Emeryville

This week was a long work week and it was the first time I had to work on the weekend in a really long time. Luckily, I only worked for 2 hours, but it could have taken a lot longer. Hopefully, I won't have to do that very often. I try really hard not to work weekends. I find that it is a really slippery slope. You do it once and people start to expect you to do it more often. Some people like to send out emails late at night or at odd hours so that people think that they are working extra hard, but I just don't want clients to think I will do that all the time. I may work odd hours, but that is my choice. Sometimes I'll hold on to my emails as drafts so that I can send them during normal business hours.

On Friday, we had a cookie baking session at our place for Jamie and Kaori's baby shower on Sunday. It was a group effort and we had 2 shifts going. We got to use one of our registry gifts- the KitchenAid mixer. Edwin, Matilde, and I had planned on making sugar cookies and gingersnaps. I had researched the recipe, however, I did not read the preparation as carefully as I should have. We discovered as we were making the first batch of sugar cookies that we needed to refrigerate the dough for 2 hours or overnight. Yikes! Matilde, Sujay, and Edwin were going snowboarding the next day in Tahoe and needed to go to bed early for a 6AM. Luckily, Michelle and Mike were on hand for the second shift. We decorated the cookies with gel icing. I didn't realize when we bought the icing that it was a gel icing. I thought it was like a frosting consistency. They turned out pretty well. We wrote Kai on some, had drawn baby-themed items (such as a rattle and bottle), and spelled out Kai and Maika on cookies with K, A, I, and M. It was a lot of fun, but a little exhausting. Here's a picture of the finished product (photo courtesy of Jamie and his cool new camera):
On Saturday, I ran some errands and also did some househunting. I looked at 2 condos in Emeryville. The first one was nice. I met a current resident who told me that he liked living there, but the 2 things he didn't like about it was the noise from a busy street (San Pablo) and that soot from outside would sometimes come in. It was a very nice 2 bedroom 2 bath. However, I really did not like the realtor that showed me the place. When I returned her call to make an appointment to see the condo, I told her who I was and that I was returning her call. Her response to me was, "Well, I make a lot of calls." OK- do you want my business or not? I wanted to see the place, so I ignored her comment and made plans to see it on Sat. Well, she told me that she would meet me at the Marina and email me directions. She emailed me at 9:45 on Saturday when our appointment was for 11:30AM asking me if we were still meeting at 11:30. HUH??? Why wouldn't you call someone if you weren't sure 2 hours before the meeting? I called her at 10AM without seeing the email that she sent (I hadn't checked email yet) to ask her if we could just meet at the condo since I knew where it was. Then, when I get there, she was 30 minutes late. Not a good impression. I had originally thought that she was the selling real estate agent, but I realized very quickly that the real estate company representing the seller had assigned me a random real estate agent so that I could view the property. Needless to say, I am never calling her again. The unit itself was very nice and I would definitely consider it, but Edwin hasn't seen it yet and we are still looking at our options. It was interesting to note that it had be on the market for over 65 days. That's promising. Maybe that means that they would be willing to lower the price.

The second condo I saw was a condo conversion. They had several condos available and I was shown the models of the different layouts available. As I was looking at the models, I was looking at the seams and ceilings to see if there were any cracks or water damage. I noticed that on the walls that were painted, they had not been very careful and painted the parts of the ceiling where the ceiling and the wall met. This was the model that everyone sees. You would think that they would be the most careful with the details of the model. If there are this careless with the model, how are they going to be with the rest of the construction details? Though they were offering some good incentives, like no HOAs for 2 years, I was not impressed.

I also have been looking at properties online. Sadly, there are only like 10 places in our price range that we would consider in Emeryville right now. Rockridge sounds pretty nice. I was able to find a few 2 bedroom 2 bath condos online within our price range, so we'll see. I'm told that the schools there are better than Emeryville, but the high school is not as good. However, I think that would mean a longer commute to work via BART. Any opinions?

This week, we'll be meeting with a mortgage broker to get preapproved. I have a feeling that he wants to convince us to go with an adjustable rate since we are looking shorter term, but we are pretty conservative and are thinking that we will go with the 30 year fixed.

Today was Kai's baby shower. We had a lot of fun, but I think that we were all exhausted by the end of it. It was definitely different that Maika's shower. At Maika's shower, there were only 2 kids. There were a lot more kids under age 3. We're getting outnumbered!

This past week, it was also Hannah's 3rd birthday this week. Yikes! Has it been that long? Happy birthday, Hannah!