It was like that when I got here

A few months ago, I received a weird letter in the mail from my neighborhood association:



(In case you didn’t believe that I live in the middle of freaking nowhere.) I’m not sure why internet and pizza delivery have to be mutually exclusive, but since we’re talking about Papa John’s (gross!) it’s a no-brainer.

When I bought this house, it didn’t even occur to me to check to see if high-speed internet was available here, because it’s available everywhere, right? Wrong. Unfortunately, it was not until it was too late that I discovered that the only high-speed internet I can get here is satellite internet, which sucks. The biggest problem is the data cap. I’m paying $59.99/month (plus tax) for a whopping 5 GB of anytime data, plus 50 GB of off-peak data between 2:00 am and 8:00 am (which is actually an improvement over when I signed up and only got 5 GB of off-peak data). This is more than I was paying for faster and unlimited cable internet when I lived in Ohio.

Once I use up all of my data for the month, my internet slows down to dial-up speed unless I pay a hefty price for more data. I can’t watch any streaming video except during off-peak hours, or it will drain my data very quickly. This is a problem because I don’t pay for TV service; I have always relied on Netflix for my entertainment. Satellite internet also sucks because there are delays that make VOIP impossible, and it doesn’t work during heavy rain.

Last week, I got a voicemail from the person who sent these ballots, informing me that AT&T U-Verse is now available in our neighborhood, so I checked it out. They are offering fiber-optic internet for $59.99/month, with a special deal of $35/month for the first year. They do have a data cap, but it’s 250 GB/month of anytime data – 50 times what I’m getting now! The only possible drawback is the speed. The highest speed available in my neighborhood is “up to 6 Mbps.” That is actually slower than my satellite internet. Netflix says that you need 5 Mbps to watch streaming HD video, so if I really get 6 Mbps, it will be sufficient, but “up to 6 Mbps” means it could be slower. Of course, I can always watch in a lower quality – I have Netflix set to the lowest quality now – but I’m a little concerned about switching to a slower internet service.

I had to sign a 2-year contract with the satellite provider, which is over in April, and if I cancel before then, I’ll have an early termination fee ($70 if I cancel 2 months early, $55 if I cancel 1 month early). I hate to pay extra money for nothing, but it might be worth it to get decent internet now.

The lease on my Mercedes C300 came to an end in June, so I had to get a new car. I was planning to get something different, because that’s part of the fun of getting a new car. I had an Audi A4 before the Mercedes, so I figured this time I might go with a BMW just to round out the big three German manufacturers.

I looked at the BMW 328i, Audi A4, and Infiniti Q50. My dad recommended that I consider the Infiniti, and it’s a great car, but it’s just not as prestigious as Mercedes, BMW, or Audi, so I wasn’t really considering it very seriously. I did some preliminary shopping in April, at which point I wasn’t ready to buy, so I just went for test drives and got some preliminary quotes, but I didn’t make any effort to negotiate.

Negotiating for a lease is a bit different than negotiating to buy a car because in a lease, you’re only paying for the depreciation (or, you can think of it as selling the car back to the dealership in advance). If you’re buying a car, you mainly just negotiate the price of the car, but if you’re leasing, you’re really focusing on the payments, which aren’t necessarily proportional to the price of the car. There are more variables in leasing than in buying, including the residual, the money factor (interest rate), the down payment, and the length of the lease (usually 36 months, but sometimes 27 or 39 or 48 months).

In order to normalize the lease prices between different cars and different terms, I used a formula of the ratio of MSRP to total monthly payment (monthly payment + down payment/months) – the higher, the better. For example, for a car with an MSRP of $40,000 with a monthly payment of $300 for 36 months and $3600 down, the total monthly payment would be $400, so the ratio would be 100. I got what I think was a good deal on my last car, and the ratio on that was 98. The quotes I got from my initial test drives were 63 for the Audi A4, 66 for the BMW 328i, and 98 for Infiniti Q50. I also looked at advertised lease specials, which are usually great deals, but very specific and not always equipped the way I’d want. The advertised deals were much better with ratios of 85, 85, and 101, respectively.

I called the nearest Mercedes dealership about turning in my old car, and of course they wanted to sell me another Mercedes. I told them I was planning to get something different this time, and they said, “Well, the C300 is all new and completely redesigned since your last one, so you should come in and take a look!” I went there first, before I went back to look at the other cars again. They gave me a quote, which was ridiculously high, with a ratio of 69. I told them that didn’t stack up well against the other deals I’ve seen, and after two more rounds, they came back with a deal with a ratio of 90, which they said was the best they could do. I told them I was going to look at the other cars I was considering before I made a decision.

The best deal I could get from Audi was a ratio of 84, and they weren’t willing to negotiate much. Then I moved on to BMW. I had e-mailed the dealership for a quote before I went in, and the best deal they had was a ratio of 87. I told them this wasn’t as good as the deal on the Mercedes, and they came back with a ratio of 93. The salesman told me this was a great deal because it had a really low money factor of 0.00128, which was practically unheard of and I would never see better than that. I said, “Actually, Audi was offering a money factor of 0.00080.” The salesman talked to the manager again, and then came back saying that they could match Audi’s money factor if I put down a security deposit (which would be fully refunded at the end of the lease). With that deal, the ratio came out to 101, which was the best deal I had seen, and on the car I wanted, so I was just about ready to take it. But the thing is, I really liked that Mercedes. I really liked the BMW, too, but not quite as much as I liked the Mercedes.

I called Mercedes and told them that I liked their car a little better than the BMW, but BMW was offering a deal that was too good to pass up. They said if I came back, they would see if they could match it. But when I got there and told them the numbers on the BMW deal, they said there was no way they could get there. They initially didn’t believe me about the security deposit, and they said the BMW salesman was probably lying to me about refunding it at the end of the lease. They said they had never heard of a refundable security deposit, but then they asked the finance manager, who informed them that Mercedes had a similar scheme. The way it works is that the security deposit is essentially an interest-free loan to the finance company, and the finance company invests the money during the course of the lease. In exchange, they offer a lower interest rate, which translates to a lower payment. With the security deposit, the deal came out with a ratio of 101, so I took it. It has dark blue metallic paint, and some nifty features my last car didn’t have, like a navigation system and backup camera.

TL;DR – I negotiated the total payments down by 32% from their original offer. Not bad! I could take a crappy picture with my phone, but I’m going to use much less effort and provide a much nicer picture from the internet.

When I moved, there were two houses on the market that I really liked. House #1 was priced $30k higher than house #2. It had an amazing kitchen and is really close to where I work, but I wasn’t willing to pay $30k more for those features. Still, I liked it better than house #2, so I decided to make an offer. It had been on the market for over a year, so I figured that (a) it was overpriced, and (b) the sellers might be desperate enough the sell that they would consider a lowball offer.

I asked my dad and brother, who are both lawyers, for advice. My dad is a master negotiator, but doesn’t know much about real estate. My brother is also a skilled negotiator and is a bit more attuned to the real estate market. Anyway, my dad encouraged me to make a really low offer, since that would be my starting point; if I started by offering the maximum I was willing to pay, the sellers would probably make a counter-offer higher than that. So I offered $25k less than the asking price. The sellers made a counter-offer $20k higher than my offer, so I raised my offer by $5k ($20k less than the asking price), and they rejected it without making another counter-offer. My brother hypothesized that they were unwilling to take anything less than that because they paid for the improvements (i.e., kitchen upgrade) with a home equity loan and therefore owed more on the house than I was offering.

My realtor later told me that the sellers were highly insulted by my offer, to the point that they almost decided not to make a counter-offer at all. As luck would have it, one of the sellers works at my company in a position of fairly high authority. I’m dreading the day when I have to deal with him and he recognizes my name as that bitch who made him an insulting offer on his house.

The thing is, I don’t understand the concept of being insulted by an offer. It’s not personal. I didn’t say that I didn’t like his house – I wouldn’t have made an offer if I hadn’t liked it. I just wasn’t willing to pay what he was asking for it. I am trying to sell my house, and if someone makes an offer of $25k less than my asking price, I will not accept it, but I also won’t feel insulted by it (and keep in mind that I am asking $17k less than what I paid for it, while the sellers of house #1 were asking $18k more than what they paid).

When I found out the names of the sellers, I looked up their current address and found that they bought a house in the same city, just a few miles away, that cost twice what they were asking for their house (and they paid $25k less for it than the asking price). Now, I understand that people get attached to their houses, but clearly, they were not that attached if they decided it wasn’t good enough for them anymore and moved elsewhere in the same city. Meanwhile, the only reason I’m selling my house is because I moved for a new job, and if I were staying in the city where my house is, I would have stayed there for a long time. In other words, I am arguably more attached to my house than they are to theirs.

I have now made an offer on house #2 and I am waiting to hear from the sellers. My brother advised me to offer $13k less than the asking price, reasoning that they paid $43k less than the asking price, so even if they had taken a home equity loan, my offer would still more than pay for what they could possibly owe on the house. My realtor cringed when I told her what I was offering, so I raised my offer by $3k, so it’s just $10k less than what they’re asking (although they have reduced the price twice since it’s been on the market, so it’s $19k less than their original price). I hope they’re not too offended by that, but shit, people are sensitive about their houses!

At the time I started my new job, I had found two houses in the area that I really liked. I had a hard time deciding between them, but I eventually decided to make an offer on house #1 (the one that’s really close to work and has an awesome kitchen). I made a lowball offer of $25k less than the asking price. The sellers made a counter-offer of $5k less than the asking price. I made raised my offer by $5k ($20k less than the asking price), and the sellers rejected it without making another counter-offer. So, that house is probably out (although it has been on the market for more than a year, so I’m guessing that if I decide I’m willing to pay what the sellers are asking, it will still be available for a while).

In the mean time, another house came on the market. It is located on the same street as house #2. This is a much closer comparison. One of the biggest factors in the decision between the first two houses was location, but house #3 is just a few doors down from house #2, so location is no longer a factor. House #2 started out with an asking price of $30k less than house #1, and it was just reduced by another $2k. House #3 is listed at $5k more than house #2, but it includes the washer, dryer, and refrigerator, which house #2 does not, so that effectively reduces the difference in price.

It seems to me like house #3 is better on paper for various reasons detailed below, but I like house #2 better. The problem is that house #2 is very nicely decorated and staged, and I don’t want to be unduly influenced by that. I’m afraid that if I buy that house, once the sellers take all their stuff and I put my crap inside, I will be disappointed because it will no longer be like the pictures.

House #2:


( Collapse )

House #3:


( Collapse )

Moving sucks. Everything about it is a pain in the ass. The only fun part of moving is shopping for a new house. I hate shopping in general, but house hunting is the one exception to that. When I visited the area before I accepted the job, I looked at several houses, and two of them really stood out to me. The downside to house hunting is that I have to make a decision, and I fucking hate making decisions. I would rather have someone just tell me what to do. So in that vein, I am going to post the information about these two houses and hope that the decision will be clear to someone, because it sure as hell isn’t to me.

House #1:


( Collapse )

House #2:


( Collapse )

I just found out that Argus passed away last week, on January 20 (in case anyone doesn’t believe that it’s an unlucky day). My parents didn’t tell anyone until now because they didn’t want to spoil my brother and sister’s birthday, January 21, which was also the 17th anniversary of the day we brought Argus home. He was just a tiny puppy, and so scared that as soon as he got inside the house, he ran under the kitchen table and sat with his chin against the corner of the wall and his nose up. I was home studying for final exams when my parents took my brother and sister to the pet store to buy supplies. While they were out, I crawled on the floor to coax the puppy out from under the table, and he happily slept curled up next to me on the couch for hours while I studied.

It actually took us a few weeks to come up with a name. My English class was reading the Odyssey, so I suggested naming him after Odysseus’s faithful dog. The rest of the family agreed that it was a good name for a good dog. And he was such a good dog. He was so much fun. My family is not very close or affectionate with one another, but the one family member we always loved was Argus. He was not only a part of every family occasion, but he always stole the show.

He slowed down a lot in the last few years and had a lot of health problems, but he was doing ok for a 17-year-old dog. The vet said he had another beagle patient who lived to be 20, so we hoped Argus would live that long, too.

My dad found Argus lying on the floor, unable to get up, as though he couldn’t control one side of his body. He thought it was a stroke. The vet was out that morning for a family emergency, so my parents sat with Argus and held him while they waited for the vet to get back. When they took him in, the vet said it looked like an inner ear problem that happens in old dogs and it usually gets better in a couple of weeks. They left him at the vet, and a couple of days later, he had a heart attack and died. The vet said he found him convulsing, so he picked him up and Argus died in his arms. I hope he wasn’t just saying that to make us feel better, because I hate the thought of my puppy dying in a cage all alone. I do think the vet really cared about him, though. Every time I took him there, all the employees remembered him by name and were happy to see him (of course they were – he was such a sweet dog), and they were always very kind and gentle with him.

I will miss him so much. My parents’ house will feel so empty without him. When I go to their house, the first thing I always do is find Argus. He used to greet me at the door with his tail wagging, but his hearing hasn’t been so good the last few years, so he couldn’t always hear when people came in any more.

I wish my parents had told me when they found Argus lying on the floor. I live close enough that I could have gone to see him one last time. I could have held him and comforted him when he was scared, just like I did when I coaxed him out from under the table. I can’t really fault my parents because they didn’t know for sure how bad it was, and it was hard for them, too, but I really wish I could have said goodbye. I am grateful, though, that we didn’t have to make a decision about putting him down. I am strongly opposed to euthanasia for people, but not necessarily for pets, and I don’t know how I could possibly make a decision like that. Argus lived more than 17 years, though, and I guess it was his time to go.

This is my favorite picture of him. I took it one time when he stayed at my house while my parents were out of town. He loved to bask in the sun, so he found this spot where the sun was shining through the window.


Rest in peace, Argus, my puppy.
11/11/95-1/20/13

I’m on vacation this week. I like to save my vacation for the end of the year, and so far, I’ve used only one day of vacation in 2012. That day was a couple of weeks ago, and I took it just so I could work more overtime the next week without exceeding the work hour limits. I’ve been working a lot of overtime, which is great for the paychecks, but tough to do. I’ve already worked more than 600 hours of overtime this year. I am actually working overtime on Friday night even though I’m on vacation (my regular schedule this week would have been dayshift).

Working 12-hour days is hard. It’s actually more than 12 hours, because I usually have to be there 30 minutes early for turnover, and I normally get there 25 minutes before that and stay 25 minutes late (since HR ruled in January that it’s ok for me to be there up to 30 minutes before and/or after my shift). Add the commute and I’m gone for about 14 hours per day. When I get home, I fix a quick dinner and eat it at the computer while I read my work e-mail and browse the condition report database (since I’m so busy at work that I don’t have time to do that stuff during the workday).

I’ve been really bad about keeping up with reading stuff online. That includes Live Journal as well as Facebook, Cracked.com, and other miscellaneous blogs. E-mail, too. I am so exhausted from work that even on my days off, all I want to do is sit on the couch and watch TV (I still don’t have cable, so that means Netflix DVDs or streaming video).

I wonder if I should rethink my strategy of saving my vacation until the end of the year. I always end up having problems with that because I like to know what my schedule is before I request vacation, but I never know my schedule very far in advance. Everyone likes to take vacations around the holidays, and we barely have enough people to cover all the shifts as it is, so only one person is allowed to take vacation at a time.

I get three weeks of vacation now, plus 32 hours of personal absence days. It’s a lot of time vacation to use (I know – nice problem to have). We used to be able to bank up to half of our vacation, but the company did away with that. We can now defer up to 2 weeks of vacation, but we have to use it the following year, so I still have 2 weeks of deferred vacation from last year in addition to my allotment for this year. I intend to defer 2 weeks of vacation to next year, but the company has been really wishy-washy on its policy about that. The past two years, they have just automatically applied my 80 hours of unused vacation to the next year’s allotment, but now they’re saying they will only allow us to defer vacation if we request vacation and the supervisor denies the request and sends HR a letter stating why the requested vacation was denied. I hate this bullshit – either we can defer it or we can’t, but they shouldn’t be deciding on a case-by-case basis.

This is a seriously boring post. Why the fuck am I writing about my company’s vacation policies? I intended this to be a short, quick post, but I seem to be incapable of doing that. Anyway, I promise the next post will have some slightly more juicy tidbits, if anyone is still reading.

I spent Easter weekend with my parents. My sister also came to visit, along with her new boyfriend. We went to mass on Easter Sunday at the church I attended throughout my childhood, and sitting in the front row was one of my biggest enemies from high school. She was having her baby baptized that day. When we left, I had to walk right past her. It’s not like I could have pretended I didn’t recognize her, because the priest introduced her by name while she stood up on the altar with her baby.

High school was not a good time for me (not that any other time was). I have so many bad memories of those days that I try not to think about them, but seeing this girl who was a part of these bad memories brought them flooding back on what is supposed to be, for Christians, the most joyous day of the year.

I am a bit surprised by how she turned out. I wouldn’t have guessed that she would grow up to be a Republican and marry a Catholic man and have her baby baptized at my church on Easter Sunday. Looking back on some of the events with which she was involved, I think there may have been aspects of the situation that I didn’t understand at the time, and some of the things for which I blamed her were not entirely her fault. Either way, I suppose she could have changed in the almost 15 years since I knew her.

I don’t know if she still harbors any ill will towards me, or if she even really remembers me. But Easter Sunday is not a time to confront old enemies. As I walked by her on my way out of the church, I smiled and said hello, told her she has a beautiful family, congratulations, and happy Easter. (I started by saying I wasn’t sure if she remembered me, and she said, “Of course I do!” but she may have been bluffing because she didn’t say my name.)

My parents bought a new refrigerator last week because their old one died. When it was delivered, though, it wouldn’t fit through the door, so they had to return it and buy another one. My mom told me in an e-mail, “The refrigerator that fit through the door cost $1000 less than the one we originally chose. I am thinking of spending some of the savings on a Dyson.”

I find that kind of hilarious... They unexpectedly had to replace their refrigerator and since they ended up buying a cheaper model than they originally selected, my mom considered that savings, like a free $1000. (Also, holy shit, how much was that first refrigerator that it cost $1000 more than the other one? I think my refrigerator only cost about $1100.)

I should say that my parents can afford a nice vacuum cleaner, and I’ve actually encouraged my mom to buy a Dyson because she has complained about the last couple of vacuum cleaners she’s had and asked me for recommendations, and everyone on the internet loves Dysons. But then again, my parents have a housekeeper, so how much vacuuming does my mom even do? I guess she would still benefit from the superior cleaning of a better vacuum cleaner even if the housekeeper is the one using it. But still, she’s basically saying, “My refrigerator died, so now I can buy a Dyson!”

This is the first writer's block question I have felt compelled to answer. I have memorized pi to 35 decimal places (so far). I have such an exciting life. 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288