Water, water everywhere

Well, that didn’t take long. Everyone who heard I was buying a house said be prepared for some crisis in the first few months after moving in, but I wasn’t expecting something so severe happening so quickly. Barely two weeks after the movers left, our basement flooded.

We’re not exactly sure how it happened, since we were both at work all day. I came home and saw a big puddle on the sidewalk and thought that was odd. I tried to find the source and saw a big spout of water coming from a pipe on the side of the house. Try as I might, I couldn’t turn the valve off. I decided I needed to shut off water for the whole house and reevaluate. After walking down the stairs, I almost fell over seeing about four inches of standing water in our basement.

At that point, it became even more urgent to shut off the water. I slogged through my new swimming pool to turn off the emergency valve for the whole house. At that point, it was just a waiting game for the sump pump to do its job. It seems to be working, as the water level is significantly lower now.



Since it is late on a Friday, no one with the insurance company is picking up right now. I hope they make house calls on weekends, as I’d hate to wait until Monday to get the paperwork going. The carpet is a write-off (thankfully, not part of the new installation) and I hope we can save the drywall from being totally ruined as well. As you can see from the picture, we also had several boxes stored downstairs that are now water-damaged. Aside from our DVD collection, nothing major was damaged.

11/11/11

Just wanted to post a quick note to celebrate my parents’ birthdays and anniversary today. Yes you read that correctly: both of my parents are born on the same day, and they even managed to get married on their birthdays. Both Ma and Pa Schick were born on November 11. I’ll spare them the years, but it wasn’t the same year; Mom is one year older.

After they were engaged, they were lucky enough to have their birthdays fall on a Saturday and chose it for their anniversary. That might sound romantic, but they are far too practical to get married in middle of the week and would have selected a different day if it didn’t fall on a weekend. But after seeing how much cheaper weddings could be on a weekday, I’m surprised Dad didn’t push for one!

Moving day

At long last, the long journey towards homeownership ended today- the movers have wrapped up and we are moved into our new home. It’s been quite the journey since we started looking back in August, but from some of the horror stories I’ve heard, I think we were very lucky. We found a house we fell in love with almost instantly and were able to close on it within a month. Financing was a pain, but that always seems to be the case.

During every step of the process, it was hard to get excited about the end result. Even at closing, it still didn’t seem real. But today was the first time it really hit me: I own a house. Looking around, it feels like we’ll spend most of the winter unpacking and it seems really daunting. It took the movers about four hours unloading the truck, which was surprising since I didn’t think we had that much stuff.

It also feels a little scary to really be out on our own. I am so used to relying on apartment maintenance staffs being only a call way from fixing any problem. There are a number of things around the house that need fixing, and of course I don’t know how to repair any of them! At least we were able to tackle one of them before we moved in- we had new carpet installed yesterday and we don’t have to much a bunch of furniture around ourselves.

Obviously the place is a disaster for the next few months, but once everything is presentable, I’ll take some pictures and post them on my website.

No home for Halloween

Nothing new to report on the house, except that our closing is all set tomorrow. I am a little disappointed we couldn’t have the house ready for Halloween tonight, as the thought of handing out candy seems like the quintessential homeowner activity. No one comes to the door of an apartment so I was looking forward to the chance to carve a pumpkin on the porch and hand out full-sized candy bars to make us the cool house on the block. Alas, it will all have to wait until next year.

As lame as it sounds, there is nowhere else I’d rather be on Halloween than at home handing out candy to little kids. It seems that the holiday has evolved into being more adult centric as the years go by, with a bunch of my friends having costume parties and dressing up in more elaborate costumes than I ever had as a kid. I never liked getting dressed up; all I wanted was the free candy. With no candy on the horizon from a costume party these days, Tracy and I skip them altogether. In fact, we made the mistake of going to a Halloween party a few years back with no costumes and we were the awkward couple at the back of the room.

So all you adults out there can have your parties with your fancy costumes. Someone has to stay and hand out candy!

Rethinking Playoff Baseball

I seem to be writing more and more about baseball these days, and I guess I have the 2011 Tigers to thank for that. With the AL Central title in the books, I have been watching nearly every game in the last few weeks as the playoffs become more intense. As crazy as it may have sounded a year ago, I think I am slowly becoming a baseball fan. It has been a long and strange journey (save that for another post), but I find myself enjoying the game more and more.

As a result of my newfound love of our national pastime, it seemed crazy to pass up an opportunity to watch playoff baseball in person. After unsuccessfully trying to buy tickets for the division series against the Yankees, I was lucky enough to snag two tickets for game 5 against the Rangers. It turned out to be the ideal game: Verlander was on the hill and the Tigers won an exciting 7-5 game.

I’m not normally a fan of online gimmick sites, but this one was too cool to pass up. Be sure to check out our seats from the game, and admire my eating skills!

The time is now

I’m not sure why I write a new season preview for my Sharks each fall. It seems that constantly repeat what I said the year before: last season was a disappointment and this year should see a decline in performance since the core group of players is a year older. I also like to complain that GM Doug Wilson doesn’t make any significant free agent signings and assumes he can grow young talent. However, I can’t believe I’m going to say it, but look for the Sharks to improve this season. I know – I just saw those pigs fly by as well.

Every offseason, I can always rely on Wilson standing by while the marquee names are shipped around the league. I’ve never felt he was a bad GM – quite the contrary, in fact – but he always seemed to err on the side of caution than take a risk once in awhile. But this year, he swung for the fences and signed the biggest defenseman free agent he could: Brent Burns. Another thing that never changes in each preview is complaining about a lockdown defender that opponents have to scheme against. Burns is that guy, and pair him with existing guys like Vlasic or Boyle and you might have one of the better pairings in the league.

On top of that, he also decided that any sluggish performances from last year wouldn’t be tolerated this time around. Dany Heatley never seemed to fit in San Jose, and it was painfully obvious last year. So Wilson sent him packing and brought in Martin Havlat, who will add some grit which is desperately needed.

The Sharks have rightly earned the reputation of playoff underachievers and another trip to the conference finals won’t help matters again this year. Even a trip to the Cup finals might not be enough to stop the doubters, and I think this is the year they can make the leap. I think San Jose finally has the defense to go along with its potent offense, and provided Niemi can stay healthy, there should be no more excuses to stop the Sharks from being Stanley Cup champions.

Where the Heart Is

I am please to write the following sentence that strikes both fear and excitement in my heart: We will be homeowners! We placed an offer on a house in Pittsfield Township and after a couple counteroffers, we have a tentative deal in place. Closing is expected to take place in exactly one month, so we’ve got some feverish planning to do in the next four weeks.

I should say that we were incredibly lucky to complete this process in the amount of time we did. We officially started looking back in late August, and now we have a deal in place six weeks later. I have heard horror stories from Tracy’s friends that they had several deals fall through at various stages of the process to be left more heartbroken and defeated with each disappointment. However, once we settled on the house we wanted, we put in a bid and everything seemed to work out.

I thought we would have a hard time agreeing on a house together. I assumed our preferences would be so different that it would take months to reach a consensus. But it turned out to be really easy. At the beginning of the process, we met with our realtor and she set up a filter for some basic criteria (3+ bedrooms, attached garage, etc.) and it produced some 50 homes in our searching area. We slimmed that down to about 10 viable candidates and I suggested we rank our favorites independently and then compare afterwards. Somehow, we both had the same house as our #1.

The house itself is located really close to the house I grew up in when I lived in Saline the first time. It’s two stories with four bedrooms and a finished basement. It has a decent-sized yard that backs up to a pond, and the neighborhood is pretty quiet. While it does have some improvements that need work (stupid half bathroom with the door opening the wrong way), it is in good shape for being 15 years old. I’ll try to post more pics once we get the keys.


Photo: Home sweet home!

Foo Fighters were Fricken Phenomenal

I have mentioned before that I can count on one hand the number of concerts I have attended in my life. As embarrassing as that is, I have slowly begun to improve these numbers by going to more concerts in the last few years. So when I say that I attended my best concert ever, I would understand your apprehension. But let me try to convince you otherwise.

Tracy and I went and saw the Foo Fighters at the Palace and it was nothing short of amazing. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve had a man-crush on Dave Grohl for some time, and this only further deepened my love for him. They played for three hours and at the end of the night, we could only come up with one song we wanted to hear that they didn’t play.

The concert was part of the Wasting Light tour, which is the group’s latest album. It’s really solid all the way around, especially given that it was recorded in Grohl’s garage. I’m pretty sure they played every song from the album, as well as the rest of their most popular hits throughout their career. The highlights were an acoustic version of “Long Road to Ruin,” the extended version of “Stacked Actors,” a cover of Queen’s “Tie Your Mother Down,” and the encore finale was our wedding song, “Everlong.”

Since the Foos seemed reluctant to leave the stage, we didn’t leave the Palace until after midnight and arrived back home after 1 am. No matter – it was worth it and would see them again if they decide to tour again. The next time you see me I’ll probably be wearing my concert T-shirt, which I’m unlikely to take off for the next few months or so.

Qwik to Disappoint

Oh Netflix, why I waited so long to sign up is still a mystery to me. I have loved watching a ton of movies conveniently delivered to my mailbox, discovering new TV series and I have finally been able to fulfill my desire to watch all the Oscar nominees for best picture the last two years.

When the company announced higher prices last month, I was annoyed, but begrudgingly understood that times are tough and the Post Office isn’t getting any richer these days (in fact, Netflix might be one of their biggest customers). I didn’t flip out the way some people online, and I surely wasn’t going to drop them altogether. However, the company announced yesterday that it would be splitting off the DVD-by-mail side of the business into its own company, Qwikster.

We decided to drop the streaming service back when they announced the price increase. We noticed the selection was slowly getting smaller over the last six months or so, and with the announcement that Starz was dropping all its movies next year, things certainly weren’t looking great. Besides, it was easy to forget about your instant queue, since there wasn’t a tangible reminder like a red envelope sitting on the entertainment center.

I know Netflix has been trying to force subscribers to use the online services, but I really feel like a second-class citizen with this latest move. I just hope Qwikster is here for the long run and not just the beginning of the end of DVDs.

Ten years later

As we approach the ten-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks, it seems that the media is adamant that we relive one of the darkest days in American history ad nauseam. I will spare you my account of the day’s activities (as I posted them on the five-year anniversary) since it seems that every network wants you to watch their show.

It makes me sad to see all the networks exploiting a tragedy as a way to grab ratings. Everyone has his or her unique story and perspective to share about 9/11; why should I care what Anderson Cooper has to say about it? We all lived through it together and I would imagine everyone’s memories of that day are still as fresh as they were on September 12.

I know everyone deals with grief differently, so I hope I am not coming across as callous. I would rather watch a discussion on where we are as a country ten years later and whether our nation is safer than it was on that fateful day.