Wednesday, February 20, 2013

My Crib Chatter Weekend

This weekend was another one of those weekends where the decent weather came on the busy day and the useless weather* came on the not-so-busy-day. 

On Saturday all I really manage to accomplish was taking the recycling to the recyle location -- our hood hasn't got the blue bins yet.  In the evening we had dinner with SHB and her husband.  We went Blind Faith in Evanston and had a tasty vegetaran/vegan meal.  First we went to an art showing of a friend of theirs. 

Sunday was meet some Crib Chatter people in the real world. A couple months ago I met Milkster in person.  She had moved to Albany Park and wanted to meet Nightingale and me.  I was hesitant at first because well you're talking about meeting someone from the internet and I have yet to see a news report where that turns out well.  However, there was something admirable in her insistence so I ran it by Nightingale and she thought it would be okay since it was at a Starbucks.  And the meeting was fun.  She reminds me of my friend Hanna from the No-Name Software Company.

Speaking of which, Milkster lives in the same building on the same floor as JF, a guy I went to high school with and helped get a job at the No-Name Software Company.  He lived there from 2005 to 2009 and was lucky enough to sell in time to avoid the crash in our area.  He sold for $10K less than he bought according to Redfin but when you consider how much most places are under water today, he did well.  He's always had a lucky horseshoe up his arse.

Milkster put together a lunch gathering at  El Milagro...so I got to meet Sonies and Benjamon9, and their SigOthers.  Sonies wife seemed familiar but in that I've met a person like her before, not that I've actually met her before.  Benejamon09 was quieter than he is on CC and his partner did more of the talking.

I suggested a CC group photo but everyone half heartedly agreed so I didn't push it.  After lunch we drove back to the north side so that Milkster and her guy could see this house at 5627 W School in Portage Park. 

Milkster was hoping to get the house for a song, rehab it, rent it for a fwe yearas and then move in herself.  Unfortunately, the hosue was in very bad condition, too much work for her and her contractor to take on.  The amount of money she would need to sink into it would buy her a house in better shape.  This is the kind of home that someone will buy for cash and then fix up and sell for $300K.

We did meet an interesting couple there.  I call them the Real Estate Fairy and the Polish Prince.  The Polish Prince had an interesting way of sizing things up, I'll call it the Trinity of Rehab:  Cost/Time/Quality

Essentially if you can get two of the following but it will cost the third:

Cost -- Time  --- Quality   aka   Cheap, Fast, Good.  If you want it Fast and Cheap, it won't be Good.  If you want it Good and Cheap, it won't be Fast.  You get the picture.

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*(cold, rainly, bleak or all of the above)

7 comments:

  1. ouch :(

    the groove was not invited?

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    Replies
    1. I mentioned to Milkster that you should come Groove!

      Delete
  2. Sorry about that Groove. I should have shot you an email about it. Milkster is in town about once a month so hopefully we can cook something up for next time.

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  3. At your house, of course?

    In answer to your Q on the other post, I don't use feeds or emails for the sites I read. I just check em. And there are limits to the number of fora on which I can interact w groove.

    You also need to work on wiki as for the life of me have no idea of anything distinctive about benjy. Maybe that he gets trolled by hofer a bit too much, but that covers a lot of people.

    DZ

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    Replies
    1. and you think that is easier than creating an account or leveraging rss feeds or email to trackback to the blog?

      the downside of allowing anonymous commenting is that i open this site up to spambots. It isn't a problem lately but if it becomes one again, i'll have to at least require that captchas.

      for an invite to the house or any other CC gathering you would have to give up some of your anonyminity, don't know if you're ready for that. Though I suppose you could just pretend to be Jenny.

      Delete
    2. The captchas are still there. Just about the right degree of challenge for me, enough I felt I accomplished something, not so much I have to keep refreshing the damned thing. Checking sites myself isn't easier, but that way things that are grossly uninteresting get dropped kinda automatically.

      If you get jenny to come, maybe we'll finally meet HD.

      DZ

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  4. Icarus, I am only more quiet in person than on CC because it is the first time we've met. Once I get talking it is impossible for me to shut up. Just like how I posted once on CC and now I have an opinion on everything. :)

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Comments Encouraged! And the nice thing about this blog is that I rarely get spam so don't need to moderate the comments.

I've set the comments up to allow anonymous users -- but I'd love it if you "signed" your comments (as some of my readers have done) just so you have an identity of sorts.