All By Myself

So this past weekend, Edwin was off on his annual surfing surfari and so I was left to my own devices. What does that mean? I got to leave my clothes out for a few days, not make the bed if I didn't want to, and get some girly stuff done like go to JoAnn Fabrics without being timed in the store.

On Friday, I worked from home. I was meeting Matilde, Sujay, Chris, Corinne, Greg, and Cary for dinner in East Bay, so I met up with Matilde a little earlier to do some Friday shopping at the Embarcadero Center. Then, we went to Coriya for some hot pot after sitting in traffic for like an hour. Good thing I had Chris and Matilde to keep me company. There was a big debate about where to go for dinner since there was a possibility of going to hot pot on Sat night as well with Show and Derek. Anyway, we stayed until closing and I ate until I could eat no more. I couldn't believe how much I ate though I like to think that most of it was liquid because I drank a lot of the soup!

On Saturday, I volunteered to help remove graffiti in SF through my church. Though it was publicized in the church bulletin, it was actually organized by another volunteer group. I get myself out of bed and arrive by 9AM in the Sunset as requested. I was a little grumpy because when I got there, I waited around for a few minutes before someone came up to me and told me that they had moved the meeting location. Then, they didn't have any designated parking and we were told that we would get light refreshments, so I didn't eat any breakfast. When you say light refreshment, I think of food. (The last time I volunteered for something like Habitat for Humanity, they gave us muffins and juice.) All we got that day was water.

There were about 3 people from church, about 5 more from different organizations, and then 8 more from SWAT. I thought it might be some kind of police force team. So I started talking to one of them. His name was Junior and he lives in Bayview/Hunters Point. He was really friendly and revealed that he had to do 90 days of community service. So I asked him why and he tells me that he was caught with 5 oz. 5 oz. of what? No idea and I didn't ask! I did ask him if it was for posession and his response to me was, "Hell no! I don't smoke that stuff!" Sorry- did not mean to offend! JK! Anyway, he told me that he had to do the community service on the weekends and pay $150 each day because he couldn't do it during the week since he had a job. I asked him what his job was and he told me that he was a security guard at a jewerly store. Interesting. Though it was a little scary to be working with these guys, they were all very nice. I guess that I never realize that people that are so different live so close. I usually feel the same way after I have been to the DMV or in traffic school. Actually, meeting this guy Junior was kind of the highlight of the day.

We started walking from 19th and Noriega and headed west towards the ocean. It was a total pain in the butt because we had to carry these buckets of paint and wear latex gloves. I was hoping to get some practice painting for the house, but we were mostly painting mailboxes, garbage cans, and utility boxes. Believe me, the city is very picky and they get quite upset if you confuse garbage can green with mailbox green. This definitely was not as fun as the last time when I helped to paint an elderly woman's house. I was told by one of the coordinators that they are out there repainting these mailboxes and garbage cans every week. Every week they get spray painted and every week, they repaint them. How senseless. I don't even understand why someone would pay for the spraypaint to do it. Such a waste. That's why I probably won't volunteer for them again. That, and I couldn't stand how disorganized they were. I really have no patience for that. When I volunteered last time, they were super organized in the list of tasks that needed to be done and had the supplies ready to go. We didn't even get started for like half an hour because they weren't prepared. At the end, I didn't have the patience for them to drive us back to our origination. Since we were at 47th and Noriega (that's right, I walked almost 30 blocks with a bucket of paint.) I decided to walk over to my Uncle Glenn's house which was another 5 blocks away on 47th and Irving. Good thing I did too, because when I arrived, they were having a BBQ and since I hadn't eaten anything that day, I was starving!

For dinner, we went to San Tung again and then over to Chris and Corinne's house to watch Hot Fuzz. I feel asleep within 20 minutes, but I am proud to say that I was not the first to fall asleep. Matilde beat me by 5 minutes.

On Sunday, we had dim sum and then I dropped off Show and Derek at the airport. On my way home, I did some window shopping and "research." I was thinking about what colors we might want for each of the rooms, maybe buying a new kitchen table, window treatments, and trying to decide if I should make or just purchase the cushions of the banquette that we are going to have in the kitchen. I think that it might be easier and maybe even cheaper just to buy cushions from Pier One. I'm looking forward to building it. I think it will be fun. We still have to think about what renovations will be done when and start planning the move. I guess we should start packing. We're planning on moving out on Saturday, September 8. Anyone want to help us move to the East Bay? :) We're very lucky that we have some good friends and family that have already said that they can help. I can't wait. It should be fun. I'm really looking forward to it. Part of me wishes that we could move in sooner, but part of me is relieved that we have some time to set things up.

2 Days Left

So we have 2 more days until the contingency period is over for the house. It basically means that we are locked in at that point. Until that point, we can still get out of it. So we spent 3.5 more hours at the house last night with our real estate agent. So now we are thinking that we may change our original plans. Instead of having a bathroom in the basement, we are thinking that maybe we will try to convert the current bathroom into a master bath and then convert the hallway and linen closet into a second bathroom off of the kitchen. According to Kian, he recommends doing remodeling before we move in or at least before we unpack. We're leaning towards this option as well. I like the idea of having it done earlier so that we can enjoy the changes longer. Why pay for changes for the next owner to enjoy? This plan requires that we do the kitchen remodel with the bathroom addition. That's just a lot of money up front. No problem, right? JK!

Our mortgage broker also told us that the appraiser said that we got a good deal on the house, so that makes me feel more confident that we are making a good decision. She also has been telling us that the lenders are definitely getting more stringent. She said that the day after they approved our loan, they stopped accepting applications. I didn't think that all the activity around sub-prime lending would affect us, but I guess that it could have even though we have great credit.

At this point, Edwin and I are pretty sure that we are going to go through with the offer. I feel like we know what the issues are and what we have to do and how much it will cost. It's more a question of when we can tackle each of these projects. We should be busy for years! JK! I think that it will be hard work, but it will be worth it. Given that it's one of the cheapest houses on the block, the value can only go up, right?

We also met one of our neighbors who is an elderly gentleman who has lived in his house for over 40 years and prior to that he lived across the street where his daughter lives now. I guess he must like the street. He did say that Christmas time is very busy because it is known as Christmas Tree Lane since Alameda decorates the entire street. I have never heard of it, but I am looking forward to it.

We also found a really great Hawaiian restaurant called Hawaiian Drive Inn. I had the saimin and a spam musubi while Edwin had the garlic shrimp. Each of the entrees was like $4 and the bill came to $12 without tip. The place is a family run establishment and we were served by the dad and his son who was probably around 12 years old. It was so tasty- we will definitely be back.

Happy Birthday to me!

Wow! What a busy weekend. I can't believe that it already over. On Friday, we went to a dinner/performance art event called Supper Club with Steve and Pablo. It has been compared to Cirque du Soleil, and I could see why they would say that, but I don't think that it was quite the same. They basically have all these beds that you can lounge on and eat your dinner. In the middle of the floor they have some random performances and a really great DJ so you can actually do a little clubbing as well. (They open the doors to the general public around 11:30 and it becomes a dance club.) Our favorites were the scallops and the tomato and crouton salad.

On Saturday, we went waterskiing, wake boarding, and inner tubing at Lake Berryessa. We rented a boat and also had a picnic area set up with a BBQ. It was a very warm day and it was nice to be in the water. This is my second time waterskiing and it was not much better than my first attempt at Corrine's bachelorette. Edwin, of course, was one of the better waterskiiers. (Naturally.) I heard that Jamie was probably the best. Matilde, Show, and Tom were able to try the wakeboard. I stuck to the inner tube. I'll post some pics soon.

We also went to the house today to inspect it with another general contractor and also our architect friend Bhavana. We didn't find any surprises, but we spent about 4 hours there looking around and talking about it. We're not quite done and will probably look at it again, but so far, I don't see anything that would make me think twice about buying it. It was more about trying to figure out what we want to do with it and the order of priority for all of the projects that we will inevitably have to tackle. (Where to begin when there is so much to do?) Part of me thinks that this may be fun. Part of it will be shear torture. It's hard to justify things like bolting down the foundation, adding insulation, doing a sewer later, or changing the furnace when nobody ever sees that stuff- especially when there is so much cosmetically that could be improved. We're still thinking that we will refinish the hardwood floors, buy a refrigerator, and paint. But now we are thinking that we may finish the basement sooner rather than later so that we have more living space and add a 3/4 bath. In order to do that, we will need to replace the furnace, move the sump pump (like I even know what that is!), put flooring down, and drywall up. Then maybe we could redo the upstairs bath because then we would have another bathroom to use. I'm still thinking about applying to HGTV so that they could redo our kitchen...

So today is my birthday. I told Edwin that I thought it might be fun to have some people over to the apartment because we haven't had people over in a while. I can't even remember the last time. So we sent out an evite last minute last weekend and I didn't think that many people would come since it was a Sunday and with less than a week's notice. But we ended up cramming 25 people into our apartment plus 3 babies and a toddler. I wonder if that is some kind of record for this place. I was afraid that we might run out of food, but I think that there was enough for everyone. We were able to use a lot of the leftovers from yesterday's BBQ. And then we started cleaning out our cupboards. (After all, we're probably moving in about a month, so the more people eat, the less we have to move, right?) We still have a lot of leftovers. It was a fun time and a good way to tell people that we were going to be moving (for the people who are not loyal blog readers like yourself! :) ) We broke out some of the platters and dishes that we had received as wedding gifts, so it was cool to be able to use it. I was dismayed to see one of my favorite platters got chipped when I pulled it out of the cupboard. I didn't chip it, but it had been chipped probably because we have a bunch of platters stacked on top of each other. We ended the evening playing Set and Cranium. Now I know why we are all friends- we are all geeks! All in all, it was a great way to celebrate my 32nd birthday. It was just great to be able to hang out with people.

Cramming for Finals

Thanks to everyone for their well wishes! It's so nice just to hear from you all. Sometimes I wonder if anyone reads this blog and now I know you do. The last few days have flown by in a haze. We're going to inspect the house on Sunday (my birthday!) with our realtor and our architect friend Bhavana. We are also hoping to have a general contractor take a look as well. Does anyone have a general contractor that they would like to recommend in the Bay Area? We have a lead, but we don't have anyone scheduled yet.

So I have spent the last few days trying to get smart and learn about mortgages. Remember in college how you had to cram for finals? That is kinda how I am feeling right now. Does anyone know what a LIBOR is? How about negative amortization? I don't know what that is, but I know I don't want it! Mortgage rates seem to be on the rise, so I think we were pretty lucky to lock in our first mortgage yesterday. We have been checking rates online and trying to decide if we should go to multiple brokers. I have heard of going to multiple lenders, but we are using a broker that was recommended to us by our friend Steve. We started with another mortgage broker who was also recommended by an old coworker, but I wasn't really as comfortable with him. I didn't like that he didn't give me any paperwork from our discussion. He kept telling me how things were going to change anyway. I don't care that it's going to change, I want something on a paper to look at, not just my scribbled notes.

If you went to school with me, you will know that I took horrible notes (even when I didn't fall asleep during lectures). I always had to borrow Santiney's notes to make any sense of my own notes. She had the nicest notes- she would even re-copy them if she thought that they were not up to her standard. But I digress...

Happy birthday to Joe. He came out for work this week, so we had a mini Ford reunion tonight at a Chinese Muslim restaurant called Old Mandarin. It was kind of funny because I think that we have been to this restaurant before, but we had a bad experience. This time, it was MUCH better- maybe because someone else ordered. The lamb stew was tasty and my fave was the tendon. I wasn't a big fan of the lamb dumplings. (This place is known for lamb dishes.) Nevertheless, we were all full when we left. I would definitely go back now that I know what to order.

This weekend is going to be busy, but fun. We're having dinner with Steve and Pablo tomorrow night. On Saturday, we are going to Lake Berryessa for some BBQing and some waterskiing. On Sunday, we are going to the house and then we're having friends over for my birthday. Lots to do and so little time! I need a vacation!

We are Homeowners! (Almost!)

It's official. We are in contract. They accepted our offer. We are on our way to becoming homeowners. We still can't believe it. I spent most of the day on cloud 9. Things going wrong at work? OK! No problem! I wonder how long this high will last. Here's a link to a virtual tour of the house.

We're starting to put together many lists. Things we have to do (schedule meetings, give landlord notice, move money to get the down payment liquid, schedule a move, pack, etc.), things we want to do before moving into the house (refinish floors, buy a refrigerator, paint, etc.), and updating our estimated costs template (mortgage costs, renovation costs, closing costs.) I think that the next 30 days are going to fly by.

Today is a good day to buy a house. Laura and Alex put in an offer and got their offer accepted today on a house in Cincinnati. Pretty funny coincidence. We knew that they were househunting last weekend, but we didn't know that they had made an offer. They didn't know we made one either.

We Won the Lottery!

Just kidding! Though we feel like we won the lottery. We went to see another house this past weekend and made an offer today. They countered on some of the terms (10 days instead of 14, etc.), but it looks like we are probably going to accept because nothing in the counter mentioned anything about changing the price. Yikes! We're not quite homeowners yet, but it does feel good to not be rejected- again.

We are definitely in the shocked, OMG-what-did-we-just-do phase. We didn't think that we would get accepted or even countered. Though we have started offering closer to the asking price versus some of our previous verbal offers were way below asking. There's still a lot that could go wrong, but so far, so good. We're hoping that the interest rate remains the same or lowers for us.

The house is a 2 bedroom 1 bath fixer. Most of the fixes are cosmetic- removing wall paper, refinishing the hardwood floors, and painting. But we will be renovating the kitchen and probably the bathroom at some point. The kitchen is currently useable, but we'll probably want to update it relatively soon. We have to buy a refrigerator, but that's pretty much the only appliance we will need to buy right away. The bathroom they just updated, but I almost wish that they hadn't because they used the cheapest materials and I want to update it sooner rather than later. We need to replace the furnace as well. Those are probably the biggest costs that we will have when we move in. Wish us luck!

Still Homeless

We didn't get the house. Apparently one of the other offers decided to offer over asking. We offered asking. It's disappointing, but that's just how it goes. My coworker was telling me that he made 9 offers before he got one accepted in LA. Crazy. Guess that means that we just get to save more money.

The Suspense is Killing Me!

So we went house hunting yesterday. We found a few houses that we were interested in. We actually made our frst official offer tonight. This house is in Alameda and is near one of the best schools in Alameda. It's a bedroom 1.5 bath with a big deck off the back. The biggest drawback is that it is on a busy street. The noise is not really that bad and they have double-paned windows on the only bedroom facing the street. We wouldn't really need to do too many renovations and it has an extra "room" in the basement with a half bath. Most of the places we have seen only have 1 bath and we would need to do a lot of extra renovations. I'm really nervous. We were told when we saw the house yesterday that they already received an offer from someone on Friday that had just lost a bidding war on another house. We found out today that they received another offer today, so the seller has 3 offers on a house that went on the market less than a week ago.

This is the first time that a buyer has ever written a letter about themselves and it sounded like the owner is a single mom with daughter who is moving out of California. Since she wrote a letter about her experience living in the house, I wrote one about us. I basically told her that we just got married in October and that we have lived in our apartment for over 5 years (longer than she's owned her home.) If this works, I'll let you know. So we left a message with the selling agent that we would send the preapproval letter tomorrow morning and send a deposit check. She confirmed that she received our offer and asked that we send in the preapproval letter and check in the morning. I'm taking that as good news because if our offer was too low, they would have said, "Don't bother," right? We think that the other offers might be higher, but I'm hoping the fact that we don't have a contingency to sell a current house will help our offer. I guess you never know around here. If we get this house, it will be a small miracle. Guess we'll find out in the next 48 hours.

I have so much nervous energy! I was talking to my coworker and he said that the house hunting is the fun part. He said that selling the house is the worst because you are just waiting for someone else to make an offer. Well, the owner of the house we just made an offer on doesn't seem to have too much trouble... 3 offers in less than 4 days. Please pray for us and cross your fingers! And if you know of a woman who lives in Alameda with her daughter who is moving out of state, please put in a good word for us!

More Important Things than Work

So work lately has been a drag. I've been working at night and I worked last weekend. I'm not working this weekend. I'm on strike. Don't know what we're doing this weekend, but I'm not working!

So we have been watching HGTV everyday for the past few months because our Tivo hard drive died. We have even talked about applying to be on one of the shows when we finally buy a house. Well, imagine my surprise when I started watching "Get it Together" and I recognize one of the people on the show. I used to work with this guy named Dylan at GlobalNetXchange and he and his wife were getting their house renovated on TV. What a small world. I'll have to see if I can find his contact information...

Happy belated birthday to Dad. (It was yesterday.) Their anniversary is om Monday, so I guess my parents will be celebrating this weekend. Speaking of anniversaries, we've been thinking about how to celebrate our first anniversary in October. I think that we will be traveling, but where? We're toying with the idea of going on a cruise to Mexico. We'll see.

I just heard that my grandmother had surgery today. Some of you may know that my grandmother has cancer and has been in chemo since February. She's been doing really well, so we thought that the worst was over. Because she was doing well, they decided to try and remove more of the cancer, but when they openned her up, they saw that the cancer had spread to her liver. They are going to give her more chemo, but it looks like they can't get rid of it and it won't prolong her life. Since my grandparents moved to LA last year, I've had the chance to visit my grandmother at least 5 times this year. I'm really glad that I have had the extra time to spend with her. I'll probably be going to LA a few more times this year. Please pray for grandma to enjoy the rest of her time and that she still doesn't have any side effects to the new chemotherapy. It just reminds me that there are so many more important things than work.

Bowling for Dollars

So I am totally excited to use the new polling function in Blogger. I know, I'm a geek. I haven't decided what I want to poll on yet, but as a market researcher, it's kind of fun.

This weekend, we went bowling at Sea Bowl with some friends. It was fun, but my bowling is terribly inconsistent. In my first game, I had 3 strikes. Unfortunately, every time I got a strike, I got a gutter ball (and a second ball that wasn't much better) which gave me a score of 81. How do you have 3 strikes and only a score of 81? A lot of gutter balls, that's how. My second game I had only 2 strikes, but I managed to not gutter all my other frames, so I ended with a 88. Edwin got the high score of the night with 153.

Today, we had brunch at Ella's with Mike, Michelle, Chris, and Corinne. It was fun catching up with our newlywed friends. Good food, good friends, what more can you ask for? Maybe a longer weekend? This weekend went by too fast. Probably because I also spent it working on both days. I try my best not to work at all on the weekend, so when I have to work both days, I get a little cranky. I think that I will be ending work a little early this week to reward myself.

Not too much to report on the housing front. It's actually been kind of quiet lately. Not too many houses coming onto the market. So we are kind of just waiting. We've seen a couple of houses, but nothing too interesting, so we're just saving our pennies for that down payment...

Perfectly Portland

So I am in Portland right now for work. Work this week is sucking, but being in Portland is making things a lot better. We came out here last year with the Banerjees and the Schneiders for vacation. I kept seeing the areas that we visited and it made me nostalgic. My flight was delayed an hour and I got a seat in the back of the plane in the middle seat. (I always request the front of the plane by the window.) Our crackerjack travel agents didn't provide my membership numbers for my car or hotel (even though it's on file.) I guess I shouldn't complain since they "forgot" to purchase my plane ticket on a previous trip which caused me to receive "extra" security screening since I was purchasing my ticket the same day. I can't believe that there are people out there who still use travel agents.

Anyway, even they can't ruin my experience out here in Portland. When I arrived at the Marriot, they put me on the 19th floor (it's a 20 floor building) and gave me access to the concierge floor. I think that they must have confused me with someone with status or something. I went up to the concierge floor to print out my boarding ticket for the next day and it was so nice. They had out desserts and water bottles with a view overlooking downtown Portland. Very nice. For dinner, I asked the front desk for sushi recommendations and they pointed me to a place around the block. It was the best sushi that I have had since I ate at the Tsukiji market in Tokyo. I loved it. It's called Koji. When I walked in, I got seated at the sushi bar.

I was sitting by myself and I noticed that there were 3 other people seated around me who were eating by themselves. It reminded me of grade school when you never wanted to sit alone in the cafeteria. I wonder when we decide that it's OK to eat by ourselves. I didn't bring any reading material and though I usually talk on the phone when I am eating alone, I was just happy to relax and ponder my thoughts as I sat by myself. I ordered the Deluxe Assorted Sushi and the quality was just phenomenal for the price. The fish was so fresh and tasty. I wanted more when I finished. I wish that they were in CA, but alas, they are only in OR and Seattle. My bill was $24 and I gave them a $6 tip because I was so happy. (I figured I am expensing it anyway, so why not reward someone else when I can?) I'm thinking about coming back to pick up some food for lunch tomorrow before my flight...

After dinner, I decided to walk a block to the Pioneer Square which is essentially downtown Portland. I sat in the public open space and just people watched for a while. The weather is a nice and warm 80 degrees and it was still light out at 8:30PM and there were people everywhere. It made me think about impressions of a city. You know- when you visit a city, it evokes emotions about how you feel about that city. There's usually nothing specific- just a lot of little things that add to your overall experience. For instance, Portland will always be one of the cities that I can go back to. I will always enjoy being in Portland. It's just so pleasant. You can walk around, the weather is nice, the views are great and hilly, and the people are so friendly. (I am visiting 2 clients here and they both independently offered to pick me up from the airport. Who does that?) I feel that way about Chicago, Boston, parts of Italy, Seattle- these are just places I love to visit. I think that most people know how I feel about NYC- fun to visit, but dirty and too expensive. LA is too spread out. Atlanta is too hot. Portland is just great. I kept remembering little things like how I was chasing Maika up and down the escalators by the rental car counters, walking into the Nordstroms and buying the shoes I wore during the wedding (tax free!), walking by the Rite-Aid where Kaori and Jamie bought Pooh-San (a stuffed Winne-the-Pooh since they forgot to bring Usachan- Maika's stuffed rabbit that she sleeps with every night), driving by the Four Points hotel where we stayed, and the Jessica McClintock store that Matilde and I went to go shopping for bridesmaid dresses. (Binh, you're just going to say I told you so because you always told me how great it is.)

Alrighty, got to get to bed, but before I go, I gotta give a shout out to Kathy- Happy Birthday, girlfriend. So when you take a break from chasing Owen to read this, I was thinking of you even though we haven't talked/emailed in a while.

More Adventures in LA

So we were in LA this past extended weekend. We spent most of the time with family and eating. A lot. We also got to see what it was like for an afternoon with triplets running around on the playground. One of Edwin's friends from high school, Keith, has triplets and we accompanied him to the park with the 3 almost 3-year-olds. We were just flomoxed. Lori, Nicole, and Jeff run in all different directions, so we don't know how Keith and his wife keep their sanity. God bless them! Here's a photo of Keith and his kids in the park on the top left. We also go to see Char and Tom with their cute kids, Annette and William.

I also took my parents to Santa Monica to walk around. I can't believe that it has already been 9 years since I was working there. I had a hard time remembering where stuff was. I wonder if I had had a blog at that time, would it have helped? Probably not. Here are pics from the pier.
We also stopped at Universal Studios. We thought about going in until we saw the price tag- $70! I remember thinking that $35 was expensive. Since we had already been there (20 years ago...) we decided not to visit again. Geez- for a family of 4, that would be $280. No wonder people don't go anymore!

So Laura called me yesterday with news that Hannah said that she was getting married. I asked who she was getting married to and Hannah replied, "Uncle Edwin!" Ha ha! Good luck! It took me 8 years to get him to marry me, so if she gets started on him right now, she should be 11 by the time he's ready. She said that I was invited and I told her I would definitely be there! Now why does she want to get married? She wants a little sister. I guess having a little brother wasn't enough.

It is now 7:30 and I am still at work. Am I working hard you ask? No. I am baby-sitting an antiquated system that takes hours to request a report. Seriously, it looks like it was programmed in the 70s. If our clients only knew that these "sophisticated" systems are held together by glue and duct tape. Anyhow, no news on the housing front. There haven't been that many houses coming onto the market in the past 2 weeks, but we're hoping that it was just the holidays that slowed it down.

Happy 4th of July in LA

So we're leaving for LA tomorrow for an extended weekend. Since our last foray into the Bay Area housing market, we are taking a short break. It wasn't really a decision to not look, but there hasn't really been anything we were interested in seeing in the past week and since we are leaving for the holiday, we won't be looking at anything for probably another week at least.

I started organizing some of the photos that we have so if you want to look at a few of the archives, I have added some pics from our travels since Feb. It's been a while since we took the pics off the camera. It's so easy with digital now that we don't even really bother to print photos anymore. I keep thinking that we should print some of the photos from the wedding and start organizing photo albums. I can't believe that it has already been 8 months since the wedding!

It is Finished- Australian Honeymoon Pictures!

Remember when I said that I would include pictures from our honeymoon in Australia? Crazy, but it took forever to sort through all the photos. We took over 800 and I culled it down to 330. It's still a lot, but I labeled a lot of them with comments. Enjoy!

Australia Honeymoon

It doesn't seem like it's been 6 months since we were there!

Gluttons for Punishment

So we're thinking of making an offer on another Alameda house. This one is another fixer upper. We went to an open house last weekend and we met the owner. Strange computer programmer type. Most of the houses we have seen have been staged and recently painted. This seller didn't even clean the house. There was dog hair everywhere and his tightie whities were hanging in the back to dry. I mean, at least take them down! There was a hole the size of a fist in the closet door in the bedroom. The flyer was not updated because it still said that offers were due on June 12th when we saw the house on June 24th, so I guess that they haven't received any yet. You would think that the agent would at least print new flyers- and the photos don't even do it justice. There are good things like the built-in shelves in the living room, but there are no photos of it. So why are we even interested in this place?

It's got a lot of potential and lots of walk-in closet space. These are probably some of the biggest closets that we have seen in any house. It's listed as a 2 bedroom 1 bath, but it also has a basement that used to have a finished bathroom (he started renovating it and never finished) and kitchen. We think that we could also put a guest bedroom, playroom/family room, and maybe a little desk/work area in the basement. We probably would make these changes a little further down the rode and just focus on the upstairs. There is also a cute little sunroom in the back. The way we figure it, we know this place is gross now, but we don't care if we're just going to replace everything and gut it anyway. We're still planning on giving an offer below the asking price, so cross your fingers! All we are waiting for is for a contractor to do a once over and give us an estimate of the costs for renovations.

No Thanks!

So we almost made an offer on a house in Alameda on Friday. We wrote the offer, had the deposit check, and got the preapproval letter. Then our realtor called me and told me that the seller didn't want to entertain our offer because it was too low. The house was a fixer upper and we wanted to make sure that we could afford the mortgage and the renovations. We thought that since the house had been on the market for over a month which is a little long in the Bay Area, they might be willing to accept a lower offer. It was a little disappointing that they didn't even want to counter. So, we're back to square one.

However, the good thing is that we are ready to go for the next offer we need to make. It was a good exercise for us to go through to make sure that we know what has to happen and what the paperwork looks like.

I always think that things happen for a reason. So it's probably a good thing that this didn't go through because there were so many renovations. We also had a contractor give us an estimate on the costs for renovating and the costs don't seem as much as we had thought. We have been watching a lot of HGTV which also gives you this false sense of how long it takes and how much effort it takes because they seem to be able to make these amazing changes in a few days and since the episode only takes half an hour, it doesn't seem to take long at all!

Durham Days

On Thursday, we headed out to Nashville to the zoo and got to spend a few hours with Hannah and Timothy there until we had to get to the airport around 4PM. We have a few pictures which I'll get around to posting eventually. It was a hot day in the sun that day, so I think that the kids were more interested in the lemonade than the animals at the zoo. All in all, it was a good trip though after your 100th round of Musical Chairs or listening to Hannah whining, it does make you think about how much energy it takes to take care of a toddler. Babies are nice because all they require is food, diaper changes, and sleep. When they can start running and talking, it gets a lot more energy. Guess we better get started before we're too old to chase them around. Or I can do what Laura does and have their aunt chase them around!

In Durham, we got to have a nice leisurely day on Friday. We woke up without kids telling us to wake up and walked their dog Dora the Explorer. However, we did discover that Dora had chewed up our shoes because she got tired of waiting for us to wake up as well. After walking Dora, we borrowed Jeannette and Jon's bikes and went for a 5 mile ride to the Durham Bulls ballpark. I always thought it was called Bull Durham because of the movie. Oh well. We biked along a path called the American Tobacco Trail. Now if that isn't ironic, I don't know what is. We're biking on a path paved from dollars spent from tobacco sales. I wonder how many of those cigarette smoking people who helped pay for this trail actually use it. When we got back, we did a little shopping and then got ready for the Chief's roast that Jeannette had invited us to.

The Chief's roast was just a party at someone's house that included video skits roasting all of the chief residents who were graduating like Jeannette. It was fun to meet all these doctors, but I will say that it is quite a different experience. Most of the time, I think that we meet people who are in software or technology. Though we have a few friends who are doctors, they don't really discuss medicinal philosophies or viewpoints like the OB/gyns we met at this party. Though maybe it was the setting- we were at a party for all the OB/gyns. Maybe if we went to a party for doctors with our doctor friends, the conversations would be different.

On Saturday, I got a pedicure with Jeannette and we all got dressed up for the graduation ceremony. Here's a picture of us getting our pedicures
The ceremony seemed more like a wedding than a graduation. There was the catered dinner at the hotel and then DJ and dancing afterwards. We headed to a martini bar afterwards and while were were walking to the bars at UNC Chapel Hill, I noticed something very peculiar. On one side of the street were all the bars and on the other side of the street were all these churches. So it's almost like you could stumble out of the bars and go straight to church the next morning to ask forgiveness for all the sins you had committed the night before. What a novel idea! Another thing that I found interesting was that before the meal started at graduation, they said a prayer. It's not that I find a prayer before a meal that remarkable, but the fact that it was an educational event that began with a prayer. This is a secular university that doesn't have an affiliation with a church that I know of. That never happened to me at Northwestern and I have yet to see that at any other school I have seen- even the Catholic ones. I wonder if it has to do with being in the South.

Yesterday, we flew back into San Jose. While we were waiting for Show Lan to pick us up, I had plugged in my cell phone to charge. Unfortunately, we didn't realize until after we got back to SF that we had left the cell phone at the airport. Luckily, I was able to call the airport and they were able to hold my cell phone for me while we headed back down to San Jose to retrieve it. Note to self- if you charge your cell in a public place, remember to take it with you!

Greetings from Huntsville, AL!

So we began our trip by landing in Nashville, TN. So that was the first time that I have ever been in Tennessee. We will have visited 3 new states (for me) before the week is over. We had a great meal in a converted jail called Monell's. The Southern food was delicious with my favorite (and Hannah's!) being the fried chicken. It was a family style restaurant where the food was all you can eat for about $16/person. Now that was a deal! So far, so good!

Our first day in Alabama, we just got settled and talked and hung out. It was to relax after the long travel day since we had a 4 hour flight and then a 2 hour drive to Madison (just outside of Huntsville.) On Sunday, we went to church and then had lunch at a deli. We got to play with the kids outside in the Nemo wading pool and had BBQ shrimp and veggies on the grill. Our goal was to balance the BBQ dinners with a "healthy dinner."

On Monday, we woke up bright and early since Hannah and Timothy wanted to play. They don't understand why we didn't want to wake up before 8:30AM (read 6:30PST) so that we could play. We went to the local mall so that I could get my haircut and then shop a little. We also went to check out one of my favorite stores that are not in CA- Hobby Lobby for yarn. I am not sure when I am going to start knitting again, but maybe someday I'll get inspired by all the pretty yarn I'm collecting! I should ask Amy for some ideas on quick and easy patterns. Then, we went to a BBQ place for dinner that was quite good. However, the heat is definitely affecting my appetite. I'm eating much less now because I just don't feel that hungry, so I guess that's good considering I could be eating a lot of fatty BBQ! When we got home, we watched Pursuit of Happyness. Now I know that some of you may be thinking, "Didn't you see that like 2 months ago?" Bravo- good memory. I did say that, but we still have it from Netflix and so we brought it so Laura, Alex, and Edwin got to watch it. What can I say- Netflix loves us.

On Tuesday, Hannah had preschool so we got to sleep in. She gets out at 11:30AM. YES!!! Edwin used the leftover BBQ and grilled veggies to make pasta for lunch and then I made a pasta salad and Edwin made BBQ sandwiches for dinner because we were going to picnic while Alex played ultimate frisbee. I'll post the pics when we get them. It was funny because there was another dad there who had a 1-year-old daughter and he left her with us so that he could play. She was really cute too. If you ever want to get mauled by a group of toddlers, they really like cheerios, sliced grapes, and those puffy snacks. These kids were stepping all over us to try and get to these snacks. It's like they never get fed or something. Mob mentality starts young. When we got home, we played a couple of new games. Laura and Alex introduced us to Blokus while we introduced them to Apples to Apples.

Today, we met up with Alex during his lunch hour and we took the kids to a kids museum called EarlyWorks. We had so much fun that we all went home and took naps. Not long after, Alex came home and then we went to dinner at Cheeburger, Cheeburger which was a guess-what cheeseburger restaurant. Very filling and tasty, but I was surprised that they wouldn't make any of the burgers medium rare. They would only do medium. They also had quite the milkshake selection. We came home for some more Apples to Apples and laundry. Gotta love that we can just do laundry in the house! Here's a fun pic of bathtime with Hannah and Timothy. As you can see, it's an action shot!

We also got a chance to visit the Memphis zoo before our flight to Raleigh/Durham. Here's a few of us in the play area for kids.

I forgot to mention that we ended up looking at some houses on Friday before we left for our vacation. There was a cute little place on the same street of the house we have been considering putting a bid on. Though we loved the house, the timing was not right. I think if we were home, we would have made a bid on this place because it was in our price range and in move-in condition. The house had just come on the market on Wednesday. When we went to visit the house, we found out there there were 2 more houses on the same street that were going to be sold as well. This bodes well for us in that there seems to be some competition and the house that we were originally interested in has already lowered their price. To our dismay, however, this new house is already sold. It was on the market for less than a week and they received 3 bids and the realtor believes it sold for over asking. Oh well, I guess it wasn't meant to be. When we return on Sunday, we will try and see the other 2 properties that came on the market this weekend.

Moving Violations

So I was driving down to Salinas to see my client yesterday, when I got pulled over by a cop. So I roll down my window with my license and insurance card ready. Here's the conversation that ensues:

Cop: So I saw you with my radar gun, and you were not speeding.

Me thinking: Really? I've been speeding the whole 2.5 hour drive down from SF!

Cop: I pulled you over because you were following the car in front of you too closely.

I respond: I'm sorry, officer. I do remember being behind that car and the reason that I was that close was that car had just changed lanes in front of me. (This really did happen.)

Cop: Well then, why didn't you slow down?

Me: I thought I did. (I don't normally slam on the breaks on the highway, but I will usually lift my foot off the accelerator.)

Cop: OK, well, I'll let you off with a warning.

So I guess that I should thank that guy for cutting me off because I probably would have gotten a speeding ticket otherwise! Speaking of tickets, we've been hit by SF DPT several times in the last few months for parking violations. Edwin got hit twice in our own driveway for not having a parking sticker. Our logic being- if it is not a public spot, why do we need a public parking sticker? Just another way for SF to take our money. Definitely feeling like we need to move out of the city! I got another one for an overrun parking meter a few weeks ago. The meter maid was still there printing out the ticket when I arrived and I know it was less than 5 minutes when that meter ran out because I had set my alarm on my phone to remind myself to go back. That was the same day I saw a fleet of tow trucks towing like 15 cars away. It made me think that I do not want to drive in SF on a Friday because THEY WILL tow you. This is after I had already been towed in Chicago in Feb. (I swear- we don't normally get tickets!)

So all this talk of moving violations made me think of this old, funny, 80's movie called Moving Violations. Here's the original trailer to jog your memories:

Happy belated Bday, Sujay and Matilde!

This past weekend, we went up to Santa Rosa on Saturday for a Food & Beer Fest. I think that there was more beer than food, but it was still a nice day to be outside. It was all you can eat/drink for $30/person. It was worth it if you drank, but not really worth it if you didn't. I think that they should give discounts to designated drivers. Anyway, the food wasn't bad, so I was happy.
We also had a picnic for Sujay's 34th birthday on Sunday. Matilde had set up 4 different pizzas for us to try from Arizmendi (which I guess owes its success from Cheeseboard- who knew?), Cheeseboard, and 2 from Zachary's. My fave was from Arizmendi- ratatouille. I've heard that there is a new Disney movie by that name.

Our friend Margie also came for a visit from Boston, so we got to hang out with her as well. We haven't seen her several years. She was here for a conference for work in SJ, so we got to hang out with her as well. We'll post pictures eventually... (I know, I'm still working on the honeymoon pictures from Australia! Only about 75 more photos left!)

3 Day Weekends

Happy belated Memorial Day. This past weekend went by so quickly. On Friday, we went out to dinner with Steve and caught up with him on his travels. On Saturday, we went househunting for a few hours in Alameda, Bay Farm, Walnut Creek, and Rock Ridge. Nothing really to note. We realized that we didn't really like Bay Farm. It has good schools, but it is right by Oakland Airport and it was just too isolated. Walnut Creek is nice and has good schools, but kind of far from SF which would probably make the commute a little long. Alameda has some good parts and we were told that it has recently become more active because they opened a Starbucks and Peets Coffee. It generated a lot of foot traffic which has increased small businesses. Then, we went to visit Kai, Jamie, Kaori, and Maika in San Mateo. Kai is already looking so different.

On Sunday, Edwin went surfing and I went shopping. I was so bummed when I scratched my car. I was trying to get into a tight parking spot in the garage across the street from Macy's when I decided it was too small, I tried to get out of it and that's when it happened. It's only an inch long and I have plenty of other dents and dings, but this is one that I caused which made me feel horrible. And I just got it waxed last weekend! Then, we dropped off a carload of stuff at the Salvation Army. It feels good to get rid of junk. Though you wouldn't be able to tell that we got rid of anything from our apartment! We also saw Pirates of the Caribbean 3. It was entertaining, but long.

On Monday, we did some more househunting in Alameda and found 2 properties that we were interested in. The first house we saw is a craftsman that has a lot of cool wood detail. It's a 2 bedroom, 1 bath place that needs a lot of renovation though we could move in and live there for a while. The owners are not living there and it is a trust sale which is similar to a probate sale, but better because there is no judge or bidding. It's probably someone who is too old to sell the house and has someone selling it for him. The floors would need to be refinished, but it is in good condition. The kitchen would need to be redone (it's all yellow and has an old push button electric stove), but I'm not sure what could be done because it is a rather long, narrow space with a breakfast nook and counter. The second bedroom has a narrow closet, but is a good size. The master bedroom is large, but there is no master bath. The only bathroom is pink. All pink- sink, tub, tile, etc. However, it is a good size with both a tub and separate shower. Though it technically has one bathroom, there is also a bathroom in the basement outside. It's just a toilet and sink on a concrete floor, but it does the job. The outdoors is very nice with a mature orange tree and has a patio with an outdoor bar. The garage has lots of storage space. The neighborhood is very nice and walking distance to a park and restaurants and great access to a bus that goes to SF in 35 min.

The other property we were considering was a townhouse. It had great high ceilings and spacious rooms. The kitchen was small, but functional. The only shared space is the floor because it is a top unit. It was very quiet and had nice views of the marina. The HOAs were high at $400. It came with a garage and had 2 balconies, but Edwin noticed that the balconies were full of bird poop from all the ducks and geese that wander the property. Both bedrooms were huge and the 2 bathrooms were decent as well. The neighborhood is located near a shopping strip, but is kind of isolated. It was in move-in condition.

Such different properties, but they were priced around the same. We think that the older house is overpriced, but seem to like it more even though we know it will be more work. We're thinking about putting a low bid on it just to see, but want to do more research on loans and read up on the disclosures. Fun fun! I went into Citibank today to talk to them about their mortgage products. Their eyes just lit of when then heard why I was there. They were very eager and kept telling me how mortgage brokers are no good and online offers can't be trusted. It made me feel like I was talking to some used car salesmen. I totally thought that the wedding industry was bad about trying to take all your money, but I'm starting to realize that the housing industry is just as bad! Will it ever stop?

So glad that this is a short work week! Bummer that our Tivo seems to be on the fritz right now. Hope that it doesn't die on us because I think it's the best invention ever! Though it's over 5 years old and it can't last forever, right?

Bay to Breakers and more!

On Friday, we saw Spiderman 3. It was definitely better than 2, but we still liked 1 the best. On Saturday, we had a picnic with Janet, Show, Sujay, Matilde, and Kokomi. Janet was visiting from Hawaii and it was a gorgeous weekend for a picnic. Then, we headed to the Legion of Honor for some culture. Bank of America was holding a promotion for free museum tickets in the month of May, so we indulged. None of us have been to the Legion of Honor before, so we didn't know what to expect.

We took our wedding photos outside the Legion of Honor, so we knew it had nice views. In the inside, it was a smaller art museum than most of the ones in SF, but I really liked the fact that it had a lot of Rodin's sculptures. The Rodin Museum in Paris was one of our favorites. He's the guy that did the Thinker and The Kiss. The coolest part about that museum is that it is located in Rodin's house. It's so cool to walk around in the rooms and think that this is where he sculpted these works of art. The other thing I just find remarkable in general is the ability to mold rock and stone into these statues that are so life-like. I am definitely not an artsy person and so whenever I see sculptures, I always marvel at how somebody was able to create that with their own 2 hands because I know that my 2 hands would never be able to do something like that. I can do a lot of things, but art is definitely not one of them. Painting, I can at least hold a brush and pretend like I could do something, but sculptures- never! If I had a chisel and rock, I could probably only make the rock into smaller pieces.

Anywho, they had quite a collection of Rodin sculptures in the Legion of Honor. They also had an exhibit on French jewelry. Now, I like jewelry like all other women out there, but most of the jewelry I saw there I would not wear. Some of it looked really cool, but it just was not my style-lucky Edwin. Too ornate or just heavy looking.

Housing update: So we have started looking at some houses in Rock Ridge, Montclair, and Lake Shore with Matilde and Sujay's realtor. Many of the houses are renovated and quite nice. However, we did see one house that was a fixer-upper that needed the kitchen and bathroom redone. We really liked it and it was selling on probate, so our realtor originally thought that we might be able to get it below asking. Boy were we mistaken. There is a court date to determine who wins the bidding process, but the current bid is already $120K over the asking. I couldn't believe that someone wanted to pay that much for a fixer upper. There are many houses in that area that you could get completely renovated for much less and I can't fathom why someone would want to bid so much over asking when they didn't need to.

The good news is that Edwin and I seem to agree on the houses that we like a lot and the houses that we don't really like. I would say that Edwin might be a little pickier than me, but I think that's a good thing. We saw 5 houses last weekend and we both really liked the same house. I think that's at least a good sign that we won't really disagree too much on which type of house. Now if only we could find something affordable...we're going to start looking around Alameda and Bay Farm this weekend. Not sure I want to be that close to Oakland Airport or living on an island with access via tunnel and bridge only. We'll see.

This past weekend was also Bay to Breakers. We didn't walk the whole thing, but we walked a couple of miles with Janet and Matilde. I'll post pictures later if we have some. I can't wait for Memorial Day Weekend. I just need some extra time off from work. Last week was brutal because I had to go to Idaho and meet with clients during the day and answer emails at night until midnight. It was exhausting. I'm glad I don't have to do that more often!

Greetings from Lewiston, Idaho!

This year, I will be visiting several states that I have never been to. This week, I am in Idaho to visit a client. So far, so good. It was interesting to pull out of the airport parking lot straight into suburbia. So weird to have the runway on one side and a Little League baseball field on the other. We had to connect in Seattle and get on a puddle jumper to arrive in Lewiston which is literally 5 miles from the WA border. We got off the plane in Idaho, but our hotel (Quality Inn) is located in Clarkston, WA. There are these really nice mountains in the landscape and the town is really along 2 streets. I expected to see more chain restaurants like in TX, but there really weren't that many. We even had dinner at what seemed like a local restaurant called Tomato Bros. I don't know what I was thinking ordering seafood here, but the halibut was quite nice. Maybe since we are close to WA, the seafood is fresh? (I was going for the healthy option.)

There were no potato farms in sight, so I had to purchase my souvenir potato at the local Albertsons as if I was shopping at home. Are potatoes allowed on planes? I mean, technically, I could build a potato bomb, right? Well, I guess I could ask the ticket agent/security inspector/baggage claim handler, right? JK! There isn't just one person running the whole "airport." However, I think that there is one gate and the baggage claim is right next to the gate which is convenient. (Come to think of it, I don't think that it ever gets used because you pick up your bags when you walk off the plane onto the tarmac...) It is eerily similar to the airport set that was used in the old TV show called Wings.

Anywho, I got a kick out of the Hertz rental car agent who gave mass instructions to everyone in line on how to arrive at the Quality Inn from the airport. (A 5-minute drive and apparently one of the only hotels in the area.) Couldn't we just caravan?

Anywho, next month, we'll be visiting our sisters in AL and NC. 2 new states in one week! I guess that I'm giving up my international vacations for more local ones. I guess that there are plenty more states that I haven't visited. I'll have to put together my list of states that I still have never visited. Does driving through or layovers count?

Happy Bday Kai!

So Jamie, Kaori, and Maika welcomed the newest addition to their family today. Congrats you guys and we can't wait to meet him. Kaori has been trying to get him to come out for weeks now. I think that his official due date was on the 9th, so he's only a few days late!

So I locked myself out of my apartment yesterday. I was working from home and was taking some trash out the back door when it closed behind me. Luckily, my neighbor was home and I was able to call Edwin. I'm glad that he wasn't in a meeting when I called. I had no phone and was wearing sweats. When I went downstairs to wait for Edwin, I realized that we had left the garage door open. Luckily again, nothing was taken. So I sat in Edwin's car and remembered that we have a phone in the garage (don't ask!) So I started dialing the numbers that were programmed on the home phone since I had 45 minutes to kill. It's really funny- I would have called more people, but I can't remember anyone's phone number. I think that I know about 3 phone numbers. My cell phone, Edwin's cell phone, and my home phone number. If I had to call anyone and God forbid dial the number, I would be screwed. I guess that's what happens when you have cell phones. You don't really need to remember phone numbers anymore except your own.

Garage Sale!

So the weather was beautiful this weekend. It was the hottest I've seen it since our wedding. Almost 80 desgrees. Perfect for our garage sale on Saturday. It was a long day, but a nice day to be outside and get rid of some junk. We didn't have anything big to sell, but we got about $80 for a bunch of junk we were going to throw away anyways. We're going to bring the stuff that didn't sell to the Salvation Army.

It was funny to see the different pricing strategies employed. For Michelle and Mike, they were asking for top dollar for the items they were selling which is probably why they garnered the highest sales of the group. I almost always underbid what they were asking for. My reasoning is that if someone wants it, I want them to have it. I need it out of my house and they will help me to not have to haul as much away. I was pricing for items to go. Believe it or not, we'll still purging. We probably should have done that first before the garage sale, but oh well.

We also went for drinks and dinner with Show and Derrick. We completed the evening with karaoke. Can you believe we had to wait 45 minutes for a room to open up?

On Sunday, Michelle, Mike, Show, Edwin and I went for a bike ride in Golden Gate Park. You would think that starting to discuss it at 2:30Pm we could have actually started the bike ride before 5PM. Between us forgetting our helmets and seat post which resulted in having to go home twice to retreive said forgotten items, Michelle and Mike got waylaid because they were stuck in traffic on 101. They had to rent also and the bikes had to be returned by 6PM, so our bike ride was a little short, but fun.

It's still warm out today, so I want to skip out of work early, but I keep having to wait for this report to come out and it's taking forever!

Allergies Suck!

So I just read on Laura and Alex's blog (see link on the right- lauralexnmore) that Timothy had an allergic reaction to peanuts last weekend. I know my allergies are getting worse everyday. I am wheezing a lot more nowadays. And poor Show has an asthma attack almost every time she comes to our apartment. (I swear, we clean and dust!)

So why does it seem like allergies are affecting more people now than when I was young? I don't remember ever seeing any products that were gluten-free or made in a manufacturing facility that has peanuts. I knew of kids that were allergic to strawberries or bees. But why does it seem like there are so many more people now who are afflicted with allergies? Does this allergy epidemic stem from changes in the atmosphere that leave our bodies unable to defend itself against these germs? Or are there more germs now than there used to be? That seems unlikely to me. As I've grown older, I have also learned that I am now allergic to cats and kiwis. Maybe I wasn't around cats very often when I was a kid so I didn't notice it. I know I didn't eat very many kiwis growing up in Cleveland.

Alas, my poor little nephew will never know the joys of peanut butter. Peanut butter and chocolate is one of my favorite combinations. (To be truthful, almost anything and chocolate is pretty good to me.) But I love peanut butter and apples, peanut butter filled pretzels from Trader Joes, peanut butter on a bagel for breakfast, I think even some egg rolls are made with peanut butter... I could go on ala Bubba and his shrimp in Forrest Gump, but I'll spare you.

How Can Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel?

We had a lovely little picnic on Saturday at the Berkeley Rose Garden. The weather was beautiful. We also went cleaned the apartment to get ready for the garage sale this weekend.

On Sunday, we went out to the East Bay to look at a charmingly renovated French farmhouse. It was the cutest thing. Barn doors, wood floors, wood heating stove, wrought iron fixtures... the price was a bit steep, but within range. We're not quite ready to make a bid, but we thought about it. So I'm reading the termite report which is like 100 pages of legalese. And what do I see? There is a list of things that are included with the house like dishwasher, sprinklers, and what do I notice? There is one box that is not ticked- central heating. CENTRAL HEATING? What kind of house doesn't have heat other than an igloo? I just assumed that heating was one of the things that a house comes with. You can do without a dishwasher, sprinklers, but heat? They should probably also have a checkbox for 4 walls just in case that's not included. This is one of what I am sure of many things that we will need to check for in future houses. Good news is that we found an area that we want to explore some more called Rock Ridge.

While we like the area, but it comes at kind of a bad time for Rock Ridge. For those of you who don't live in the Bay Area, you may not have heard about the gas truck accident that caused a major freeway to collapse. Well, this freeway accident is about 5 minutes from Rock Ridge and how you would get from SF to/from Rock Ridge. Well, who knows, maybe this will help us to get a house in the area. I guess only time will tell.

Yesterday, we got to go to the Morrisey concert with Show. Thus, the name of the post. It was a great show and while I'm not as big of a fan as Edwin, it was definitely worth going. Just the people watching alone was worth it. There were a lot of pompadours, red-white-and black dresses, and indigo jeans rolled up at the ankles.

The Pursuit of Happyness

So I actually wrote this post on Sunday, but my computer froze and I lost it. I was not very happy. Anyway, take 2.

I remember talking about the Method wood wipes. I really liked them because they allowed me to be able to reach all the little crevices in the furniture. The wipes are stronger and more durable than paper towels. And they smell like almonds and a fresh baby. They're one of my clients, so I felt a little pressure to try out their products. Surprisingly, I seem to like it so far. I have a few new freebies they gave me to try.

I also saw the movie The Pursuit of Happyness. It was a really good film. One of my favorite scenes is while the family is clearing the dinner table. The mom starts putting away the dishes and she puts the contents of the half-drunk glasses of juice back into the pitcher. It was such a subtle detail about how this family was scraping to get by. They are having a conversation while she is doing this, so this event would pass the audience by if they weren't paying attention. Sometimes I forget what it is like to struggle financially. I may complain about the housing prices in the SF Bay Area, but there really are people who have to live paycheck to paycheck. It was a good reminder about humility and being thankful for the things that we generally take for granted like being able to pay the bills every month.

And while I am discussing the Pursuit of Happyness, we have also have some renewed hope on the housing front. Congrats to Matilde and Sujay on the purchase of their new home in Orinda. It makes us think that maybe it's not as hopeless as it seems.

Yummy Yogurt and other Food Adventures

Greetings from LA. Edwin went home on Monday morning, but I stayed for work. I'm in training until Wednesday. While I was here, I had dinner with my grandparents and Uncles Jason and Edwin and Aunts Emily and Tung Fan. I'll post a photo when I get a chance.

I also got to hang out with Binh who took me to a few new restaurants in the area. She took me to a place called Phoenix Food Boutique which had some really yummy looking food for very affordable prices. I only wish that I hadn't just finished eating dinner. We ordered a shark fin like soup, clams in a sesame chili oil, noodles with braised beef, mango mochi, pecan cookies, lychee panecotta, and fried calamari. Did I mention that I already ate? All this for under $25. I'm in heaven- or hell, since I couldn't eat very much and it looked so good. We went to the one in Alhambra, but there are quite a few in SoCal. I hope that they open one up in NorCal soon.

Tonight, Binh took me for some Cuban food at a place called Versailles. I haven't had decent Cuban food in long time. My favorite Cuban restaurant is in Miami and is coincidentally also called Versailles. We had the lemon chicken, a combo with oxtail and beef tongue, and of course fried plantains and black beans. I normally really like black beans, but I didn't really like the black beans here because of the cilantro. Binh tells me that is a hereditary thing. It was good, but then we went to this cool new dessert place called Pinkberry. Here is a hilarious LA Times article about how the place started and has generated the city of LA much revenue via parking tickets issued for illegal parking around the original location. We went to the one on Berendo (and Sixth) street in Koreatown. Here are some pics. Doesn't it make you want to drool? If there has been one sin that I have been guilty of this week, it's gluttony. From the spa to all this eating. It's just gluttony. I wouldn't mind doing it all over again if only my pants still fit! I had the vanilla with mango, strawberry, and carib while Binh had the green tea yogurt with raspberry, blueberry, and mango. So delish. No wonder they call it crackberry.

Spa Day in San Diego

So this weekend was a great weekend of decadence. Edwin and I flew into LA on Friday and I drove down to San Diego for a spa day with Michelle and Corinne. It was a very nice way to spend a Saturday. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I don't really like to wake up early. However, I was out the door by 8:30 on Saturday to drive down to San Diego for a 12PM spa appointment. Michelle and Corinne were already in San Diego for a conference.

We met up at the Manchester Grand Hyatt. Corinne and I had the Papaya Pineapple scrub while Michelle and Corinne's cousin Emily had deep tissue massages. What I thought was interesting is that while Corinne and I had the same treatment done, we had slightly different experiences. I had a 25 minute scrub with a 10 minute shower and then a 25 minute massage with lotion. Corinne had a 50 minute scrub and massage and then a shower and was given the lotion to apply herself. I always like to get scrubs because I think it's like getting a 2-for-1 with a scrub and massage. We got to hang out by the pool and use the sauna. I took 3 showers that day- once in the morning, another to remove the scrub, and another one after using the sauna and pool. It was very relaxing to say the least.

We left to get some Hawaiian food and then started on spa part 2. We went to get some mani/pedi's that was recommended by Emily. They were clean and relatively inexpensive, but they had some service issues. They were trying to upsell everything. I also had a weird experience with a parrafin wax for my hands. I decided to do that one because when I had hand therapy, I always had a parrafin wax treatment to help my hand "stretch." I think most women do it for the smooth skin. I feel like an old woman sometimes because my hand feels kind of tight when it's cold outside.

Before dinner, Michelle, Mike and I went to Seaport Village for a little shopping. Here's a picture of me and Michelle looking relaxed and happy.

For dinner, we went to Indigo Grill, a hip San Diego restaurant. The Smoked Duck Nachos were really yummy and I had the pecan crusted rainbow trout. After dinner, we walked around a bit in San Diego's Little Italy section and then headed out for the drive back to Calabasas. Michelle gave me a little tour of the "Valley." It was a surreal experience because we drove for miles and could not find a coffeehouse to save our lives.

Who's Afraid of SoCal?

This weekend we are heading south to LA and San Diego. Edwin's friend Dennis is coming to visit from Singapore and I am going to San Diego on Saturday for a spa day. I have to be in LA for work next week, so we decided to go for the weekend. I'm also going to try and see the grandparents while I'm there to check in on Grandma.

I wish that I had more time in SD. I have a few friends there and I'm not even telling them I am coming. It was supposed to be a Girls Weekend, but it turned out to be a spa day. Todd and Frances just got married in December in AZ and I wish that we could at least stop by and say hi. Our friends Amy and John came up with their 2 daughters for our wedding and we hardly got to talk to them. I would love some quality time to catch up with them since we haven't seen them in almost 2 years. Gilbert also lives in SD and came to the wedding and we haven't seen him since. So many people and so little time. Also, I'm going to the spa with Michelle and Corinne and both of them live in SF, so it seems a little crazy that we're all meeting in SD to hang out. I guess that Michelle and I have done crazier things like traveling to the same locations at the same time without planning on going together. We planned on going to London and Paris a few years ago and both got food poisoning on Valentines Day dinner together. Then, we also both had to go to Seattle for work and so we met up there too. Not to mention that Michelle and I have never lived in the same city until she moved to SF 2 years ago and we have known each other for about 8 years.

We're going to see "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?" tomorrow night. Should be fun hanging out with Sully and Eric. Dinner at Le Colonial. YUM! Haven't been there since we went there for Edwin's 30th birthday.

Happy Easter!

We had a pretty good Easter this year. Had dim sum with Uncle Glenn and his family while they visited from Lousiana. I'm looking forward to having more family around. We didn't do any Easter egg hunts this year or egg dying. It's really funny to me because it really makes me wonder how the resurrection of Christ somehow led to an Easter bunny as an icon for the holiday. I understand how Santa Claus came about with St. Nicholas. That makes sense to me, but what happened with Easter? It's not like the Bible has any story about Jesus with bunnies or eggs. You've got the parable of the water into wine or the fish and bread multiplying, but I don't think there's any reference to candy or anything that is commercially "Easter" related. So then how does a holiday morph into a day that celebrates bunnies, dying eggs, and overdosing on jelly beans and peeps?

So we also started looking at a few places in the peninsula. We started looking at Foster City and saw a few 3 bedroom 2 bath condos. It was encouraging to see things in our price range in an area that has good schools, but the condos were a bit older (1970's) and not as charming as we would like. We like older Victorian places that have a lot of original architecture or were really made of solid wood, but I don't think that anyone can really say that buildings built in the 70's were either made well or look that great. Still, the area is very pretty and quiet along the water, but unfortunately, it is built on landfill. However, I think most of the places that we can afford are going to be on landfill which is not exactly the best place to be if you're in an area that is prone to earthquakes. Though I have to say that in all the years that I have lived here, I have never had any bad earthquakes where even 1 thing broke. Most of the time, it just kinda feels like vertigo- you just kinda lose your balance for a second. Sometimes I think that a truck is passing by outside or that the upstairs neighbors are walking loudly or dropped something. But it is never like what you see in the movies. But you never know if there's gonna be another Loma Prieta earthquake like there was in 1989. So what's another option? Move away from the Bay Area? Let's hope not!

We're Pregnant!

Ha ha! Happy April Fools Day! And just to clarify- no, we are not pregnant!

The last few April Fools Days were pretty eventful, so I thought I would try and top some of the biggies:
2005- Nikki & Ed's wedding in Maui
2006- Edwin asked my parents for their blessing for our wedding (believe me- that was a big day!)
2007- really hard to top!

This weekend, we spent Friday with the Banerjees for dinner and a movie (and a little laundry!) Poor Kokomi has a diaper rash and had cried so much during the day that she was completely hoarse when we saw her.

Saturday we went down to our cousin Billy and Maggie's house for a BBQ in Mountain View. My Aunt Finney and my cousins who are moving from Louisiana are in town for spring break, so it was good to see them. I also got to try out the new video game system called Wii. It's kind of a reality video game but without all the motion sickness for me. It was pretty cool. I was swinging the control like baseball bat for a game that simulates baseball. The control had some kind of vibration that went off if you hit the ball. (Since I only hit the ball 2/10 times, I don't really recall too much. Obviously, I'm a little rusty...)

Today, I went to my Uncle Glenn's new church called SF Swatow Christian Church. I had no idea what a Swatow was, so I googled it and here's Wikipedia's definition. The church has a small English congregation with about 20 members. Reminds me of the old church in Cleveland when there were only about 15 of us in the pews so we only took up one side. It grew a lot bigger and when I left Cleveland, there were about 100 in the English congregation. If only the services weren't so early! 9:30 is not early for some, but when you are used to an 11:30 service, and sometimes even waking up in time for that service is a struggle... I know, I know, parents with young kids are collectively groaning everywhere... believe me, I am going to enjoy every minute of sleeping in until possible!

I also wrote a recommendation for an old coworker who is applying for a teaching assistant position in Spain. I don't know what I was thinking because I guess that I thought that my Spanish skills were still up to par and that I could write the recommendation in Spanish. Well, it's not that I can't write in Spanish anymore, but it's the lack of speed I can't deal with. It was taking forever to formulate a sentence. I finally gave up and wrote it in English and then I'll go back and translate it later. So sad when I used to be able to speak Spanish without even thinking. Ay, que lastima!

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!