For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room—no more child's desk in a trailer laundry-closet, no more cramped kneehole in a rented house.
Capitalizing on the sharing economy fetish, she raised 2 million dollars from a cadre of drooling investors, purchased 300k umbrellas, and rented them out at train stations across 11 cities for a fee of $1 per half-hour.
My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season.
The place actually belongs to my mother, but her health isn't great, so we finally managed to persuade her to move in with us and rent this old place out.
This is the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia, lying within a colossal rent in the Earth's surface where giant land masses are pulling away from one another.