eye candy and mental floss

[lagilman]

There is so much good in the visual of George Cloony, dressed all in black, full silvering beard and moustache, walking out onto the Tonight Show to strains of "What A Man" that all the crap of the day is just... suddenly not quite so bad.

Really. There was no downside to that visual. Hot fudge-butterscotch-with-real-whipped-cream sundae kind of yummy.

Anyway. Where was I? Oh, right. Working. The lockdown is over (and was reasonably successful) but the work continues.

Meanwhile...

If you were given $1M after taxes and told that you had to spend it all on yourself --specifically on housing for yourself (and anyone living with you)... how would you do it?

flights of fancy or practical consideration are all fair game.

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

>If you were given $1M after taxes and told that you had to
>spend it all on yourself --specifically on housing for yourself
>(and anyone living with you)... how would you do it?

I could probably spend all that on fixing up this place...

More seriously, buy a condo (somebody else gets to paint the trim and mow the lawn) in smelling range of saltwater.

[vcmw]

There's this marble monstrosity in Dorset, VT. With an in-ground pool and a gatekeeper's cottage and its own greco-roman folly. $1M would not cover it, but maybe it would be enough of a down-payment that I could make the monthly payments? Because seriously - enormous hillside greco-roman folly. *sigh*

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Paint house, inside and out. Redecorate bedroom. Completely renovate kitchen and bathroom. Install vent fan in upstairs bathroom. Install ceiling fans in upper and lower bedrooms. Rip up beige carpet in living room and refinish the floor beneath.

Screen porch and fill it with furniture, an all-weather rug, and a tile-top table from Italy.

If the land around the house counts, I would bring in an professional landscaper to 1) make it pretty and 2) do the upkeep.

What's depressing is that over time I will do all these things, and nobody's giving me the money, and it's probably going to cost a lot more than a mil.

[smoemeth.livejournal.com]

$1m would get you a small condo in New Haven, wouldn't it? :P

Re George Clooney, I had a VERY odd dream last night involving him, some other random famous person I'm now blanking on, and David Ortiz. We were in my former workplace screen-printing t-shirts, playing a century-old player piano, and waxing rhapsodic about the band The Weepies.

No, I'm not even gonna try to figure that one out.

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

Build a house in southern Missouri with secret rooms and entrances and such on a couple of acres. I've always wanted to make my own haunted house.

[sfmarty.livejournal.com]

I would find a small place here in San Francisco. For a million I might be able to find a studio apartment. Then I would sell this place and MOVE!

Oh, wait, taxes...never mind.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Pied-a-terre in San Francisco. Sadly, with only (ha!) $1M, I wouldn't even get a view of the Bay.

[skidspoppe.livejournal.com]

Design and build a house with secret passages and large (I mean really really big) fish tanks. once I knew how much the house would cost to build, then I'd figure out where I could afford the land to put it on.

[ferragus.livejournal.com]

Oh that's easy.

Mountain views
3 bedrooms +
3 bathrooms +
Horse property (2.25 acres + w/ stalls and fencing)
Dog property (fenced areas for the dogs to play in)
Cat property (closet or similar off the mud room that can have a cat door installed to keep the dogs out of the cat food and litter box)
Separate offices for the writer and me
Library
dual kitchens (or one big enough to divide between my food and the gluten free side)
Flagstaff AZ

Well I started out with dozens of places, but there are a couple that fit the bill out there.

I'd still like to get a really huge bed and breakfast place and hold retreats in it. But that's multi-millions.

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

Have you been reading my LJ? Did I mention that I'm closing on a new house at the end of this month?

The new home (4 bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, living room, study, library, huge kitchen, large yard, patio, deck, two car garage, and big ass basement) isn't a cool million by any means. But between renovations, furnishings, and tons (literally!) of new applicances, we going to get closer than I like.

Valerie's goal in all of this is to create a home that when people come and visit, they'll feel so comfortable and welcome that they won't want to leave.

We're looking to throw regular (at least monthly) dinner parties, as well as game nights and movie nights.

We'll get you down here some time.

[delkytlar.livejournal.com]

I'd buy one of those big houses on the shoreline scenic overlook near The Narrows in Brooklyn. Or, if #1M isn't enough for that (as it probably isn't), I'd buy one of the nicer big old homes along the Ridge in Dyker Heights.

(Let's face it, even becoming wealthy isn't getting this boy out of Brooklyn.)

[ex-fashioni.livejournal.com]

Whatever I could get that's on a beach somewhere. Probably East Coast, since I'm an Atlantic sort of girl.

Or alternatively, a condo in Miami, strictly for the people watching and to replenish the home fries.

[shadowhelm.livejournal.com]

Never been a real George Cloony fan. Doesn't do much for me.

As for the 1 million? I'd pay off my current place and buy a second place in Telluride. (Either that, or buy a bigger place)

[ramblin-phyl.livejournal.com]

A bigger house on a real foundation -- not a manufactured home on piled cement blocks-- with more library space here on the mountain, and an equal sized place east of the mountains where T can get more sunlight (maybe Leavenworth, WA). That's about 500K a piece.

[signeh.livejournal.com]

I'd buy several smaller condos: one in Stratford, Ontario; one in London, UK; one on the beach, probably in the Fort Lauderdale area; one here in Chicago.

[quarkwiz.livejournal.com]

A total gut job of the house, or at least nearly total. Maybe add a partial or full second floor. Make sure the basement is reallyreallyreally waterproofed. Add a hot tub to the deck (in the corner next to the door). Get a really top-of-the-line woodstove, and figure out how to get rid of the creosote smell once and for all. Get the second garage door working. Get some really good landscaping and tree-doctoring work done. Hm, that'll probably more than use it up, especially if we hired people to keep the nice new landscape in good shape. (Including scrubbing the pond liner. Ugh, that is fearsome work.)

If Himself had his way, it would all go into radio goodies. :P (And a new pickup, but I think I could live with that! Gotta haul the firewood with something.) Or, he'd want to move someplace more remote so he could put up even BIGGER radio goodies.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

I think much of what makes Clooney so good looking (imo, of course) is that he looks like he's having fun with it and isn't taking himself seriously.

[lagilman]

Amen. Anyone who smiles as much as he does (in a "come along for the fun" sort of way, not a smirk) is going to hit my 'hrrrm yes' button. From what I've read and heard from folk who know him, he actually IS a decent guy who has a lot of fun with what he's made of what life gave him, all the while doing good with it, too. That's a solid A+ thing to go in an epitaph, methinks.

[rwglaub.livejournal.com]

A place with a big kitchen. Country-style kitchen, with a big counter in the center. Plus, since I'm a male, and it's hardwired into the genes, I would have a huge gas or charcoal grill in the backyard that I would use several times a week.

Plus lots of room for books, books, and books...

[dianora2.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm. That's tough. Probably an oceanfront Outer Banks home (yes, you can get oceanfront in OBX for that -- 5 or 6 bedrooms, even). Since it's between that or a two-bedroom apartment in NYC, the house seems the way to go, as I would hopefully start earning income on it through rentals within a couple of years.

If the stipulation was that I had to LIVE there, well, then, yeah, I'd buy a nice 2-bedroom apartment with a dishwasher and laundry in the building. My needs are simple. :)

[anisosynchronic.livejournal.com]

A million dollars for a house.... the taxes on a million dollar house in Masschusetts would come to something like $12,000 or so (some places more, some less) a year, then there's insurance, and maintenance (reroofing after two or so decades, replacement windows, fixture and switches eventually go, repaving driveways...) That cuts into the milion dollars.

Having said that...

I'd finally do something about putting in a Water Feature, which I have never seriously done anything about. I'd get some additional fruit and nut trees and pay someone to plant them... what else, blueberries, a grape arbor, some landscaping? Get the house rather rebuilt? Put a solarium or sunroom/greenhouse area on it, a hot spa room, rebuild the place as havin lots of library area, and area for plants, solar and perhaps wind power, the rebuild would include kitchen facilities designed for utility... craft areas with temperature-controllable faucets and sink, high bandwidth networking with a RADI network drive, and computerized home controls with battery-backed power suppy, more storage space...

[greeneyedkzin.livejournal.com]

Would -love- to try for the Upper West Side, near Lincoln Center.

Failing that, I'd stay in my neighborhood.

[fakefrenchie.livejournal.com]

I'd put that into repairs on the new house circa 1850.