AmandaVT
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Posts posted by AmandaVT
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I got DS and I shower flip flops at Old Navy, for , I think $2? Maybe $3?
Here's the link, we got them in the store and they had a huge wall of them: http://www.oldnavy.com/products/girls-flip-flops.jsp
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33 so far this year. It'll be a lot higher, the second half of the year is always a lot busier than the first half. Buying school stuff, Christmas, winter stuff, vitamins, etc.
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We're trying Mr. Q Earth Science this year. It's got Astronomy chapters in there too. We did Life Science last year and DS loved it. Mr. Q had lots of projects and experiments, and I'm also going to supplement with some I've found online.
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I always say I'm not going to look, but then I look anyway.
I am so weak.
I've been doing some daydreaming house hunting. Looking at properties for millions of dollars is always fun!
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We have a PowerFlex water heater and it has worked great. Never had a problem with it since we installed it 7 years ago. It works hard too because we have radiant heat floors and all winter long, the water heater is what warms the water in the floors to warm our house. I know nothing about water heaters, just let the plumber and gas guy do their thing and this is the one they picked out for our house.
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I have to admit that if I was the seller,your one and only contingency would be a dealbreaker for me and I would not accept your offer. I wouldn't want to wait around until you sold your own home.
From a seller's perspective, they don't know if your house is well-priced, if it is in good condition, if it's in a nice neighborhood, or if you are the kind of seller who doesn't keep the house clean for showings and the house is in poor shape with an overgrown yard and strange unidentifiable smells coming from the basement. ;) You know your house is nice and that it should sell soon, but they don't, so they may not want to take a chance of missing out on another offer while they wait for your house to sell.
And if your house doesn't sell during the contingency period, won't you lose your deposit if you can't complete the purchase by a certain date? (I could be totally wrong about that, but it would seem that you would lose some money if you had to back out of the deal, right?)
I hope you can get an answer soon about the TV and internet issues. I wouldn't agree to buy the house until I knew for sure that high speed internet was available.
I know, itis a big contingency. I had actually mostly stopped looking at houses, planning on waiting until this house was under contract. But then zillow e-mailed me this house when it was listed and we fell in love. If this falls through, I'm going to go back to my not looking at listings plan. :-)
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I think our offer is fair. We offered pretty close to asking, are putting 20% down, have a good earnest deposit, and the only contingency is that our house needs to sell first. We're getting more aggressive selling here too, so it should sell in time.
We did hit a snag though. My realtor got the docs over to me to sign late last night, when I was already in bed. Read through them first thing this morning and learned that the house has no cable or high speed internet. We saw cables in a couple different rooms of the house, so we thought it had cable. Called the two local cable companies today and no service to the house. As far as I can tell, it has satellite internet, which has a horrible reputation here or DSL which has a slightly less horrible reputation. I called the DSL company and no one will be in that can talk to me until Monday morning! So we're in a holding pattern. I don't care that much about TV. As long as I can watch football in the fall/winter, I'm happy, so any basic service will be fine. The Internet is a deal breaker though. DH does a lot of online gaming with his friends that we don't see a lot because they're scattered across the country. And the stories I've heard are about people having no access to even e-mail for weeks at a time and getting charged exorbitant fees for the pleasure of frustrating access. Ugh.
On the plus side, I haven't gotten word about any other offers going in today, so maybe it was a bluff or maybe the other buyer saw the same docs I did this morning about the lack of Internet access!
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We replaced ours when we moved in here. I think it was somewhere around $10 and less than 10 min to swap out. Good deal for not having to deal with someone elses bathroom germs. Not sure if I would do that again, but this place was nasty when we bought it.
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As a few others have said, I follow the not before 8am and not after 930pm rule for calling and texting unless I know it's someone who is up late or early. Two of my close friends never go to bed before midnight, so I can call or text them late if I want. My aunt is up at 5am, so if I'm up and feeling chatty, I can call her early. In general though, I treat texts like a phone call and won't send a text if I don't feel comfortable calling.
Personally, I do set my phone to dnd with exceptions. DH, my mom, my dad, my brother and my aunt are all set to go through regardless of time of day. I do take my phone in the bedroom with me because I sometimes have a hard time falling asleep, or I'll wake up to use the bathroom and have a hard time getting back to sleep due to anxiety. I keep audiobooks and podcasts on my phone to help me sleep, or at the very least, distract my mind. I had an ipod for years, but when it finally died, I decided to use my phone rather than buy another ipod.
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Ugh - that would have me inside with the air set at 72 for the day! It was 80 here with super high dewpoint and humidity a week and a half ago and I just about died when I went to my tennis lesson. 95 and I wouldn't be leaving the couch! We're supposed to be 87 with humidity at 70% on Sunday and I'm already grumbling about it!
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All I can think of now when I see places like this is the heating cost. :svengo:
I know! Although that part of RI doesn't get all that cold, they have a nice buffer thanks to the ocean. Growing up, I don't remember too many days where it didn't get above freezing. Up here is a different story though and I know you're in the same boat in ME! The first house we put an offer in on, was 2600 (I think) square feet and the living room had these gorgeous high ceilings. All I could think of was that I would need to start budgeting for propane immediately! This house is a good size though - 1400 sq ft. shouldn't be too hard to heat. We've been spoiled here though. 1000 sq ft and we have radiant heat flooring, so all we use is the water heater to heat the floors up. I think our total heating bill last year was less than $500 for the winter.
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What a beautiful house! Fingers are crossed for you!
We just made an offer and it was accepted over the weekend. (Still feeling "Wow!" about this.) We are in a hot market, and this house had only been on the market a few days. When we put the offer in, we knew that 6 other people had looked at the house (some were lined up waiting for us to finish, eek). We offered what we felt was fair, but asked them to cover closing. Another offer for the same amount came in that night, and they gave us a counter offer, with the stipulation that we sign by 11 am the next morning or they'd go with the next offer. We were happy with their counter (which was to split closing costs). We would not have gotten into a bidding war. We'd have walked away, and found another house.
I hope you get the house! It's beautiful. I can send you a link to ours that's under contract, if you want to see, just for fun. :)
ooh please do! or post it here - I love looking at houses! I was house daydreaming yesterday and was looking in the area where I grew up. I texted DH asking him if we could get this house instead. :-)
And thank you everyone! I hope they accept our offer, but I am being realistic and since our house still isn't under contract, I know it's not a sure thing at all. And there will be other houses if we don't get this one!
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Oh that sounds awesome- I'd say yes as long as you think your son is mature enough. :-)
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Don't up your price. If it is ment to be, you will have it.
I think it is a little strange there is always "another offer" that comes in when trying to buy a house. hmmm
I know right? The first offer we made, another offer really did come in about 24 hrs later. And the sellers took that one. This one I'm a little suspicious, just because the house only went on the market earlier this week and, we feel it's currently priced a little high. We'll see though.
I'm glad we're not off base by deciding what we feel is a fair price and sticking to it. Our realtor has been very good about not pushing us thankfully!
Here's the listing - I know I always want to see listings when other people are house hunting! It looks like it's priced fair or low, but it's in the worst town in our county and it's going for only $10k less than the last house we put an offer on. That one was a good bit bigger, a bit nicer and in a much nicer town and neighborhood.
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And not everyone grew up rural and had to walk miles to a payphone. I grew up in a large town/small city and in theory, I could have gotten to any number of payphones or businesses with phones if I needed to call my parents. In reality, I had overprotective parents and until I got my license, I was never really allowed to venture anywhere on my own. Helicopter parents were around in the early 80's, just ask my brother and I.
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We're on our second offer and we never got the chance to make an offer on 4 other houses we've liked because they were under contract before we got an offer in. It's gotten me thinking, how do you go about making an offer on a house?
Do you decide what the house is worth to you and stick there?
Are you willing to get into a bidding war?
Do you offer more when there's another offer on the table or coming in to avoid losing the house?
We're getting our offer in tonight, but the seller's realtor told our realtor that there's another offer that's supposed to come in tomorrow. Our realtor then told DH and I to make our best offer if we really wanted the house. DH and I discussed and decided to stay put where we're at for price. It's slightly overpriced and in a crappy town (granted it's in a rural area, and it's actual location is nice, but the town itself is not good and we could never use the school system). Our offer is fair I think, but there's a piece of me that's wondering if we should up it to at or over asking price.
We're in an area that isn't a hot market by any means. Some houses sell relatively quickly (a few weeks) while others are on the market for more than a year pretty regularly.
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I'm in my late 30's and I would call my parents or my aunt if I got into any kind of trouble. Car trouble, accident, etc.
We had a car phone back in the early 90's by the time I was driving, so I could use that back then! If I was with someone else, we'd find a payphone or ask to use a phone of a local business or something.
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I made a chopped salad to the last BBQ I was invited to. Brought a bottle of maple balsamic vinaigrette on the side and it was gone by the end of the evening.
We had 3 pasta salads there - so, at least that day, everyone thought of pasta salad.
2 people brought fruit
no one brought potato salad (my favorite and I almost made one)
lots of chips and dips
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Oh, I forgot to mention, DH's job lets them trade in sick days for vacation. 5 sick days = 1 vacation day. Not a great ratio, but when you've got tons of sick time saved up and have used vacation time, it comes in handy.
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DH gets a lot of sick time. 5 weeks a year of sick time (and 5 weeks of vacation). The sick time accumulates and never falls off. I think he's up to over 900 hrs of sick time at the moment. DH doesn't get sick often, but when he does, he usually ends up in the ER or emergency clinic for something, so he tends to take his time in small chunks rather than one day.
He's been with the company for 12 years now. The first year, they got 2 weeks sick and 2 weeks vacation and it went up a week for each year of employment, maxing out at 5 and 5.
I'm going to follow this thread because DH's company (not the above job, he has a business as well) is deciding what to do for sick and vacation time. I think he and his partner are leaning towards starting with 2 weeks of paid time off - to be used for sick or vacation time.
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Another vote for Badger! I like the kiss my face zinc stuff too- that one comes in a spray that goes on really easily. James (DS) has been out playing 2-3 hrs of tennis most days this summer and hasn't gotten even slightly sunburned.
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Any tennis players here? I started playing again this summer after a long (18 year) break. It's becoming painfully obvious that my regular sneakers are not going to work. I'm having issues with my big toes, I think from all the lateral movement. It was the 90's last time I bought a pair of tennis sneakers, so I have no idea what's out there.
Anyone have any favorite shoes I should look for/try on?
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I'd work on knee push ups for a bit. Concentrate on having great form. One push up with perfect form is better than 10 without! Once you can do maybe 10-12 without stopping, start sliding your knees back a bit. That will get you closer to a full push up. Also, work on plank holds - those are great.
Congrats!!
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If you move near a metropolitan area in the midwest, you can find a lot of progressives along with a much lower cost of living than CA. Rural midwest vs. coastal city isn't the only divide.
Emily
That's what I was thinking. If you put the idea of relocating on the table, I'd look at all sorts of places to move. Asheville NC, Minneapolis, MN, Burlington VT, Portland, ME are all places that could work for you.
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Ramdom question of the day: Were you afraid of your parent(s)?
in The Chat Board
Posted
Not afraid, but I didn't want to disappoint them. I was very fortunate to have loving, non-abusive parents.