs is cable TV and it could rent to some college student for $200 a month.

As a college student, I sub-let an apartment that had such a leaky roof that a previous tennant had given up, pulled all the waterlogged plaster and rotted lath off the ceiling, stapled up heavy plastic sheeting, waited till the water pooled in the center, poked a hole in it and stuck a bucket under the hole. One drip for the whole ceiling. When the rain got heavy, and the bucket filled quickly, you learned to wake before it overflowed. The sound of the drips changed as the bucket filled. That was a great old place. It was so cheap that no one wanted to mention the fire in the basement. It wasn't a big fire, and didn't seem to impair the structural integrity of the place much. I had a cast-iron clawfoot six-foot long bathtub in my bathroom.(A VERY romantic gentleman poured champagne over me in that tub.) And the main heat source was a steel drum with a stove pipe attached. Oh yeah, and someone had pulled all plaster and lath off the wall between the kitchen and the livingroom, and nailed a few 2x4s between the studs to make display shelves. VERY rustic but lots of charm.

What cheap apartment memories do you have?