Procrastination Central

The hunt resumes - visited more new townhouses

nobody@vox.com(Heike) — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:43:31 -0400

I snuck off from work today to see three townhouses that were all in the same area of GHo - all on 16th street. We couldn't get in to one, so I ended up seeing two. The first house is actually what prompted our visit as the listing price of this house just came down considerably and was now in our price range.

Townhouse 1: This one had a bit of an awkwardly shaped living room to make room for the staircase, the fireplace, the half-bath, and the coat closet -- similar to the Bamboo house. The kitchen setup wasn't ideal for me (partly because of this). I have never been fond of kitchens that has all of the stuff along each side wall. It seems like a waste of space. BUT, it had fabulous cabinets - plenty of drawers and a full length cabinet next to the fridge (I can't believe more people don't do that!), with very deep shelves. Perfect for things like the Food Processor, blender, and all that other stuff that you need close by, but don't use enough... and a lazy susan, perfect for food... there was a porch out the back, kind of small - half mulch and half cement - a little unusual. The townhouse also had an unfinished basement, but it has already been studded, so it would be an easy to finish -- a good "Man Room" and plenty of storage as well (something the Kimball House was missing in the basement). The bedrooms on the second floor were a little small, but again, lots of closet space. Unfortunately, the recessed lighting on the first floor did not continue to the second and third floors - crappy lights, ugh. Laundry on the second floor, closets in the hallway and in the bathroom.... third floor is the master bedroom. There wasn't a door on the third floor, something I know Adam isn't a big fan of. The bathroom was very nice, but I wish they had put in a jacuzzi tub. The master closet was phenomenal -- can you tell I value closet/storage space? No roof deck or porch off the bedroom, which was a bummer. The developer made great choices when it came to marble/granite/hardwood choices. Its not EVERYTHING we were looking for, but its a pretty good house - no way it was worth what they were originally listing it for though - no recessed lights throughout? What is that about???

Townhouse 2: I had high hopes for this place because the first floor had great wainscoating in the photos. The layout was straight-through on the first floor and felt larger/wider than the first place. Wasn't a big fan of the kitchen - some of the cabinets were in an unusual place that felt more like an afterthought. The basement was half finished, the front half seemed too small to do anything with, but there was lots of storage space in the back/unfinished half. The fun stopped here. The two bedrooms on the second floor had teeny tiny closets and had cheap carpeting (everything else was hardwood floors). When you walk up the steps there was this funny lost space without a window that was odd. On the third floor they again had a funny layout, with an office/seating area when you walk up the steps, but then a small area for the actual bedroom and the smallest master closet we have seen so far. The realtor and I both thought that the developer didn't do a good job making the best use of space. Why not take some of that lost space and make some decent bedroom closets???

The hunt continues....

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First Hand Evidence of Housing Market Slowdown

nobody@vox.com(Heike) — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:06:59 -0400

When I was at the realtor's office yesterday, I saw that our townhouse had been relisted (makes sense). The house is being listed $10K BELOW where we had agreed to buy it. Our price was already $25K below the original list price. It's interesting that the housing market pullback began almost at the same time as when we signed the contract to buy the Kimball house. Wow!!! Another good reason that we didn't buy that house!

Now we have a chance to buy things that would have previously been out of our price range. Of course, who knows how much farther things will slide. We are going to proceed slowly (mainly because of Adam's very cautious approach). I am determined to keep looking though. I know "OUR" house is out there somewhere.

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Getting Back on the Horse

nobody@vox.com(Heike) — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 11:52:36 -0400

Yesterday, I met with a NEW realtor. She came highly recommened by a work friend of mine who just bought a house himself (during the time that we were battling with the developer). She has an exisiting relationship with one of the higher-ups in his department, so its a great referral. He also mentioned that she enjoyed haggling when it came to price, which makes me feel better about our realtor actually working for us!

I wasn't hugely impressed with her at first, as I thought she and I would spend a little time discussing in greater details things that Adam and I liked and disliked in houses. We had spoken briefly the day before and she had run a list of places that met my initial criteria. I was procrastinating at work earlier in the day and had a list of 5 places that have come to market in the last month that I thought were worthwhile. All 5 that I had selected were on her list, which I found encouraging. Three of them are located around 16th & Montrose, so we are going to look at them this afternoon. One of them recently had about 40K shaved off the price so it is no in our price range. My only grumble about this woman so far is that she likes walking to see the listings, which is annoying for me, because it is much harder to slip away from the office to house hunting if I have to tack on 20min each way to walk to the neighborhood where we are looking. Or, I have to wait for the bus, or pay for a cab. It was nice that our old realtor was always picking us up on the way to see houses.

Stay tuned!

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What to make of this blog....

nobody@vox.com(Heike) — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 09:11:45 -0400

Dear Dave and Others I have recently given my blog address to.... WELCOME!

You are probably looking for details regarding the crap that has gone with the house and instead have found some entries/rantings having to do with my intern, violence in philly, and the gender wage gap issue, among other zany, irrelevant topics -- I've been a little nutty lately!

The quickest way to weed through the garbage and find the entries related to the townhouse drama is to select the "house drama" TAG on the right-hand side. If you really want the whole story - you can start with the "house hunting" tag {note the space between the words} -- that will take you back all the way to the begin when we began this nightmare of a journey.... in hindsight, I'm glad we didn't end up buying the Bamboo or Parish houses... the search continues.

Happy Reading!

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I'M FUMING!!!

nobody@vox.com(Heike) — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:10:02 -0400

I have been very impressed with my Spring Intern and was thrilled when he asked if he could stay on through the summer.... (Its a ten week program and our interns always leave right when we get them to the point where they are actually helpful). He had approached me before I started the massive project of interviewing (25 candidates for 3 openings) and I told him I would be happy to have him stay for the summer, IF he PROMISED to stop looking for summer positions elsewhere -- I couldn't have him find something else after we had finished selecting our candidates and then I was stuck with noone. (DO YOU SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING?). Today, he informed that he is taking a summer position in NYC. ARGH!!!

We are about to fire the useless Associate on our team and I was counting on my Intern to pick up a fair amount of slack. Because I knew he was staying with us longer than normal, I have been going out of my way to train him.... now it seems, it was all for nothing - a complete drain on my time. In the meantime, I found terrific interns for the other research teams -- one of them would have been my intern had I been looking (I get first dibs because I do all the leg work -- very time consuming responsibility). Now I'm stuck scraping the bottom of the barrel. Not only are the top candidates taken, but since so much time has gone by, our B list students have found positions as well.

I'M FUMING!!!

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Gender gap in pay widening - this is such crap!

nobody@vox.com(Heike) — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 10:57:03 -0400

Can you tell I'm fired up today? This study showed that the wage gap starts right out of college (even though women have a higher average GPA than men - I left that part of the article out). By looking at students one year out of college, the impact of women choosing family over career/work is removed. Stupid Men! This is such bullshit!

Salaries for college-educated women lag those of men soon after graduation, a new report says. The gap grows with time.

Bloomberg News

A gap in pay between U.S. college-educated men and women starts soon after graduation and widens over time, according to a study released yesterday. One year after receiving degrees, women working full time already earned 20 percent less than men, a report from the American Association of University Women found. The difference grew to about 30 percent a decade after graduation. Not all the gap can be explained by factors known to affect wages, such as gender occupational differences or child-rearing responsibilities, the report said. About a quarter of the difference in earnings remains even when comparing men and women with similar jobs and family situations. "Relatively small gaps out of college are something to be concerned about," Catherine Hill, research director for the project, said in an interview. "Our study points to the continuing persistence of discrimination as a problem in the workplace."

Other studies have shown that the divide in earnings may have widened over the last 10 years.

One year after graduation, women made more than men in just one field, engineering, and made at least 90 percent as much in four others, according to a breakdown of findings for 10 professions. Pay in the five remaining disciplines ranged from 75 percent to 88 percent of men's salaries.

"Part of this, we know, is probably gender discrimination," said Sylvia Allegretto, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute who had not yet seen the AAUW study. "But there's also the idea that women are less tied to the labor market."

According to Census Bureau statistics released last year, the pay gap for full-time workers at all education levels was the narrowest ever, with women earning 77 cents for every dollar paid to men. Education Department figures show the share of women attending college rose to 51 percent in 2003, from 33 percent three decades earlier.

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A little scary - where's the "Brotherly Love"?

nobody@vox.com(Heike) — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 10:16:56 -0400

At least 10 people died over the weekend as bullets cut through several Philadelphia neighborhoods - including Center City, where homicides are rare - and at a barbecue in West Philadelphia. At least nine others were wounded in shootings or stabbings. Despite the national spotlight on gun violence after the Virginia Tech massacre and at least three antiviolence conferences held in Philadelphia last week, the homicide toll climbed to 127 (from the Philadelphia Inquirer).

It's awfully scary that Philadelphia's murder rate has skyrocketed this year!! The latest count, 127 murders year-to-date in Philly is higher than the number of murders in New York City this year! While most of these murders are happening in poorer areas and involve young african americans shooting one another, some of this is hitting closer to home. We live in Centery City, where one of the murders occurred - its about 12 blocks from where we live, but just two blocks away from where we had dinner on Saturday night. And a few weeks ago there was a shooting at a bar less than 2 blocks from our apartment building.

More than 100 murders so far this year, more than 80 percent of them involving handguns. More than 400 shootings, an average of five a day. A 40 percent increase in homicides since 2002. Almost 85 percent of shooters and victims have criminal records. More than $100 million in hospital charges for assault-related medical care. Not enough jobs or social services, and way too many guns. (more from the Inquirer)

Gun control anyone??? I don't usually like to get involved in political debates, but I find it UNBELIEVABLE that PA officials are opposed to enacting a law that would limit people to only able to buy one firearm a month. It drives me nuts that they claim this is infringing second amendment rights. All these nutty officials from rural, hunting-land, middle of nowhere, PA are dictating legislation that is perpetuating the increase in homicides witnessed in Philly. Drives me nuts!!!!

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I thought this was hilarious!!!

nobody@vox.com(Heike) — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 08:28:04 -0400

MEN

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Hide & Seek with our Stuff

nobody@vox.com(Heike) — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:26:16 -0400

Each day brings a new hunt for our stuff: A purse to match an outfit, a DVD, tuperware, a clean towel..... On Saturday it was a blanket so we could loung outside. On Sunday, it was a pair of shorts for Adam and a casserole dish for dinner. (Update: Monday night: Food Processor)..... I feel like the problem is exponentially growing. With each day that passes, we are looking for more stuff. We are probably about 75% packed - living around the boxes We were actually more packed, but once we knew we weren't moving we actually UNPACKED some boxes - no joke. I already had 3 boxes of food all packed up as we entered the home stretch. Adam was teasing me for my over-organized packing (I was writing a lot on the boxes explaining what's inside), but its coming in pretty handy! We have hidden as many boxes as we can in the "scary" closet. I was starting to feel claustrophobic. I first started packing back in late July/early August when we thought we were moving to NYC - I want to have access to our stuff! I haven't seen our fondue pot in 9 months!

Boxes

So, now what? Great Question! How long can we live among the boxes? I really don't want to live in our current apartment building anymore - I have been emotionally prepared to move out for ages now. I just can't resign myself to staying in that place for another year (and unpacking!). At the same time, we have not had any luck in the past finding a place to rent that is as nice (and big) as our current place for the same price. Other places have either been a dump, teeny, or twice as expensive.

We had been largely ignoring this dilema over the weekend, taking in the sun and enjoying a weekend of lounging in Rittenhouse Square. It was one of the nicest weekend we have had in months! I am coming into my busy season next week and it will last until May 10th - so we can't ignore this for long. (I cheated a little - this photo is actually from lounging in RIttenhouse last spring, but it looked the same this weekend).

IMG_0007

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Why Do I Get Involved???

nobody@vox.com(Heike) — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:49:21 -0400

Wednesday is Adminstrative Appreciation Day (formerly known as Secretary's Day). I mentioned something to my boss on Friday so we could coordinate a small gift. She works in another office, so it needs to be a little bit more planned that if we were sitting next to one another. Realizing that the Men/Analysts in my office were unlikley to do anything for their Admin I mentioned something to the two Analysts that I really like. I figure its not fair to the Admin that they have clueless bosses. While I was at it, I decided to clue in the Director of my department, since the past the department has usually treated the Admin to lunch.

How do I get rewarded for clueing in the Director? By being responsible for ordering the Admin their lunch!!!!

Admin appr

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