City life

I haven’t blogged in a while (my brief font post doesn’t count). I’ve been a bit busy and stressed. Normally it’s work that stresses me but lately it’s been stuff outside of work.

Our adoption is stalled with the Guatemalan government. It’s in that black hole mode where we have no idea what is going on. So that’s stressful.

The big one lately was our home purchase. This was very much a city event. We are buying a loft style co-op. The previous owner took a two bedroom apartment and added a wall to make it a three bedroom. We liked that. After our offer was accepted our lawyer put some language into the contract making sure that the current owner delivered the approvals to have that work done. That seemed like a formality since the work was done two years ago.

Oops.

It turned out the official approval had never happened. No problem, just get it done before the closing. Oops. It turns out that they couldn’t get it approved as a three bedroom because one of the bedrooms didn’t meet city regulations. No problem, just do the work to meet the regulations before the closing. Oops, can’t be done.

Suddenly we had a legal two bedroom. Well, even if the space is identical, I don’t think a two bedroom is worth the same money as a three bedroom. So negotiations went back and forth. Finally we had resolved the issue. So now we are buying a two bedroom with a storage room (for less money).

Does this sort of thing happen in Amarillo?

On another note, we spent a very city style Memorial Day weekend. We had no plans so we stayed in the city. It’s always interesting spending a holiday in the city. Everyone else leaves, so the city is pleasantly quiet. Traffic is light. Parking is plentiful. It’s quite remarkable.

On Friday we had a barbeque at a friends apartment in Brooklyn (they have a nice deck). On Saturday we needed to go to our storage unit to switch winter and summer stuff. This too, is a city thing. If you don’t have an attic or a basement or a garage, you need a place to put stuff. Storage units are common. So twice a year we go, mainly to switch my wife’s wardrobe.

On Sunday my wife needed to organize the stuff we got from storage. So it was me and Danielle. We spent the whole day together at various playgrounds. We call them parks, but I grew up in the Midwest and to me “park” implies grass and trees. These are asphalt, swings, jungle gyms and sprinklers. Where we live there are easily ten playgrounds in walking distance. You pick the playground to go to based on what you want to do (playground A has the best swings, but B is better for riding bikes and C has good sprinklers). So in the morning we took Danielle’s bike to the close playground (bikes). Then we grabbed swim suits, went to McDonald’s for lunch and hit the next playground (sprinklers) with her scooter. After getting soaked we went for Italian Ices and went up to our roof deck to blow bubbles. And then we all went out for dinner. All in all a very good Brooklyn day. Then Monday my wife took Danielle to a baby shower and afterwards we went to Jersey for another barbeque. Not bad for a weekend with no plans.

Hopefully I’ll have an adoption update soon…

Loft:

A loft is really just an apartment that is a big rectangle space. It is often created when an industrial or other type building (school, etc.) is converted to apartments. Lofts are favored by artists because you get a bunch of big space. But apartment dwellers also like them because you get to decide how the apartment will look by adding walls where you want them. They also typically have high ceilings which add to the spacious feeling. Our building is the original headquarters and factory for Ex-Lax (insert joke here). The building was converted to apartments about 30 years ago.

Co-op:

A co-op is similar to a condo, but different. Co-op is short for cooperative. In a co-op the building is owned cooperatively by all the apartment owners as a corporation. Each apartment owner has a certain number of shares in the corporation which determine voting rights, etc. The building is typically managed by a co-op board and each owner pays a certain monthly maintenance fee which covers the mortgage on the building and all common expenses. Co-ops are very common in New York City.