Something I saw the other day

I found this old sign while walking home from the Beacon Hill light rail station a few days ago:

From Blogger Pictures

I had to do a double take. Someone in 20th century Seattle actually thought  that this was a clever name for a cafe?

Kid 1: "Hey guys, I"m bored. Where do you want to go?"

Kid 2: "I know - let's go hang out at the K.K.K!"

Ughh.

Fortunately, the Triple-K no longer exists (that I can discern, anyway). There is a bakery-flower shop at the site, and adjacent to it is the Seattle Supermarket. Which really isn't, but that's a discussion for another day. Maybe.

The Day Before

One of  the good things about working in the tech industry is that, if you have the right setup, you can work from home on occasion. Varolii issues laptops to its employees, and the VPN connection is usually very reliable; more often than not, the only chokepoint is my own wireless network; thankfully, since we dumped Clearwire (whose service in both Leschi and mid-Beacon Hill has never been that great in the first place) in favor of Qwest DSL, we don't have much of a problem in that area.

I bring up the above so as to set the stage for the meat of my post today. I elected to work from home because I promised Carrie that I would pick up our Thanksgiving turkey this morning from Bob's Quality Meats in Columbia City so that I could dunk it into a quick-brine solution for overnight. Before I could do that, however, I had to go to a doctor's appointment in Belltown. After that, I would have to make my way to Columbia City, pick up the turkey, then schlep it back home in time to call in for a 11:00 AM meeting and get a few hours of work in before breaking to prep for T-Bird day.

Having accomplished all of my work-related goals for today, I'm content to sign off and spend the evening with Carrie getting things readiy for a wonderful feast tomorrow.

If I, for some reason, don't say it tomorrow - Happy Thankgiving!

My weekend - first time on a new run - more mashups - second playlist of 2009

On Saturday, Carrie and I (after a nice hearty breakfast of grilled chicken sausage and eggs) went into Ranier Valley in Seattle so that we could go to a sale being held by Kate Spade, featuring her organics line of baby clothes. Now this was quite an event, since ordinarily this line of clothes sells for beucoup dineros in her retail stores, and this weekly sale was featuring many of her leftover and discontinued styles for wholesale prices; additionally, they were firre-selling everything at half off, so Carrie and I walked out of there having spent $130.00 for what could easily have been $500 worth of clothes.

Like I had mentioned, this was being held in Ranier Valley, which is a neighborhood just south of the trendier Columbia City business district, which happens to be where our favorite butcher, bakery, farmers market and diner is located at. Ranier Valley itself, however, is strictly a working-class neighborhood that has unfortunately suffered the effects of urban blight and neglect. So the neighborhood has its own set of problems; however, it's not an entirely bad place, and there are more than a few fine establishments there, so to hear well-off people complain about having to drive into the "Ghetto" in order to get their discounted Kate Spade Organics baby clothes was more than a little sickening. If these people felt so strongly about having to suffer the presence of the less fortunate while they themselves fill thier minivans and SUV's with discounted boutique baby clothes, they should have saved themselves the drive and paid retail price at a mall in the exurbs.

But that's just me. And I digress.

When we had first looked at what was then our future house together, Carrie and I fell in love with the place, but we knew that a few things had to be changed, chief amongst them the color scheme. The previous owners definitely had thier own sense of style and asthetics, which is fine, but it's not ours. So, we went down to Lowes with a basic idea of what needed to be changed, got a few paint samples, took them back home, and put them on our walls. Sunday, satisfied that we had made the right choices, we went back to Lowes and bought four gallons of primer and five gallons of paint so that we can paint the living room, kitchen, hallway and kids room. We'll also be painting our front door as well, so hopefully, the weather this weekend will cooperate and be decent enough for us to leave everything open so that we can air the place out without freezing to death.

Doin' th' Runnin' Man

Well - gotta get into shape. I've come to realize that my cardiovascular health has deteriorated a bit since I stopped working out regularly last Fall (that was when we gave up our memberships at 24 Hour Fitness and embarked on our ill-fated Wii Fitness experiment), so - despite the fact that I absolutely despise doing it, and the fact that it makes both my shins and knees feel like holy hell after I'm done with it - I've decided to take up running in the mornings, at least until I can get a used bike and start riding it part of the way to work.

Let me back up...

Carrie and I bought a Wii Fit back last November, thinking that we were going to save on Gym memberships. Thing is - due to the size of our apartment, only one of us could work out at a time, and that also meant that the other person either couldn't watch the TV, or, if they didn't want to watch TV in the first place, they were subjected to the noise of the console. In either case, neither one of us saw the benefit in using it after about a month, so we ended up joining an expensive gym in Madison Park, and then we enrolled in the Samraya Center when we started our house hunt; we knew that we were moving pretty far away from Madison Park, so we quit the gym, but we were - and still are - committed to the yoga.

Okay, back to the present -

Since Beacon Avenue South has a very nice median with a walkway, I've decided to use that instead of doing either the Greenlake or Seward Park thing.

Here is my first trek - .7 miles one way, ~1.5 round trip. It's pretty good, since I can pace myself and build up to running the entire route slowly. I'm shooting for running to Dawson, walking to Ferdinand, running to and from Columbian to Dawson, walking to Brandon, and then sprinting the rest of the way to Orcas. Each week, I'd like to eliminate a walking route from the route until, at the end of the month, I'm running the entire 1.r5 mile route.


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So, if I can do this by September, here is what I'd like to do for that month - a slightly longer route:

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Now, assuming that I can run the entire first course, I should be able to run all the way from Orcas to Myrtle, do a walking turn around, walk to Holly, run to Graham, walk to Spencer, then kick it to Orcas. I eliminate one walk per week until I can do the entire run without a break.

Hopefully, by this time, I'll have a bike that I can ride to and from Orcas to the new Light Rail station along Beacon:

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If I don't have a bike - it probably won't be too big a deal anyway, since it's only 2 miles, and I should be able to jog that distance, and not get too sweaty - it will be October, and I can do the jog on the way back home, so that I can take a shower if need be.

Macpherson's Fruit & Produce

This place is great!!
Carrie and I went there the other day for some ffnv - we got a whole bag fulla stuff for only ten dollars. Granted, we'll have to use it all within the next couple of days, but it's worth it. As Carrie quipped after our first visit, "Ever feel like you've just mugged someone?"


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Our new Neighborhood

So far, we’ve found our new neighborhood to be a pretty friendly one.  It’s mostly Asian with sprinklings of Caucasian and African American throughout, and there are quite a few Africans and Hispanics nearby. Our part of Beacon Hill is definitely a working class neighborhood. Both of these facts make our ‘hood very different from the bleached out rarified hues of our old Leschi Digs.  Plus, plenty of people have come up to introduce themselves to us – again, much different than Leschi, which to me is the “Seattle Freeze” typified. I’m looking forward to what the upcoming years will bring.

At Last!

It almost didn’t seem like it would happen. Our initial lender fell through at the last moment, and our mortgage company stepped up and scrambled trying to get a replacement. The replacement lenders didn’t offer the nice slim interest rate of the first lender (the later was half a percent higher), and demanded that we carry more insurance on our property – but we ended up getting things done in the long run.
On what was supposed to be closing day, we discovered that, due to a miscommunication between the lenders and our escrow company, a single document hadn’t been signed! That held closing up for a day, which meant that we had to close and move pretty much on the same day. We had to wait until 3:30 before we could get the keys and step foot inside our own house. Oh – and note to self – never rent a U-Haul from the location on Ranier. The people there are very poorly trained, and the “manager” has a major attitude problem.
But I digressed. It took us six hours over two trips to move out of our old place and into our new one. We’re still unpacking and cleaning to this day, but it’s well worth it. We have a beautiful place that we are in the process of truly making our own.

Signing day

Carrie and I signed a bunch of documents yesterday - about half an hour in, our hands were getting tired, and we were still looking at three inches of paperwork still to go - at the very end, we had to sign a piece of paper attesting to the fact that we had just signed a bunch of other pieces of paper. How meta!  Anyway, the deal's not quite done yet, as we  now have to wait for the VA, Lender  and King County to bless the union between humans and house.  We'll know (and possibly) celebrate by the end of the business day today!

It ain't real until the keys are in your hands...

...which may be today!

Part dos

So, our Realtor (who also happens to be our current landlord) put in an offer that was about $25k below the seller's asking price. The seller "countered" with their original asking price, plus some concessions on our part. Carrie and I were thinking "WTF?"

It turns out that the seller's agent was one of these discount brokers who was on vacation in some remote area in Oregon, and wasn't really giving them any meaningful input - we were (and still are) dealing directly with the sellers themselves. So it was up to our agents to walk the sellers through the process, and show them why our offer was a fair one. In the end, we agreed on a price that was twenty grand less than what they were asking, and our agents provided the sellers with a market analysis to back up our offer - sort of like a mini-appraisal.

Which brings me to the next hurdle that we had to get through - the appraisal itself! The sellers bought the house during the height of the Seattle housing boom about three years ago, when it was a seller's market, and it was the people who were selling the houses who were pretty much providing the appraised values for the land. Flash forward three years to our present economy, and, while there are bargains to be had, if a seller wants to sell their house without taking too much of a loss, they will have a hard time doing so (and they buyer will have a hard time getting financing) if the property does not appraise for the agreed-upon price!

*sigh* More to come.

House Hunting, part one

Carrie and I are in the process of buying our first house (first together and as individuals).

First, we did the Redfin thing - looking up houses, then going out to the various locations and giving them a rather cursory visual inspection. We had done this with a couple of places in West Seattle, Beacon Hill, Seward Park, Madison Valley and the Central District. We ended that day at a condo in Columbia City.

Then, I had gone out with our realtors by myself looking for a place, since her work schedule is a bit less flexible than mine. We looked at a place that Carrie and I had looked at in Seward Park, but went inside this time. Wow - this place, which looked charming from the outside, was a bit depressing on the inside. We then went to Beacon Hill and found an Extremelly Nice Place which I thought that Carrie would fall in love with. We then ventured to view two blah townhouses, one in Beacon Hill and one in the Central District. There was also another house in the CD as well, but that one was tiny with no yard to speak of.

Carrie and I went out next to view a place in Judkins. Nope - too close to Ranier.

We then went out with our realator to Greenwood ( one really nice place, but too close to power lines, and one blah place), Maple Leaf (yikes! I mean the house, not the neighborhood), West Seattle (one in Arbor Heights - a bit too far from the action for me, one closer to Westwood - too small, and one around Gatewood - too small, and a couple of hoodlooms ruined the neighborhood experiance by yelping like dogs as we got out of the car), and Beacon Hill.

My instincts were right - Carrie loved the place!

Next up - the offer!