Mangled metaphors

Even President Obama gets it wrong sometimes.

In a debate with Sen. John McCain, Obama said: "Senator McCain suggests that I'm green behind the ears."

The president's metaphor was a mashup of "wet behind the ears" and "green," meaning new to the scene.

I had to laugh out loud -- all by myself -- when I was reading the business section of this morning's paper. I was checking out a column about trademarks by an intellectual-property attorney. The writer was discussing the danger, for new businesses, of picking a name that is too similar to the name of an established company.

His advice was to hire an attorney to research any possible trademark conflicts. (Shocking, isn't it, that an attorney writing a column would suggest hiring an attorney? But I digress.)

Here's what he wrote: "As with horseshoes and hand grenades, too close can kill you in the world of trademarks."

Horseshoes? Kill? Nope, that just doesn't work right.

Nature calls

So, I was coming back to my apartment last night after having dinner with my nephew at Carytown Burgers & Fries.

In the lobby, I held the elevator for one of our security guys. I was headed for the 9th floor. He said he was going all the way to the top. I pushed the appropriate buttons.

We rode in silence for about 10 seconds, and then I told him the story of my first visit to the building.

The rental agent, who was a delightful woman to talk to, was showing me several apartments. We entered the elevator on the ground floor, with an elderly gray-haired lady close behind. The agent greeted her by name. "Where are you going, Mabel?"

I heard Mabel answer: "I'm going up to pee."

All was quiet then until the elevator reached the 9th floor. We left, but not before saying a polite goodbye to the little old lady.

As the door closed and we walked away, I said to the agent: "I suppose when you get to be a certain age, you can be fairly relaxed about discussing your personal business."

The agent looked at me for a moment, and then burst into laughter.

When she caught her breath, she told me, "No, no. She meant she was going up to the top floor -- the penthouse floor. The elevator button is marked 'P'."

When I finished telling the story to the security guard last night, he, too, laughed out loud.

I could still hear him chortling as the elevator doors closed and I walked down the hall to my apartment.

The security guard continued his trip up to "P."

It's back ...

There was a great skyscape outside my living room window tonight. The clouds look much more striking from a 9th-floor perspective.

That view was an antidote, of sorts, for the disappointing news that the contract on my old house fell through.

The young couple who were set to buy it apparently got cold feet. They nickel-and-dimed on the post-inspection modifications they wanted to make to the contract. My real estate agent suggested we opt out. I gave my okay.

So the house is back on the market. In fact, there was a showing this evening. And there is an open house coming soon.

Both the agent and I are optimistic. We're hoping we'll soon be getting a nibble or two from a willing buyer who understands that a well-kept 85-year-old house is never going to flaunt herself the way some new young thing might.

As in people, character counts.

Going, going, gone

The picture says it all.

Twelve days after I put my house on the market, we had a firm offer.

Three days later, we had a contract.

I'm awaiting the results of the buyer's inspection. Then will come the appraisal by the buyer's lender. The latter shouldn't be a problem, since a house almost identical to mine on the same block sold this summer, and we priced my house accordingly.

If all goes well, closing should be in early September.

Coincidentally, I bought the house myself exactly 33 years ago this September. I say "coincidentally," because we didn't plan the sale that way. That's just how it turned out.

Several friends have asked if I miss living in the house. I do, but I have no regrets. I miss the deck and the yard most of all. One step out of the kitchen door led me to a yard that the real estate agent called "park like" in her listing. I spent 33 years whipping what was a bare space into shape with plantings of althea, acuba, lilac, hydrangea, deutzia, mock orange and butterfly bushes, as well as exotic lilies, azaleas in a panoply of colors, and dogwood and fig trees. I planted crape myrtle trees that are now blooming in reds, pinks and lavenders.

One of the crape myrtles was only a bare stick with scraggly roots when I bought it at a grocery store 20 years ago for 99 cents. It's about 12 feet tall now. The variety is called peppermint, and the blossoms are each hot pink and white, like a peppermint candy. I'd never seen that variety before, and I haven't seen anything quite like it since.

And now, somebody else will have a chance to enjoy it all.

I'm at peace with that.

Alarming

So I'm having a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper the other evening and this ear-splitting alarm sounds. It was my first fire alarm here in my new high-rise apartment. I knew what to do: I headed for the stairwell and gathered there with other residents to await instructions.

A lot of people were obviously dressed in winding-down mode, although it was still fairly early by my standards. There were some men and women in pajamas and bathrobes. Others of us were in casual clothes -- me in a T-shirt and jeans and flip-flops, others in sport shirts and khakis and sneakers. We chatted for a while, shouting a bit to be heard above the blaring alarm. One of the women in a bathrobe said she was taking a shower when the alarm began sounding. Her wet hair was wrapped in a towel. She was clearly not happy.

There was no smell of smoke in the stairwell. About 4 or 5 minutes passed, and the alarm stopped. We heard voices from the floors above and below us, but nobody seemed excited, and nobody was evacuating from the floors above. The consensus was that it was a false alarm, and we ventured back to our apartments.

Cassie was hiding behind the couch with her ears laid back. She had clearly been really frightened by the loud noise. I sat down on the floor and reassured her, and she settled down, although she stuck close to me as I picked up the newspaper again.

Then came the sound of sirens growing closer, and as I watched at my window (from which I can see the main entrance to the building if I look straight down), a couple of fire trucks, a police car and a fire chief showed up. But nobody was hurrying. There was no laying of hose, no rushing into the building.

Then the piercing alarm started up again, but as soon as I got to my door, it stopped. Still, the scene below my window did not look like there was any emergency. The hallway was quiet; nobody was rushing to the stairwell this time. Firemen stood at the building's entrance, chatting.

I called the front desk to ask what was going on. Since it was after hours, I got a security guard who said he didn't know what was up either, but that I should not be too worried since the fire alarm had stopped and he had not been notified of any emergency. He told me, in essence, to stay alert.

The fire trucks stayed for about 30 minutes and then went away.

A couple of people were chatting in the lobby when I went down a while later to check my mailbox. They didn't know what had happened either. One of them told me that the most common cause of false alarms here is popcorn and microwave ovens. It seems people set their microwaves for too long and the popcorn begins to burn and smoke.

I eventually went to bed without knowing more. Maybe I'll hear something through the grapevine, or maybe from the management, which is fond of leaving flyers and notifications in the little wire baskets on the walls outside our doors.

Evidently it was nothing serious.

I did find out first-hand that there's no way I could miss a fire alarm here. It's really, really loud. And that's reassuring.