I have been so wrapped up in "condo issues", I did not take the time to realize that my one-year bloggiversary was on the 10th. So, Happy Bloggiversary to me. Soon enough, that word will be an official word in the dictionary. If "
Ginormous" can make it, why can't "Bloggiversary"? I told my self that one of my New Years resolutions was to post more entries on my blog. Like most resolutions I try hard to keep, this would failed. That's why I only make them in theory, because I know I won't reach that goal. Which is fine - I'm not loosing sleep over it.
So, my condo issues are that the final stages of selling my boyfriend's condo are happening, very s-l-o-w-l-y. I understand that when you're making such a big purchase, you want everything to be perfect in the place you're going to be living in. I've done it, although the purchase for my place went much smoother than this one. It will be done, but minutes are passing by very quickly and we're coming closer to the date of the close and we're just not as far as we'd like to be for that to happen. We're trying to be patient as possible, and if we can do that, everything will fall into place.
We have also begun to attend Open Houses. Our first trek out there into the world of mostly spotless, and un-lived-in condo's that are waiting for potential buyers like ourselves, was quite interesting at first to say the least. We started in Quincy, as my boyfriend has a slight obsession with that area. I haven't spent much time in there area, so I was open to seeing what it had to offer. I had searched Boston.com's real estate section and printed out all of the listings that we might be interested in. I eventually had a stack of about 6 or 7 open houses and put them in order of time. Most,or I should say ALL of the open houses that we made a point of seeing were... let's just say that a picture isn't always worth a thousand words. Somehow, when the seller takes pictures of their place, they make it look a lot better than it actually is. We were excited to see some of the places only because they looked great in the pictures. We were disappointed, to say the least, when we saw them in person. They were either in an area that was not easy to find, and let's just say, for lack of better words, a bit sketchy. I know there are good and bad parts to every city and town, but I had obviously taken an interest to the one's who's neighborhoods were not exactly where we would want to live. Call me snobby or picky, but I'd like to feel safe when I walk around my neighborhood.
We finally gave up after becoming quite dissatisfied with what we had seen so far, so we decided to take a ride over to
Marina Bay in Quincy - which if you don't know where that is, it's right on the waterfront - pretty nice actually.
The first place we happened to drive past had an open house sign on the front law - place looked nice, so we went in. An older woman happened to be walked down the hall as we were walking in and asked us if she could help us. We told her we were there to look at an open house. Her response? "This is a condo complex for people 55 and older". Our response? "OK - thank you!". We had no idea - there were no indications of that, so we laughed and left. We finally reached Marina Bay which was only about a half a mile down the road and parked in the visitor's spots. The building was beautiful and we assumed it would be out of our league. We walked in and the concierge nodded. There was a table with listings on it, so we walked up and took one. The condo ended up being pretty much what we were looking for and in our price range - we hoped it was as nice as it sounded! Even better, the open house had just started. The place was nice, nice enough to keep us interested but not quite ready to make an offer as we needed to see what else we could find in that area. We went to a few others that had potential, but we still took more of an interest to the first one we saw. I'm not quite convinced that first one could be "offer-worthy", but I'm keeping an open mind.
Oh, the joys of condo selling and buying. I just want to click my heels and have everything done!
Who needs the Weather Channel when they can have this umbrella for only $125?! Ambient Devices, a company in Cambridge, has invented an umbrella that senses when it's going to rain. Ambient Devises has a wireless internet device in which a receiver that is in the handle of the umbrella transmits the weather forecast through Accuweather.com. When the umbrella senses that rain is due, the handle of the umbrella will light up. This very smart umbrella has been designed to stand upright so the handle is visible when flashing.
