city officials acknowledge snow reponse

A new report in the Seattle Times questions the city's response to December's snow.
An excerpt:

Because of poor record-keeping, the report said, "how many miles of residential streets (were plowed) and why they were plowed during the snowstorm cannot be confirmed or explained."

During the storms, according to the report, Seattle transportation officials kept snowplowing records on dry-erase boards and in handwritten notes, and let road crews decide which streets to plow first.

Also, the city did not follow its own procedures. A team of people was supposed to be ready to respond to road emergencies, but that team was not activated for the storm's first week and a half because it "did not formally exist," the report said.

They also touch on their no-salt policy, stating there was no scientific basis for banning salt. I'm prepared to watch in amazement as not a single responsible party is fired or resigns.

a quicky

First day of work tomorrow! I'm more nervous about taking the bus than anything else. The ipod is charged to minimize the risk of small talk.
Celebrity Apprentice was absurd tonight. I don't think anyone believes a single one of the contestants is in it for the charity. The producers did a good job of picking people that represent all the stereotypes about fame.

I'm bringing my pink lunch box tomorrow and I don't care who knows it!
Good night!

why seattle real estate is absurd part 2

This is the next installment of "people attempting to sell their garage"...
MLS#: 28139698

At first, this seems like a steal. After all- getting into the Seattle market under $200k is quite an accomplishment. But check out the price/sq ft. If you apply the $250 neighborhood average it should cost about $81k. Also they claim to have a walk-in closet! I'm calling BS on this one unless they are counting the house itself.

why seattle real estate is absurd

Nate and I have had some frustrations with trying to find a house in Seattle. I would like to provide the following examples to demonstrate why:

MLS#: 29050711
A look at the google map satellite shows that this is someone's garage or shed that's been converted into a house. One-of-a-kind indeed!

MLS#: 29047766
Or is it?! This "charming bungalow" is also a garage. Bed must be entered through the bottom right corner. Excellent.

MLS#: 29048902
This is by far my favorite piece of crap of all time. If you map it, you'll see it's not in the city like the other 2. Also, King County records lists the square footage at 680, making this a whopping $551/sq ft in a $250/sq ft neighborhood. Throw in the $190/month HOA dues and you have yourself a winner!

go meat!

I'm still bothered by what happened at the deli yesterday. You tell the deli person the amount of meat or cheese you want and they put it on the scale in front of you. It's almost always more than what you ask for, so you pay more and end up throwing some away. I don't think that's fair so when they ask you "is that too much?" I will say yes. Apparently they don't like this. Once the meat has been sliced, it can't be sold again and they have to throw it away. The girl looked at me like I was being ridiculous.
Why should it be my problem that she can't estimate the weight of meat and cheese? Isn't that one of the most important aspects of her job? If I'm working in a bank and a customer wants to withdrawal $400 and I give them $415 they would think I'm crazy. I have a one-slice overweight limit. If I paid the extra $2 for that extra meat and cheese each week that I wasn't going to eat anyway, I'd be wasting over $100/year. Think about that next time they ask you "is this too much"!

EDIT: I want to note that I do not ask for strange amounts. I ask for 1/4, 1/2, or 1 lbs. It's not like I ask for 3/17 lbs of meat though that might be fun to try sometime.

happy tax day

Nate posted a video on soapbox of the gasworks park fireworks last year that got a really good rating. Someone else took a video of the grand finale though that I thought I'd share with you all. We just recently learned that Chase is stepping up to do them this year in place of Wamu so we're pretty excited.

<br/><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=03039e13-1686-45c7-9db1-58ee8c7059c9" target="_new" title="Gasworks Park Fireworks Finale">Video: Gasworks Park Fireworks Finale</a>

that's not my name

We saw The Ting Tings last night at the Crocodile Cafe downtown. It was a smallish show (maybe 150 people) and we were some of the youngest people there. The opening band, Hot Tub, was possibly the most horrifying thing I've ever seen. Three girls- two of them overweight- wearing too little clothing and dancing a little too provocatively. Lot's of bass and screeching. It ended with one of them putting a microphone down her pants and announcing that she's on her period. The Ting Tings were great though and actually sound better live than on the album.

In other news, we moved our house hunt outside of the Seattle city limits. We don't want to over-extend ourselves and we can get a lot more house for the money. We put in offer in on a new construction in Renton and we'll see what happens. The nice thing is now that I'll be working downtown, coming home to the suburbs at nice will be a lot more appealing.

ALSO! I'm going to be an aunt! Doug and Helen are having a baby and I regret to inform her siblings that Nate and I will be the favorite aunt and uncle. I already called dibs. Sorry! =)
Congrats guys!!

Serving Suggestion

Nate was making my cupcakes today when I started to think about the "serving suggestion" recommendation in the bottom right corner. What exactly are they suggesting? I should find a fictional character to serve me the cake on a spoon that's twice as tall as he is? I'll pass.

New Cell Phone Case

This is my new handmade cell phone case! I bought it from Helen's brother's Etsy store. He doesn't sell them, but he'll make one if you ask. Check it out here: Underground Grace

I asked for a mating of two of the cubby buddies and this design was born.

Home Buying and the Internet

As most of you probably know, Nate and I are looking to buy a house when our lease is up. I'm am so fascinated by how much information you can find to research home purchases. I knew you could pull up sales data in the public records, but I had no idea about how much detail is there. You can even pull up the scanned documents.
This got us wondering about this odd little wooden house that keeps turning up on our searches on real estate sites. It looks like the exterior is completely made of wooden shingles and the interior is gutted down to the wood frame. Of course, this is what shows up for single family homes in our price range! Still, this property is sold pending inspection. Who would purchase such a strange little house? We had to know.
Cue King County public records website. We find the sales history of the property and see that a lady flipped it in 2 months and made $90k on it. Holy crap. The guy who she sold it to is the current seller and taking a huge loss on it. So we became intrigued about this woman and her house flipping. Was it a one-time occurrence or her business? So we looked that up! An hour later we learn that she started a business of buying up homes at a steal before they went into foreclosure and flipping them for profit. Even ran a blog on how to avoid foreclosure. Last month two of her properties were foreclosed on and one of them is still on the market for way less than she owes on it. Nice upgrades to if anyone is looking for something in South Seattle. It's been foreclosed on twice now. We think viewing it would cross a weird line.
Still, we had a fun time with our public records soap opera. And we did gather a lot of useful information too about which properties we've seen were overpriced and which were priced about right. And I'm glad to finally know the history of the little wooden house.