House shopping

Hi All,

Just wanted to give you a quick update on our house hunting adventures. In the past 1-2 months Mariah and I have seen at least 25-30 houses in all areas of Cincinnati. We've visited some of the roughest neighborhoods where house bargains are readily available and we've visited some of the nicest areas where the houses have a premium attached to them. Since the housing market is really bad at the moment in the U.S. because of the sub-prime mortgage disaster it is a buyers market, especially if you are a first-time buyer.

After all of this searching we have found two beautiful houses that we really like. Last Monday we decided to place an offer on the following house: 1301 Bursal St. We placed a really low-ball offer just to see what the sellers would do, not surprisingly, the sellers rejected the offer and asked for a much higher price. At this point we decided to walk away for a few days. On Monday we are going to place another offer on this house at a higher price. If the sellers continue to be difficult we will walk away and go to our number 2 option.

This has been quite the adventure for us. We've learned a lot about buying a house during the past few weeks. We'll post our learnings shortly, although they would only apply to the U.S.

Stay tuned...

In other news, Brock is no longer sick... no more Costco food for him. We weighed him on Friday and he is 35lbs.

Michael

Being a bachelor isn't quite the same anymore

Hi All,

With Mariah going up to Lansing, Michigan with all of her knitting buddies, Brock and I were left alone to be bachelor's for the weekend. Unfortunately, this weekend wasn't as relaxing as I had hoped.

We recently changed Brock's food from a $30/large bag of Purina One to a $10/large bag of Costco brand dog food. We decided to make this change because the Costco food was supposed to be better for the dog. The fact that it only cost $10/bag didn't hurt either. Since making the switch Brock's poop's have been less than solid. He has also lost the ability to control when he needs to go #2. On Friday we woke up to find out that Brock had pooped in his cage and inadvertently rolled in it. Mariah and I had to give Brock a bath at 8am and clean-up his lovely mess. On Saturday Brock was fine until Mariah left for her trip, he became mopey and wouldn't eat any food. This wasn't completely unexpected since Brock is Mariah's dog.

On Sunday morning, I awoke to find Brock's cage full of poop again. After an hour clean-up I took him to go to the bathroom outside but Brock didn't go. I took him back inside and after 10 minutes I heard his bell ring and before 2 minutes went by I came to take him out found a nice present in the living room. Brock took a liquid crap all over the floor. It appeared that he was running when he took the crap because there was a long trail of it. Needless to say, I was not impressed. After cleaning up that mess I was finally able to get the day started.

I'll be very happy to have Mariah home again to deal with her dog!

Michael

Websites I Like

Hi All,

I thought I would share with you all of the websites that I've enjoyed in the last few months. When you work for an agency you find out about all sorts of interesting sites.

Dave and Adrienne's Blog, http://daveandadie.blogspot.com

Dave is an old friend from my year at UMASS. We've kept in touch over the years and I was very happy to attend his wedding last summer.

Attempting to Live a Sustainable Lifestyle in St. Louis, http://livegreenstlouis.wordpress.com/

One of my good friends and former colleague, Todd moved to St. Louis, MO and decided to build an eco-friendly house. This blog is a great resource for those who are interested in eco-friendly industry.

Lufthansa to Europe: Virtual Pilot!, http://www.lufthansa-usa.com/useugame2007/html/play.html

Very cool travel game that tests your knowledge of cities in Europe. It's a lot harder than you think.

Stuff White People Like, http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

Probably one of the funniest blogs I've read in a long time.

Stuff Bitches Love, http://stuffbitcheslove.wordpress.com/

A spin-off of the Stuff White People Like, very funny from the mind of my current co-worker, Anna.

Bush's Perfect Pair Contest, http://www.perfectpaircontest.com/

This is a recent promotion that we recently launched at work. Its a pretty interesting contest. For all the people in the U.S. who love to grill, you should definitely enter.

Finally an update......

Hi All,

I apologize for the very late posting, I blame Mariah :) Since the beginning of March we have been incredibly busy. What's been keeping us busy? House hunting!! Mariah and I have decided to get a house to store all of her stuff... and Brock. I'll get to Brock later.

The Cincinnati housing market, like the rest of the U.S. has hit hard times so there are plenty of deals out there. We have been looking for a house with 2-3 bedrooms, 1.5-2 bathrooms and air conditioning of course. After 2-3 weeks of looking we've found one house that we really like a lot. The house is located in a small town called Fairfax which is about 10 minutes away from where we currently live. The house has been completely redone with all new everything. We'll see in the next few weeks if we get it.

Another big update, we finally were able to get our wedding photos, only 2 months later. After many phone calls, emails and personal visits we finally were given the photos. We will be posting them online shortly.

Michael

Mirror mirror on the wall, whose puppy is the most pathetic of them all?

So, after reading my most recent blog posting, Kiff claims that her Sadie (one of my favourite doggie friends, by the way) is actually more pathetic looking than Brock when it comes to getting baths... So I've decided to let you all vote for yourselves!

Here's a juxtaposition....

Brock, wimpering to be 'saved' from his bath.

Kiff canoodling sadie... Not sure what's more pathetic-looking: Sadie or your babushka?

FYI: That's not what you think... it's peanut butter smeared on the bathtub.

Aww, Sadie looks so sad! Must have been dirty though, or had an accident... That water doesn't look clear to me!

More puppy patheticness.... :)

Who do YOU think is the most pathetic water doggie???

Raining cats and dogs...

Hi everyone,

Not a lot to report today but I thought I'd right a quick update so those of you who have been checking this regularly aren't annoyed with me for another day of no posting. :)

Today is nice and warm in Cincinnati, however it's been raining pretty hard since yesterday evening. Our snow is all but gone and I have a feeling that we won't be seeing much more until next year *tear*. Ah well.

Brock enjoying what's likely to be his last snow this year... Poor thing is confused now - when we take him out to pee, he's not sure where to go because we had been taking him to the snow.

Brock is growing like a weed and is doing well. He is a lot of fun now as he's learning and discovering his little world at a very rapid pace. I suppose the most excited thing he's learned to do to this point is to ring his bell in order to be let out for a pee. It's actually very cute. Now that he's house trained and we're not needing to take him out every hour, it's a very handy trick. We just started by hanging a couple large 'jingle bells' that I purchased at Michael's from a chain of tie wraps (Dad, aren't you proud of me for being so handy?) as we didn't want him to chew through a string or ribbon or something. We would have him nudge the bells with his nose and then sit every time we took him out and now he's learning to do it on his own. Ah, we're such proud parents! We must give him credit though, he's been incredibly easy to train....

Michael's doing laundy...
oh wait, I knew it was too good to be true!

Tonight, we're off to our second puppy kindergarten class (last week's was canceled due to the big storm), which should be a lot of fun. Brock has made a little friend there, named Graham, who's an oatmeal-coloured poodle mix (his parents got him at a shelter and so they're not really sure what he's mixed with) who's a good match for Brock. Graham's only about five or so pounds heavier than Brock but he's full grown so he's a little less excitable, which is nice.. all the others in the class are fully grown large breed dogs - two labs and a boxer. And actually, those three are not very well behaved so we were glad that Brock and Graham became fast friends :)

Brock looking particularly pathetic and defeated by the end of his first bath a few weeks ago (this week's bath was thankfully much less eventful!). It's amazing how much he shrinks up when he doesn't have his big fluffy hair to hide inside!

So yeah, not a lot is going on here right now. I got a library card in the mail yesterday (which I ordered online) so I think I'll head over there this afternoon to activate it and see if I can find a good book to get me through the rainy weekend. Tomorrow, Michael and I are off to Ikea to pick up my knitting chair - see the last post about how I won a 100$ gift certificate there - which I'm also pretty excited about. Michael's not so much looking forward to it - he hates stores full of people - but I promised I'd get up early enough to miss the rush.

Brock's 'pounce' while playing at the tennis courts... too cute :)

Well, that's all for now. Must go as Brock's jingling his bell for me!

Take care,
Mariah

I heart IKEA

Well, I must say it's a beautiful day in our neighbourhood today :) The sun is shining, it's probably about 13 degrees and there's no sign of snow or rain... oh, and the 40 cm of snow that we got on Friday and Saturday is nearly gone. I must admit that it's much nicer to have a blizzard when you know that spring is just around the corner...

So, now for some local news: Today was the Grand Opening for the first Ikea in Ohio. Actually, it's the only one within about 7 hours of here, so it's quite new and exciting for many local people who don't really know what Ikea is all about. So anyways, they allowed people to start camping out for the Grand opening starting on Monday morning at 9am. A little crazy but I'm sure many people did it. Michael wouldn't take two days off work to wait in line with me, and having only one vehicle and not really knowing anyone else in the city crazy enough to do it, I missed out. (What gives, eh? haha).. No, just kidding. I wouldn't have anyways.

Instead of all that fuss, I decided to go this morning after dropping Michael off at work. (His parting words were 'please don't spend all our money there!') It was tough, but I managed not to. I spent 18.00$ on two laundry hampers and a large container with a flip lid for dog food... Wasn't looking for these things but they had been on my list of things I semi-need for a while and the prices were right. That's really not the most exciting part though. Although I didn't arrive until 9:20am, I was still within the first 2500 people to enter the store. I was sure I had missed out on the 'mystery envelopes' that were being given to these first visitors since, when I got there, the line-up went around three sides of the huge square building. The hype going into the building was pretty ridiculous. As we rounded the last corner to the entrance, suddenly there was music... Like a live band playing really upbeat music - like you would hear at a sports game. Then, the most shocking thing, as you walked in through the doors, I was handed a gold envelope (yay me for being one of the first 2500!) and then the line passed through a room of at least 100 Ikea employees, all dressed in yellow, clapping, hooting and banging these plastic Ikea signs together... like the ones you'd see at a hockey or football game. It was mayhem! (but oh-so-much fun :) So yeah, after walking through the throng of cheering employees, you go up an escalator and, I was finally in the store. You'd think this would be where the excitement would end, but NO! I decided to grab a quick breakfast.... 99cents for a plate of eggs, bacon and potatoes, you can't go wrong! Then, as I'm checking out, I'm given a free mug. "Sweet," I'm thinking... But it doesn't end there. It's a cup that entitles me to free coffee for life at the West Chester IKEA. (Not that I'll be stopping by there that often but, a) it's a free travel mug and b) it's a free coffee at least on the next few occasions that i'm there.)

Ok, so now you'd think the excitement would be over... but still not yet! I realized that I hadn't yet opened my little gold envelope... Inside was a 100$ gift card! I couldn't believe it! Mariah, who NEVER wins ANYTHING, won! So yes, that's the end of the big excitement of my day. I then trolled through the store, wondering what to purchase with my windfall... I had been telling Michael I would love a chair for knitting... I though I knew what I wanted but once I got there, I realized I had a couple choices... I want to make sure it's something that we'll be able to use when we move - we're hoping to buy a house once I get a job here - and that it's something he'll like as well. Plus, I wanted to think about it a little while. So I think we'll head back this weekend or next... as soon as I can drag Michael :)

Well, that's about all for now. I hope this post finds everyone well and happy.

Take care,
Mariah