Anti-Room Service

I despise room service. When I travel I almost never order it. But the other night I had no choice. And in so many ways it reminded me of why I had made such a point of avoiding it.

The Place: downtown Atlanta
The Date: Sunday, October 21st
The Time: 10pm

Having just arrived into the city I was looking to grab a quick bite to eat and then head to bed. I was just looking for something light and simple. I figured Atlanta was such a world class city (yes I am still habouring a little resentment that Atlanta won the 1996 Olympic bid over Toronto) that it had to have something around to eat, even if it was 10pm on a Sunday (since there is no doubt that I would have a variety of delicious cuisines to choose from on a late-Sunday-night food run in Toronto).

I knew I was sunk when even the concierge had no recommendations for me. Even to grab some take out or whatever. I quickly hit the street to see if I could find anything suitable.

Now I rarely and I mean rarely get nervous walking in large cities alone in the evening. I have gone out for slices of pizza in NYC at who knows what hour of the night and late night Vietnamese in Dallas. I should stop here before I make Christopher nervous... But for some reason, when I was walking around Peachtree & Andrew Young International I didn't like it. So I decided to admit defeat and head back to the solace of my hotel room. So with my only other choice being the , I decided to order room service. Here is a picture of my "Confetti of Field Greens Accompanied by Crispy Potato Crostini"

Yum - salad from a bag topped with ridged potato chips. For $9.50 no less! This was definitely enough to keep me off room service for another decade.

Beat the Bank

The first thing we did when we began our whole home buying process was go to our bank to get "pre-approved" - which means nothing really, but that's a whole other story.

When we went in to the Bank of America to meet with a mortgage advisor we were introduced to the "Best Value Guarantee". In nutshell, if you are approved for a mortgage by the B of A and then decide not to close with them, they will give you $250.

Sound too good to be true? Well I am ecstatic to announce that we received our $250 cheque today! Of course the B of A doesn't make it *easy* for you to collect on their guarantee. But with a little legwork it becomes well worth the hassle, IMHO.

For any of you out there who stumble across this posting, here are the steps I went through to get our reward:

• Figure out how to apply for the redemption. Though the pamphlet that we were given at the bank doesn't have any details on how to go about collecting, a quick Google search reveals that you need to phone 800.870.3206 to answer a brief automated phone survey
• At the beginning of the survey they tell you that at the end they will provide the fax number and mailing address to send in a copy of your HUD-1 to prove that you actually closed and closed with another lender (in addition to giving them all the details they ever wanted to know about their competition). Note: write down BOTH the fax number and the mailing address. I planned to fax, so I only wrote down the fax number. But the fax number was bogus so I had to do the whole survey over again to get the mailing address
• Fax Number: 800.272.0562 When I first did the survey I swear the fax number they listed was 800.272.0576 which is disconnected and made me very cynical. However when doing the research for this blog post it seems to have been fixed, so I'm slightly less cynical than before)
• Mailing Address #1 Bank of America Best Value Guarantee, Attn: Pauly Bradshaw, 1375 North Highway Drive, Fenton, MO 63099
• Mailing Address #2 Bank of America Best Value Guarantee, Attn: Pauly Bradshaw, 1375 North Highway Drive, Fenton, MO 63026-1929
• Why 2 mailing address you ask? Well, the curious cat that I am, I was interested in knowing where this Bank of America location was and I looked up Mailing Address #1 on Google Maps. However, I was slightly confused when the zip code came up as 63026. So I looked up the zip on USPS.com and found it listed as 63026-1929 which matched Google Maps. Just to cover my bases I mailed a second letter to Mailing Address #2

And after 29 days of patience, my efforts were duly rewarded with a cheque in the mail for $250 :)

I Like Caulk

Some people look at old houses as so much work - I see ours as a puzzle. I am continually fascinated by the craftsmanship and intricacies of our home. In some instances "they don't build 'em like the used to" is quite true - many of our walls are a very solid lath and plaster and our foundation is a double-thick stone monstrosity. However our 20+ oil burning boiler leaves much to be desired in regards to heating efficiency.

This weekend I gained an appreciation for the double-hung sash window. Save for 7 vinyl replacement windows upstairs, all the windows in our home are original (read: cracked/loose panes, broken/missing sash cords, and painted shut/open). In an effort to keep this winter's heating oil bills to a manageable level (see aforementioned oil boiler) as soon as we moved in we began the first phase of our process of window rehabilitation.

Our windows have an outside track where winter storm windows as well as summer screen inserts fit. These tracks have carefully placed notches to help you get the window/screen in easily. I was probably doing it wrong before, but in every other place I have lived when I needed to remove the screens it was a struggle and usually ended up with me slightly bending the screen to get it in/out.

This weekend we focused on the storm windows, next spring we'll work on the screens (our home repair is definitely on an on-demand basis). We carefully removed 4 cracked storm windows which I will bring in to the glass repair shop tomorrow morning to be fitted with new panes ( I draw the DIY line at cutting my own glass). One of the storms had glass that was in good shape, except its seal to its metal frame had deteriorated. So we set off to Lowe's to buy some silicon caulk to seal it with. Mind you with so many choices found in the sealant aisle we have no idea if what we used is optimal (we didn't really do much research on this project), but it was inexpensive and it seems to be doing the job. I am not one to argue with either of these two scenarios, especially when they happen to coincide :)

For a first-timer I think I did a pretty good job with the caulking gun. I managed to keep the smearing of caulk on the window to a minimum and didn't wreck anything else in the process (of which there was a high potential since I was doing this on our living room floor!) So right now I am enjoying a personal high of DIY prowess, or could this be fumes from the caulk curing beside me...

PS. Thing brings the list of Tools My First House Taught me to Use to a grand total of 3: electric hedge trimmer, reciprocating saw, & caulking gun.

I put some new shoes on...

"I'm wearing my brand new shoes"

Tyson now wears shoes around the house. It prevents him from scratching the hardwood floors. Nancy wanted some sneaker-style ones with flames on them, but I was concerned about the quality of those ones. I have to admit, these ones aren't the most flattering. Maybe he'll get something a little more stylish for his next pair.

Tyson now bears an even stronger resemblance to his favorite toy, Camel.

Good things come in threes

This past weekend is tough to top. They say that good things come in threes and this weekend was no exception.

Golf: On a beautiful sunny fall day Christopher and I played in a end-of-season golf tournament for the golf league at my work. It was just best-ball so it was just for fun. We had a great time and both of us made some contributions to our team's shots so that was good. I sunk a 15 foot put for eagle on one hole and Christopher drove the green on a short par 4.

Home Improvement: As new homeowners our latest hobby is fixing all the deficiencies in our old house. And there are plenty to keep us busy! Christopher's parents were down for the weekend; his mom is a decorating fanatic and his dad is a keen handyman - a killer combination! While we were golfing they busied themselves with some chores around our home: hanging paintings, putting up the Roman shades that had just been delivered, fixing wonky light switches, weatherstripping our front door, assembling our new tool chest. The place is really starting to take shape and we can't thank them enough for all their hard work!I don't exactly know which mechanism local businesses use to get information on new home sales, but since moving in we have received several coupons and offers at our new house welcoming us into our new home. One of the coupons was 10% off at Lowe's so on Sunday the four of us headed off to make good use of it and filled two shopping carts with goodies for the house. And what was invaluable was having Chris's dad help us select what we needed - without him we would have had to do hours of research to find out which products suited our application.

Paolo Nutini: Last night we headed off to Tarrytown, NY for the Paolo Nutini concert. The Tarrytown Music Hall is a fabulous venue. It reminds me of the Music Hall on the Danforth in Toronto, but better! It seats only 843 people so it is a very intimate setting and the architecture on the old building has that shabby-chic sort of thing going for it. In between acts you can just head outside for a breath of fresh air and grab a soda or snack from the volunteer-run snack bar.
Tarrytown is a quaint little town - population of less than 12,000 I believe. But it's convenient for us to get to, which is nice and parking is easy to find. Within 2 blocks of the Music Hall here are several charming restaurants that look very tasty as well as the requisite homemade ice cream shop.The concert was great. I really enjoyed both of the opening acts: Jon McLaughlin & Serena Ryder and bought both of their CDs for $15.

It was fun to see Paolo perform live - and we had great seats too! His Scottish accent is much stronger in person - probably due to a combination of some pre-show drinking along with not being in a formal recording studio. When he spoke between songs (which was not often) the audience probably caught about 10% of what he said because he speaks very quietly and his speaking accent is extremely thick (as a sidenote it always amazes me how people don't have an accent when singing - bizarre).I'll definitely look for more shows in Tarrytown to check out. While Boston and NYC are fun for a weekend trip - Tarrytown is perfect for a dinner & show type evening.

The inlaws are coming!

Chris's parents are coming down for a visit this weekend to see our new house. I don't care how much of a neatnik you are, when your inlaws come for a visit you are BUSY getting things ready for their arrival.

This past week the UPS guy has delivered packages to our home Monday - Thursday with all sorts of things we have purchased online for the house.

Scrambling to get as much done as we could, here is what we managed to accomplish:

• weeded flowerbed and planted 6 mums & covered with mulch
• assembled bench and shelf for our entryway
• assembled and hung a train shelf in our bathroom
• swept up pine needles & miscellaneous debris from the driveway

And on top of this there was of course the standard laundry, cleaning, tidying, and grocery shopping to prepare for any houseguest.

All this being said you would think that I don't like to have people over. But in fact it's quite the opposite - I really enjoy playing hostess. And if nothing else it forces us to give the house a good cleaning!