Pluggers by Rick McKee for May 31, 2024

Being A Landlord, You’ll Never Get Board

I’m a landlord. Most of the houses I rent out are student housing. One group of students was particularly vexing to me.

They were four young men living together. They played video games a lot, and whenever the game went poorly, one of them (and they’d never tell me which one) would punch a massive hole in their dining/living room wall.

I got fed up with it, so one day when I was over there repairing the wall, I made a point of grabbing a wooden board and hammering some spikes through it in front of them. I then put it into the wall while they watched before I patched over it.

They looked at me flabbergasted.

Students: “Uh, is that normal?”

Me: “Yeah. It’s how I repair all the holes in the walls.”

They never punched another hole in the wall.

Once they graduated and moved out, I opened that wall up again and removed the spiky board before renting it to the next set of kids… just to be safe.

I talk stocks and bonds to my grandkids. Their eyes soon glaze over.

I used to teach my grandsons about Enzo Ferrari, complete with picture books……..

I couldn’t get my kids to learn anything but my 6 year old grand daughter watches me doing repairs and ask questions about how and why, I guess the DIY gene skipped a generation

Well … Nap Time … Is Nap Time ! What better way to make it happen ;-)

And when you have no spare drywall, how do you repair the hole in the wall? I use a block of wood and spackle over it.

I quickly learned with my first daughter not to use character voices when reading bedtime stories as it made her giggle and not fall asleep. A good monotone worked though.

…and me too.

You don’t teach drywall repair by telling about it, you teach it by doing it.

Cue “I’m Fixing a Hole” deep cut on the Beatles Sgt Pepper album.

Easy for him to say. :)

it’s hard to do well

whoa… I almost fell asleep just reading this strip!

Not been fortunate enough to have children, so no grandchildren. I have a niece and two nephews. He has 2 nieces. My niece is the oldest of the group in her early 30s. His younger niece is the youngest of them – she is in high school.

My 30-something niece did something rather interesting and I think smart. She is a teacher here in the U.S. She got a job teaching for a year in London. On weekends and during vacations she travels around Europe on the train. Her first trip she went to several Nordic countries. At one point she matched vacations with her brother who is here in the US and they met up in Spain. She went to Dublin for St Patrick’s Day.