At Last My Condo Has Come Along

It's finished! We have prevailed! Despite angry sellers, bad appraisals and a nasty housing market, Josh and I have successfully purchased our little condo. It's been a complex and winding road to get here, but today at 2pm we made it official. We now have our own corner of the world. It's a diamond in the rough right now, but with some work it's going to be gorgeous. And I plan on taking over the condo association so I can fix all the landscaping issues I don't like with the other 2 units. Yeah, I'm going to be that association president. As long as property value is at stake, the other residents will thank me. And fear me. Just kidding. Mostly...

Wild World of Funeral Webcasts

Now I can end up some pretty odd places online on a Sunday afternoon when it's snowing outside (yes, that's right, it's snowing on Easter Sunday in Vermont), but this is one of my odder finds. I give you FuneralOne:

http://www.funeralone.com/

In concept, the recording and web-casting of funerals so that loved ones who couldn't make the trip can feel a part of the process is honorable. That's not the part that weirded me out. Well, at first it was, but then I read an article about a family who had taken part in the process and it sounded downright cathartic. The part that truly gives me the jibblies is the company's website. It looks like it came straight out of a Mac commercial. And the copy? Here's the intro paragraph:

"funeralOne is a personalization, technology, and consulting company for the funeral care profession. funeralOne's core services include strategic funeral home web site design, personal funeral service consulting, and funeral tribute video software. Committed to delivering innovation, funeralOne collaborates with its clients to help them reach their full market potential. With deep industry expertise, broad resources and a proven track record, funeralOne can mobilize the right people, skills, and technologies to help clients reach their customers in new ways"

Delivering innovation? Reach their clients in new ways? How many ways can you reach them? It's a funeral for crying out loud! Thank you, FuneralOne. Thank you for understanding that I just can't be satisfied honoring my deceased loved ones unless I feel that death's middle men have a firm grasp of the information highway. It's great to know that society's pariahs truly understand the magic of synergy.

The Sky Hasn't Fallen

Congratulations to Vermont for being the first state to legalize same sex marriage through legislation and not a court order! A major boo and hiss to our governor for vetoing the bill, and a hearty thank you to the house and senate for overriding his idiocy. To all my gay and lesbian friends, I'm so thrilled for you all!

Excess Helps No One

I've come to an awful conclusion. In the last few years I've eaten too much, drank too much, gone out too much, spent too much and said too much. And now I'm tired. I'm overweight, I'm broke and I'm tired. It's time to reform. And to keep my mouth shut.

I've had three addresses in two years (Updated)

This just in - buying a condo sucks.

So for the last month cerebral drool reader Josh and I have been going through the steps of buying a condo in Burlington. Everything was going smoothly until the appraiser found that the value was $14,000 less than the agreed upon price. So the seller and I examined the appraisal and found some major flaws and I contacted all parties to try to get them rectified. I just found via a voice mail on my home number from the bank that essentially said the errors weren't enough to change the estimate. I disagree. Do I

1) walk from the deal and have no where to live after June 1
2) Ignore the bank and pay full price
3) Negotiate with the seller even though both of us know we're getting screwed

Inquiring minds want to know!!! I'll update as information becomes available.

Update - So I've counter-offered and am waiting to hear back. I've been a wreck. I hate situations where I'm not in control and the waiting game kills me. But three hours ago I found out that the house across the street from the condo is for sale and would only be $200 more a month, so if the seller rejects my extremely generous offer, he can suck it. I'm going elsewhere. And I'll have the fun of watching him try to find someone else as understanding an accommodating as we've been when it again appraises for $15k below his asking price. Which he won't. Which will mean I'll get to laugh at him for months.

Revenge is a dish best served cold. And from across the street.

Vermonters can now "Come Hungry and Leave Happy" tm

It's official: Vermont has an IHOP. Big whoop, you say? Perhaps you were unaware the Vermont was the last state in the union to host the 'House. From WCAX's morning newscast:

"A recession may not be the best time to open a new restaurant...

But the owners are betting that i-Hop at the University Mall will be a winner. The owners spent the weekend training new servers and staff for the grand opening on Tuesday. These customers were specially invited to check it out. At a time when jobs are hard to come by, the new i-Hop has hired over a hundred employees.

Proprietor Sam Handy told Channel 3, "We can bring people in, bring a new business to the area, you know, hire 110 people which gets a lot of people off their feet from some tough times, you know, from being laid off. We can get them going again. It's a little nerve wracking with the economy, but I think it's going to work out really well."

Vermont is the last of the fifty states to get an i-Hop. Although it's a national franchise, the restaurant at University Mall is owned locally -- by the Handy family."

I remember distinctly the shock that set in when I first moved to Vermont from Massachusetts in 2000. I couldn't purchase my normal brands of toothpaste, bread, orange juice or moisturizer, and I lived in the only metropolitan area in the state. I found out that according to the 1990 census there were more cows than people in the state. I now lived closer to Montreal than Boston. The state was in the middle of the nasty "Take Back Vermont" campaign where all the yahoos came out of the woodwork to protest Civil Unions and angry jackasses from the "kingdom" (that's the Northeast Kingdom to those of you unfamiliar with the term for the highly poverty stricken and rural northeast corner of VT) were on the news constantly spewing some of the most vitriolic and hateful language I've ever heard on TV. I had to pull over and throw up when I drove down a road with dead deer strung up in people's front yards to bleed dry before butchering. I learned that half of the state hadn't been on an electrical grid until the late 60's when the first highway went up, and that many of the major roads used to cross from east to west close for the winter since they go through the green mountains. There's even an extra season, "mud season" that happens when the rest of the country has Spring. In short, I looked around at my new surroundings and thought I had made a terrible, terrible mistake.

But it's grown on me over the last 9 years. I still miss Massachusetts and always will, but this is now home. We have no Target, no Ikea, no Ann Taylor, no Nordstroms, no DSW, to only mention a few chain stores I miss, but we do have the distinction of being the only state to not have a MacDonalds in our capitol (nor do we have one in Burlington, thank goodness). All in all, it's a mixed bag. No one accidentally lives in Vermont. You may grow up here, come for college, or move here at some point without much thought, but you only stay because you want to. It is not an easy place to live.

But of course now that we have an IHOP, that may change.

In Celebration of Common Sense

I'd like to thank the VT state senate for doing the right thing and voting to approve same sex marriages! From the Burlington Free Press:

"The Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously this morning to recommend a same-sex marriage bill to the full Senate."

Congratulations to the great people in office who decided to celebrate the first day of Spring by voting to extend the right to marry and to all the same sex couples out there who are one step closer to ditching "separate but equal"!!!

Creating the tropics inside to give the finger to the outside

It's March in Vermont, which automatically means it's a combination of muddy, snowy, rainy, icy and a few other dwarves. Doesn't that sound delicious? For those of us that were raised in Massachusetts, we expect the crocus and daffodils to be emerging right now. But in Vermont, we have mud season. And what a mud season we are having! I wear galoshes to work every day and slip on the ice on the way to and from. But inside my apartment, I'm doing my damnedest to counteract the crappy, crappy weather. I give you... THE VIVARIUM:

I have a 40 gallon tank I bought in my junior year of college (ahem, we won't mention what year that was...) that I tried to sell three times on craigslist. All 10 buyers fell through, which made me think that somehow I was made to keep this tank. In an act of self-fulfilling prophecy, I turned it into a vivarium.



My first official act as creator was to add plant friendly gravel and a big ol' log that had been living in my turtle tank:



It looked a bit dull, so I decided it needed a few artificial rock formations. At midnight on a Friday, with a can of "Great Stuff" expanding foam and a few transparent plant holders, I had the beginnings of rocky crags:



At 6am after they'd cured overnight, I painted them grey:



At 10am, I realized everything else in the tank was brown and repainted:




Then I added water, a spike leafed Ivy, a pitcher plant, two African violets, a few pothos cuttings, and a peacock fern, and we had a vivarium!



Not pictured are Fred and Ginger, my two fancy guppies. Originally I had three neons as well, but they succumbed to the cold. Let us remember and mourn their little fishy souls.

For those of you who are desperate for tropical plants, I highly recommend sticking a whole bunch of plants in a big tank with a bit of water. Nothing makes you feel more tropical than a vivarium, unless you're willing to fork over the dough for a tropical vacation. Which I'm not. Unless you'd like to contribute to the l.e.h.a.l.e. commemorative vacation fund. In which case feel free to make all checks out to "cash".

The Cruel Reality of Living in a Small Town

How you know you live in a small town and have been there way too long:

You view two newspapers' online slide shows of a valentine's day drag ball and you:

1. know more than half the crowd pictured
2. have dated more than one of the guys wearing a dress
3. now know what too many of your female friends look like wearing beards and pasties
4. spend most of the time critiquing your friends' drag outfits thinking you could have definitely done a better job on their make up
5. check out the way they've set up the venue because you rent it for one of your own events
6. wonder who donated to their fundraiser and if they'll share their mailing list
   

It may be time to move.

Happy V-Day

Because I love you all, enjoy the following:

Weird and Wonderful Moments

Tonight I hosted the grand opening of a program I run that serves free dinner to low income kids twice a week. The VT Foodbank coordinated the guest list so I really had no idea who was coming. I figured just a few folks from local agencies would show up a little after 5 (it was supposed to start at 4:30) and would stay for a second before inconspicuously ducking out. Instead, at 4:30 on the dot a stream of politicians, community activists, Foodbank representatives and shockingly enough, members of my Board of Directors arrived and took over half of the room. I immediately took my exhausted expression off my face and put on my happy happy special event smile and worked the room. The highlights of the evening? 1) officials from both of Vermont's senators' office getting their asses handed to them at ping pong by two 9 years olds and 2) former governor Howard Dean showing up in a track suit. Everyone stayed through dinner, ate with the kids, and had a great time. Over all a success I'd say, and a good warm fuzzy experience of a whole mess of politicians.

Confessions of a Sporadic Addict

I have suffered from a problem all my life: I get addicted to various things very easily and then completely lose interest for months at a time. I've started study in many a new field with extreme enthusiasm, absolutely sure that this will be my one true passion, only to put it down in a few weeks and wonder why I was ever interested. To wit:
- my art closet. This 6'x4'x4' behemoth cabinet is filled to the brim with enough supplies to make just about every kind of art project you can imagine.
- my collection of fish tanks. I once had 14 aquariums of fresh and saltwater fish going at once, many of them breeding populations.
- my kitchen appliances. I've had so many baking and cooking projects that needed just the right piece of equipment that I have a pantry that only has enough room to fit food on two out of 6 shelves.
- my coffee equipment. I could have an entire room solely dedicated to my contraptions used to roast, grind and brew coffee.
- and much, much more.

Which brings me to my current obsession - PLANTS! I haven't had this one come up in a while. I used to be an orchid addict. I had specialized lighting, humidifiers, moisture trays and pots dedicated to these stunning but finicky plants. Then I moved onto vegetable gardening and had entire binders devoted to notes and research. These days, I'm into exotics. The weirder the better. I'm thinking of putting together a bog garden since bogs have been a source of utter fascination for me from childhood on. In the last few days I've broken down and purchased really, really neat plants online including:


Selaginella umbrosa, aka Red Clubmoss. This native of Mexico is related to the super cool resurrection plant which can rehydrate itself with drops of water after being completely dessicated. This one, however, is much prettier.



Begonia "Phoe's Cleo". While not a particularly rare or remarkable plant, it's really neat looking and blooms in the winter when all Vermonters need it most.


Epiphyllum oxypetalum aka "Night Blooming Cereus". This truly wonderful and weird plant is a night blooming member of the orchid cactus family. Pure white flowers, the size of a dinner plate and super fragrant, open as soon as the sun goes down and stay open all night, closing in the morning which is perfect for an insomniac like me. I'm completely in love.


Sarracenia "Scarlet Belle". Ain't she a beaut? This pitcher plant eats insects and grows in water. Need I say more?

Nepenthes Rafflesiana. This gorgeous pitcher plant, unlike its cousin above, is a climbing vine. It produces two distinct types of pitchers (heavily modified leaves), which are used to capture and kill insects. The lower pitchers are generally round and squat, while the upper pitchers are more narrow. Mostly it's a really neat bog plant that eats bugs.

Since I'm moving to an apartment in June that has much more natural light than my current digs, I could be in for quite a fun ride with these plants. Josh, however, who's moving in with me, may not be quite as thrilled. Pity him, for I am stubborn.