Oh submarine shop, you're my Hero

During the marathon training summers of 2003-2005, SHB and I use to carpool to the downtown CARA site.  We'd do our miles and then head to the Corner Robbery Bakery for breakfast.  Breakfast wasn't just about refueling, it was also about socializing with the other pace groups and catching up on gossip with our fellow runners.  Once the mileage got longer, we would end up not getting back north until closer to noon.

SHB lives at Irving Park Rd and Scheffield Ave.  For some reason, I couldn't just drop her at that corner and make it home in 10 minutes with a straight shot down Irving Park.  I had to make the turn and drop her off in front of her condo, 100 yards south of the intersection.  Basically, I was too much of a pussy to insist otherwise.  Fortunately, my pussyness afforded me the opportunity to head toward Addison and drive West to get home.  I would often stop at Hero's Submarine Sandwich Shop at 3600 N Western and get a couple of subs for my late lunch and early dinner before going out for the evening.

This tiny, cash-only corner sub shop across from Lane Tech High School specializes in fresh sandwiches made fast. Subway, this is not.  All sandwiches come with lettuce, tomato, onions, pickles, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper and oregano.  I still make sure to say hold the mayo unless I'm getting the roast beef.

Hero's has been around for a long, long time. My Uncle "Animal" use to go to Lane and he introduced me to them.  I was supposed to actually go to Lane Tech for high school but a bitter douch bag 8th grade teacher decided to write an anti-recommendation in the section of the application reserved for Principal Comments and I suspect that placed me on the path to attend Von Steuben instead.  Although I did get to go there for a couple of summer school sessions.

Reading through the Yelp reviews, it seems like the quality has gone down a little.  If so, that is too bad.  I suspect this shop, like so many other Chicago staples, will go away once the current owner decides it isn't lucrative to continue and/or doesn't have an heir to continue the family business.

Shifting Paradigms

When I attempted to sell my 2/1 condo in spring of 2010, there came a point when my agent hinted that a significant price drop might get the job done. While we had some showings, the Home Buyer Tax Credit was going to expire soon.  When we initially discussed putting my place on the market, I explained that I knew I wasn't going to make any money off my place.

My goal was simply not to bring any money to the table to cover transaction costs or mortgage shortfall. Bonus if I actually walked away with a little something to add to the down payment fund.  I believed I communicated that and my realtor was fine with that goal.  The paradigm was Price It Right and It Will Sell.

My realtor couldn't tell me exactly how low we could price it so that I wouldn't have to bring money to the table over transaction costs and or sales price. In fact he could only give me a rough estimate and was reluctant to do any work to refine that estimate. Apparently a top seller who has been in the business for years couldn't crunch some numbers to give his client the information necessary to make the best decision possible.

He did argue that even if I had to bring a small amount of money to the table out of my down payment savings, it would be a good thing to be free of the condo and could quickly start saving again.  That would have also meant moving into Nightingale's cramped 1 bedroom condo in the south loop.

If he had said something like "if you lower your price to X and we get an offer around that amount, you'd end up bringing approximately $2K to the table," I might have actually considered it. But again he couldn't be bothered because I was being unreasonable not lowering my price enough to get the sale done.  Of course tweaking his commision was probably not an option either.

I never had to formally make that decision because no official offers came my way. The Paradigm switched overnight to Do Not Put Your Home on the Market If you Cannot Afford to Sell It.   My Realtor basically abandoned me when I couldn't lower my price any further. 

Nightingale moved in here and we rented her condo at a slight loss. Looking back, it was the right decision because we have more space here.

If I tried the same thing today, based on the comps, I'd probably have to bring more to the table. How much more? Again, impossible to say. Best guess is in 2010 I might have had to bring no less than a couple grand but no more than 10K to the table.  Today I'd probably be lucky to get away with only bringing 10K to the table.

Can't Run but can still Kick TSR Butt

I'm just itching to get a good long run in: In some ways this foot procedure was more impacting than last year's knee scope. I wasn't able to wear a normal shoe comfortably until Wednesday. Until then I had to wear this stupid shoe pictured below.  It wasn't designed to be walked on.  The velco straps would only allow me to tighted it so much and I couldn't wear it while driving.

From looking at it, the gaping hole in my foot looks as bad as it did a week ago.  If you know what to look for, however, you can see that there has been much improvement.  There hasn't been any scapping yet though.  Even though the doctor said I should leave the bandage off overnight to air dry, Nightingale override that idea.  Therefore I'm stuck with it stinging a little when I walk on it too much.

if the boot fits, wear it as long as you have to

Years of working in Tech Support pays off:  One of the very first "tricks" I learned as a Tech Support Engineer for the No-Name Software company was what we refer to as the Push Off.  The Push Off is a technique designed to get the customer to back off and go away for a while so you that you get some breathing room.  The idea is to ask for something that will require the customer to hang up because they have to option information they do not possess or permission they do not have autonomy to provide themselves.  In theory, you are supposed to use the time to fix their problem.

Different Stages of the Seller in Today's Housing Market

Those who are new to the Real Estate market — not involved on a day to day basis, following the market or stalking the Crib Chatter website — go through a learning curve when they decide to sell their home. They think I paid X and it’s 2,3, 5 years later, it must be worth Y. Or I changed out the light fixtures, it must be worth more.

Every owner thinks that their house is special and worth more than the one next door, across the street or down the block. This healthy belief gets even sillier when it’s clear the houses were built by the same builder and have the same general floor plan, number of bedrooms/bathrooms and the only real difference is the exterior paint.

What's really surprising is that even today owners thinks their place is worth X because the houses across the street sold for X +/- a few dollars last month, but fail to account for the fact that the other house had updated bathrooms and kitchens. During the Boom you could get away with this because "prices could only go up" and "buy now or be priced out forever" mentality.

If you bought in the last 5 years and didn’t do anything to the property (I’m NOT talking about renovators here)- why do you think you will get more than what you paid?

 It's really a quite simple formula:

Z = Price_Sale - Amount_You_Owe_Bank - Transaction_Costs

You want Z to be a positive number and to be as large as possible. You cannot do much about Amount_you_owe_Bank other than pay it down as quickly as possible. Transaction_Costs are pretty set too.  And you don't really know Price_Sale until you put your place out there and then its too late.  For many people Amount_You_Owe_Bank is higher than Price_Sale and they cannot afford to bring that much money to the table. 

The reality is that a lot of people are out there chasing the market. Believe it or not, a lot of people don’t know this or even truly realize how bad the current market is. Yeah they see headlines but unless you are buying or selling a place, you treat it the same way a person who doesn’t like sports treats a headline about the Cubs or the Bears.

So when someone tries to sell today, they go through a few stages.

• Stage 1: My house/condo is worth so much more than everyone else’s on the block/in the building and I should get back every $1 I put into it;
• Stage 2: Okay I may not make any money, but perhaps I can have something for a Down Payment on the next house;
• Stage 3: Geez, at least let me sell for enough to break even;
• Stage 4: Yikes, I have to bring how much to the table?

I knew the market was bad when I placed my condo on the market almost two years ago but thought skipping Stage 1 and going directly to Stage 2 would give me an edge. Unfortunately, I was already chasing the market but didn't even know it. The paradigm at the time was price it at or just below the comps and you would be fine. Unfortunately, that paradigm soon switched to if you cannot afford to sell your place (at whatever price necessary) then don't bother a realtor with putting your place on the market in the first place.

From Muscle car to Utility Vehicle

So Long Kellie

 So I wrote about our dilemma with the car situation a month ago.  My 1997 Mustang was falling apart system by system and was basically unsafe to drive.  While Nightingale had the option of using public transportation, it came with limitations.  When she worked late she still had to take a taxicab home, which is costly.  She also could not fit in a workout before or after work because it isn't easy to get to the gym on her way to or from work.

We had evaluated the pros and cons and were just waiting for something to tip the scale.  I even wrote a few Internet pundits I follow about my situation.  Here is what Tara Nicolle-Nelson of Trulia.com and Trent of TheSimpleDollar.com had to say.

It finally came to a head shortly after that post when a snowstorm hit Chicago on Friday while she was at work. Since we knew snow was coming, I had the Trail Blazer and she took the El to work.  While it was nothing like the Stormaggedon of 2011, it did slow down the city such that traffic was crawling along.  That meant she would either have to spend a fortune on a cab or suffer two hours on the CTA to get home.  Nightingale basically said we had to get a second working vehicle immediately.

The follow week, her dad was in town helping her sister get ready for the move back to Michigan.  In between packing, he helped me research used cars.  I wanted the flexibility of something that could haul a lot of stuff since I have gotten use to Nightingale's Trail Blazer.  We also needed better fuel economy with my 25 mile daily commute to work (one way).  Several friends have Honda Elements and they give them good reviews. My research shows that they get at least as good of gas mileage as my mustang, though perhaps slightly better depending on year. Plus I kinda like the idea of throwing our bikes in the back and going to the forest preserves for a ride. Currently, it's a hassle to put the bikes in the Blazer or use the bike rack for the Mustang.

So mid week her dad (the FIL heretofore) was getting stir crazy and wanted to head home.  Translation: being in a house with two noisy and very young children wasn't his cup of tea.  At the beginning of the trip he said he would stay as long as he was needed.  After a few days he was already mentally packed to go.  Nightingale begged him to stay throughout the weekend to help us find the right Element.



Needs a name

I was fine with finding the cheapest one available.  Nightingale on the other hand felt that we should get one with the fewest miles possible.  No easy task since Element owners typically tack on the mileage -- I guess they feel they need to get their moneys worth and do the toss-the-bikes-in-the-back thing as often as possible.  Needless to say, Nightingale won out on this point too.  She felt that the less mileage and newer the vehicle, the longer it will last and the longer it will be before we need to put money in it for repairs.  For those keeping track at home, Nightingale 2, Icarus 0.
FIL managed to find two Elements that would fit the bill.  He had found one earlier in the week but it was gone by the time we decided to go look at it.  That did make me feel vindicated that my choice of an Element was a good one.  Unfortunately, the two he found were at dealerships that were difficult to get to and not conducive to going back and forth for comparison purposes.  We also had a house viewing scheduled for the middle of the day that we couldn't reschedule.  It made for a long day.

We went to the first car dealership and drove around the lot.  Instead of the red Element we were expecting, there was only a grey one.  While not a bad looking car, I just didn't have a good feeling and never stopped the car. Instead I had NG punched in the address in the GPS for the second car and headed out. 

On the way we made a pit stop at a tollbooth oasis in order to use the restroom, get some coffee and call the place to make sure the car was still there.  My FIL made the call and instead of just asking if the car was still there and getting off the phone, it sounded like he was becoming BFFs with the sales person.

We get there and drive around the parking lot.  The Element is there and it's the correct one. So we go inside and find Harvey.  Harvey, originally from the UK, is a young Indian guy who reminds me of some of the consultants I worked with at the No-Name Software Company.  Definitely not your typical used car salesman and in fact a rather sharp guy.  He takes us for a test drive and gives us a tour of the Honda Facility. 

We like what we see and decide to buy the car.  Then the negotiating began.  With the two previous cars I've purchased, I never felt like I got the best deal I could. So I really wanted to hold out for the best deal I could get.  I was ready to go to the mat over price, trade-in-value and even financing. 

Alas, thanks to the internet, there isn't as much haggling as there was the last two times I did this (2001 and 19 ninety-something.)  We already knew what the car retails for and what we could expect for our trade in (not very much).  What drove me crazy was that when Harvey came back with the value of the trade-in my FIL said "that's what you expected."  I was like, way to show our cards.

The long and short of it is this is the car I wanted and Nightingale was not going to get back into the Mustang-with-no-brakes so we negotiated a good interest rate for the financing and were ready to call it a night.  However the lady in the financing office was determined to sell us one of the add-on packages.  We didn't want or need it, but she was able to lower our interest rate to 2% so our payment stayed the same.  We figure she had an end of the month quota to met.

Fri-enemy Mine: One Year Later

It was a year ago this week, that I received the call.  Heck, it might even have been a year ago to the day.  I just recall it was the week after we had all been out for the Krazy Guatemalan's birthday dinner.  I was at the office and my cell phone rang around noon.  It was So-Suede. Even before I answered the call, I knew it couldn't be good news.


Just like this except So-Suede isn't half as attractive as the guy on the right
Credit: http://oneguyrambling.com/

 He called to tell me that there was a last minute opening at Old St Pat's on Oct 1 and that he and his FW (Future Wife) are going to take it.  They had just got engaged on Valentine's Day a few weeks before.  So-Suede said that he didn't want to put off his life any longer and a whole litany of other excuses.  I pointed out that our mutual friends might now have to choose a wedding.  He said that he would be fine whichever wedding anyone chose to go to, but that he was also asking KrazyGuatemalan and QK to be his groomsmen.

At KrazyGautemalan's birthday gathering there was no mention of this by anyone, though I think almost everyone if not everyone knew.  Especially since one mutual friend who use to be very sweet on me kept asking what day were getting married.  So-Suede said that he was still exploring all his options and hadn't really told anyone.  In the same phone call he also said that most everyone he talked to advised him to do what works best for him. 

This isn't the first time he has asked everyone to either pick Team So-Suede or Team Icarus, it's just the largest scale.  The Superbowl if you will.  What hurts is that none of our mutual friends call him on it.  They step back, look away, ignore it.

KrazyGautemalan was supposed to come get a dish washer from me that weekend. There was no phone call or email saying he had a change of plans.  You'd think a free dish washer would merit a text message.  I have not heard from him since his birthday party. No Instant Messenger, no emails, nothing in a year. We did get a obligatory invitation to his wedding along with a card congratulating us.

I'm not well liked or popular with a good portion of our mutual friends.  Some of it is deserved, some of it is inflated payback for God-knows-what.  It is what it is.  I do believe that if the situation were reversed and I got engaged 10 minutes after So-Suede, and had the audacity to pick the same day as he, there would be quite a few so called friends reading me the riot act.  Heck the Collective would have probably burned my house down.

One of the friends who have de-friended me asked me at the time if So-Suede knew what our date was.  He knew because he had a chance to help me secure the engagement ring in September.  He had recommended a jeweler to KrazyGautamalan and I asked for her contact info.  At the time I couldn't understand why it wasn't a matter of simply emailing or texting me the info. So-Suede wanted to make sure it was okay and took about two weeks to get the info to me.  I couldn't wait and went with my Polish Jewelry Shop instead.

So now the question is, what does he do for an encore?  Being the Exiled Pariah from the group, there is no more next game.  By design and by intent, I avoid all the churches I use to church hop.  We didn't recieve an invite to KrazyGautamalen's birthday celebration this year.

Gross Post: Another Foot Procedure



Pre-surgery Plantar Wart

 On Friday I decided to take care of an issue I've had with my foot since 2006.  Thanks to the gym at DePaul University, I contracted a plantar wart on my right foot.  At first it was just an annoying little callous, but it grew into a full fledged flaming virus that caused mild discomfort.  Kinda like the current batch of Republican presidential nominees.  I've tried treating it over the years but have never been able to fully cure it.

I went to this one Podiatry center where the doctors were fun but the staff was extremely incompetent.  I'd call for an appointment and they'd disconnect me.  Surprisingly, they have moved or gone out of business.  They did the freeze it with freon thing and since a big old bubble of blood pooled beneath the surface, we thought we had it.  Not so fast.  It didn't go away but other things that year kept me from going back until the office disappeared.

Next I went to a podiatrist who was a bit closer to my house but had the worst office hours ever unless you happen to be a housewife from the 1950s.  Just getting in to see him was tricky since the only day he had that matched my schedule was Saturday and I was usually doing marathon training those mornings.  Naturally his schedule was booked. Oh and apparently he was the Valedictorian of Podiatrist because he often went out of town to attend lectures at Podiatry Conventions. Yes, there are such things.

Now that I've got yet another insurance plan and its the start of a new year, I figured I'd get this addressed as quickly as possible rather than put it off to the end of the year.  I googled and found Dr Virani who is 5 minutes away from my office.  Actually he has three offices and wouldn't you know it, the next available appointment that worked for me was at the Villa Park office.  The choices were make an appointment now or wait a month, I opted to make the appointment.

He looked at my foot and listened to me describe the history.  We agreed that laser blasting it was the way to go.  As luck would have it, he did have an opening the following Friday.  Like my knee scope last year, this was simply an outpatient procedure.  In fact, it should have been less involved because there would be no anaesthesia involved.  However, everyone at the Surgical Center was treated it like it was major open heart surgery. [Warning: gross picture coming after the jump!!!]