for the love of snow

My brother’s response to my e-mail about how jealous I am that he’s actually getting snow amused me:

Kevin to me
I wouldn’t be…. it’s VERY inconvenient. The first 9 inches was fun. The second 14 inches was still cool. But now, another 6-12 inches… not so much. This is definitely the wildest winter I can EVER remember. Roanoke has been even worse, too!
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On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 5:59 PM, Jennifer O____ wrote:
I am SO jealous of all the snow you are getting!

The cool thing about getting snow in Southern Virginia is that they just can’t handle it. There are two many mountains and not enough snowplows. You have to stay home and play. Though, I suppose as an adult it might not be as fun.

airlines padding schedules

A nice article in the WSJ about how airlines are padding schedules. I actually don’t really mind. I’m sure it would bother me if I flew all the time, but as it is, a large percentage of my flights occur over the holidays, so the schedule padding probably just makes the flights feasible.

work sucks

Often, I hate my job. The problem is, I just can’t find another one that I think I’d like any better.

food rules

My husband and sister are living evidence that staying thin and exercising a lot will not keep you healthy. B has a couple of ailments often associated with obesity. He’s always been fit, but he’s caught the running bug in the past year, and he’s gotten crazy fit and his clothes are falling off him. However, if anything, this affected his health negatively.

I started thinking about this after reading the NYT article on Pollan’s new book. I loved Omnivore’s Dilemma. In Defense of Food was a little terse for my taste. Now he’s come out with a Cliff’s Notes version of that. Still, I think Pollan is great. I wish he would write another real book.

seattle real estate

B and I went to look at houses this weekend. We’ve been sort of looking at places online for a while, and we just went to all the houses on our list that had open houses on Sunday between 1 and 4. There were 8 houses on that short list, and we saw 6 of them. Our thought is that we may be interested in buying a house next winter (a year from now) and we’d like to build some familiarity with the market between now and then, perhaps looking at houses every couple of months or so.

The houses we looked at were MUCH nicer than the ones I looked at 3.5 years ago. First, prices have dropped significantly around here. Even with my old budget, the houses would have been significantly nicer. Second, our budget is larger since there are two of us. Two years ago, I was looking at houses in Seattle, and my max price range was 350K. Really, I strongly preferred to be under 320K and wanted to be at 300K if possible. (In the end, I was.) Anyway, I loved W. Seattle. In W. Seattle, 350K got you a seriously dilapidated dwelling of absolutely no more than 700 sq. ft. with no basement or garage or potentially a nicer place of 600 sq. ft. That is really small. 700 sq. ft. in an old house (not modern apartment) means no dishwasher, probably no eating area, full-sized bed and so on. Today, 350K gets you a modest house of up to about 1000 sq. ft. that needs work, perhaps with a basement for storage. Up your budget 100K, and you can find some seriously nice houses. I guess I was a little blown away just by contrast to the places I’d seen before. I think the motto of this story is, if you can’t afford to shop in a real estate area, accept that and move on and forget the “dollhouses” (what they call these tiny houses around here).

Anyway, we actually ended up finding a place we loved, this one. I guess that is the danger in looking at houses when you’re not ready to buy. It had this turret, which might seem impractical to some, but it had two little rooms, which were basically perfect as offices. Since B works from home, a nice office for him to work in is a very high priority. The place has been on the market for 130 day, so should go for significantly less than asking. Anyway, we are not really in a position to buy a house right now, but it was tempting to think about.

I would like to not use a buying agent this time around. I really feel the buying agent added very little value the first time, and having made offers on at least 6 houses, I’m very familiar with the paperwork and the process around here. I found this article which stated the following: “There are certain things you should never do without the help of a professional – undergo surgery, go to court, fix a gas leak, perform electrical work, and, of course, buy a house.” I have to say, I find it a little ridiculous to compare a surgeon to a real estate agent. The former requires just a hair more in qualifications. If you google “how to become a real estate agent,” you find an article stating that you can train for the job and begin working with “a matter of months.”