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Dream House Requirements

I get asked, by realtors and friends, what my dream home looks like.

Prerequisites: I want a house, not a condo or a townhome, but a bone fide house, I’m partial to 4-squares, but am warming up to bungalows. Also, the more recent things like the roof, the windows and the mechanics have been updated the better.

• Proximity to the Blue Line. I don't like to drive and would prefer to be able to walk to a Blue Line station, preferable within less than a mile. 
  
• Bonus if there is a Metra Station nearby.
  
• Basement: It needs to be tall enough for a 6' 2" fellow to stand upright in it. As long as it provides good storage and can also double as a workshop and workout room, I'm happy. 
  
• Bonus if it is finished or partially finished or could be finished and turned into a ManCave or entertainment room.
  
• Attic: Bonus if it's finished but again, one that has potential to be expanded is ideal. I saw a place that had the water pipes run up to the attic already so that creating a dream master bedroom with bathroom, whirlpool and separate shower was a possibility later down the line. My understandings running the pipes up is a big part of the cost so having this already done is a must.
  
• Fireplace or at least a spot to put in a fumeless one.
  
• Garage 2 car or more. Carport might be okay but would prefer a place to safely park my car, a future wife's car and our bicycles.
  
• Kitchen: updated. I do not want to renovate a kitchen or any other room really.

So really I'm looking for a place that is ready to move in and doesn't need an mandatory renovations, only if I suddenly decide I have too much money in the bank (ha!) and decide I want to drop a wall to increase the size of the a room or something.

That's all I can really think of besides the obvious: good neighborhood, low/no crime, proximity to expressways and good restaurants. I do realize that to get the majority of a wish list it might be necessary sacrifice one or two items.

A Rare Friday Run

I went for a run before work this morning.  I debated sleeping in again for the 4th time this week, but since I ate a plate of hotwings for dinner, it was easy to convince myself to overcome the things that made me sleep in the other mornings since Monday.

Because I do my LR on Saturdays, Fridays are usually a rest day.  I might do a little weight lifting, but otherwise I usually take it easy.  But because I am racing my first half marathon in over a year on Sunday, I could afford to get in a short workout this morning.  In fact, if I didn't, I would have had three rest days and would probably not be ready for Sunday's 13.1 miles at all.

I went with a little hillwork.  There's a park not too far from my home that has a small hill which is just enough to be considered hillwork.  The weather also co-operated.  It was overcast and cool this morning.  I wasn't planning on doing high mileage, but I still had the challenge of getting a good workout in before work.  You see, I had a 9 am meeting that I had to be on time.

Luckily, it worked out.  I got in 1.5 miles of hill work and 2 miles of warmup, cool down.  It wasn't enough to offset the hot wings, but it was enough to unlease some of the pent up energy and combined with Wednesday's tempo run, I feel like Sunday could be a good day for me.

 

Task Management

So I've spent the majority of the week in these meetings with our project managers working on the Task List for the Major Upgrade that will Impact my life and the company I work for over the next year.  My speciality stems from my knowledge of the software produced by the No-Name Software Company I worked at for seven years. 

So we spent several days in a conference room putting colored post-it notes on the wall trying to figure out what order the tasks come in and what they are dependent on.  I know that this serves a purpose but I really have to question why I needed to be there all that time.

For me, a lot of the tasks that are involved are combined whereas project managers like to break them down.  Let's say we're talking about eating a steak dinner.  To me, you go to the restaurant and eat the dinner.  To the PMs, you order your drink, then you order your food.  Then you eat your pototatoes, then you eat your vegetables.  Finally you cut your steak. 

What really annoyed me was that most of the meetings went over the time alloted and prevented me from going to my exercise classes.  Work is work and that's what I'm there for, but it is annoying to miss a class by 5 minutes because someone rambled on about something off topic.  On the other hand, my boss makes sure to get out in time to catch his express train so that he can get home sooner.

My boss is a good guy and so are the PMs.  We all just want to finish this project successfully so that we can add it to our resume for the next company.

That will teach me to be responsible

My place has been on the market for three months and while there have been repeat showings, no offers have come forth. There hasn't even been a showing since mid-April. I did lower my asking price, but now that the Tax Credit has expired, I really don't expect any thing to come of it. We did get positive feed back from all the agents and potential buyers.

One lady said it was down to my place -- a two bedroom with no parking -- and a one bedroom with a parking spot in Andersonville.  She opted for the parking spot, which makes sense.   The general rule of thumb is that it's easier to resell a two bedroom than a one bedroom.  However, parking triumps an extra bed, especially in a trendier neighborhood like Andersonville.

The thing is, my place originally offered parking. However, to afford the seller's market of 2003, I had to give up the parking spot to get the seller to lower his asking price enough so that I could afford it. At the time my income from the No-Name Software Company could only cover so much, especially since I was still paying off my g-school student loan.  Could I have gotten a loan to cover the full asking price? Probably, but I opted to be in what turned out to be the minority and only buy as much home as I could afford.

So I did the popular 80/15/5 loan where you put 5% down and got a Home Equity Line of Credit for the other 15% to avoid paying PI.  Over the years I dilligently worked toward paying off the HELOC loan who's rate followed prime.  Between selling off stock options and using my tax refunds, I managed to get a $30+K loan down to about $5K over six years. 

And my reward for being a good citizen and home owner:  I now have a home that isn't worth what I paid for it, and I apparently cannot sell it becuase I wasn't selfish enough to overspend for parking six years ago.  It isn't all bad.  I was able to at least refinance last December and got rid of the worthless HELOC (when the housing market busted, Chase thanked me by freezing my line of credit so I couldn't use it.)

Overemphasis on the holidays

It's been an extremely long weekend.  We had my birthday on Friday, my cousin's graduation party on Saturday and today of course is Mother's Day.  Lot's of people have birthdays that follow collide with a holiday and it can be challenging to plan a celebration.  In college, my birthday always was just before midterms or final exams so most people couldn't go out to help celebrate.  Later in life, many people wouldn't be available to help celebrate my birthday because they were going home for Mother's Day.

In most cases, it was a legitimate excuse, though some really milked it because, really you cannot go out on Thursday because Mother's Day, which falls on a Sunday is coming up.  Just what does your family do to celebrate and is it legal in most states! 

I also have a friend who would always, always, I mean always aplogize for not making my birthday because her husband's aunt happened to have a birthday that same weekend.  Newsflash: birthdays are annual events if you're lucky so chances are if Aunt Kookie's birthday falls within a week of mine this year, it will probably do the same next year and the year after until one of us kicks the bucket.

Okay, bitter pill swallowed and digesting.  I think I just have to learn not to let it get to me when someone doesn't take the time to think of a new reason for not coming to a birthday party or cannot give a simple graceful response like "wish I could be there but regrettablily I am unable to attend."

Runner Wedding

I'm off to a wedding this afternoon.  I think I've been invited to more weddings through runners than any other group of people I know, including college friends. 

I've been invited to some weddings that I can only imagine an uncle croaked or a cousin got disowned at the last minute and I got bumped from the B-list (or C-list even).  I've also been "snubbed" and not made the guest list because I pissed the bride off once and she remembered years later, or we grew apart.  Or someone else was invited because they are the last of a group and you cannot invite all but one.  That's one of the few things I don't take it personally. 

Weddings are a delicate thing.  You cannot invite everyone and they end up being a snapshot of the people in your life at that particular moment.  In a perfect world, you are still friends with the people who were close to you in high school, college or even from the old neighborhood.  Hopefully you strike the right balance and it all works out.

One of the differences between SigOther 2.0 and the previous version is she doesn't dress me.  I have enough sense to wear a suit to this wedding and I'm probably gonna wear a tie, though it will be a last minute decision.  When I told SigOther 2.0 about this, she was fine with it, or at least didn't voice any objection.  SigOther 1.0 would have pouted, threatened not to come or had some other unhealthy display of objection.  In a way it's almost too much since guys really do need a lady to help dress us. 

10 Minute posting

I just got back from a run with Angela (yeah that one).  As part of my comeback campaign, I'm trying to do more of my runs with someone so I am forced to keep a proper pace and set mileage.  It's also nice to have someone to talk with although she's more of a run by herself runner and needs to hear music to keep going. 

We talked about how it doesn't look like I'll get to sell my condo.  I figure if no one makes an offer by the end of this week, it will be quite some time if ever.  Best to either take it off the market or let the contract expire and try again next year when the gap between what I owe on the place and what I can get for it theoretically widens.

Angela said she doesn't have a grasp on how all that works and I gave her the reader's digest version, explaining why I can't lower the price.  I mentioned that the only incentive for doing so would be so that SigOther 2.0 and I could get on with our lives and buy a house so we don't have to live out of closets in two zip codes.

 
Angela started to tell me that her BF doesn't want to get married.  He uses the classic why do we need a piece of paper, to which I said "go ask a gay person why it's important."

She went on to talk about how while she doesn't think she wants children, she is leaving a little bit of room for the idea, which means giving herself the option to change her mind.  She thinks that if she had children, she would want to have them with someone younger than Current BF because  while he looks good for his age (older than me), he doesn't take care of himself and might not be around to help raise the pups.  She also brought up that if she was to have children she wants to have them sooner than later because in five years she might be too old (she's 32). 

And this is where I just have to say thinking like this is what F's up a lot of women today.  It's not just Angela, my friend Sasha has the same mentality.  Yah, it's statistically easier for a young woman to have children than an older one.  But 37 is not too old by any stretch of the imagination. 

 

 

Impeding others

Several times today I took the bus.  And each time, it seemed that someone needed to go through me to get to the exit.  On the way to work, a lady had to go past me to get to the front door -- even though the path to the back was clearer.  Apparently walking the extra few feet would put her out or exhaust her.  She couldn't figure out that once she got off the bus, she'd need to go in the opposite direction and getting off the back of the bus would actually save her a few steps.

On the way back to SigOther's place, this Indian guy decided that he would rather stand than take one of the many rarely available seats.  So he was kinda hovering over me, holding on to the rail pole that was in front of my seat.  If he sits down, people can move back and forth with ease, and I don't have to bump into him when my stop finally arrives.  Instead it was easier for his backpack to hit my knee occasionally like a slow swining pendelium. 

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Same track, different station.  When I was leaving work today, this lady who was on a crutch, was moving toward the elevator.  A bunch of people got on it but didn't hit the open button or hold their hand in the door.  She was pissed.  I hadn't seen the transaction go down so I asked "did you ask them to hood the elevator?  She said angriely, "they saw me, I didn't think I needed to ask them to hold it for me."

She was angry.  And bitter.  One of three things happened.  1) They didn't realize she was expecting them to hold the elevator for her.  2)  They saw her but thought she would just catch the next one  3) They know she wanted them to hold the elevator for her but they hate her that much that they didn't hold the elevator in hopes that she wouldn't catch it and they wouldn't have to share the 20-30 second ride down the elevator together.

I saw in her anger a flash of someone who once upon a time -- a time now forgotten to her -- was much, much happier than she is today.  Maybe there was more opportunity in her life or she hadn't been beat down by Life.  I also worry that I carry this same bitterness, unreasonable expectation and uncontrolable anger.  I sometimes worry that I'm on the same track, just a few stations behind.

 

 

 

 

Rebound run on pace

I just got back from a 10 mile run.  In years past this would have been a typical Saturday morning run and I wouldn't even mention it.  However, after last year's injury bug, I don't take any run for granted.  To be sure, this is the longest run I've done since the half marathon in September. 

I ran with Angela, Lydia and Jerry joined us around mile 3.  He usually starts his run earlier from his place and runs into us as we're departing the parking lot and joins us for most of our out-and-back trip.  I bailed on everyone last week since I was tired, coming down with a cold and it was raining.  I used the excuse that there will be many Saturdays when I cannot miss a run so I'm skipping the ones I can.

This week was much nicer weather even though the girls increased the distance.  They did 8 miles last week and felt it served me right for skipping out last week.  Fortuneately, I got in a lot of miles this week so I was ready.  Plus we went at a nice 9mm pace and made several water stops since the fountains are finally on in Chicago.

I wasn't sure how Lydia and Angela (yes that Angela) would get along and until Jerry joined us, she was unusually quiet.  I did my best to engage them in conversation and we did alright but didn't hit our stride until Jerry joined us.  

During a training season, runners will pile on all sorts of mileage that include dozens of runs of the same length, yet no two runs are exactly alike.  Last Sunday I ran 6 miles and felt like there was no way I could run another 20 like I will have to in October.  Then there was todays run where I ran 10 and felt like I had more in the tank.  Not 16 more but I definitely feel better about the race that is six months away than I did a week ago.  I even heard the Chariots of Fire theme song in my head during the last mile.

****

 On the way to dropping Angela off, we were talking about how I knew Lydia and I mentioned our running history and how we really got to know one another during the training for the Paris Marathon.  She said something to the effect of "when you do your next International Marathon I'll definitely join you for that," as in she'll go on the trip and run the marathon.

My immediate reaction was "oh my next international marathon," as in oh instead of the one [Prague] we talked about doing together a few years ago.  I'm sure she caught my drift though I did stop myself from going further.  Instead I just said that I was focusing on Chicago in the fall and it could very well be my last marathon.

There's nothing to be gained by bringing up what happened at the end of 2007.  We are both in good places relationship-wise now and might not be if things had been different.   

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

At the low-rent consulting company(C2), one of my Menace's unoffical functions was to make sure you were always second guessing yourself.

Let's say you walked into ABC client's office at 10 am.  You get to the server room and see that the servers are literally on fire.  It's now 10:01 am.  If you try to put the fires out and then call when the fires are contained, let's say 10:06am, my Menace would say "why didn't you call me as soon as you discovered the servers were on fire?"

 

Now let's go back in our magic time machine and go back to 10:01 am (no need to go back before the fire and prevent it for the purposes of this example).  You see that the servers are on fire and you call the office to let them know.

Menace:   "Well have you tried putting the fires out?"