Eat a Bagel!!!!

Too funny.

Jonah would love this.

Cheers.

Verizon Arenas

I'm going to try to keep this as short as possible...

First and foremost, now I didn't research this but, if carrying an unlicensed firearm in the District is illegal and punishable by jail, then that's the law that should apply to Arenas--by now we know that he brought unloaded guns into the MCI Center that weren't registered in the District of Columbia, nor MD nor VA nor any other state as far as I know.

**Right now, Rihanna singing, "where dem bloggas at? where dem bloggas at?" is pulsing through my head...in part because I'm here writing as a partially (maybe mostly) uninformed individual. But this is my opinionated blog that no one is reading so...**

Anyways, and I've said this for Tiger Woods, athletes and entertainers are not only abnormal people because once they become famous (or the people around them realize they will one day become famous), I feel they are shielded from "life on the ground" as most of us know and understand it, but also because at that level of professionalism, all of them possess an "abnormal" competitive nature/drive...otherwise they wouldn't be there. And I personally feel, you CAN'T disassociate that from the person they are off the court. In other words, if I will myself to win this game at any cost, I'm also going to use that same will to bag the baddest chick in the room, do the "dare" that no one else would do in "truth or dare", disrespect to a greater degree that dude that I feel just disrespected me...

Feel me?

Combine the fact of being shielded from reality ($1,000 dollar gambling bets on team private jets, making jokes with real unloaded handguns, thinking that because the threat of violence wasn't apparent to those that witnessed the exchange there is no harm to be had legally either from the heated exchange on the plane or in the locker room with the "Pick One" post it note) and the natural competitive "one-upping" nature of professional athletes (Arenas taunting Crittenden on the plane to the point of saying he'll blow up his car to Crittenden saying he'll shoot Arenas in his surgically repaired knee to Arenas bringing 4 unloaded handguns to the Verizon Center so Crittenden could "pick one" to Crittenden allegedly throwing one of the guns across the room then allegedly taking his own weapon and cocking it (i.e. loading a bullet in the chamber) and allegedly walking around the locker room singing to Arenas then laughing at Crittenden's whole act), and voila!...there you have it, the situation we now find ourselves in. (sorry for the super run on sentence).

As Chris Rock said, I'm not saying I agree or condone his actions...but I understand (why it happened).

Cheers.

P.S. As for the pregame "Shoot 'em up" picture taken before Monday's Philly game, I think the same holds true--those that were there feel that the perceived non-threat of violence speaks loader than the fact its illegal to have unlicensed guns in the District...much less the Verizon Center.

If I Could Do This House Over #1

Time for another recurring post.

And I knew this would happen too. While rehabbing my house last year, I got kind of anal about certain things cause, knowing me, I knew that certain things, if done wrong, would forever stick out and urk me like a...perpetual hangnail. Anyways, thanks to my efforts (and the semi-patience of others as I pointed things out), I'd say I got it about...90 percent right. Still, its that 10 percent that I get reminded of almost everyday.

I have a running tally in my head of the things in my house that if I were to do it again (and have a larger overall budget, not to mention), I'd implement. Please note, most of these were realized only after moving into the house (i.e. these wouldn't have occurred to me during the initial process), some are more cosmetic than others, some would be considered more functional. Anyways, I promised myself I wouldn't be doing those novel-long blogs of my Frankfurt heyday so I'm only going to write four at a time and try to keep these short and sweet...coming back to write more installments over the long haul.

• Heated Floors in the Kitchen Tile...and maybe in the bathroom ;-). While the bathroom would be more of a cosmetic (i.e. sexy) thing to put in (coming out the shower on heated tiles is the hotness, no pun intended), the downstairs actually has a more functional purpose. With the onslaught of Winter '10 in full effect (read: cold as hell), you really develop the appreciation of a certain law of physics--heat rises. Now, aside from the fact that my HVAC return duct is inadequate to service the house (right now its literally below 50 degrees on the first floor and I'll probably have to spend more than a couple grand to get that redone...but that's another story), its ALWAYS cold on the first floor, even with a working system. This is exacerbated by the fact the floor of the 1st floor is the lowest (read: coldest) point of the house and the ceramic tile in the kitchen IS AN ICE BLOCK in the winter! Even with socks on. Its to the point that if I wake up in the middle of the night thirsty as hell, I'm just like "F*** it, I can't get to the refrigerator". Long story short, having heated kitchen tiles would not only reinvigorate the idea of cooking in my house during the winter, but would also probably lower my overall gas bill cause the radiant heat from the floor would actually serve as an alternate (albeit small) heating source for the lower level.
• Light Above the Kitchen Sink. I have a corner sink. I also eat out more than I eat at home so it makes more sense for me to wash the limited dishes I use by hand than to load up the dishwasher. Unfortunately, the placement of the lights in my kitchen (a centered rectangle of 4 recessed lights), creates a shadow over the sink when I'm washing. Not that I can't see what I'm doing, but it would make tons of sense to have another light there right above. This would also be functional for any future corner shelving I put up there over the sink.
• Install a Recirculation Pipe. Ok, now this one may be a bit difficult to explain, but I'll try. I installed a tankless water heater in my house. Your traditional water heater stores like 30 or so gallons of hot water that the house draws on as needed. As the water is used the tank fills itself back up with regular water from the street and heats it up til the entire tank is back to the temperature you set it to hold the water at (hence, when a whole bunch of showers have been taken in the house, you only get lukewarm or cold water cause the tank is dealing with a sizable portion of fresh water from the street that hasn't been heated yet). Conversely, a tankless water heater doesn't store any water. Rather, it heats the water right as it comes into the house (with a gas or electric heater that is more powerful than the heater used on a water tank). The good thing, aside from being energy efficient in the amount of gas or electricity used to heat the water, is that you never run out of hot water. But there is a downside, and its on the front end...it sometimes takes a number of minutes for the water to get hot (sometimes up to like 2 to 3 minutes...literally). The reason for this is that once you turn of the water and don't use it for a while (ex. over the night), the water in the hot water pipes gets cold. Then, when you turn on the water in the morning, all of the cold water in the hot water pipe needs to get flushed from the pipes before the newly heated water, provided by the tankless water heater, reaches the spout. There is a way around this though...a recirculator pipe. What this is is a 3rd pipe (in addition to the hot and cold water pipes) that allows for you to set the water heater to a specific time that you'd like for the water to be hot (say, 6am). Then, at that time, what the system will do is drain the leftover cold water from the hot water pipe into the recirculator pipe, thereby allowing for newly heated hot water to fill the hot water pipe and be used as needed (with no wait for the water to get hot). The cold water in the recirculator pipe is then recirculated back into the system to be reheated and reused. Make sense?
• Placement of the Bathroom HVAC Vent. Now, this one I knew about before I moved in, but by the time it was done, redoing it would have costed more money than it was worth. Basically, drywall is hung over wood studs that are about 3 inches wide. This space behind the drywall allows for many of the mechanical, electrical and plumbing elements of the house to be hidden from view (sort of like the guts of the house). In the bathroom's case, they placed duct work for the HVAC vent behind the wall of the bathroom mirror. So what does this mean? It means that I can't have a mirror that has a recessed medicine cabinet behind it cause the area behind the drywall where the recessed medicine cabinet would go is now occupied by damn duct work. How does this affect the bathroom? That means I had to pay like $500 more than I should have for a stand-alone cabinet that I hung over the wall above the toilet as opposed to paying less for an all-in-one mirrored cabinet. Had they put the duct work behind the adjacent wall (like they were supposed to...meaning, I told them to do it), I would have not only saved money but had extra room on the wall where the current cabinet is to, I don't know...hang a picture or something. I guess that's why I didn't stress it too much--the aftermath was primarily cosmetic, even though the issue had structural origins. But, this was just one of the many issues I had with the HVAC subcontractors my GC on the project used. But that's a $2,000-$3,000 story for another blog.

On the next installment, I'll talk about how 3 inches affected the layouts of the whole 2nd floor.

Cheers.

P.S. Guess I just can't get away from novel-long blogs.

The Denman-Werlich Residence

I could appraise properties like this all day and never get tired...

Finished my first report of the year in 3 days, and I must say, it's pretty thorough...and not even for the summary report that it is, I mean this thing could pass for a self-contained.

I think part of the reason for the beastiality, aside from the fact I'm trying to get more focused in the new decade, is the fact I thoroughly enjoyed inspecting, researching, analyzing and reporting all of the facets of this property's value...not to mention the fact its "goooo-gious" as Kadija would say.

Seriously, if I could be the dedicated guy in the office to do these types of properties in the once-in-a-while chance a request for bid comes through our office...I'd do it for half the price.

Real talk.

Cheers.

Maintenance Man...beta

It's an iterative process.

Cheers.

...talk about a mind f***

From this Morning's Jog...

I'm in the hall already

On the wall already

I'm a work of art, I'm a Warhol already

On a another level, on another plane already

Frankfurt Freddie, I got my own frame already.

Cheers.

I'm Full...courtesy of Jamie Oliver

Spanish Chickpea and Chorizo Soup

Chorizo
Onions
Garlic
Celery
Spinach
Tomotoes
Chickpeas
Chicken Stock
Salt & Pepper
Spanish Ham
Olive Oil
Eggs

Prep takes FOREVER!!!!
Cook the sausage
Add the onions, celery and garlic
15 mins later, add spinach, tomoatoes, chickpeas and chicken stock
40 mins later, puree 1/3
Season to taste
Add the ham
Grate hard-boiled egg on top

Cheers.

Resolutions

Ok...

So one of my resolutions was to blog at least 5 times a week. So what do you do for the first Fri-Sat of the new decade...? Well I'm off to a great start (as you can see by the date and time of this post). And I jogged yesterday (another of my resolutions)...but not today.

The decade is off to a great start.

Cheers.

Idiosyncrasies #3

• Everyone speaks at least 3 languages
• Apartment leases have no end dates, just 3-month termination notices
• Speaking of apartment rentals, tenants typically (i.e. around 90% of the time) provide the appliances for the apartment (as in refrigerator, overn/range, etc.)
• In order for the lights in your hotel to work, you have to insert your key card into a key card slot by the door
• You don’t have to pay for baggage carts at the airport
• When you get your check at a restaurant, they only give you change if you ask. In other words, if you leave more money (20 euro) than the meal costs (12 euro), they'll think its a tip unless you tell them how much you want back.
• Traffic lights are positioned right at the line where cars are supposed to stop, so if you pull all the way up to the line, you can’t see when the light turns green.
• If there are homeless people in Amsterdam, they don’t ask for money on the street
• “F**k” means the same thing in all languages and is the preferred version of the word even though each language has their own translation of the word
• You can crack (as in open) windows on the subway trains
• Everyone AROUND THE WORLD has their eyes on the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
• Beggars have no problem pimping animals for your spare change

• They don’t “text” in Europe…they “SMS”
• Dogs don’t need leashes
• All streets have signs, regardless if they're pedestrian-only

Cheers.

Walk to Work

Blog 1 of 2 that I meant to post before I left...

In remembrance of my experience in Germany (not just for you all, but for me as well), I figured I'd make a "photo-blog" of my daily walk to the Frankfurt office from Berger Strasse 121. Enjoy.

So I lock the front door...


Walk down the steps (inside)...


Then walk down the steps outside (to the left) and pass by the casino on the ground floor (mind you, its in the cut, as you have to go under a canopy-corridor off of Berger Strasse to get to this area...


Check the always empty (except for the infamous letter grandma sent me) mailbox...


Come from under the canopy-corridor onto Berger Strasse (this is the view north)...


And this is the view south (the direction I have to walk to the U-bahn (subway)). Watch out for the cars.


Walk less than a block to the escalator for the Hoenstrasse station...


Pass by the "Fahrkarten" machine that I never learned to properly use my entire time in Frankfurt. Mind you, this isn't where you purchase the monthly pass, so I never really had much interaction with this machine, except when visitors came to town.


Go down two more levels to the actual boarding area...


However, this is the end of the boarding area I would wait because by boarding the train at this end, it would be less of a walk to the escalator I would need to take when I would get off at Hauptbahnhof (my destination).


Check the time board to see how much longer I have to wait for the next train...


Board the train when it arrives. Unfortunately this end of the train is ALWAYS crowded.


Fortunately, two stations later (at Konstablawache), many people get off the train to transfer to another train. I can usually find a seat at this point.


Get off the train and come above ground to this rather grandiose view of the Hauptbahnhof...


Get an "apfeltashe" (which I just learned means "apple turnover") from one of the vendors by the long-distance trains...


Walk to the southern-end of the station (along the platform for track 1)...


Exit the station and walk towards the cylindrical glass building in the distance...


However, its not as easy as it seems because the rental car parking lot blocking your way is like a maze (they have hidden gates and rails that making walking a straight line (the shortest distance between two point) impossible)...


Once through the parking lot, I come out on the street between the two buildings in the distance where the green "go" stick figure is (this picture is me looking back from where I just came)...


Walk half a block west to the next street, make a left and the glass building comes into clear view...

At the end of the block, all that's left is to cross the street...


Cars hardly come from the left...


But the right is always chock-full of cars...


Once across the street, a clear, sunny day always greets me with a beautiful view of the cobblestone ground around the office...


Although the glass building is the guide, our building is the trapezoidal one next to it...


Walk to it and put the access card in my wallet to the "entrance pad"...


Walk through the glass door that slides open...


Catch the first available elevator to the 2nd floor (which in the U.S. would be classified as the 3rd floor)...


Get out the elevator and use my access card again...


To open one of the glass doors for entry onto the floor...


Turn to the right and walk down the hall...


To the "water closet"...


To get my favorite 32oz. "medium-carbonated" sparkling water...


Go back out into the hall and walk the opposite direction to the other end...


Turn the curved corner...


Say hello to the world famous, Wall Street Journal quoted, Head of Research for Germany, Inga Schwarz (whose laughing by the way cause of all the pictures I'm always taking)...


Admire the open lay out of the Frankfurt office...


Walk to my desk and say hello to my desk mates Pascal (right) and Thomas (and yes Thomas is also trying not to laugh at all the pictures I take)...


And finally, get my laptop from the shelf to hook to the docking station to start another day at work...


Cheers.