More concert

Bela Fleck, the Flecktones and the Seattle Symphony

Great show - very smart music.

Also - it's like NPR's audience was all in one place at the same time. Very eclectic mix of people.

Travels

Interesting notes from the weekend - first weekend completely out of town since the move.

- Washington has a pretty if quiet state capitol (Olympia) - the requisite large stone building surrounded by a large city park - neat main street with small coffee shops.

- Dancing Goats coffee gives away the burlap coffee bags in which their beans arrive in exchange for a $1 donation to a local childrens' charity - we thought that was neat and now have a huge burlap sack - will be useful for protecting the trunk of the car when carrying home potting soil and such this weekend.

- Portland is a neat place - same general northwest-y character as Seattle - very eco-conscious, walkable, pro independent business, pro local food - just on what feels to be about half the scale of Seattle. It also is much cleaner and better organized for the difference in scale. Also - their Pearl District is a great example of new urbanist planning and execution in the US. Not only for the design but the fact that it's all about the same age, less than 10 years old in this case - props to their urban planning department for being able to completely level and redevelop a whole city (warehouse) district in such a short time. For that reason though it looks very similar to the post WW2 districts in Germany - 6-10 story flats with shops at street level. Hopefully it ages as well as those have. My current neighborhood in Seattle could learn a lot from their example.

- Gosser beer - find it at Clyde Common in downtown Portland - only place I've yet found it. It's one of the major Austrian brews. Tasty.

- Best recent music find - Helio Sequence - Keep Your Eyes Ahead album - interesting sound, and surprisingly upbeat for music from this region.

Next up... ???

House closed today.

The earnings are enough for a down payment on an in-the-city place here, though given the economy presently I'm going to wait a bit and see what happens.


Quick estimate using nice round numbers.
Purchase price -170,000
Home Improvements -10,000
Interest Paid -20,000
Tax Benefits +14,000
Sale Price -Fees +203,700

Total Earnings +17,700 over 1.75 years
Earnings Per Year +10114
Approx Percent ROI +5.95

Over most of the period of home ownership, my 401k was earning a similar percentage, and even the HSBC online savings account was over 5%, so the earnings on a single family home in one of the most-positive real estate markets in the country were better, but not exceptionally so, than traditional investments.

Next up - more detailed numbers and how it would have compared to renting.

Weekend

It was a nice, sunny weekend out here. We spent Saturday driving the length of Lake Washington, stopping at a few of the parks along the way to wander and see the sights.

Sunday we hit the markets and came home with a lot of vegetables, then went to check out a small sailboat - sailing is apparently the weekend thing to do around here when the weather is decent. And, like my car decision last fall, if used only occasionally, the two options are rent, or buy cheap. I took the cheap car route, and probably will pick up a cheap boat as well.

The house closing is on Tuesday - still no decision on the market here. It looks stable enough that purchasing might not be a bad idea, but I should probably give it 6 months and see what sells during the prime part of the year, and what doesn't.

Well, time to start the day here.

General Update

1) House is under contract and the closing date of the 21st is fast approaching. Everything looks good thus far.

2) What to do with the cash... short term is obviously an online savings account, but given the fractional at best appreciation from real estate, is buying another place the best solution right now?

Two ways of thinking here: looking at the economy, inflation is coming, odds are sooner rather than later, and having a fixed rate, fixed amount, mortgage is an interesting way of benefiting from inflation.

The other way of thinking is to rent for 2 years while getting a degree and saving money enough to make a larger leap then. Interest rates will have to rise to control inflation... it is a bit more of a gamble having a fair amount of cash in that situation, even if it is invested safely.

Currently in the city rent+parking on ~750ft^2 is ~$1500/mo. To buy an equivalent size and location place with 20% down the mortgage + taxes will be ~$2000/mo with another $300-400/mo for condo dues. That is a massive difference that currently negates any tax benefits to owning.

I'd like to say - oh, I'll be taking classes that teach me how to turn this into a win win situation - but one thing that I have already learned from business classes is that predicting the response of the economy does not tend to give accurate results.

3) Seattle - still cool. The winters here are quite grey. It's already February, so that should be improving soon enough. At least there's still a lot of green - few trees lose their leaves it seems.

4) The mushroom selection and quality at Uwajimaya is awesome. From spicy Honshimeji to really meaty Shiitake it's no wonder I wasn't that into mushrooms in NC - even the Fresh Market ones were already dried up and well, stale.

5) Apparently the far out suburbs and mountains are getting a lot of snow this winter - haven't seen any of that apart from some flurries in the city. People complain about traffic or the weather... it is really nice not having to deal with any of that anymore. Just throw on a jacket and within a mile anything's available. Tons of food of any nationality in both grocery and restaurant form, live music, shopping (bargain and nice), books, movies. Seems like the ideal way to live imo.

6) The job has been busy lately, but I seem to be staying afloat - this is good. And not working weekends anymore is a great change. Falling asleep at 9PM is kinda weak, but getting adjusted to the early schedule will pay dividends once classes begin in the fall. (UW evening MBA program is my aim at this point - going through the application presently)

Experience #2

iTunes movie rental - downloaded 1.5GB (2hr) movie in 65 min. And that was for a generally new release (Ocean's 13 - better than 12 - bit campy as usual, but entertaining). Not bad!

So, from someone that hadn't rented/gone to a movie in ah 5 months, I've now rented 2 in the past month. Apple has thus succeeded in capturing the lazy movie watcher demographic.

w00t

The house is under contract. Closing date of Feb 20-something. At which point NC is entirely in the past.

From the 'It's about time' files:

I think the house has sold (counteroffer accepted). I should be getting paperwork tomorrow that finalizes this.

It was a learning experience if anything. And I'll be sure to post a full financial analysis including tax benefits, to assess the annual rate of return and see if I would have been better off just putting the money in mutual funds, once I get the final check after closing. Initial estimates only point to a 7% per year gain... we'll see how right that is.

Week of Sun

No rain for a week, few clouds even. Sun, mid 40's temps - this is nice.

Went to the UW MBA open house last night... between that and a really expensive program that I previewed earlier I'm thinking more about where to go, career wise. There's a diverging path here - one is to go all out and have a 'prestigious' degree and then get back into a more corporate job, for better (easy to play the games) and for worse (longer hours and more stress initially). The other would be to use the flexibility in my current job schedule to get a more normal degree and then make an evolutionary step.

This led to the 5+ year out thoughts. In the near term 1-3 years, Seattle is a fine place to be. I like the current job and seem to be progressing fairly well through it. The UW option is a convenient and affordable MBA at a very good school.

Anything after the 2010 or 2011 conclusion of school is too far out of consider... where do I want to be then, what should I be doing then... no clue.

Just need to prepare myself to have options then I guess.

The future.

iTunes movie rental - props to Apple for putting together an easy to use, cheaper than physical rental service that actually works. And it works really well. Especially with the mac mini outputting to a nice TV and speakers.

While Allison and I haven't watched many movies lately due to a variety of factors, this service will probably change that. See a movie, click, $4 is charged to your debit card, and the movie downloads. Easy.

While it took a couple hours to download, that may have been partly due to it being a new, popular release (the Simpson's movie) - I'll have to try it on an older, less busy, release.

After the movie downloads you have 30 days to start playing the movie, and once you start playing the movie you have access to the file for 24 hours, which is fine by me.

DVD rentals are old-skool now.

er

sound tribe sector nine - an auditory experience beyond your imagination.

summary - show rocked the house. great venue, great band.

Weekend

Sound Tribe Sector 9 concert tonight. That should rock. As long as I hit the caffeine beforehand I'll be awake to see it.

Probably going to explore another coastal park or two this weekend, see what the northern suburbs have to offer.

Packers game on Sunday - they actually still have a chance at making the Super Bowl this year - not bad.

Sun!

When it's nice here, it's really freakin nice here. Sunny and 50 degrees. Picked up some good seasonal root veggies at Pike Pl. Market, walked down to Uwajimaya for lunch and some other groceries, then back to the apartment with a half hour before sunset - quick drive over to Alki beach to watch the sun set over the mountains. Here's the view from West Seattle looking back toward home/downtown (our apt. is in the building immediately above the bow anchor on the IHC Pool ship.)

Looking back

While booking appointments to check out a couple MBA schools in the coming weeks, I had a few moments of doubt as to why I moved away in the middle of school, in the middle of updating a cool old house... it seems like a lot of effort, not wasted, but perhaps under appreciated.

At which point I went back and read the urban planet Charlotte forums to see what was going on there - the light rail is apparently popular and working well - downtown is still generally growing even with all the news of the housing troubles. It seems like if I would have been able to find a less annoying job Charlotte wouldn't have been that bad, and in the quest to fix that I kinda took a bit of an extreme position and left it all behind. I could be taking the light rail to work as I envisioned, I could have completed the renovations of the house as I envisioned, life would have been more 'settled' than it is now.

I guess I still have loose ends that need to be taken care of. It will be better once the house sells and I actually feel like I'm making the money I'm earning here, rather than just covering rent/mortgage/bills. The other step will be finishing up the degree.

Tech jobs can be nice ways to make a living, but I need to keep working for the next step. And either MBA option available here is a better school than where I was, so that will be good.

I think I've generally been on the right track, but a bit too ambitious for my own good, these last couple years... there hasn't been a lot of time to realize what makes for a good life. There's just this lingering feeling that I can't become complacent, still need to be working/advancing/learning/growing.

These last couple months have been odd to me - there has been free time... I've walked for hours with no real destination other than to see what's around... Allison and I have been able to go to new restaurants, wander new markets, cook more. I guess I just haven't accepted that this is all there is yet. Even if it's generally been good.

Vacation?

I need to learn not to fly anywhere on vacations - there are too many sick people that are just so happy to transfer their hacking cough to everyone within 5 rows of their seat on the plane.

And to make the experience more enjoyable is the inevitable 2 year old that will not stop screaming at a level that drowns out generally loud music from in-ear earphones.

So after I got to Wisconsin, I spent a day carrying around a box of Kleenex, then another day drugged up, then another two days finishing up the box of Kleenex as well as randomly coughing.

At least Allison was able to experience some of the small town Wisconsin lifestyle.

It snowed. And wasn't too cold - so we were able to walk around in the snow - and there was a full moon, so the shadows of the leafless trees on the snow were rather pretty as well.

We also were able to walk out on a frozen lake, and head up north to the formerly Norwegian area to see Green Bay, Sturgeon Bay and the snowy state parks up there.

And had Kopps frozen custard (yes, they still have lines when it is under 20 degrees outside - it's that good) on a snowy day.

Generally a good trip - perhaps I'll not have a cold next time we go there.

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Due to said cold and my east coast schedule, I slept through new years.

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Four matching new tires work wonders for a car's ride and handling.

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Sound Tribe Sector 9 concert coming up in a couple weeks - looking forward to that

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Things to do this year: get back to an MBA program and finish the degree... sell the house... lose the last 10 pounds I want to lose...