Haaarvard and the wedding - Boston

On Saturday we went to Harvard.  To be 100% honest, I was NOT impressed with the campus.  I imagined an oasis campus in the middle of the city, similar to Marquette University (where I went to college.  Instead I saw a quad, and a campus that was intertwined with the town. 

To the left is Mr Harvard. 

Below are gates at Harvard that say "Enter To Grow in Wisdom"  Dad needed some Wisdom, so he went through the gates. 





















Possibly the coolest thing I saw was at the Harvard was the Book on Demand Printer.  We got lucky and they were printing a book as we speak.  It was really cool!  Basically if you have a book, recipe book, or whatever that you want bound, you can send it to Harvard and they will bind it.  Its not even that expensive!  You can go here for prices.
 

After Harvard, we went back to the hotel and got ready for the main event.  My cousin getting married. :) Here you can see the new Mr and Mrs. 

Boston Day 2

Boston Day 2 has much more pictures. :) The first thing we did was go to Warren Tavern.  Warren Tavern is one of the oldest Taverns in Massachusetts.  George Washington's funeral speech was given here and both George Washing and Paul Revere frequently visited here. 



After that we followed the Freedom Trail to the Bunker Hill Monument.   I wrote about some of this day in a previous blog post - here.  I mistakenly said this was the Washington monument, but that is not correct.  This is the Bunker Hill Monument.  The Washington Monument is in DC.  This monument was 294 stops to the top, and we never ended up going to the top.  We got side tracked with the USS Constitution and a family dinner later that night. 

The USS Constitution was very cool.  It sailed on the 24th for the first time since 1998 (at least that's what the sailor told us)  It is the oldest navy vessel that still sails.  It got its nick-name "old iron-sides" because during the war of 1812 soldiers said that cannons would "bounce" off the ships sides.  

At one point we went down below deck to see the other levels of the ship.  Above is the barracks.  Pretty small if you ask me.  The ceiling was real low.  I would have to duck almost the entire time so I wouldn't hit my dead.  After a few minutes one of the sailors said everyone had to go upstairs because a VIP was coming aboard.  Later we found out it was the governor that was coming.

C's brother joined the Navy.  He leaves for basic in December.  So I was very confused as to how and why these sailors got the job of manning this ship.  So I asked one of them.  The conversation went like this.               ~Me - Excuse me. Do you have a minute?

~Sailor - Yes

~Me - Can you tell me what job you have in the Navy?

~Sailor - Missile Launcher (or something like that) 

~Me - But the USS Constitution doesn't have missles?

~Sailor - There's a long story that goes along with it, and I came here by choice.  *Sailor turns and then walks away*

I think I may have annoyed him.  It wasn't my intention.  I just was curious since C's brother is joining as a Corpsman.   I didn't really understand how a military man could have ended up on the USS Constitution.  C told me that I asked the sailor for a minute, and he gave me a minute and at that point I was asking for more of his time. Oh well.  If that sailor reads this - I'm sorry. 

This is another ship that was in the harbor for repair.  Unfortunately I can not remember the name of the ship. 

I'm back from Boston.

I had never been to Boston or any of the original 13 before this trip so I had a lot of fun.

These days I pretty much rely exclusively on my phone for pictures and the day we left started super early so I didn't get many pictures that first day.  I woke up early and drove to midway.  Met C at Boston Logan and he surprised me with Coffee, K-cups and a sandwich from Dunkin Donuts.  Later that trip we learned that Dunkin Donuts originate near Boston, but in reality C got me coffee and K-cups because he knows Dunkin Donuts is my absolute favorite coffee of all time.

We arrived at the hotel and woke up my Cousins and Aunt and Uncle.  Then we decided to go explore Boston.  Since the wedding was actually in Peabody (pronounced Pibidy) a suburb of Boston, we had to drive everywhere.  We were extremely surprised at 1 PM when there was traffic on the interstate.  Don't ask me which interstate we were on, I have no idea.  I just was shocked to see so much traffic on a Thursday.  Chicago doesn't have that much traffic in the middle of the day, and I assumed Boston would be similar.  When we got to the city of Boston we attempted to find parking and realized the parking prices were just as bad, possibly WORSE than Chicago.  It was surprising. 

Finally we found parking (only $29) and went to a graveyard that was close by.  We saw graves for Mother Goose (pictures here on C's blog) a women who is thought to have been behind the mother goose fairy tales, Sam Adam, Paul Revere, 5 victims of the Boston Massacre, Ben Franklin's parents, John Hancock and many others.  After this we went to a local coffee shop to get coffee and then walked along the Freedom Trail toward The North End.

Along the way we saw another grave and a very old church.  (I highly recommend going to C's blog to see pictures for this day.)  The only picture I have for this day is of a memorial to honor the men and women who have lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq.  When a wind comes through it sounds like chimes. Absolutely gorgeous. 

Anyway, we continued to walk and found the North End.  We ate at Lucca's which is a restaurant someone recommended to us.  Honestly, I thought it was overpriced and not worth it.  But oh well.  We also went to Mike's Pastry and ordered an assortment of Italian Cookies to-go.  Unfortunately, this was also not worth the wait.  Later in the trip we went to a much better Italian Restaurant, and a much better Italian Bakery.

After that we went to Cheers. :) Or should I say, the bar that inspired the TV Sitcom Cheers.  Unfortunately, we didn't realize this when we first went here, so when we followed the signs that said "set bar upstairs" we thought we were actually in the set bar.  Later we learned that the actual set bar is in a storage room somewhere in LA.  Apparently people would visit the cheers bar and say things like "this doesn't even look like Cheers. Where did Norm sit?" So they built a set bar.  Oh well.  At least we got to see the bar that inspired the sitcom.  After that we walked through the Boston Commons (a big garden area) and had a few Italian cookies and called it a night.

Boston Day 2 will be posted tomorrow. 

Blogging from Boston

Well. I'm standing in line to see the USS Constitution. We just came back from eating at the oldest pub in Massachusetts.

I'm blogging from my phone right now, and I have never done this before.  So I  don't know how the pictures I've uploaded are going to be. Hopefully you can see them. Anyway.

Apparently the pub we ate at is where George Washington's funeral speech was given! The food was pretty good. I had a crab cake BLT. Yum!

Then we walked to the Washington Monument. I didn't even know Boston had a Washington Monument and it turns out this one was the original. Who knew! Unfortunately the inside of the monument was closed for a bit. I guess they were repairing a light. So we were planning on going to the USS Constitution and coming back to climb the 20 flights after we saw the ship. Unfortunately, the line for the ship is REALLY long. I'm not sure if we will have enough time to do both.

Ill post more about the ship later.

My story of buying my first house Part 2 of ???

C and I are leaving for Boston today to go to a cousins wedding.  :) Yay for a mini-vacation!  Its also nice because I can see C since he has been in New Jersey.  But anyways, this post is pre written.  

So. I believe I left off at when we made an offer on the house.  We made an offer of approximately 13k under what we thought the house was worth.  I think our offer was officially presented to the seller at Thursday, March 15th around 9 AM.  Later that day we get a call from our relator around noon saying they came down $7,000 in price.  So we counter coming up $8,000 in price.  Mind you we are still have bout 5k in playing room. Then comes the drama.

Friday comes and goes... and then we go visit C's family to celebrate St Patty's day.  At this point its so surprising to us that it is taking so long to get a response from the seller.  My realtor will randomly send me texts saying "still haven't heard anything" but other than that we are in silence.  The same things happens on Saturday.

For those who know me, I don't do patient well... I want what I want when I want it.  And I usually want everything now.  So Its absolutely killing me that they wont respond.  Sunday I still have no idea what is going on.

Finally around lunch time, my realtor calls me.  I'm all excited but he immediately says "I have bad news.  The sellers went up in price."  My immediate reaction is - what??? Why?!  How?? I don't understand?  Well, it turns out, the sellers realtor originally gave us a counter offer without talking to the seller.  I have no idea why, but essentially the sellers realtor conned us into going up in price when the seller hadn't actually heard our offer.  So at this point, our offer is 5k below our max price, and their offer is 10k over our max price. So, sucks.

I tell our realtor to tell them I'm pissed, not with him, but just in general.  I also tell him to go up to our max price.  Tell them its our final offer.  Two days go by AGAIN without hearing anything.  At this point I'm deflated.  I'm guessing and planning on us going out again soon to look at houses.  Then I get a call from our realtor saying they counter offered at 3,000 above our maximum price.  All I keep thinking is don't these people understand what a final offer means??? Final offer means take it or leave it.

But, C and I decided to take the offer.  And so, on March 22nd we finally sign all the paperwork and we are on the road to owning our first house! :) Yay!!  We chose May 4th as our closing date and thus begin the process of securing a loan.... TBC.

My story of buying my first house Part 1 of MANY

Well, my house has been taking up a lot of my time, so I figured I might as well tell everyone the very detailed and drama filled story of buying and reno-ing my first house. 

I guess I can start at the beginning.  In October of 2010 I sold my horse, Jack, to a good friend of mine.  Jack (left) was the first horse I bought with my own money.  I had owned horses since I was a young kid, but my parents bought me my first horse, Rags.  I found Jack as a long yearling and I fell in love.  I think he has TONS of potential and I think his coloring is gorgeous.  Unfortunately, horses are expensive, especially if you want to compete with them.  And for a young person like me, it is extremely difficult to try to save for a house while showing horses.  So almost 2 years ago I made the tough decision to get out of horses for a short time so that I could start saving for a house.  This meant I had to sell Jack.  Over the past 2 years I have only ridden a handful of times.  Most of that is my fault, a few friends of mine have offered me plenty of times to come up and ride.  But its been pretty busy with buying a house so perhaps in a few more weeks things will calm down.

Fall of last year C and I started talking about looking for a house.  We decided that we were going to be in the Chicago area for at least 5 years, and while he can't contribute anything to the house (except rent and manual labor) he would help me look for a house.  Another set of eyes is always nice.

I think the first time we went out to see houses was some time around January or February of 2012.  The first realtor we used was very new at the whole process and basically knew nothing.  So we dumped her after the 2nd time we went out with her to see houses.  But the second realtor we used was great. 

With him we made our first offer on our first house (left).  Unfortunately, our offer was beat out so we didn't get the house.  I have no idea how much our offer was beat our by, but I do know that the sale price of the house was only 1,500 over our offer on the house. 

Our realtor showed us about 20 more houses.  I think the most important thing about the house we wanted to buy was proximity to the EL station and the size of the backyard.  The whole reason we wanted a house was because we wanted to enjoy a backyard.  Most of the houses within walking distance to an EL stop have very small backyards.  We pretty much only wanted to look in a 5 mile radius of houses. By March, I was getting discouraged.  We saw something like 30-40 houses, and we didn't like any of them.  They just didn't have a big enough back yard. 

Then mid March we saw a great house.  The lot was 2 PIN numbers.  It had a fireplace on the main level AND the basement!  It had a wet bar.  It had 2 bedrooms (which was less than we wanted, we wanted a minimum of 3) but the house had a "den" that if we added a closet could easily be turned into a 3rd bedroom.  It had a 1 car attached garage with room on the lot to add a 2nd car garage in the future.  The house was completely out of date.  I mean we are talking avocado green stove and baby pink bathtub.  But I could see the potential.  The rooms were good sizes and the house had a lot of character. :) So C and I decided on March 14 (pi) day to make an offer. :) It was pretty much the start of all the drama. 


TBC....

Challenge problems

Well, if my situation doesn't improve soon, Disastica will have an easy challenge.  I left work on Friday to drive to my house and mow the grass.  The grass has not been mowed since I bought the house (we closed on June 6th) but because of the drought the midwest has been having we haven't had to mow the grass since then.

So I go to the house, pick up the empty gas can, drive to the gas station and proceed to fill up the can.  Now, this is the first time I've ever done something like this, so I look on the side of the can to try and locate the size of the can I have.  (6 gallons if your wondering)  Since I was afraid of the gas spilling all over C's car, I decided to only fill up approximately 3 gallons worth.  Of course I decided this after I had already topped off C's car with gas and started pumping the gas into the can before I made a mental note of the start point, but still, approximately 3 gallons. $20 later (yeah, gas is really expensive considering I only put a gallon or 2 into C's car) I put the gas can into the trunk, and made sure it wouldn't tip over.

Wow... Gas REALLY smells strong!  I had all the windows open on the short drive home and I still felt like I was getting high off the fumes!  But anyway, I get back to the house and go to get the lawnmower.  Well, our contracts put a TON of debris in front of the lawn mower so I had 2 choices, either lift the lawnmower over all the garbage, or take the lawnmower through the house (We have an attached garage).  I chose the first option.

After a small battle (and later I found out a pulled muscle) I managed to get the lawnmower out of the garage.  I go to pour gas into the lawnmower and realize I probably should NOT have put so much gas in the can.  I don't know if its because I'm extremely weak or what, but I could not keep the can steady! I spilled so much gas on the side of the lawnmower that I was nervous it would catch on fire when I went to start it. But alas, I didn't start a fire.  :)

It took me approximately 1.5 hours to mow the entire lawn, and while I was mowing it I decided we have WAY too many obsticles and who in their right mind decides to plant 3 trees in the middle of the yard??  The good thing about the drought is one of the trees we hate has died.  C and I were planning to cut that tree down, it was a young tree and was not planted in a good spot.  So now we don't have to kill a healthy tree since its already dead! :)

Back the the lawn, The grass was so long in one spot that the lawnmower stalled twice.  Of course this spot was in the corner of my yard, and I would have to trek to the patio to try and start it again. I mean it would be way too convenient if something like that happened NEXT to the patio.

By the time I was done mowing the lawn (by the way it is not a self-propelled lawnmower...) I was sweating buckets.  In my mind I was cursing the sun as well as thinking of what to write in my blog about how I was going to kick Disastica's butt in this challenge.  I mean seriously, I probably burned like 400 calories during that whole time!  It wasn't until I was done mowing the lawn and on my way to pick up C from the airport that I realized I hurt myself.

I don't know what I did, but I think I pulled a muscle in my back.  It hurts... a lot.  At first it just hurt to move, but now there is a dull pain even when I stay still.  And then if I do move a gigantic shooting pain goes through my back.  Its to the point that I may go to the doctor.  So basically, I can't exercise which really makes this whole challenge well... challenging. 

Hopefully my back feels better tomorrow.  I've never pulled a muscle before, so I don't know if this is what it feels like.  But if it is... gross. 

Free Friday - Confirmed.

A few days ago I posted about how I heard about Free Nook Books every friday at B&N.  See the post here.  Well, I just wanted to make sure everyone knew that it DOES work!  I just downloaded Tim Davys’ Amberville.  Yay!  I have no idea if this book is any good, but I plan on visiting the B&N blog every friday because I'm sure every once in a while they are bound to have good books you can download for free. :)

Happy Friday everyone! 

Challenge Accepted.

Everyone pretty much knows my exercise/weight battle... Well, you all at least know about my exercise battle.  Basically I hate exercising and I love food.  I wouldn't say I'm fat, but I also think I could use to loose a few lbs. 

If I do say so myself, I was HOT in college.  I think it was the fact that I hated the dorm food so I pretty much only ate salads for lunch and dinner.  (The salad bar in my dorm was amazing)  It also helped that I walked EVERYWHERE in college.  I'm sure I walked a minimum of 5 miles a day.  I would frequently come home in between classes and my dorms were always pretty far from my classes.  So yeah... easily 5 miles.  In college I could eat whatever refrain from going to the gym and not gain a lb.

When I graduated college I continued to not go to the gym.  My only exercise consisted of walking to and from work.  For the first 3.5 years after graduation this amounted to 2.5 miles of walking a day.  So I still could refrain from going to the gym, but I quickly learned I couldn't eat what I wanted without seeing the results on my hips.  A little over 1.5 years ago, I moved from the suburbs (where I would take the Metra and walk a mile to and from the office - trust me I know this doesn't add up to 2.5 I did additional walking every day too) to the city, where I got dropped off either via bus or El practically outside my building.  My daily exercise consisted of walking up 2 flights of stairs whenever I took the dog out... Yeah... I know thats awful.  So over the past year, I have gained weight, and not been happy with the way I look. 

So - this morning my good friend DecidelyDisastica asked me if I would do a challenge with her.  She knows I've been trying to figure out motivation to loose weight and she needs motivation too, so we are going to try to help each other out.  The challenge is the first person to loose 10 lbs gets a mani/pedi bought by the other person.  This will happen a total of 3 times (since we would both LOVE to lose 30 lbs)  The next 10 lbs will get a facial.  And the final 10 lbs will be a massage. 

The official weigh in starts tomorrow.  And I have to say, part of me wants to slam an entire gallon of water before my weigh in so I can have a little extra help beating DecidelyDisastica, but the other part of me doesn't want to see that number on the scale with all that water weight.  So, its doubtful that I'll slam the water.

All I have to say is - DecidelyDisastica - you are going down! :)

Wish us luck all!

B&N The Nook Blog - Free ebooks!!

Ok, seriously, how long has this been going on before I found it?!  Did you know B&N has "Free Fridays?" I love my nook, and I also love free, so this is amazing.

Go to the B&N Nook Blog here .

This is what B&N says "Each week, we ask our featured author to recommend a book or author that you may want to check out. Since authors are such passionate readers themselves, we thought you might like to find out what they love to read, too"  

Supposedly, the book they recommend is free for that day only.  So may sure to subscribe to their blog or check it out once a week to get these free books.  I scrolled through the books they have offered in the past, and I haven't heard of most of the books (well, aside from Jane Eyre and The Lord of the Flies) but I figured if an author enjoys reading it, the book can't be half bad. 

I'm going to try to download a free book on Friday and I'll let you know how it goes.

Starting to work out.

Well, its official... I'm determined to start to work out again.  I was doing real well at the beginning of the year when I was going to the gym and lifting with 2 of my friends.  Then the gym closest to work closed down and the next closest was $50 a month!  That is way more than I was previously paying, so I quit and made a promise to myself I would exercise at home.  Well I originally made that promise in March or so, and I don't think I've worked out more than once or twice since. 

A few days ago I discovered "Back On Pointe's" exercise challenges on pinterest.  She (I'm almost positive the blog writer is a she) creates mini workout challenges and posts them online.  You can see them here. I hate to admit it, when I first saw her challenges I had to look up how to do some things; I never knew what a Burpee or a Star Jump was.  But I thought they looked short and easy and would be the perfect thing to get me wanting to work out again.

Today I did the "Cardio Circuit" workout.  And I feel like today's short exercise kinda kicked my butt.  :-/ Maybe it was because these challenges are supposed to be done with no break in between exercises (and not because of how out of shape I am) but I got my heart rate pumping and started to sweat a bit! 

I hope I keep up the workouts.... I figure if I'm so obsessed with the internet or tv where I can't spare 20 minutes I have big problems to worry about. 

Dublin and Skype

C was supposed to leave for a 9 month work assignment a few weeks ago (he was supposed to leave the day before my birthday).  I was pretty upset when we found out because that would mean I would be moving into our new (to us) house all by myself.  Since my laptop was a piece of shit and the webcam didn't work, C and my parents bought me a new laptop for my birthday. :) (I'm getting to the point, I promise) The laptop is super nice and I absolutely love it. :)

So, I've had the laptop for about 10 days, and last night is the first night I got to Skype. :) It was pretty fun being able to see C, but I think the best thing was Dublin.  Dublin would hear C's voice and start searching around the whole room for C.  At first he just looked behind the laptop, then he looked behind the furniture, left the room, ran downstairs... just about everywhere.  Poor Dublin was certain C was in the house and was so confused when he couldn't find him. 

Eventually Dublin went to sleep while C and I were Skyping, but every once in a while Dublin would wake up whining.  Poor Dubby, he misses C.

C's New Blog. :)

I don't know if you noticed, but there is a new link at the top of my blog, for C's (my boyfriends) new blog!  He is in New Jersey (a long way from the midwest) for an undetermined amount of time for work.  Basically work bought him a 1 way flight and said "we will buy the return trip when we know more about when your coming back..."  Sounds great huh.  But then in this economy beggers can't really be choosey so he packed his bags and said "sign me up."

Anyway, while he is on the East Coast (perhaps we can convince him to continue to blog once he returns) he will be updating a blog to share with his family and friends.  So go check it out!  C's Blog

Sams Club non-members Welcome this weekend!

This is an FYI for everyone.  If you are a Sams Club member, get your shopping done Thursday or wait until Monday!  Every year Sams Club lets non-members come into the store to try to hook us into joining the rest of the year.  Fortunately for non-members (like myself), that weekend is this weekend!  (Just in time for back to school season)  Therefore, if I were a Sams Club member, I would avoid this store if at all possible.  I also learned that some states (Illinois is NOT one of them) have a tax free weekend.  More info here.

 :)

Free Kitchen scissors

Do you need kitchen scissors?  If so - head over to facebook here.  Fill out the order form and you should get scissors soon.  The site says it will ship in 5 days!  Not bad. :)

Good luck!  Let me know when your scissors arrive. :)