Thursday, November 27, 2008
In the Spirit of the Day
I am thankful that Samantha has not yet figured out that it might be fun to open the toilet seat and put objects other than waste in there.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Mysteries
How do people get their little girls to wear clips and bows in their hair? Sam is developing quite a mullet since the only way we can keep the hair out of her face is to keep cutting off the front part.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Chain Blogging
Ok, so BAW didn't really tag me, but I don't have friends either and I can't resist a game where I get to write about my favorite subject: me! Also, I'm desperate for easy ways to promote my blog.
Here are the rules:
Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write 6 random things about yourself.
Tag 6-ish people at the end of your post.
Let each person know he/she has been tagged.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.
1. One of my biggest hopes is that before I die, I will be able to slip the surly bonds of earth, to touch the face of my own god. I want to see the Earth from space. Thank you, Carl Sagan, for helping me hone my reverence for the mind of man.
2. I can't see out of my right eye. Actually, I can see a little bit, but that eye is legally blind. I have a birth defect in my optic nerve and most of what I see is dark and there is a huge gap in the visual field. With my good eye closed I can walk around without running into walls, and I can even tell you how many fingers you are holding up, but I can't read. I couldn't even read the big E on the eye chart if I didn't know what it was. I was curious about this because that big E is bigger than fingers held up a couple of feet away, and it only has four elements while a handful of fingers has five. Why can't I tell that it is an E? I decided to practice reading with my bad eye. I used a word processing program to make a column of random letters, one letter per screen. At first I could not identify any of them, but after a bit of practice I started getting some right. After about a half hour I could get any letter or number, so I reduced the font size. I spent another half hour working on it and eventually hit a wall with how small I could go. I also was unable to identify any letters when they were in a horizontal row. They had to have enough space around them or it just looked like random lines on the screen. When I had had enough I opened my good eye again and I'll tell you, I had the worst headache ever. Obviously, I was exercising my brain, not my eye. My mind had to learn how to connect the sense data from the eye to something it could recognize as a percept. Since I had never used my right eye to do this before, it had to be learned, just like a baby learns (automatically). There may be some truth to the idea that humans who are deprived of sense data early in life are never able to learn to process certain data later, but I proved to myself that there are some neural pathways that can be forged as an adult. It was a fascinating experiment but that headache was so bad I never tried it again. I get along just fine with one eye.
3. I'm a Valley Girl. Like ohmigod, fer sher, I'm really from The Valley, ya' know.
4. I dropped out of college my first time around.
5. I named my first cat Geddy, after Geddy Lee of Rush.
6. One of my biggest regrets is that I never made good on my dad's offer of $1,000 if I could learn how to play Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. I still hope to play it someday.
Woohoo! That was fun! I also had a lot of fun reading back through the chain. I loved the one about the physics major who was convinced that time travel would not be invented in his lifetime because otherwise his future self would have come back to tell his present self. Ha!
I hope these folks join in:
Rational Jenn
Diana Hsieh
LB
dooce
Kim
rootie
Here are the rules:
Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write 6 random things about yourself.
Tag 6-ish people at the end of your post.
Let each person know he/she has been tagged.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.
1. One of my biggest hopes is that before I die, I will be able to slip the surly bonds of earth, to touch the face of my own god. I want to see the Earth from space. Thank you, Carl Sagan, for helping me hone my reverence for the mind of man.
2. I can't see out of my right eye. Actually, I can see a little bit, but that eye is legally blind. I have a birth defect in my optic nerve and most of what I see is dark and there is a huge gap in the visual field. With my good eye closed I can walk around without running into walls, and I can even tell you how many fingers you are holding up, but I can't read. I couldn't even read the big E on the eye chart if I didn't know what it was. I was curious about this because that big E is bigger than fingers held up a couple of feet away, and it only has four elements while a handful of fingers has five. Why can't I tell that it is an E? I decided to practice reading with my bad eye. I used a word processing program to make a column of random letters, one letter per screen. At first I could not identify any of them, but after a bit of practice I started getting some right. After about a half hour I could get any letter or number, so I reduced the font size. I spent another half hour working on it and eventually hit a wall with how small I could go. I also was unable to identify any letters when they were in a horizontal row. They had to have enough space around them or it just looked like random lines on the screen. When I had had enough I opened my good eye again and I'll tell you, I had the worst headache ever. Obviously, I was exercising my brain, not my eye. My mind had to learn how to connect the sense data from the eye to something it could recognize as a percept. Since I had never used my right eye to do this before, it had to be learned, just like a baby learns (automatically). There may be some truth to the idea that humans who are deprived of sense data early in life are never able to learn to process certain data later, but I proved to myself that there are some neural pathways that can be forged as an adult. It was a fascinating experiment but that headache was so bad I never tried it again. I get along just fine with one eye.
3. I'm a Valley Girl. Like ohmigod, fer sher, I'm really from The Valley, ya' know.
4. I dropped out of college my first time around.
5. I named my first cat Geddy, after Geddy Lee of Rush.
6. One of my biggest regrets is that I never made good on my dad's offer of $1,000 if I could learn how to play Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. I still hope to play it someday.
Woohoo! That was fun! I also had a lot of fun reading back through the chain. I loved the one about the physics major who was convinced that time travel would not be invented in his lifetime because otherwise his future self would have come back to tell his present self. Ha!
I hope these folks join in:
Rational Jenn
Diana Hsieh
LB
dooce
Kim
rootie
Eternal Vigilance
Today I signed off on the homeowner association documents for our new townhouse. I certainly didn't want to read the entire package, but I did look at every line item on the financial reports, checked the reserves, reviewed the rules, and noted the level of detail in planning for future expenditures. Everything met with my approval.
I turned in the documents, and came home to this amazing story from Rational Jenn. $600,000 stolen from her HOA - holy crap!
I've been involved with 2 HOA's prior to this purchase, and I know exactly what Jenn means about how you just want to pay your fee and be left alone - the whole idea of these communities is a bit too collectivist for my taste, and that makes me loath to get involved. But in my first HOA, which consisted of only 5 homes, I had to take over the accounting and arrange for maintenance because nobody else would get off their lazy butts to do it. I hated every minute of it and I didn't do a good job, but I left it a bit more organized than I found it. My second HOA was a brand new one for an apartment building that went condo in downtown Chicago. The developer didn't honor his commitments in upgrading the common areas and we lived for over a year with hallways half-painted and wallpaper half-removed because somebody decided the color was wrong in the middle of the job. When we complained at meetings, other homeowners told us to pipe down because it would all get done eventually and didn't we want it done right and what can we do about it anyway when the contract states that the developer has "reasonable time" to do these things? When we spoke to the developer about his neglect in completing promised work, he told us, "Sue me." We moved.
Jenn's analogy to being politically and ideologically active is apt. When things get messy in our culture and with our national government, I tend to tune out. I tuned out for most of the Clinton administration and I've been only half tuned-in for the past few years since GWB turned into the worst president in my lifetime.
This is a mistake. Facing up to these distasteful issues is a matter of selfishness. In the short run, it might seem wise to avoid the pain of paying attention, but you'll pay a price in the long run. I can't say it more eloquently than Jenn did, so I'll quote her:
I seem to be doing a good job at the community level, but I hereby recommit myself to, at minimum, paying attention to current events at the state, national, and international levels. At some point I may do more, but I've got to start somewhere. Thanks for getting me up off my own lazy butt, Jenn.
I turned in the documents, and came home to this amazing story from Rational Jenn. $600,000 stolen from her HOA - holy crap!
I've been involved with 2 HOA's prior to this purchase, and I know exactly what Jenn means about how you just want to pay your fee and be left alone - the whole idea of these communities is a bit too collectivist for my taste, and that makes me loath to get involved. But in my first HOA, which consisted of only 5 homes, I had to take over the accounting and arrange for maintenance because nobody else would get off their lazy butts to do it. I hated every minute of it and I didn't do a good job, but I left it a bit more organized than I found it. My second HOA was a brand new one for an apartment building that went condo in downtown Chicago. The developer didn't honor his commitments in upgrading the common areas and we lived for over a year with hallways half-painted and wallpaper half-removed because somebody decided the color was wrong in the middle of the job. When we complained at meetings, other homeowners told us to pipe down because it would all get done eventually and didn't we want it done right and what can we do about it anyway when the contract states that the developer has "reasonable time" to do these things? When we spoke to the developer about his neglect in completing promised work, he told us, "Sue me." We moved.
Jenn's analogy to being politically and ideologically active is apt. When things get messy in our culture and with our national government, I tend to tune out. I tuned out for most of the Clinton administration and I've been only half tuned-in for the past few years since GWB turned into the worst president in my lifetime.
This is a mistake. Facing up to these distasteful issues is a matter of selfishness. In the short run, it might seem wise to avoid the pain of paying attention, but you'll pay a price in the long run. I can't say it more eloquently than Jenn did, so I'll quote her:
... When people don't pay attention, coast through life, the people to whom we've delegated power over our lives may take advantage of us. And they might even look us directly in the eye, and smile at us while they're doing it.
I seem to be doing a good job at the community level, but I hereby recommit myself to, at minimum, paying attention to current events at the state, national, and international levels. At some point I may do more, but I've got to start somewhere. Thanks for getting me up off my own lazy butt, Jenn.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
House Hunting Odyssey
I've made most of the arrangements necessary for our move and the packing is on track. We're moving on 11/28 - the day after Thanksgiving. Luckily, some good friends in town have invited us for a quick Thanksgiving dinner and we won't have to do more than bring a store-bought pie. We'll probably be painting that morning and packing more boxes that night.
Aside from being Sam's mom, house hunting has been my dominant activity for the past few months. It's been so frustrating not to be able to write about it, but we had to break our lease and so didn't want to go public. Our landlords here have treated us so well and we're working closely with them to re-rent their home. It was a risk to rent a townhouse privately, but it worked out better than we could have hoped. Thanks J and L!
Our house hunting adventure started with exploring a huge area of northern Virginia by car. We spent about 5 weekends just driving around and looking at a few open houses. Samantha was a real trooper, although the portable DVD player we said we'd never buy was a big help. We found that there were only a few neighborhoods in our price range that would meet our basic needs. A regular detached house was pretty much out of the question, although we did look at a few. The next option in this area is the townhouse, like the one we are renting now. I despise living on 3 levels and not having windows on 2 sides of the house, but other than that, the townhouses here are pretty nice (and low maintenance!) A commute was also going to be necessary, as the area around Adam's job carries California-like prices, and the next ring around that is a slum.
The whole point of starting the house hunting early was to give us time to make a large quantity of low-ball offers, in the hopes of getting a good deal. We saw a house we really liked, so before we even had a real estate agent we decided to make an offer on our own, working directly with the seller's agent. This turned out to be a waste of time. She was supposed to represent both us and the seller, but after 3 meetings with her we realized that we could not trust her, and decided to get an agent. In the meantime, that house went under contract. That was ok with us - we knew we had only a slim chance of getting it in the first place, and we were determined not to get emotionally involved in any offers we made.
We know a lot of people who have purchased homes here recently and could have referred us to their agents, but for some reason we decided to use an agent we met at another property and had liked. I just don't know what possessed us - it was a bad decision. This agent was helpful in the house hunting process, but once we started making offers we realized she was incompetent and dishonest. At one point, we had 2 offers outstanding because she neglected to revoke one before we made the next. If both sellers had accepted those offers, we would have been on the hook to buy 2 houses! Besides that, this agent had no idea how to be an advocate for us in the negotiation process. She seemed to feel it was her job to convince us to spend as much money as possible. We fired her after the 2-offer incident. We hired a new agent on the recommendation of a friend, and we've been pretty happy with her.
During this whole process, the credit crisis hit. I was on the phone with our mortgage broker almost daily, trying to keep up with interest rates, down-payment requirements, increasing mortgage insurance costs, and stricter lending practices. It was a real nightmare. There were days that we decided to make an offer, but by the time we got the paperwork done we could afford to pay 10% more. Remember, we were making very low offers on all these properties, so we were trying to offer as much as we could afford at any given point in time. One day we were all set to make an offer and suddenly every single mortgage insurer decided they would not insure 95% loans. We could not put more than 5% down, so this basically killed any chance at buying. We resigned ourselves to renting indefinitely. A few days later, our broker found that FHA loan rates had come down, and they only required 5% down, so we could manage that way. We got a lock on that and were about to make another offer when we found the house we ended up buying.
We called it the "comparison townhouse" because it was in the same neighborhood as the original one we were interested in, was listed for $10K less, and the ad said it had more updates. We decided to go look at it so that we could use it as a reason to convince the seller of the original house that she was overpriced. When we saw it we were blown away. It had a great open floorplan, 4 bedrooms instead of 3, and although it needed some work, was in better shape overall than the first house. We realized that this was no exercise, but the perfect house for us!
Needless to say, after much haggling, we closed the deal, but not without more nightmarish hassles. The owner of the house is a real estate agent representing himself and tried to pull every dishonest trick in the book. We thought we had a ratified contract at one point, only to find out 4 days later that he had never signed 2 pages. Our new real estate agent isn't perfect either - she told us specifically that he had signed the whole offer (as we were driving to Pennsylvania for my grandmother's funeral) so when Adam and I noticed the missing pages we assumed that they had gotten lost between our agent and us, not that they were never there. We actually did the home inspection before we had a signed offer, so if he had backed out, we would have lost $450. He tried everything he could to use this against us, but finally, our agent did her job and got this bastard to sign the papers. Whew!
A few days after that got resolved, our mortgage broker stopped returning our calls. When I finally cornered her, she admitted that she could not honor the rate-lock agreement we had made because the rules had changed again. I'm not sure if she was dishonest or simply incapable of keeping up with the insanity in her industry, but we had to fire her and get a new loan. I can't tell you how frightening this was. It's bad enough when this sort of thing happens in a normal market, but with the uncertainty that we had already experienced we thought for sure that we were toast. Once again, our real estate agent came through for us with some options, and we ended up getting a good loan that is costing us about the same as we had anticipated.
Since then, things have gone more smoothly. The home inspection showed that the house is in good shape (although we did find out that the seller lied more than once in the MLS advertisement.) There were renters living in the house who have since moved out, which had been another huge worry. The seller has tried to get out of every single thing that he agreed to, but mostly our agent has had to deal with him. In the declining market we have now, we also had to be concerned about the house not appraising for the amount we paid for it. In all 3 of my previous real estate purchases I've never had to think about that, but our good eye for value was validated when the appraisal came through.
The sad part is that we never had a day where we felt like, WE BOUGHT A HOUSE! Somehow, we've morphed into knowing that it will all work out, but there was never a specific moment. I'm hoping we get our moment when we close escrow on Monday. I think I'll go buy some champagne just in case.
Aside from being Sam's mom, house hunting has been my dominant activity for the past few months. It's been so frustrating not to be able to write about it, but we had to break our lease and so didn't want to go public. Our landlords here have treated us so well and we're working closely with them to re-rent their home. It was a risk to rent a townhouse privately, but it worked out better than we could have hoped. Thanks J and L!
Our house hunting adventure started with exploring a huge area of northern Virginia by car. We spent about 5 weekends just driving around and looking at a few open houses. Samantha was a real trooper, although the portable DVD player we said we'd never buy was a big help. We found that there were only a few neighborhoods in our price range that would meet our basic needs. A regular detached house was pretty much out of the question, although we did look at a few. The next option in this area is the townhouse, like the one we are renting now. I despise living on 3 levels and not having windows on 2 sides of the house, but other than that, the townhouses here are pretty nice (and low maintenance!) A commute was also going to be necessary, as the area around Adam's job carries California-like prices, and the next ring around that is a slum.
The whole point of starting the house hunting early was to give us time to make a large quantity of low-ball offers, in the hopes of getting a good deal. We saw a house we really liked, so before we even had a real estate agent we decided to make an offer on our own, working directly with the seller's agent. This turned out to be a waste of time. She was supposed to represent both us and the seller, but after 3 meetings with her we realized that we could not trust her, and decided to get an agent. In the meantime, that house went under contract. That was ok with us - we knew we had only a slim chance of getting it in the first place, and we were determined not to get emotionally involved in any offers we made.
We know a lot of people who have purchased homes here recently and could have referred us to their agents, but for some reason we decided to use an agent we met at another property and had liked. I just don't know what possessed us - it was a bad decision. This agent was helpful in the house hunting process, but once we started making offers we realized she was incompetent and dishonest. At one point, we had 2 offers outstanding because she neglected to revoke one before we made the next. If both sellers had accepted those offers, we would have been on the hook to buy 2 houses! Besides that, this agent had no idea how to be an advocate for us in the negotiation process. She seemed to feel it was her job to convince us to spend as much money as possible. We fired her after the 2-offer incident. We hired a new agent on the recommendation of a friend, and we've been pretty happy with her.
During this whole process, the credit crisis hit. I was on the phone with our mortgage broker almost daily, trying to keep up with interest rates, down-payment requirements, increasing mortgage insurance costs, and stricter lending practices. It was a real nightmare. There were days that we decided to make an offer, but by the time we got the paperwork done we could afford to pay 10% more. Remember, we were making very low offers on all these properties, so we were trying to offer as much as we could afford at any given point in time. One day we were all set to make an offer and suddenly every single mortgage insurer decided they would not insure 95% loans. We could not put more than 5% down, so this basically killed any chance at buying. We resigned ourselves to renting indefinitely. A few days later, our broker found that FHA loan rates had come down, and they only required 5% down, so we could manage that way. We got a lock on that and were about to make another offer when we found the house we ended up buying.
We called it the "comparison townhouse" because it was in the same neighborhood as the original one we were interested in, was listed for $10K less, and the ad said it had more updates. We decided to go look at it so that we could use it as a reason to convince the seller of the original house that she was overpriced. When we saw it we were blown away. It had a great open floorplan, 4 bedrooms instead of 3, and although it needed some work, was in better shape overall than the first house. We realized that this was no exercise, but the perfect house for us!
Needless to say, after much haggling, we closed the deal, but not without more nightmarish hassles. The owner of the house is a real estate agent representing himself and tried to pull every dishonest trick in the book. We thought we had a ratified contract at one point, only to find out 4 days later that he had never signed 2 pages. Our new real estate agent isn't perfect either - she told us specifically that he had signed the whole offer (as we were driving to Pennsylvania for my grandmother's funeral) so when Adam and I noticed the missing pages we assumed that they had gotten lost between our agent and us, not that they were never there. We actually did the home inspection before we had a signed offer, so if he had backed out, we would have lost $450. He tried everything he could to use this against us, but finally, our agent did her job and got this bastard to sign the papers. Whew!
A few days after that got resolved, our mortgage broker stopped returning our calls. When I finally cornered her, she admitted that she could not honor the rate-lock agreement we had made because the rules had changed again. I'm not sure if she was dishonest or simply incapable of keeping up with the insanity in her industry, but we had to fire her and get a new loan. I can't tell you how frightening this was. It's bad enough when this sort of thing happens in a normal market, but with the uncertainty that we had already experienced we thought for sure that we were toast. Once again, our real estate agent came through for us with some options, and we ended up getting a good loan that is costing us about the same as we had anticipated.
Since then, things have gone more smoothly. The home inspection showed that the house is in good shape (although we did find out that the seller lied more than once in the MLS advertisement.) There were renters living in the house who have since moved out, which had been another huge worry. The seller has tried to get out of every single thing that he agreed to, but mostly our agent has had to deal with him. In the declining market we have now, we also had to be concerned about the house not appraising for the amount we paid for it. In all 3 of my previous real estate purchases I've never had to think about that, but our good eye for value was validated when the appraisal came through.
The sad part is that we never had a day where we felt like, WE BOUGHT A HOUSE! Somehow, we've morphed into knowing that it will all work out, but there was never a specific moment. I'm hoping we get our moment when we close escrow on Monday. I think I'll go buy some champagne just in case.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
New Ayn Rand Book
I'm excited about this new book of Ayn Rand interviews, Objectively Speaking, edited by Marlene Podritske and Peter Schwartz. I've probably read most of the print interviews already, but it's been a while. Since I can't afford to buy recordings of all her audio interviews, this book will fill that gap nicely. Too bad it's not available for Christmas.
If you've never heard Ayn Rand interviewed you're missing out. Treat yourself to the pleasure of observing a brilliant mind in action: the Ayn Rand Institute has a nice selection of her lectures and interviews you can listen to for free. I just listened to the beginning of Speaking Freely, a wide-ranging interview by Edwin Newman, and I'm blown away all over again by her clarity and precision.
If you've never heard Ayn Rand interviewed you're missing out. Treat yourself to the pleasure of observing a brilliant mind in action: the Ayn Rand Institute has a nice selection of her lectures and interviews you can listen to for free. I just listened to the beginning of Speaking Freely, a wide-ranging interview by Edwin Newman, and I'm blown away all over again by her clarity and precision.
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