The Cassie Chronicles

For newcomers to Tasty Sauce, The Cassie Chronicles are fictional stories narrated by new home sales representative, Cassie Petersen. Here's the latest glimpse into Cassie's world.

The Way It Started

The Bella Vista models first opened on a hot Saturday morning in August of 2005. Opening a model complex is like a Broadway show. Once the date is set, there’s no stopping it. The scenery must be in place, the actors in costume and ready to emote. The show must go on as advertised.

The night before we opened, landscapers, designers and construction crews buzzed furiously under floodlights, planting flowers along the walkways, accessorizing rooms, painting, and hammering. In the sales office, Sarah, Judy and I prepared lot files, arranged displays and stuffed brochures with price sheets that hadn’t arrived until 8:30 that night. We were on temporary power, and at nine the generator blew, plunging us into darkness. The ones who were able to work by flashlights and candles kept on working. By ten the electrician fixed the generator and we were all in business again. We worked until midnight, when the project manager said, “That’s it, folks. Bring on the buyers.” We cheered with what little energy we had left, and as the floodlights clicked off, we made our way to our cars and headed home to get a few hours of sleep before we had to be back the next morning.

 

 

None of the frenzy leading up to the model grand opening was new to me. It’s always a whirlwind of last minute activity no matter how well you’ve planned. But even though the previous few years had seen a growing demand for new homes, I was unprepared for the frenzy of buyers who descended upon us Saturday morning.

Our PR releases touted ocean views and breezes, but on that opening weekend all you could see or feel was the crush of people wanting to get in on the ground floor and make a bundle of money in real estate. Over a thousand people coursed through the models that weekend. When we closed on Sunday night, Sarah, Judy and I fell into a heap on the sales office floor, exhausted, but thrilled. It looked like we had a success on our hands. Looks can be deceiving.

 

 

By the time Bella Vista opened, everyone – and I mean everyone - was jumping on the bandwagon, desperate to play the real estate game. The ultimate goal was to buy in Phase 1. As each subsequent phase was released, the prices would go up. Phase 1 buyers would be sitting pretty, making tens of thousands of dollars in appreciation before their houses were even built.

The key was getting on the priority list, and not only getting on the list but being on top, having first choice. When you had first choice, you could buy the best lot at the best price. Competition was fierce.

In the old days priority was on a first come first served basis, and people camped out before a phase release. As the market heated up and people’s emotions hit a fever pitch, campouts became unwieldy, confrontational and dangerous. More than once I found myself in between two angry buyers trying to break up a fight over who was ahead in line. I’m a sales professional, not a referee, so I was relieved when we finally went digital to let the computer sort it all out.

Here’s how it worked. The Monday following a grand opening weekend the website would go live and people could submit an online pre-qualification form. The ones who were quick on the computer ended up at the top of the list. People hired computer nerds to get them onto the website first. People devised systems to fill in the forms at warp speed. People cheated, lied, cried and connived to get higher on the list.

So, at noon on Monday we braced for the onslaught of calls and sob stories as the site went live. Immediately the phone began to ring as people jockeyed for position on the list. People called to confirm that their forms had been received. Panicked seniors couldn’t access the site and begged us to accept a paper application instead. People called to find out what number they were on the list, then yelled at us and threatened lawsuits when we couldn’t tell them yet.

At 2:05 the site crashed - overloaded, with over 300 names already on the list for an initial release of ten homes. That’s when I should have known the worm was starting to turn. Like our website, the whole system was overloaded and something had to give. But no one recognized it. We were all – buyers, builders, lenders - caught up in the excitement of a boom market that was putting money in everyone’s pockets. We just didn’t notice there were big holes in the pockets.

Gigantic, Massive Cheat

I'm posting this link because I'm in a Starbucks, have been since early morning, and it's past my lunchtime, and I'm too lazy to start a brand-new post! Instead, you can link to what I've been working on all morning:

http://www.travelinglitely.wordpress.com

It's mostly photos, but There Will Be Writing... :)

Priorities

I have decided that there’s a disturbance in The Force lately. Well, at least the force surrounding me. Electricity is going haywire. Today, after several days of electronic miscues and coughing starts, my car battery died. A few days ago my hair dryer sputtered, spit out one last heroic spark and gave up the ghost. The automatic sprinklers tripped off. The hot water recirculation pump timer went bonkers. It all started a couple of weeks ago on a Thursday afternoon.

I was doing a little laundry. The sheets were in the dryer and the towels were in the washer. I decided I needed a little snooze, so I stretched out on the loveseat in the family room and fell asleep. When I woke up an hour later around 4:00 pm, I headed to the laundry room. But first I stopped at the bathroom– the hall bathroom with no windows. I flipped the light switch and nothing happened. Damn, the light must be burned out, I thought. I left the door open and tended to my business, wondering if I had any of those spotlight bulbs that go in the recessed light fixture, trying to remember where the extender was so I could reach the bulb to change it. Annoying, I thought in my fuzzy just-woke-up-from-a-nap state. Prioritizing, I decided to deal with it after tending to the laundry.

In the laundry room, I took the dry sheets out of the dryer, put the wet towels in, shut the door and pushed the Power button. Nothing. I pushed it again. Nothing. I checked the dryer door to make sure it was latched. Yep. I pushed the Power button again. Nothing. That’s when it dawned on me that the power was out. Crap.

It’s funny what you think about when the power’s out. You’d think you would bemoan the lack of telephone or computer or TV or microwave. Apparently, my priorities are different. The first thing I thought of was the brand new package of ice cream bars in the freezer. I figured I’d better go have an ice cream bar before they all melted, because who knew how long the power would be out. I sat there eating my ice cream wondering if it was just my house or the whole block. After I’m done with the ice cream I’ll figure it out, I thought. First things first.

That’s when Gary came home and said the power was out at his studio, too. The electric company website was down. The City website was down. Clearly, this was more far-reaching than our little neighborhood. Gary found our hand cranked emergency radio in a kitchen drawer and started cranking. We couldn’t get any news, though, because President Obama was delivering his jobs speech early so as not to interfere with the NFL season opener. The country has its priorities, too. For me it’s ice cream; for the country it’s football. We listened to the president and occasionally cranked the radio until Gary realized it was also solar powered. He set it on the kitchen floor in a shaft of sunlight and magically the president kept on talking. I felt like I had been transported to the days before television, when whole families sat around the radio for their evening’s entertainment or for fireside chats with the president.

As the sunlight waned the radio did too, and we were back to cranking if we wanted an update on the power situation. Human error, the radio said. One maintenance guy in Arizona had made a mistake and unplugged millions in Southern California. We could be in for a long powerless vigil. I got out the candles and the flashlights and discovered most of the super duper flashlights I’d bought a few years ago had oozing batteries, and I didn’t have the right size replacements. Preparing for an emergency had obviously slipped from the top of my priority list.

I made sandwiches for dinner before the light dimmed too much to see what I was putting in them. After we’d eaten and I’d cleaned up the kitchen, I took a book out to the back yard and sat there reading. I couldn’t think of a better thing to do.

As I sat there, I realized how quiet it was. Without the power for all of the devices that populate our busy lives, the world was gloriously silent. I hadn’t realized how loud the underlying hum of modern life was until it wasn’t there anymore. Even after the sun went down and the moon began to rise, I sat and listened. That’s all I had to do. No decisions were necessary. No prioritizing begged to be done. It was so peaceful. I vowed to make it a priority just to be quiet and listen to the silence more often.

But as soon as the power snapped back on a little after 8:00 pm, the vow was forgotten. I slipped easily back onto the grid. I snuffed out the candles, reset the clocks, rewashed and dried the towels, checked email and caught the end of the football game and a couple of other shows before I went to bed, as if nothing unusual had ever happened.

Maybe that’s what The Force is disturbed about. Maybe all these glitches are meant as reminders to slow down and appreciate the world around me, pay more attention to my priorities. Just don't mess with my ice cream.

Oh Those Voices

Rebecca left the grocery store gently swinging the clear plastic produce bag with the thick stem of broccoli – the green she needed to go with her tilapia. She probably shouldn’t have taken the bag since she was going to soak the Broccoli in her high Ph water anyway. She had enough plastic bags at home to make her own Great Pacific Garbage Patch. She did own a variety of string and cloth bags, but they never seemed to make it into the car, and if they did, they generally didn’t make it into the store. Occasionally she would ask someone to hold her space, or ask the cashier just to wait and not bag her items until she got her ecologically conscious paraphernalia from the car, but she knew this usually caused tongue clucking and eye rolling from the cashier and other patrons. For one bunch of broccoli, it didn’t seem worth the disruption. At least she didn’t take another bag.

As she headed out to her car thinking about the plastic strewn Pacific, she noticed the unmanned makeshift booth with its homemade sign for The Falzy Residential Home, a place that helped unfortunate people get back on their feet. She’d been asked for money before from a sad looking man who collected the donations in a shabbily decorated tin can. She was glad nobody was there to pester her for money today.

Walking toward her car, Beth began thinking I should look them up on the internet. I’ll bet I find something about them that shows that they don’t exist or that they’re a bunch of unscrupulous thieves. Then she stopped herself. Why do I always do this? she thought. Why can’t I just let it go or think nothing of it or think something positive? Maybe it is a good organization; maybe they do good work for people; maybe it’s worthwhile to support. She took a breath and scowled her way into the car.

“I want to be a nice person” she whined to the empty car. “I really do.” She let her head fall onto the steering wheel and silently screamed afraid that a verbal scream would have to be explained. Her facial expression would have scared anyone who looked at her had she made that face available to scrutiny. Frowning and making a ‘hut hut hut’ sound in her throat, she said out loud “I can’t stand all of these fucking horrible thoughts that go through my head all the time. It is soooo frustrating and I don’t know what to do.”

A voice from the backseat said “Get over it. You’re such a drama queen.”

She flipped her head around kinking her neck “Owww!” There was no one there.

“Great. Now I’m hallucinating.”

She started up the car and had to drive by the grocery store entrance to leave. A slightly disheveled man was now stationed by the makeshift booth. Before she got to it she stopped the car, reached into the glove-box and took out four of the quarters that otherwise would have been deposited into a parking meter. She rolled down her window, smiled and nodded her head to the man by the booth.

She dropped the coins into his hand. “God bless you,” he said exchanging her fake smile for a genuine one.

Beth raised the window, took a deep breath and drove to the street.

“I am such a sucker,” she said to herself. “Good thing I have caller ID.”