Packed weekend

Wow, what a fun and packed weekend we had!

It started off with a visit from my BBF Stacey on Friday. We've been friends since we were 6 years old, and she's that kind of friend that we can lose touch for a year, yet catch right back up. She's on her way to new adventures in grad school in NY, and it was awesome to see her before she headed off. We enjoyed a new restaurant with her and capped off the night with some unique ice cream (thai chili for B, ginger cookies and cream for me, coconut and hazelnut for Stacey).

Saturday we were going to go test drive a car we were interested in (the Ford Fusion) and then a trip to a Sake place that we had a groupon for. Weeeelllll, we got a little sidetracked when we learned there were a few different car dealerships out by the Ford one (we hated the Fusion by the way). We wandered over to Mazda/Subaru/Nissan. That little "why not, since we're here" detour led us to trade in this:

and this:

for this (not our actual car):
It's a Mazda 3 hatchback, and ours is dark grey. Since we're a 1-car household now, we decided to get the top-of-the-line model (leather, sunroof, dual climate, 6 disc CD, etc). So far we love it, although it sits in the garage more often than we drive it!

The car shopping/buying ended up taking the entire afternoon/early evening, and we quickly headed off to a BBQ at my sister's. It was mostly people that we didn't know, but they all knew each other from meeting at a bar! Really! I have no idea why I think that's so cool, but I do (since everyone was in their 30's and 40's). They are all real life friends now because they drink at the same watering hole. It was fun, but we were tired and headed home for some much needed sleep.

Sunday we had to head back to the dealership (almost an hour away) to give them my car, and we then headed on to the Sake tasting. Our Groupon was for a shock flight, which was 5 Sakes paired with food.

Obviously the "food" was a bit sparse, but it was interesting (see menu above).

We had a good time and tried 2 additional sakes. Admittedly I didn't really like any but the really sweet ones, but it was fun to try something new. We also got a tour of the sakery and learned all about making sake (basically rice, koji mold, and water).

We bought a few bottles (plum sake and coconut lemongrass that we thought would be fantastic with thai food).

After getting home, I turned around and went to my parent's house to get my mom for a volunteer appreciation picnic. We are both involved in a local cat rescue, and every summer they have a picnic for the volunteers. It was nice to catch up with some of the volunteers we haven't seen in awhile, although the picnic was a little boring. Cat trivia just isn't my thing! My mom enjoyed it though, and it was a feel-good event for her.

I got home about 7pm and then barely moved for the rest of the night :) We watched The Food Cart Challenge (or whatever it's called) and called it a night. It was a packed weekend, but so much fun!

Summertime and the livin's easy

It's always a good idea to blog while slightly tipsy, right? Right? It is when you're bragging about living in a place where you can walk to at least 2 dozen happy hours! We live diagonally across the street from a brewpub with a fantastic happy hour. They have 15-20 items on their menu, and so far everything we've tried has been good.

Although I frequently use my blog as a venting space, things are going really well. The weather has been great, so I've stopped driving to work. Instead, I walk the .62 miles to our light rail and take that into work (it stops 1 block from my office). It's delightful to start my day off with a walk in the fresh morning air. While I can't promise I'll continue when the rainy season starts, it's great for now. Once they finish repairing the bridge near our place I might ride my bike as well.

In my entire life I've never lived in a place where I could walk everywhere. I'm totally loving it. The closest grocery store is 1 block away, Whole Foods is just a few blocks, Trader Joe's is a few more blocks, and the restaurants are too numerous to count. We lived in our house for almost a year and only really knew one neighbor, yet already in our apartment we know several people and we've been invited for wine around the fire pit. We've enjoyed fresh cookies while sitting in the courtyard, and we've wandered the neighborhood in the evening after work. We feel a new-found sense of freedom with an extra hour after work since we have short commutes. Bored and want a movie to watch? Just walk across the street to the Blockbuster box or take the mile walk to one of THREE local theaters. It's ideal in these warm summer days.

In an ironic twist to the rant about Comcast, our "free" wireless they promised doesn't work at all on my computer, and intermittently on Bryan's computer. While they are "actively working on it" and appreciated me letting them know it didn't work, it's really hard to live without internet (or TV). We can't have any type of dish due to other buildings, and the rabbit ears only got 1 channel well (CBS - unless you count the Jesus stations that came in perfectly clear!). We had to cave and get Comcast again. The bright side is we got a great deal ($59.99 for cable and internet) and no contract. We hope our building gets everything figured out before our promo deal ends in 6 months so we can cancel. It sucked to have to give them our money again, but we're paying less than half of what we paid before, so we're still "saving" money.

City life

I've never been able to be a consistent blogger, and moving sure isn't helping. It's been so long since I've stopped to write, but every night between packing to move and unpacking from the move it's all I can do to stay awake until 10pm.

We're finally out from our house, but not without a few snags. First off, the closing estimate said we'd get ~$1,800 back. Now I know this is just an estimate, but these people do estimates for a living. You can imagine our shock when we got the final closing statement and we owed $750. We certainly were NOT expecting to have to write a check to get out. It turns out they "forgot" about 2 months of interest. We will get about $700 of it back, plus the $485 for homeowners insurance the bank decided to pay 3 weeks early, but it was still frustrating.

The second snag was the movers forgetting about us. What follows is my Yelp review:

I made the moving appointment a month in advance, and I got a confirmation number. I scheduled for 9am. At 9:15am on move day, I called to see where they were. Without asking who I was, the woman said "they are on their way." I told her she didn't know who I was, and when I told her, she starts flipping through paper and I hear an "uh oh." That is NOT what you want to hear on move-out day for a house that is closing that day.

She then tells me she "forgot to transfer me from her notebook to the wall," which was her way of saying "I forgot about you, and you have no movers coming." She assures me she'll get someone to my house by 11am at the latest, and that a crew is on their way in. 11:30am comes, and no movers. I call her back, and she says she is still waiting on a mover, and when he gets there they are still at least 30 minutes away. She apologizes profusely and says we "won't be charges for any drive time," since this was her fault and she knows this is a huge problem for us. 12:15 the mover calls and says they are on their way.

2pm STILL no movers, and we have to leave to sign on the sale of the house. The move is supposed to be long over by now, and still nothing. I had to beg my mom to come wait for them. 2:15 they finally show up. The 2 movers are kind, and they are the good guys since they came in on our day off. However, one of them is only in his 3rd day of the job, so he needs lots of coaching and direction from the lead mover. This significantly slows them down.

To make a long story less long, they arrive over 5 hours late and take a whopping 5.5 hours to move things that are all within one room of our house (we were super organized). They got stuck in an hour of rush hour traffic, which we were charged for, despite her saying we wouldn't be. She was rude when I called her, and made herself sound like the hero that "hadn't charged me for 2 hours of driving, or the overtime since it went past 7pm." Um, they had overtime and all of that driving because of an accident and rush hour traffic that wouldn't have happened IF YOU HAD PUT US ON THE SCHEDULE. Needless to say, we'd rather throw all of my stuff away rather than use Thunder Movers again.
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So yeah, it was stressful. In the end the owner did wave the hour of drive time, although we still feel overcharged. The happy part of the story is we are moved, mostly unpacked, and loving city life. Work is super close, and we've been able to explore the new neighborhood some. We can walk to things like the farmer's market, which we did tonight. It feels lovely to have simplified, and once we got things unpacked we realized this is plenty of space for us. While we don't think this is where we will be long-term (the 2 months free made it affordable, but we're unlikely to get that if we re-sign in a year), we're looking forward to what this year of urban life has to bring.

Ode to Comcast

We've sold our house and we're moving soon. As part of that move, we called up Comcast to move our services. Keep in mind that I (and we) have been Comcast customers for years. At ~$150 per month, they have made a ton of money off of me.

B signed us up for whatever package we have here (triple play, plus HD box, plus second box, etc). That came with a 2 year contract. Our new place has free wireless, so we don't need internet anymore. We also only have the phone line since it's virtually free with the package, but we don't need it since we both have cell phones. B calls to transfer our cable to the new place, and he's told there is a $150 fee for breaking our contract. Keep in mind we don't want to cancel Comcast, we just want to only have cable (still about $60-70 per month). He talks to both their online chat and to a person on the phone, and both refuse to help. He says we'll just cancel, sets a termination date, and then has me try a few days later.

The rep I get understands what I want, and he understands that I think it's short-sighted to lose a long-term customer over $150. He looks into my account more, and then decides I'm a liar about the free internet since other people in my building have Comcast. Yes, I patiently explain, they do. We get free wireless because we live across from the party room. He still refuses to transfer our service without the fee, so I confirm our cancellation date and ask where we return all of the boxes.

So the moral of the story is that Comcast would rather lose a customer over $150 than continue to get at least $60-70 per month from said customer for at least another year (and likely many more years). The fact that we have paid thousands and never had a late bill means nothing.

I was mad at first, but now that I realize we spent a whopping $1,800 a year on Comcast services, I'm thrilled to have that much extra money to spend on vacations, Netflix, eating out, and generally having a good time. Suck it Comcast!