It is snow on.

Yesterday, we both got sent home from work early due to the snow.  I was driving and was intimidated by the snow in the alley, so I parked on the street.  Which meant this morning, I went downstairs to clear the parking pad so that we can park in it tonight without having to clear it.  This is what I opened the door to:

Fortunately, the 5-6 inches of snow we got is really light and fluffy and extremely easy to move.  The only problem is there aren't a lot of places for it to go. Ten minutes later:

We ran out of ice melt yesterday, so we have to pick up some more tonight.  I think I will generally try to park on the street, because it was actually easier to clear the parking pad than to clear the car in the parking pad. 

We kept the taps open overnight and the bathroom heaters on, so hopefully no more freezing. 

Moving to matching

We received new towels as a housewarming gift, and now most of our towels work well with our green and brown shower curtain. 

I also put the washcloths in the red basket, which does not match but I am leaning towards spray painting or covering it in fabric.  I also have to find a new home for those crummy hand towels - possibly the basement or with our camping gear since I always wish we had a kitchen/hand towel with us. 

Community Association

We attended our very first community association meeting last night. It was extremely educational.  First of all, I do not ever want to be the lone guy who supports the 300 person megabar that is coming in.  Secondly, I learned that our community association signs MOU's with local bars and restaurants.


The point of the MOU seems to be to make sure that they are not going to destroy our community with having people come to park in the neighborhood and get drunk and break our stuff.  Since I spent last Saturday morning awake at 3am as a very loud fight happened right outside our window, I'm starting to see the concerns about larger bars, etc. coming into the neighborhood. 


I also learned that I can call 311 to complain about potholes, so they are about to get a large number of complaints about potholes in the bike lanes.  We also got to meet our local police officer, who is returning to the force after being hit by a drunk driver last January and a year-long recovery.  He seemed nice and I look forward to seeing him in the neighborhood.


The community association meeting was a bit demographically varied, between older folks who have lived here for twenty years, and the young guy who was the only one who was psyched for the open air beer garden they want to put in that holds 90 people.  (For the record, I'm only psyched if they serve vegetarian brats and cider.)  Unfortunately, when the young guy stood up, he got yelled at by a bunch of folks, demanding to know whether he was a member of the association, whether he was a homeowner, and how long had he lived there for. 


It was very interesting to listen to the discussion of the neighborhood, because we supported one bar coming in that is going to be pretty upscale and local foodie.  One lady asked what kind of food would be served and the owner listed a bunch of too-hip-for-me places and she said, "yeah, I don't know what those places are" and then he specified it as "new American" and a west-coast concept that originated in Northern California.  The new bar and the mega-bar are listed as having the same capacity, but the big issue with the mega-bar seems to be being built to hold 300 people, even though they have agreed to self-imposed limits of capacity. 


The most exciting news for us was that our local dive bar is going to be taken over by a local bar/restaurant which will be very cool.  I'm hoping that they will a) serve food and b) have vegetarian food, because our local establishments don't have a ton of vegetarian stuff on their menu.  I'm excited to go to another smaller meeting next week to hear what the new owners have to say.  This does concern me a bit from a gentrification perspective, and also because we moved to the area because I don't always want to pay $14 for a cocktail.  I'm also a little worried that the patrons who hang out down the street won't have anywhere to go if they get priced out of the neighborhood joints when they are sold, and doesn't everyone deserve a place where everybody knows their name?  However, none of those folks were at the community association meeting.

Single Car Living

Yesterday, I drove my husband to work, I drove myself to my first hearing in Essex, I drove back to my husband's office, took the bus from his office to my office, and then took the bus to court for an afternoon hearing. After the hearing, I got a ride home with a generous friend who works at the courthouse and lives around the corner.  My husband drove home from work and took the car to the shop so that the bumper could be repaired and picked up the rental car. 


All of this juggling was necessary because we are a single car family.  Normally, my husband would have just ridden his bike and I would have taken the car to the shop and picked up the rental.  However, it was 5 degrees outside when we left the house in the morning.  Biking to work in this weather was not advisable since we don't own any of the gear necessary to bike in 5 degrees. 


Being a single car family has its drawbacks.  Three years ago, we went down to only one car, and had only minor hiccups since then.  However, when my husband accepted a different job in June, things like riding his bike in the freezing cold or heavy rain or snow became a lot less possible with his different commute.  So it's hard on a day when I have to go out to the county and he needs the car to go to work. 


So far the inconvenience is not enough to require us to consider purchasing a second car, but we may hit that point.  Unfortunately, the inconvenience of having a second car far outweighs the relative benefits, because we have to find it a parking space and do the parking pad shuffle.  All of this makes purchasing a super-tiny car really appealing, but I think, unfortunately, we may be past the point in our lives where we can buy a super-tiny car and expect it to suit our needs for the next ten years. 


Before we jump to buying a second car, we also need to consider the relative costs of actually using Zipcar, Uber, Lyft, and taxicabs.  Right now, I spend maybe $10 a week on alternative transport, which at $520 a year would still be less than the estimated $3158 spent on owning a car.  That doesn't even include car payments.  Yet we have a hard time actually spending any money on alternate transportation.


Maybe this math is easier for somebody who is making a car payment and sells their car - because if I was comparing spending $50 a month on a Zipcar and $300 a month on a car payment, the Zipcar seems like a no-brainer, but our car has been paid off for awhile.  I just have such a hard time justifying the cost of a Zipcar, and I'm very concerned that if I rented a zipcar to go to court for the afternoon and rented it for 3 hours, that would be the day the courthouse is insane and I end up going way over the time I rented it for and getting hit with a hefty fine. 


Honestly, the cost of a zipcar for an hour is cheaper than the cost of the Metro in DC, but that's not math that works in Baltimore where a bus ride is $1.60.  However, public transit in Baltimore is not reliable, so I can't always take a bus where I need to go. 


Does anyone else share a car and use zipcar, etc. to get around? How do you make it work? 

Happy Birthday j!

It's our nephew's birthday!!! He is a whole year old!  Here he is at 8 months, penned in by Ikea flat packs in our empty house. 

Parking Permit Renewal Time

Parking permits in Baltimore City are pretty reasonable - they are $20 a year for a residential permit, and each guest permit is an additional $20. However, when you consider the added expense of going to the parking authority twice with all the necessary documentation, the cost seems higher. This year we will be picking up our permit at one of our convenient community pickup locations.  It is annoying that they aren't pro-rated, so we bought new permits last January at our old apartment, then this year in August, and then we have to get new ones now as well, paying $20 per permit and guest permit each time.  However, they are useful and the City could get away with charging way more than they do, so I try not to complain about it too much. 

I'm very curious as to whether we would be entitled to get two parking permits for our address. Because we have a parking pad, usually they will only give you one street permit and the other person has to use the parking pad, but this varies by area. I want to find out if that rule would apply to us if we bought a second car, but I don't want to ask and alert anyone who hasn't noticed yet to the fact that we have a parking pad (it's a new addition, and the parking authority is really slow to update). We rarely would park two cars on the street, but when we've had two cars, we need to be able to shuffle them.

The most annoying part is removing the stickers. Some people just let them pile up on their windshield and show how long they've been living in Area 8/16/45/30 for, but we usually opt to remove the old and put the new one on.  Right now we have both our old permit and our current permit, which is because we needed both of them for moving day and then never bothered to remove the old one. Two is where I draw the line though, so they are both coming off.  Removal has always been annoying, and since we now have an easy way to run an extension cord out to the car, I want to try the blowdryer method of sticker removal. 

Let's get some shoes

The husband has been working on a shoe rack for my closet in the evenings recently. He repurposed the poorly built shelving from the closets when we moved in, and made me an awesome custom shoe rack.

The shelves are adjustable. 

He had to buy a few extra clips, and we'll need more wood to make additional shelves. 

The rack goes right in front of the furnace, which is a good use of otherwise totally wasted space. 

There is room for movement - we think we can add another two shelves.  It only fits half my shoes, but all my dress and summer shoes are in the closet in a bin because I wear them rarely. 

Another reason to hate the cold.

Our pipes are frozen. Upstairs, the sink does not have water and downstairs, the sink works but the toilet won't fill. I hope we can fix this before the temperature drops more and we lose the ability to shower. 

Oooh, apparently the hot water is back. Maybe tomorrow after spending some QT with the space heater, the cold will return as well. 

Ice Melt

Since we are covered in snow today, we put down ice melt on our front sidewalk.  Because our street is high foot traffic, it's prone to being icy, and we need to clear it and keep it clear.  A container of Safer than Salt came with the house, but as I was spreading it on the sidewalk, I remember my cousin's warning that people spreading ice melt didn't buy the "pet friendly" kind and it irritated her pup's paws.  I was concerned that this was not pet friendly, but then I remembered the previous owner had a dog and she probably bought pet friendly ice melt.  I checked the label and it specified that it was eco friendly but not necessarily pet friendly. 

I found this article about ice melt interesting but was dissatisfied to see the ingredients on the Safer than Salt is "a unique mix of chemicals that is better than regular salt" or something else to that effect.  This site says, "The product is a proprietary formulation of sodium chloride, calcium chloride and magnesium chloride." Since the article advised avoiding sodium chloride, I'm honestly not sure whether Safer than Salt is pet-safe or not.  We live in an extremely high-traffic dog walking corridor, so this is a concern for me. 

I think once we have used up this container of ice melt, we will probably switch to an advertised pet-friendly brand.  But I'm keeping the jug it came in - it's so much easier to spread! 

Snow Covered

When I came out of the office yesterday, the snow had already started.  I rode in the snow to the gym anyway.  Then the snow kept falling and I had to ride home.  I forgot a plastic bag for my bike seat, but luckily, the seat on my Canondale Quick is pretty waterproof and doesn't absorb water. 

 

 

It was really coming down as I went to carry my bike into the house. 

As I opened the door, my husband came to me and asked what I needed.  I replied with, "towels".  I wiped my bike off best I could outside (it was still totally covered in snow except the seat) and then brought it in. 

As the snow dripped off my bike onto the floor, we put down towels and mats.  However, this morning as we shoveled out the car, I started drafting a "snow emergency plan".  Hopefully this will allow us to be better prepared in the event of inclement weather. 

1.) Keep old towels near the front door. We were gifted new towels as a housewarming present, so this will be easy. 
2.) Get a second door mat that is super absorbent for the back door to put boots and the snow shovel on. 
3.) Flip wiper blades up so that they do not freeze to the car and then have to be dug out. 
4.) Clear the drying rack so that we can put dripping winter clothes on it. 

 

5.) Stock up on hot cocoa. 

My instinct is to buy All The Mats and put them everywhere, but I have to consider where we would store them.  We have discussed getting a runner that goes all the way under the gravity stand and will absorb the dripping from the rack.  I think we will be making that happen soon. 

Any other suggestions? What is your snow emergency plan?

 

 

Spite Houses

A friend shared this article about spite houses on Facebook and it's pretty great.  What's really hysterical though, is the fact that many of these houses don't seem so bad after living in a 12 foot wide rowhome that narrows to nine feet.  The wedge shaped beauty that narrows to four feet just seems cozy.  The ten foot wide home with only one room per floor? Totally manageable.

(source)

I draw the line at the five foot wide apartment building.  That is crazytown.