Country night

Eric and I attended our first Tampa sporting event on Saturday night: a Tampa Bay Rays game at their indoor stadium in St Petersburg. Who ever heard of an indoor baseball stadium?

Though I have largely kicked the San Francisco habit of bringing a layer since it is always 95 everywhere all the time I had a feeling it would be chilly in there, so I brought a sweater. What I should have brought instead was my cowboy boots, hat and shirt because that's what everyone else brought. It was Country Night at the ballpark.

There were many ways that Country Night was celebrated. They handed out blue Rays-branded cowbells to something like the first 10,000 people who entered the stadium and people were not shy about ringing them. Every time a Ray got a hit or made a good catch it was like a huge herd of cows suddenly startled and took off running, cow bells clanging like crazy. The kid next to me didn't even wait for anything to happen - he just rang it constantly until the woman in front of us turned around and asked him nicely but quite firmly to "take it easy" with the cowbell. The poor kid didn't ring it again the whole game.

More country-ness: Jeff Foxworthy on video opened up the game with a bit on "You might be a Rays fan if..." which reminded me that there are more people that you think who are able to turn one not very clever idea into a lifelong career as a performer.

Even more country-ness: after the game they held a free live country music concert on the field. The performer was Miranda something who was a participant on Nashville Star.

The game was memorable in other ways, too. After the fourth inning Eric and I went to get some food. I ordered the "Heater" which is a chili-cheese hot dog.

"Whoa!" exclaimed the woman taking our order. "You want that baby to come tonight?" She seemed genuinely concerned and/or horrified, but I stuck with my order. I think I just liked the name.

Eric, no fool, quickly determined that the large beer, which was 20 oz for $9, was a worse deal than two regular beers, which were 12 oz for $5 each. I didn't think I cared one way or the other which one he got until it became clear that I was going to have to sherpa the second beer up the 30 steps to our very last row seats past many, many disapproving country folk. Before we even got half-way up Eric started calling out to no one in particular "It's mine! She's carrying it for me!" and presumably people knew he meant both the beer and the baby. But they still gave me the stinkiest of the stink eye and shook their cowbells disapprovingly in my direction.

As for the baseball itself, there were actually a few remarkable plays all of which involved players not catching balls that they had no excuse to miss. My personal theory: as they looked up to follow the ball they got so distracted by the fact that there was a ceiling over their heads (and a racket of cowbells in their ears) that they thought they must be dreaming and completely forgot about the ball until it dropped to the astro-turf in their general vicinity. It was just bizarre.

I can't wait to go see a hockey game.

We bought it

On Wednesday evening we officially purchased our first home. All it required was all of the money we have ever made*, plus a lot of signatures.Here it is!

It is much too large for us and has a pool. From our bedroom window you can see a palm tree. Eric and I keep asking each other: is this really our house? 

I am a healthy mix of excited, daunted, eager to actually move in and completely exhausted (though this last one is not just because of the house).

We won't actually be moving in for a couple of weeks because what's left of our money will be going towards a new roof, new floors for the upstairs and a thorough de-cat-ifying of the house so that Eric doesn't need to live on Claritin for as long as we live in this house.

All of our worldly belongings should arrive by October 14th but we have been warned by other people who have moved that we shouldn't really be too confident that will actually happen. We may be urban camping for quite a while.

*Just most of it, actually. Not all of it. I promise.

Our transformation continues

We are now a two-car family.

As our experience with the house has demonstrated time and again, I can really struggle with these large purchases. I get a little paranoid that everyone knows something I don't and is trying to take advantage of my lack of savvy*. So I tried to put on my best economics-major mindset and recognize that while there is information asymmetry (I believe "buying a used car" is the example in the text book) that doesn't have to make me a sucker. I think that Seinfeld episode about the dealership has also been quite influential in my thinking about car buying. No undercoating for me!

We have been looking around for a used Prius because the Nissan Leaf is not yet available in Florida. I would like for us to be totally off petroleum vehicles in the next few years, or as soon as possible. That didn't stop me from having a brief crush on the Lexus hybrid SUV but I got over it when I realized our 94 Honda still gets better gas mileage than most hybrid SUVs.

Per craigslist, which has used vehicles for sale both by owner and by dealers, there were a bunch of used Priuses in our price range, including one which boasted a dent on the front bumper from hitting a raccoon. We arranged to see the most promising ones for sale at two different places and just to be sure we were set up for success, we made sure Emerson ate and napped poorly all day before going car-shopping.

The first "dealer" was a couple of Ukrainains and their pit bull Eos who rent a small storage warehouse in a row of other small storage warehouses. We were extremely dubious. Eric took the maroon Prius for a drive while I let Emerson do his new favorite thing: sit in the driver's seat of our car and let him "drive" (while car is parked). He wiggles the steering wheel, tries to honk the horn, pushes the climate control buttons and changes the stations on the radio. He is in heaven.

Eric reported that this particular Prius was both stinkier and louder than our 94 Honda and Boss Ukranian told him he had actually bought it from a dealer who had it priced several thousand dollars higher. Wha?! With so much weirdness, we decided to move on but not before Eos attempted to lick Emerson's face clean off his head. Emerson was delighted by it, of course, and the dog was perfectly friendly about it, if a bit persistent.

Our next stop was a Toyota dealership with a white Prius we had been particularly interested in. When we walked up, another couple was talking to a salesman about the Prius so Eric found a different salesman and immediately asked to take it for a drive. Meanwhile, Emerson and I had fun exploring the dealership. We found the powdered sugar trail leading to the now-empty boxes of donuts (note to self: go car-shopping earlier in the day). Emerson got a big blue balloon to play with. Emerson found the donation box of unopened toys that was clearly heading to needy Florida children and decided some of the toys needed a little breaking in.

When they returned from the test drive, the other people were there ready and waiting to take it for a spin but Eric convinced our salesman to let me take it out first. I enjoyed the test drive and without giving up the keys, Bob and I went to his desk to discuss the deal. After a speedy negotiation, we agreed on a price ($1,000 off the asking price!) and we bought the car! Sorry to the other people. I'm sure they will find something else that they like.

I got to drive the pretty new white Prius all the way home and now all we need to do is name her.


*This from the daughter of the woman who would walk into car dealerships and announce to the salesperson "I don't know anything about cars"

The house saga

I had no appreciation of the drama required to buy a house before this move. I knew it was a Major Life Event, so I suppose I should have realized that drama would be part of the deal, but I went in blind.

Just finding a place we wanted to make an offer on was hard enough, and then when our first two offers didn't work out (overbid on one, they decided to take the house off the market for the second), I got that slightly hopeless feeling in my stomach and I began to have nightmares about having baby #2 in this horrible rental condo.

When our third offer was accepted we were cautiously optimistic. Maybe we'll get a house! We thought. But the story was far from over.

The home inspection revealed that the place needs a new roof immediately and the AC is at the end of its natural life, which means we could need to replace that soon as well.

These are not obstacles so much as opportunities for negotiation, we told ourselves. And after a lot of back and forth and a lot of stomach aches, we did get to resolution that allows us to go forward with the purchase, but oh! the drama.

I do appreciate the art of negotiation. But at a certain point, I want to stop playing the telephone game through two agents and get on the phone with this current owner guy and just get this deal done already.

As of today, the only thing remaining to check out is the appraisal and we should be getting that back in the next few days. Fingers crossed - we will close on Sept 21 and move in a week or two after (depending on the timing of a number of essential pre-move-in projects).

Andrew comes to Tampa

Andrew arrived in Tampa on Wednesday evening and spent two nights visiting us here before we all trekked across the state for a fun long weekend with extended family.

With Andrew visiting, we had to order pizza on his first night in town. Eric and I hadn't really done our homework in the pizza department but we had driven by a place called Paci's many times and decided we would give it a try. I ordered one large cheese pizza and one large pepperoni.

My mother offered to do the pick-up (there's a weird absence of pizza delivery in Tampa. Too sprawling?) and returned carrying the two largest pizza boxes I have ever seen. Ever. Apparently a "large" for Paci's is 18" and even without calculating the area (it involves pi and squaring something) I can tell you that two of these is significantly more pizza than four people can or should eat outside of maybe those disgusting eating competitions that are always won by tiny Asian people.

Andrew stayed at the local HoJo while in town. He likes to have his own space and apparently enjoys sleeping past 5am, which can be hard to do in our small apartment here. The last time he stayed at a HoJo while visiting us was when he came to SF for our wedding almost two years ago. That HoJo had a special on perma-damp carpeting along one wall that we were thankful this local one didn't offer. Eric had recently learned that due to over-enrollment this year, the University of Tampa is using a HoJo as overflow space for freshmen: all but one floor is occupied by students.* I think Andrew was a little disappointed that he was not staying at HoJo Dorm, but just a regular HoJo with crabby management.

Thursday night we went to Miguel's, a Mexican restaurant we keep going to even though, as Eric said on the way home "I keep ordering different things trying to find something that's good." I think the margaritas help compensate, though I'll have to take their word for it.

Gail left for a wedding on Thursday night so Andrew had to look after Emerson while I did one work phone call on Friday. They had a great time kicking Emerson's various balls around inside and then Andrew took Emerson out to kick a ball around the parking lot. Emerson adored Andrew from the moment he arrived and was happy as a clam to get to spend so much time with him one of one. Andrew actually worked his charm all over the condo complex: after being here for about 36 hours he had made friends with several people walking their dogs and got free Girl Scout Cookies from an army guy from the local base. I guess we could learn a thing or two from him about how much we really need to be settled to be open to meeting people.


*I can see that being a bummer on the one hand (not being on campus, and it's a HoJo) but there are some nice perks as well (maid service! free cable TV! private bathroom!).