Real estate and other stuff

Lots of people are going to be relocating to Fort Sam Houston and Brooke Army Medical Center (now known as San Antonio Military Medical Center) over the next few months as the two facilities expand under BRAC. If you're one of them and you're not familiar with San Antonio, you may be wondering where to look for a home. Here is an overview of neighborhoods within easy commuting distance of Fort Sam and BAMC. Details on other neighborhoods will follow in upcoming posts.

Alamo Heights is less than a mile, in places, from Fort Sam. It is the tree-filled Beverly Hills of San Antonio, with sales prices ranging from $200,000 for a tiny 2-bedroom cottage that may need rehabbing or may be located on one of the busy main streets through the neighborhood. You will need to budget $350,000 up to over a million for a larger home, an updated cottage, or an elegant mansion on a large lot. All of these are available in Alamo Heights. Most homes in the community were built in the 1920s through the 1940s, and the styles range from Prairie to mock-Tudor to Mediterranean. Some of the homes have been torn down and replaced with McMansions, but the voluntary neighborhood association has put the brakes on that. The city of Alamo Heights has a great vibe and is a wonderful place to visit for shopping and dining, too.

The Alamo Heights school district is the most prestigious one in San Antonio. If you want the Alamo Heights schools, but not the real estate prices, you might consider Terrell Heights. It is a smaller, slightly newer neighborhood to the north and east of Alamo Heights. The topography is flatter than in Alamo Heights and the streets are grid-shaped for the most part. Homes average around 1,600 square feet and are more standardized (no mansions here). They range from $170,000 for fixer-uppers to over $300,000 for remodeled homes, averaging in the low $200,000s. They are mostly one-story homes built on pier-and-beam foundations with asbestos or wood siding. If they have garages, then tend to be detached. Terrell Heights has its own buzz, like Alamo Heights.

Two other neighborhoods bordering Alamo Heights and Terrell Heights, and located 5 to 10 minutes from Fort Sam are Northwood and Northridge Park. These are true suburbs that were built in the 1940s and 1950s as San Antonio grew to the north. The homes tend to be on larger lots than in Terrell Heights, and there is a mixture of pier-and-beam and slab foundations as well as much more brick and stone. They are mostly one-story ramblers with attached garages, but there are some estate homes, too, in the $600,000s and up. These neighborhoods encompass both Alamo Heights and North East school districts, and prices run from $185,000 for small or yet-to-be-updated 3-bedroom homes to the high $400,000s for larger and/or remodeled homes. Northridge prices are in the higher range because more of them are in Alamo Heights school district than Northwood farther to the north and east.

I'll post information about more neighborhoods soon, or if you can't wait, just contact me for details. You might also want to check out my other posts about Fort Sam and BAMC.

Carmaker bailout update: the House gingerly approves $14 billion in loans to the Big Three, and thankfully kicks the bill over to the Senate.

Union members, in return for their dues, earn more than the federal minimum wage (currently $6.55/hour, which is $13,100 per year) and get better healthcare benefits, retirement, and severance pay for time worked.

If all American workers had this, I guess there would be no need for unions.

For a fascinating, and at times depressing, look at what it's like to work for minimum wage, read Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed. She's a terrific writer.

Want to see how much some executives make? The AFL-CIO website tracks this on their Executive PayWatch database. Note that their language is not totally objective, using the term "raked in" rather than "earned" or simply "paid" to report their pay. But considering the source (and the times), that makes sense.

Perhaps the head of Merrill Lynch, John Thain, asked for his $10-million bonus because more Merrill Lynch employees were likely to be laid off as a result of the sale to Bank of America. This would free up some extra cash for the fiscal year, so I guess he thought, "use it or lose it!"

Here's an interesting graphic illustrating the ratio of 200 executive pay and stock prices from the April 5, 2008, New York Times online edition. Note that that our hero, Mr. Thain, is at the top of the list. This is the same month in which it was announced that his company had lost about $2 billion in its first quarter and in response was going to lay off more than 2,900 workers.

According to this article, Warren Buffet is scraping by on a pittance of $175,000. And Steve Jobs--what was he thinking?!

(Thanks to everybody who commented on my post from yesterday. That's why I did this one instead of a really long comment in return!)

I have long thought it was criminal how much more American executives make than the workers in their companies. And I just don't think it's right or fair that the workers should have to be laid off when sales drop. When executives do resign, which is rare, they float gently away on their golden parachutes.

(The Big Three bailout is what got me started on this, but plenty of other industries are laying off workers, too.)

Why don't those managers who are paid so much money because they are so smart and savvy just ask everyone in the company to take, say, a 10% pay cut instead of laying off employees? Everyone would still keep their jobs and health benefits. Plus, it would not expose the rank stupidity of those executives and managers in hiring a whole bunch of workers when times are good who suddenly are worthless when times aren't good. To me, restructuring or streamlining, as those activities are euphemistically called, is an admission of failure. No bonus for you!

Naturally, the executives would take a cut themselves, same as everybody else.

It really infuriates me, too, to hear those managers and executives, and their spokesmen (or lobbyists), blame the cost of labor or "the unions" for their companies' troubles. Statistics show the average American employee makes less and works longer than they would have 30 years ago. Maybe the stronger unions of the past had something to do with that. Or maybe it's the fact that 30 years ago, average executive pay was only 35 times more than the average worker's. Last year, it was 275 times higher.*

If the Big Three auto companies get a government bailout, I hope somebody will put try to force management to take a pay cut, and maybe even rehire workers. Without those "little people," management would have nothing to sell, nobody to manage, and no big paychecks.

*Figures from The State of Working America 2008-2009, a biennial report from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization

Image from the Library of Congress

I went with a couple of friends one evening to see if we could get any photos of ghosts or orbs at the Menger Hotel. The bar is supposed to be especially active, but I didn't get anything there. I did get some interesting shots in the hallway and a room off the main lobby.

You can see the orb sneaking up on my friend from the left.

Gotcha!

I had to brighten the first three above, since the hallway was rather dark.

The photos were taken with my old digital camera, now retired because it obviously didn't cope with low light levels very well. I need to go orb-hunting again soon!

Thanks to Carole Provenzale's post for reminding me about these!

I really liked the colors and textures of the plants that we saw in the cactus garden. It was late in the afternoon, almost closing time. and many of the plants were in shadow, so only a few of the photos showed the colors in contrast. Here are three that made the cut before we had to hustle out of the garden. 

Visit Russel Ray's post to see my inspiration for this one.

It's taken me a while to get around to processing photos from our weekend in Corpus in late October. I was so busy assembling our Halloween costumes and getting ready to not cook for Thanksgiving that the photos just sat on my hard drive.

So finally, here are some of the creatures we found in the gardens, which has been renamed the South Texas Botanical Gardens and Nature Center. Enjoy!

A longtail skipper on the mist flowers. Skippers differ from other types of butterflies in several ways. One is that their antennae are hooked instead of clubbed; all butterflies use their antennae to detect odors and wind speed.

The mist flowers were very popular with caterpillars, too. I have to look this one up.

I love dragonflies the most. Look at this one's cute little face!

There were dozens of green tree frogs snoozing in the fronds of palm trees bordering the lake.

One of a pair of Great Southern White sulphurs that fluttered through the grasses next to the trail. I got a lot of photos of blurry white blobs before this one settled long enough for me to take its photo. Note the turquoise-colored clubs at the end of the antennae.