I feel SO much better now!

Some of you may remember my post about my little incidence of inconveniencing a few DC fire fighters.

Well, after reading about the internet breakdown in Asia, North Africa and the Middle East yesterday, I must say that I feel SO much better now!

Here's this guy on a boat, throws out the anchor as he's done probably hundreds of times in his lifetime, when all of a sudden two continents go dark. Can you imagine how this guy feels now?

Yeah, I'm feeling good about myself right now.

New Year Resolutions

Blogger finally has a Hebrew version of blogging. Yay. I can now start my Hebrew blog. Oh wait, that means I will only have an audience of 6 million people instead of several billions. Hmmmm....tough choice there.

As you all probably gathered, my new year resolutions for 2007 slipped a little into 2008. But I couldn't anticipate this horrendous housing market, so give me a break! I did accomplish every single item on my new year resolutions for 2007 and I'm very proud of my accomplishments. Now we're into 2008 and I have only one new year resolution. It's one that I will not be sharing on my blog. But I promise to share it in 2009.

Yesterday my husband and I decided to try out a restaurant that someone recommended. Since we never really celebrated the sale of our house properly (and separate from our anniversary), we decided this would count. So off we went to have dinner. $3,400 later we were stuffed!

Yes it is a bit of a pricey restaurant, but if you ever get a chance to visit any of these restaurants in the US - DO IT! It's called Texas De Brazil. The experience and the food is absolutely outstanding! Okay, don't worry, it won't cost you anywhere near how much it cost us. But this restaurant is conveniently located attached to a shopping mall, and we really needed a new refrigerator and a matching oven. That completes our kitchen remodeling project. (well, except three drawer faces that our freaking contractor has yet to deliver, and if I see the asshole ever again, I swear I'm going to slap him silly!).

Back to the restaurant - this is a place where you start off with a salad bar with the most delicious dishes you've ever tried. 100% of the dishes are unique and different. Then, you have this little coaster - one side is red, the other is green. Turn it green side up - and young cute waiters will come storming with long skewers of meat to your table. Each waiter with a different type meat. They load your plate up until you turn that coaster to red. You eat, you decide to try something new, you turn the coaster back to green. The food is absolutely fantastic! The service is outstanding. The atmosphere is phenomenal. The architecture is beautiful. The music is awesome. The professionalism and cleanliness of the place is commendable. We plan on going back to celebrate every birthday and anniversary.

As for the refrigerator and oven - honestly, they weren't as expensive as it seems, but once you add on to it delivery and the five year warranty plans on each, it all adds up. But we're going to recover some of the money by selling our old appliances on craigslist. I have two potential buyers, so I'm hoping they'll decide to take it off our hands tomorrow.

Oh, and the dishwasher we purchased last weekend - awesome. It's so quite that we can watch TV while it's running and not be annoyed.

We now have a fully stainless steel kitchen. I hate it, but since my husband will be doing all the cooking anyway, I'll deal with it. Why do I hate it? Because stainless steel shows every single finger print, and it's impossible to clean or prevent it. Not to mention I get static shocks from everything made of steel. I suppose I need to go on a diet anyway, so I won't be touching those appliances any time during the dry winter months.

The Reason We Moved

Above is a photo giving you all Reason # 1 why I wanted to move out of the townhouse. This was my computer room. The place where I spent most of my time in the house. The stress factor related with coming to this mess every day was weighing on me to a degree of insanity.
There've been numerous times where I snapped at my husband just because I could no longer tolerate to look at this.

I know some of you cannot even begin to imagine how a normal person can let their house get to this condition, but in 11 years we managed to let it go this bad.

This stressor in my life was unbearable until I finally came to the realization that the main reason this room is like this is because I have no time to clean it. Of course, who has time when you're wasting three hours of your day commuting back and forth to work, then you're spending another hour trying to calm down from the commute. By the time we got to the weekend, we had no energy to take care of our house.

The solution was to move closer to work.

Well, that was a year ago. Some of you may be curious as to what my computer room looks like right now. Well, here ya go...


Ok, ok, yes, I get it. This makes no sense to you. But seriously, this is fantastic accomplishment. You see, all these papers on the floor are actually piled by topic. These are only three years worth of bills. The other 8 years are in the boxes you see on the right. Tomorrow I'll have only one more year's worth of bills to lay out on the floor: 2007.

Then...

Hmmm...then?

Oh yeah, then I get online and ask you guys - ok, my legal all knowing friends, for how long do you keep your bills?

Keep in mind, I had tremendous difficulties throwing away the ADT (house alarm) bills for the townhouse - so be gentle with your advice.

One major problem I'm already seeing is the Cingular bills. Those mf bills are about 20 pages long each! It's almost as long as the script to my phone conversations per month. They take so much space, it's just a crime against the environment.

Another issue I'm seeing - Blue Cross Blue Shield has GOT to learn to stop sending a piece of paper for EVERY SINGLE medical charge. They need to consolidate the charges per month and send me ONE statement per month instead of the 70 pieces of paper I have from this past year.

Before you admonish me for saving bills for so many years, I'll have you know that the Class Action lawsuit against VISA/MasterCard and AMEX go all the way back to 1996. And unlike most normal people who will get $25 out of this lawsuit, I intend on submitting every single bill I have from my once-twice a year trips overseas. I've been upset about those exchange rate finance charges for YEARS and kept those bills just in case someone ever has the brains to file a lawsuit. I can't wait to find out how much this lawsuit will get me.
Last time I participated in a class action lawsuit I got $500 from Toshiba. That bought my first digital camera back in 1999.

I love lawyers!

By the way, this entire cleaning effort on the floor of my computer room is because I started looking for all those credit card bills. I figured while I was doing it, I might as well pile everything else appropriately.

But NOW what?

You Don't Mess with the Zohan

Note to self: Must see this movie!


Favourite quote from the trailer:
"I love my country. But the fighting - when does it end???"
"They've been fighting for 2000 years. It can't be much longer..."

Another dream

Last night's dream involved a unicorn shrimp.


Should I be concerned?

Home #*&@ Home and 1993

On Feb. 10th, 2007 we moved from our home of 11 years to a new home. We put the house on the market on March 2007.

We went straight into the housing market from hell.

The house has been on the market since then.

In November, my husband was sent to Australia for one week during Thanksgiving. The day before Thanksgiving we received an offer on the house.

The offer was horrendous. I had to wake up my husband and consult him on how to deal with it before Thanksgiving. We counter-offered. Day after Thanksgiving it was accepted.

Then we started a long ordeal from hell that drained the life out of our marriage, our lives, our beings. The reason I hadn't been blogging much was because I didn't want to jinx anything or take my anger out at the world only to find that this guy is handicapped or something.

So here's the short story of it:
The guy's original offer was $19K less than our price, plus he asked us to pay his closing fees - $22K.
We said, "sure, why don't we even throw in an extra $50K because we don't know you and we love your negotiation skills."
Our agent worked tirelessly to get a good counter-offer approved by the buyer.
Buyer says "ok. Settlement date is 12/27/2007."
My husband and I sadly agree, though we understood it meant no Christmas presents for any of my family-in-law.
House inspection goes by okay (well, we had to pay $700 for two trademen to fix something as silly as the heater and the sprinklers, but oh well).
Then we get a call on Christmas Eve - "we have a problem. The buyer's lender found out that the guy just purchased a car with $800/month payments and they need to reprocess his paperwork to get the loan approved. Settlement won't occur on 12/27/07. Possibly a day later."

[Fucker! Who buys a new car the week before freaking settling on a house?!!! Your freaking credit is already so low that the lender is demanding 6.75% interest rate and 1 point on your loan, because she's been working with you for several months to get your credit rating up, and because she believes she deserves the profit from this sale, and then you go buy a BMW???]

A bunch of frantic phone calls later and we decide that we have no guarantee that this asshole's loan will be approved even before the new year! "Tell him that after Monday 12/31 - deal is off."
From Christmas Eve till today we've been living from one day to the next, with ten phone calls to our agent, signing addenda upon addenda, faxing and scanning documents back and forth before noon "so we can close tomorrow" (rolling eyes), only to find that the loan has not been approved yet, or conditionally approved, or whatever other status the lender decided to whip out of her ass.
Then the buyer's grandma was brought in as a co-signer.

Closing was finally set for today. At a huge cost to my health. I have been in serious stomach pains since Saturday, unable to eat. Then to supplement this stressful period - I caught another cold. My sixth one since August. Suicide is not out of the question.

This weekend we decided to clean our house from anything we left in good faith for the new buyer (you know, things like two lamps, extra toilet paper, seven packages of wood floor, three packages of floor tiles, light bulbs). In a childish moment, I programmed the address back home on my GPS to announce the arrival to...
[I wish I had a video with sound of this computerized voice pronouncing this...]

Before closing today, we demanded not to be in the same room with the buyer. We couldn't bear to see him or his grandma after the ordeal they had us go through. We came half hour early to sign the paperwork and left.

Our agent stayed behind to get the check after the buyer's signed the settlement. The poor guy had to deal with another last minute development during closing, when the bank announced that the loan has not been processed and it will take two more days, so they cannot give us a check yet. For forty minutes he walked around the building thinking how to break the news to us, before the bank called back to say "screw it, you already signed the closing documents."

Our agent planned on dropping by at the restaurant where we planned to have dinner so he can drop off the check and have a drink with us.

Because you see, today isn't just another day.

1993 is all my husband has to remember.

Then he puts the periods in the right place - 1.9.93 - and there you have it - today is our FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY!

We went to our favourite restaurant, where my husband had a surprise for me. When our agent joined us, he had the waitress bring it out. [Click to enlarge]

The bottle of wine is from our agent. We had an amusing exchange between him and us today. First we gave him a bottle of wine, then it turned out he had one. Then he came to the restaurant to give us a check, then we gave him a check in return because he put in money from his commission to compensate us for the delay in closing (which we didn't think he should have been penalized for), then when we got the check for dinner, the waitress revealed that he had picked up our check before he left to ...

celebrate his birthday!

A fantastic ending to a ten month ordeal. Our house is sold!

GOOBYE, ANNAPOLIS!

Things in common

I know this drawing was uploaded before, but this time it's relevant to the post.

Chickie's post about the possum reminded me of something I haven't revealed yet on this blog.

When I first met my husband we searched for things we had in common. We didn't have a difficult time finding those because some were rather obvious - like we both have blue eyes. And we both have identical hand-writing (which often freaks people out, because it's not a very common hand-writing).

As the years go by, and we shared stories from our lives before we got married, we stumbled upon one of those "matches made in heaven" coincidences.

Apparently, we both had pet Guinea Pigs. Ok, no shocker there. But how many married couples do you know where they both played an integral part in killing those guinea pigs, Huh?!?
Mine lasted a couple of weeks in a cage, before I decided to let it out and play with it. Well, I brought him to my favourite room in the house - the kitchen. The visit to the kitchen took a couple of minutes, before little guy decided to take a stroll into one of the crevices between the cabinet and the oven. So here's me thinking food will lure him out, or calling out to Ziso to come out and play with me. Ziso never came out. He got stuck. Forever.

My husband's story is a bit more exciting. He played with his guinea pig at the top of his bunk bed, when his mother called him for dinner. Well, him being a very energetic kid, took the guinea pig in his hand and jumped down from his bunk bed. You're all thinking now - ok, what's the big deal? Well, what you're missing is that when excited kids jump off the bunk bed, they have a tendency to squeeze their hands tight. So tight that it suffocates little guinea pig that was alive only a second before.

Ok, no need to comment - I know, I know, we're both going to hell.