Two Fun Nights Out With My Husband
May. 7th, 2011 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarah_senseiI spent the last two nights pretending I had a real social life by having two lovely date nights with my husband.
Thursday night we had tickets to see "Spamalot" here at the local theater. We started off by trying a restaurant we had heard about downtown called "Downstairs at the Loft" (the other half is a bar only). They had a nice menu and a fun atmosphere. It got a little crowded by the time we were done eating though, because it was Cinco de Mayo and I guess everyone was going out. I had a really good burger and my husband tried a more Mexican style vegetarian dish which was also quite good. I think we will go back again sometime.
"Spamalot" was really amusing. I think it had just enough surprises that it wasn't just a complete rehash of "Holy Grail." I liked most of the added content and plot and I think our local theater had really cool sets. I must say that even though this is a really small city, they do have a lot of nice shows that come through. I think we will have to see if there are any good shows when the new season starts.
The next day was spent looking at homes in the area to give us an idea of what is out there and what we can afford. Since the house stuff isn't of interest to everyone I'll skip to the night out in Atlanta and come back to the houses.
We drove to Atlanta early because we wanted to try a Brazilian Barbeque that my boss recommended. He cautioned us that it will cost around $40 per person but he said you will not forget it. We went to Sal Grosso and it was pretty neat. The meats were very good and I imagine this place would have been lots of fun with a bigger group of people. No complaints about the food and we enjoyed the experience, though I would not be going back anytime soon because we just don't have that kind of money ^^;
We went on to the concert after that and I think my husband felt slightly out of place knowing he was surrounded by video game nerds. He honestly never played a FF game before, had no clue who Nobuo Uematsu is, and actually had to ask me what a Chocobo was XD (After the video clips during the Chocobo Medley I asked him "do you know what one is now?") But he was a good sport and I think he ended up enjoying the music even if he had no idea why everyone would laugh or cheer at the visuals that accompanied it on the big screen.
A few random nerd rants:
1) I was a LITTLE bummed that when they were doing the FF 1-3 Medley they showed the "updated" versions of the games and not the original 8-bit NES ones. What was up with that?
2) WTF was up with all the fights against Malboros? I swear half the clips they showed, (including the video clip from FFXIV -- which I think was intended to be a "sneak peak" at the beginning of the tour but is now "old news" so to speak) had Malboros involved. No Tonberrys or Cactaurs? Seriously? I can't be the only one who noticed all the Malboro clips.
3) I loved the encore "One Winged Angel" but... seriously guys? I would RATHER have seen clips of the actual fight with Sephiroth with him casting Super Nova than a whole crapload of clips from "Advent Children." Super Nova > Anything in Advent Children
The show was brilliant over all though and I got myself the CDs (though the CDs have slightly different track lists than what was actually played that night. I think it has most of the songs but it has some that were not played and we heard some that I don't think are on these discs). I bought the mid-priced tickets so I wasn't sitting WITH Uematsu like some of the people who did shell out over $90 for their seats, but I was in the FRONT ROW. So, this made it a little harder to watch the movies and visuals, but I was less than 30ft. from Uematsu when he was on stage. I'm sure he could see my smile, so that was enough ^^
I met a nice lady who looked to be about 10 years younger than my mom at the concert and we got to talking during intermission. She was really cool and was there with her sons who were all in college. She was having a blast and she talked like she played the games too XD I told her I honestly stopped at IX because I thought they began to forget that this is an RPG and I'm not supposed to be waiting for the next video file, it's supposed to be about the story and the characters and the questing. She agreed and said she'd like them to be, "A little more fantasy, a little less 'HALO'!" I don't think I could have said it better myself (especially after seeing the clips of XIII, my God is that what they have resorted to??? I'll wait til Dragon Quest X comes out to get my RP on kthx. At least the Enix branch of Square still has knights and armor and that old D&D feel to it :p )
I had just such a wonderful time, and I was glad they played one song from FFV too. I love V and I don't think it gets much love in the US because it was released here so late. I was so excited about everything it really made me want to run home and play V, so I think I will be doing that (and I will be playing the fan-translated FFV SNES Rom, not the stupid disc version -- which is on my shelf. I do not want to see the video files, I want to play it the way I did the FIRST TIME I played it... which... was... obviously... not-entirely-legally...) I wish they had done an orchestrated version of "The Fight With Gilgamesh" from FFV though, that is my favorite track from that game.
Overall, wonderful concert. If you get the chance to go, you should :)
Now, back to the less interesting houses:
We saw two that we liked. But as I have been telling my husband for AGES now, we do NOT have enough money for a down payment, no matter what banks and lenders tell you. I think he was FINALLY convinced when we had the numbers crunched and he saw how much extra you have to pay in fees if you do not have a full, traditional 20% down payment. (If you can manage the 20% a lot of the extra loan "insurance" stuff disappears and you only have to deal with the loan itself and closing costs). I have been telling him this all along but I think he didn't quite get it until now.
We saw some really bad homes too. One we saw had ungrounded outlets. I began prodding the realtor about it and she said she didn't know much about how old or how bad the wiring really was (and unfortunately it's legal to sell a house with ungrounded outlets). She all but ushered us out of the house herself though when we found the fuse box. Yes, a FUSE BOX. NOT circuit breakers! She said, "You don't want this one!" as we all ran out the door XD
Another one we saw was just on the edge of a neighborhood we like (but unfortunately is was also close to the local "bait car" that begins the NEXT neighborhood). That house was cute downstairs and looked like a bunch of ladies lived in it. The decor was very feminine. The bathrooms weren't real great but what REALLY turned me off from that one was the attic. I don't normally put much stock in hauntings and ghosts, as I think most can be explained away by houses settling and rats or other critters. But this place, had a VIBE. Like a bad juju vibe. First off, the attic door was at the top of this staircase and the door itself was off center, which made it a little ominous and strange in the first place. Once you went up there, it was a half-finished attic where one side was a bedroom and the other side (behind a little curtain) was the storage space. The bedroom looked like it belonged to a teenage girl, based on the decorations, and it even had a pretty little window over the bed. However, even standing in that space I felt instantly uncomfortable and had a feeling of "dread" that I can't explain. My husband was in the same room and he pointed in the direction of the storage area and said that there was storage back there. But even he didn't make much of a move to show it to me. I stepped forward and told him to find the light switch since I assumed he already knew where it was (he was up there before I was). He kinda said "it's on the side" but he didn't really make like he wanted to go back in there. I found it and when I took in the room, I had a feeling like "you really don't want to cross this line." I did take one step in, and honestly it didn't LOOK strange. It was normal attic storage stuff, boxes, some signs pointing to where they designated certain areas for holiday decorations. But man, this place FELT BAD. I turned off the light and came back into the "room" section with him and I said, "Do you feel weird up here? Like you don't want to BE here or you shouldn't be here?" and he admitted he ALSO had a weird feeling up there. So, I told him I would NOT buy this place for the simple fact that the attic FELT like bad karma and I was so relieved to get out of there.
We saw another place that has been sitting for quite some time and we have walked past it often. We soon saw why. The house, as I suspected was overpriced. But that wasn't the half of it. It looked like an amateur was trying to flip it. Everything was done somewhat half-assed in the house. The kitchen was a little ugly (the new cabinets were cream colored with thin grooves in them, like stripes, and the grooves had a little bit of dark paint rubbed into them. So, they had this trippy, slightly striped, feel to them. Even the realtor said, "Don't come home drunk and walk in here! You'll get dizzy!" It had a second bathroom added but it was just a cheap one-piece enclosure deal. Not terrible, but certainly not worth the price he was asking for this place. He slapped paint on the walls but even my husband said it looked like his sister did it. (Her painting skills are pretty much, "I don't care what this looks like I just want to be done!") There were mistakes everywhere and it looked like he didn't believe in taping the trim before you paint it. One of the biggest crimes of all though, was the fact that someone (perhaps this guy or someone else) decided that to add outlets to the house, it would be a good idea to go into the crawl space and drill HOLES in the HARD WOOD FLOOR and put the outlets ON THE FLOOR. So, if you were to carpet the room, you'd have to cut holes in it to use the outlets in the floor. I'm buying a HOUSE here guys, not an auditorium where they plug mics and pickups into the floor! You can't tell me it would have been THAT HARD to run a wire, up from the crawl space, one foot up the wall... This isn't a 3-story house! It's a ranch with an attic! The attic in this place was significantly less creepy. It had a more "Edward Scissorhands" feel. It didn't feel like EVIL though. Though I gotta say, the sprung rat trap was not endearing (even though it didn't have a dead rat, it still raised my eyebrows) and the guy cut into what little floor boards the attic had to put in new lights for the downstairs ceilings. 9_9 I have NO IDEA why he did this. It was more than a little weird.
We saw one I did like and would have been comfortable with. It only had one bathroom (which was the primary "draw back" but I grew up that way, so it doesn't bother me too much) and it had a smallish kitchen (but not terrible). It had a pretty little yard and a cute little bonus area for book shelves or something small (like a computer or possibly laundry room). I thought it was cute and a real possibility. My only gripe with it was the fact that it had a weird mixture of "grounded" and "ungrounded" outlets. It had circuit breakers though, so I wonder if it's a thing where the ungrounded ones might not be active anymore and they just never bothered to dismantle them and patch the walls. That would be something for the inspector to tell us IF we were actually buying, which we aren't...
So, those were probably the most significant things we saw in terms of houses (we saw a couple others but there's nothing remarkable about them). I still can't get over how much that one house creeped me out. I never felt anything quite like that from a certain "space." It was certainly an experience ^^;
Thursday night we had tickets to see "Spamalot" here at the local theater. We started off by trying a restaurant we had heard about downtown called "Downstairs at the Loft" (the other half is a bar only). They had a nice menu and a fun atmosphere. It got a little crowded by the time we were done eating though, because it was Cinco de Mayo and I guess everyone was going out. I had a really good burger and my husband tried a more Mexican style vegetarian dish which was also quite good. I think we will go back again sometime.
"Spamalot" was really amusing. I think it had just enough surprises that it wasn't just a complete rehash of "Holy Grail." I liked most of the added content and plot and I think our local theater had really cool sets. I must say that even though this is a really small city, they do have a lot of nice shows that come through. I think we will have to see if there are any good shows when the new season starts.
The next day was spent looking at homes in the area to give us an idea of what is out there and what we can afford. Since the house stuff isn't of interest to everyone I'll skip to the night out in Atlanta and come back to the houses.
We drove to Atlanta early because we wanted to try a Brazilian Barbeque that my boss recommended. He cautioned us that it will cost around $40 per person but he said you will not forget it. We went to Sal Grosso and it was pretty neat. The meats were very good and I imagine this place would have been lots of fun with a bigger group of people. No complaints about the food and we enjoyed the experience, though I would not be going back anytime soon because we just don't have that kind of money ^^;
We went on to the concert after that and I think my husband felt slightly out of place knowing he was surrounded by video game nerds. He honestly never played a FF game before, had no clue who Nobuo Uematsu is, and actually had to ask me what a Chocobo was XD (After the video clips during the Chocobo Medley I asked him "do you know what one is now?") But he was a good sport and I think he ended up enjoying the music even if he had no idea why everyone would laugh or cheer at the visuals that accompanied it on the big screen.
A few random nerd rants:
1) I was a LITTLE bummed that when they were doing the FF 1-3 Medley they showed the "updated" versions of the games and not the original 8-bit NES ones. What was up with that?
2) WTF was up with all the fights against Malboros? I swear half the clips they showed, (including the video clip from FFXIV -- which I think was intended to be a "sneak peak" at the beginning of the tour but is now "old news" so to speak) had Malboros involved. No Tonberrys or Cactaurs? Seriously? I can't be the only one who noticed all the Malboro clips.
3) I loved the encore "One Winged Angel" but... seriously guys? I would RATHER have seen clips of the actual fight with Sephiroth with him casting Super Nova than a whole crapload of clips from "Advent Children." Super Nova > Anything in Advent Children
The show was brilliant over all though and I got myself the CDs (though the CDs have slightly different track lists than what was actually played that night. I think it has most of the songs but it has some that were not played and we heard some that I don't think are on these discs). I bought the mid-priced tickets so I wasn't sitting WITH Uematsu like some of the people who did shell out over $90 for their seats, but I was in the FRONT ROW. So, this made it a little harder to watch the movies and visuals, but I was less than 30ft. from Uematsu when he was on stage. I'm sure he could see my smile, so that was enough ^^
I met a nice lady who looked to be about 10 years younger than my mom at the concert and we got to talking during intermission. She was really cool and was there with her sons who were all in college. She was having a blast and she talked like she played the games too XD I told her I honestly stopped at IX because I thought they began to forget that this is an RPG and I'm not supposed to be waiting for the next video file, it's supposed to be about the story and the characters and the questing. She agreed and said she'd like them to be, "A little more fantasy, a little less 'HALO'!" I don't think I could have said it better myself (especially after seeing the clips of XIII, my God is that what they have resorted to??? I'll wait til Dragon Quest X comes out to get my RP on kthx. At least the Enix branch of Square still has knights and armor and that old D&D feel to it :p )
I had just such a wonderful time, and I was glad they played one song from FFV too. I love V and I don't think it gets much love in the US because it was released here so late. I was so excited about everything it really made me want to run home and play V, so I think I will be doing that (and I will be playing the fan-translated FFV SNES Rom, not the stupid disc version -- which is on my shelf. I do not want to see the video files, I want to play it the way I did the FIRST TIME I played it... which... was... obviously... not-entirely-legally...) I wish they had done an orchestrated version of "The Fight With Gilgamesh" from FFV though, that is my favorite track from that game.
Overall, wonderful concert. If you get the chance to go, you should :)
Now, back to the less interesting houses:
We saw two that we liked. But as I have been telling my husband for AGES now, we do NOT have enough money for a down payment, no matter what banks and lenders tell you. I think he was FINALLY convinced when we had the numbers crunched and he saw how much extra you have to pay in fees if you do not have a full, traditional 20% down payment. (If you can manage the 20% a lot of the extra loan "insurance" stuff disappears and you only have to deal with the loan itself and closing costs). I have been telling him this all along but I think he didn't quite get it until now.
We saw some really bad homes too. One we saw had ungrounded outlets. I began prodding the realtor about it and she said she didn't know much about how old or how bad the wiring really was (and unfortunately it's legal to sell a house with ungrounded outlets). She all but ushered us out of the house herself though when we found the fuse box. Yes, a FUSE BOX. NOT circuit breakers! She said, "You don't want this one!" as we all ran out the door XD
Another one we saw was just on the edge of a neighborhood we like (but unfortunately is was also close to the local "bait car" that begins the NEXT neighborhood). That house was cute downstairs and looked like a bunch of ladies lived in it. The decor was very feminine. The bathrooms weren't real great but what REALLY turned me off from that one was the attic. I don't normally put much stock in hauntings and ghosts, as I think most can be explained away by houses settling and rats or other critters. But this place, had a VIBE. Like a bad juju vibe. First off, the attic door was at the top of this staircase and the door itself was off center, which made it a little ominous and strange in the first place. Once you went up there, it was a half-finished attic where one side was a bedroom and the other side (behind a little curtain) was the storage space. The bedroom looked like it belonged to a teenage girl, based on the decorations, and it even had a pretty little window over the bed. However, even standing in that space I felt instantly uncomfortable and had a feeling of "dread" that I can't explain. My husband was in the same room and he pointed in the direction of the storage area and said that there was storage back there. But even he didn't make much of a move to show it to me. I stepped forward and told him to find the light switch since I assumed he already knew where it was (he was up there before I was). He kinda said "it's on the side" but he didn't really make like he wanted to go back in there. I found it and when I took in the room, I had a feeling like "you really don't want to cross this line." I did take one step in, and honestly it didn't LOOK strange. It was normal attic storage stuff, boxes, some signs pointing to where they designated certain areas for holiday decorations. But man, this place FELT BAD. I turned off the light and came back into the "room" section with him and I said, "Do you feel weird up here? Like you don't want to BE here or you shouldn't be here?" and he admitted he ALSO had a weird feeling up there. So, I told him I would NOT buy this place for the simple fact that the attic FELT like bad karma and I was so relieved to get out of there.
We saw another place that has been sitting for quite some time and we have walked past it often. We soon saw why. The house, as I suspected was overpriced. But that wasn't the half of it. It looked like an amateur was trying to flip it. Everything was done somewhat half-assed in the house. The kitchen was a little ugly (the new cabinets were cream colored with thin grooves in them, like stripes, and the grooves had a little bit of dark paint rubbed into them. So, they had this trippy, slightly striped, feel to them. Even the realtor said, "Don't come home drunk and walk in here! You'll get dizzy!" It had a second bathroom added but it was just a cheap one-piece enclosure deal. Not terrible, but certainly not worth the price he was asking for this place. He slapped paint on the walls but even my husband said it looked like his sister did it. (Her painting skills are pretty much, "I don't care what this looks like I just want to be done!") There were mistakes everywhere and it looked like he didn't believe in taping the trim before you paint it. One of the biggest crimes of all though, was the fact that someone (perhaps this guy or someone else) decided that to add outlets to the house, it would be a good idea to go into the crawl space and drill HOLES in the HARD WOOD FLOOR and put the outlets ON THE FLOOR. So, if you were to carpet the room, you'd have to cut holes in it to use the outlets in the floor. I'm buying a HOUSE here guys, not an auditorium where they plug mics and pickups into the floor! You can't tell me it would have been THAT HARD to run a wire, up from the crawl space, one foot up the wall... This isn't a 3-story house! It's a ranch with an attic! The attic in this place was significantly less creepy. It had a more "Edward Scissorhands" feel. It didn't feel like EVIL though. Though I gotta say, the sprung rat trap was not endearing (even though it didn't have a dead rat, it still raised my eyebrows) and the guy cut into what little floor boards the attic had to put in new lights for the downstairs ceilings. 9_9 I have NO IDEA why he did this. It was more than a little weird.
We saw one I did like and would have been comfortable with. It only had one bathroom (which was the primary "draw back" but I grew up that way, so it doesn't bother me too much) and it had a smallish kitchen (but not terrible). It had a pretty little yard and a cute little bonus area for book shelves or something small (like a computer or possibly laundry room). I thought it was cute and a real possibility. My only gripe with it was the fact that it had a weird mixture of "grounded" and "ungrounded" outlets. It had circuit breakers though, so I wonder if it's a thing where the ungrounded ones might not be active anymore and they just never bothered to dismantle them and patch the walls. That would be something for the inspector to tell us IF we were actually buying, which we aren't...
So, those were probably the most significant things we saw in terms of houses (we saw a couple others but there's nothing remarkable about them). I still can't get over how much that one house creeped me out. I never felt anything quite like that from a certain "space." It was certainly an experience ^^;
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-08 02:21 am (UTC)Crappy Flip: Oh lawd that sounds like a "Holmes on Homes" episode waiting to happen. ><;;; Again, it is NOT LEGAL to randomly cut out FLOOR BOARDS for wiring. How much you want to bet he's got a spaghetti factory of dangerously slapped together wiring in the walls? These are halmarks of someone who DOES NOT HAVE A CLUE and DOES NOT CARE. Yeah. I'd run screaming too. :P
Mom thinks I ought to become a home inspector. ^^; I think all the contractors and realtors would come to hate me.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-11 09:41 pm (UTC)I slept in an attic for a good 10 years myself at my parent's house. But we're talking an attic with actual walls and a ceiling. You can't just throw some plywood down on the ceiling beams and put a mattress on it and call it a bedroom. I believe it has to meet certain requirements (like walls, ceilings, outlets, light fixtures etc.) to even be considered a room. My grandparents always used their attic as a bedroom too. It is finished as well. So, I think it's perfectly legal... however, they may also require the attic to have windows, which this one did, ours did, and so did my grandfather's house.