I Heart Peanut Butter

Neil and I drove over by the Adams Street School Lofts over off of Shrewsbury Street and there was a few cars parked there. I couldn’t imagine that someone, anyone would buy these over-priced, cheaply done lofts. So I came home and searched the Registry of Deeds for 28 Adams Street to find that indeed a unit had sold. The unit #302 as shown here
It sold for $180,000, first off what the hell was this person thinking. The unit is the size of one of our small units which currently are around 100k for sale, a owner is trying to sell hers for about 90k-something. There is no garaged parking, and the units look like SHIT. The doors for the unit are the original school doors with bad paint, again this renovation was only a cover-up not a re-do.

Seems that the LLC that underwent this development is also doing a portion of the financing. The mortgage taken out was with $26,000 from the LLC. The LLC better have a large amount of capital somewhere because I do not see how they will pay back their almost 4 million dollar mortgage they have to Middlesex Federal Savings.

I know how this will all go down, which is sad. I know what my building has went through in the 2 years of its life. I know how LLC’s handle this mess, they go bankrupt and the bank will own the building soon enough.

Between Adams Street and Kettlebrook (with hug mold issues) my building looks pretty good.
We still have underground parking, the building is structurally sound and hopefully we will have our roof decks this summer….

Christmas is finally over and I can stop feeling stressed out about buying not even one person a present this year, damn.
The end of the year is coming and as I have already reflected on my own dismays and happiness, I will remember this year for rest of my life. The year America became humbled and the year we moved past the race divides that have plagued this country since being established. The year that big business learned they no longer control the United States, that a strictly capitalist controlled country can not be so. The year of History, the year people of my generation will speak of, the year that we all wish didn’t happen. This past year is the year that will be an example for things to and not to do. Move forward and demand change, but don’t fuck it up to begin with. We will all step back as to not put ourselves in the financial mayhem that surrounds us in the last quarter of the 2008 year. Greed has caused 90% of the problems that we face, the need for the most and to be the greatest. He who dies with the most toys wins, right! The courts now making examples of all that is wrong in corporate America, about damn time. This year I could have cared less to see a woman in the Oval Office, because the women that were offered up did not meet my needs for change in the world. This year will be one for the History books…
Good Bye 2008!!!!!

I am heading to Connecticut to the rents for the Christmas Eve Party, should be a great time.
I wish everyone a safe and merry Christmas…

2) New Camera- I have been without camera most of this year.
Nikon S60, with the touchscreen….

3) Nescafe Dolce Gusto- single serve machine that makes lattes – and it looks like a bird

4) Cuisinart Blender/Food Processer
To replace the one that hit my concrete floors.

5)Eee mini laptop- to throw in my bag and not worry about killing it

6) TOMS wrap boots size 11

7) New Tokidoki bag, mine is looking rough

I think that is the main things I have wanted, but most likely I will be buying myself once my tax return comes in..

What the hell happened with the last 11 months?

I love reflection, I love looking back into a time of my life that really in essence went by way to quick. As the calendar years flip quicker than I gain grasp on my life I am thinking I will be 30 in just over 12 months. I have 18 days until I am 29, and for what it is worth I am not sure what 29 should be for me. I still feel young, and most people think I am 21, don’t I wish, all the things I would have done over again. I am only now getting the main portion of my college education because my life just didn’t go the storybook way.

I have friends that I envy their lives because it seems so much more adventurous than my own. I own a home that is only worth 2/3rds of what I have a mortgage for. I haven’t traveled at all in the last two years. Hell I live a pretty boring life right now, so I dream. I am hoping that the hard work I am putting in for school and working my butt of at work will at some point prove to be valuable. What if all I am doing is ringing up student loans and working for a company that in the end will not show they have the need or respect for individuals time outside of work. I really don’t know.

The last two years I have done less craft projects than I could count on one hand, I have not drawn anything, I have not watched my quota of foreign films and dressed to excess. I worry that 30 for me will be no more than losing who CRYSTAL really is. That scares the living shit out of me. I have no real “close” friends anymore because I couldn’t deal with their drama or wait there is no “or”, I just couldn’t deal with the drama. I think I have forgotten how to make new friends because outside of work and school I have “zero” time for anything, never mind trying to make new friends. I worry that my constant busy-ness will affect my relationship because I have so little time.

So I am confused and dealing with having to be an adult but really being who Crystal has always been. I now look at younger people and roll my eyes at their outlandish behavior while still trying to hold onto the element of surprise that comes from me onto others.

So I think as the year comes to an end I need to focus on how to get Crystal back, to bring the life and creativity that made me who I was back.

Finally Monday night after a busy weekend.

Friday was my company party which was a fun event. I am not one to be over friendly with my work peers outside of a work environment, but when you see everyone in scrubs everyday, how can you miss everyone dressed to the 9′s. The food was good and the free cocktails made for some easy chatter.

Saturday Neil and I worked the Lisa Lampanelli at Hanover, we both were thrown on the merch table and were able to go an sit and watch the show. We are both fans of her material but she is not for the weak individuals. She is harsh!

Last night we had to drag ourselves out of the house, it was cold and I wanted to stay inside in my pj’s all day. We worked the Terry Fator show last night, merch table again..

So the Extreme Makeover Home Edition home will be complete tomorrow. Saturday they were clearing the debris from the old home out and playing in mud, today the house looks like this HERE

Tomorrow the family comes home to their new home and I am excited. You can watch it on TV on Febuary 8th.

This coming weekend I have my work holiday party, then Neil and I are working two shows at the Hanover this weekend. So I will have more to share in the next few days.

So today Neil, my mom and myself are going to volunteer at Extreme Makeover-Home Edition, from 4-8pm. We need to get to my folks around 1:30 today and then meet at Foxwoods at 3pm for the shuttle to the families home in Voluntown. My stepdad is drilling the GEOthermal well I believe starting at 4pm.

Tomorrow I am going with my mom to the VIP Meet and Greet to meet Ty Pennington and his crew. I am super excited

More to come on how the event turns out.

In the meantime check out the website from the contractor and all info regarding the build.

Extreme Homes by Bruno

Neil and I finally have heat again, seems the furnaces they installed in the building are a rare, hard to find, cheap furnace. The man who replaced the blower motor said the job they did on installing isn’t as bad as other buildings he has seen. So with about $600.00 in repairs we have heat again.

Poor Neil and Julie have had to deal with emails about my posting about the broken elevator, shame on me right. But seems people only read or for that matter not read what they want. No where in my post did I mention that we couldn’t afford it. Well really we can’t but that is what a special assessment is for, right? I am not sure why tenants need to know all the details, they rent and can move if they wanted too. Unlike us owners who are here for the long haul. The blazing owner of 3 units in the 5th floor, which he rents, doesn’t even live here likes to blame, blame, blame everyone. Blame me for writing we have an expensive fix to do on the elevator, what should I lie. He drives me nuts most of the time, the bossiest of individuals but only has anything to do with the building when he wants to tell people what they are doing wrong. He simply disgust me. I know how hard Julie has been working on this issue, you think she likes climbing those stairs to her “owned” home each day.

It is getting done but the trustees are making sure that the total cost is the best price and service that we can get, there has been 6k dollars in difference between quotes. Obviously the company who services our elevator does not look at any issues we have had, so now to find a good company to do the work.

Ok I hate walking up concrete stairs, I have arthritis in both my knees but then again Neil and I live on the 2nd floor, only 4 flights of stairs between the parking garage and our home. We feel bad for people on the upper floors, but they shouldn’t be questioning the trustees, their landlords are the ones that need to deal with issues. I would expect some kind of concession on my rent if I was a tenant, like when a toilet doesn’t work and you need to wait to get it fixed. You pay rent to have the things done for you. I wish I was renting again.

Owning for us right now means nothing. More money out of our pockets and no equity on our home. It seems like a cash pit for me right now. We bought at the wrong time, when units are selling or not selling at 60k less than we paid for ours we have a hard time justifying the cost of the mortgage.

I have moved my issues back to this blog because the blog I set up I am not allowed to post anything but GREAT news, sad but true. I am the UPL’s owner who has went rouge, I just don’t care anymore what anyone thinks.

POP EUPHORIA: TOYS, FAIRYTALES, ICONS & EPHEMER
A Charity Art Show to benefit Toys for Tots.
The Aurora Gallery660 Main St.Worcester, MA 01609

Opening Reception:Sat. Dec. 6th6 – 9pm @ the Aurora

I really wish Neil and I could make this, this is the closest thing to what we are into, that has come to our fine city. We will be in Connecticut working on Extreme Makeover-Home Edition

I can’t say life at University Park Lofts is all that great right now, funny thing is that thing started to look up for me, but with my expectations as low as they are with my home, they only go back to shitty in no time flat. If Neil and I were to so this all over again I would have bought a cute little bungalow, something Worcester also does well, but no we are in this for the long haul.

Our heat has been non working for the last 2 weeks, well two weeks ago this coming Friday. We had a HVAC man come out three times and the issue seems to be the blower motor, which can not be found anywhere in Massachusetts because it is a cheap as HVAC furnace, everything was done cheap, quick and without much thought that people would be living here. Oh wait the developer could have cared less because he was going to sell all the units and hightail it to the hills. So we hopefully will have heat sometime in the next few days and a bill and high electricity cost to go along with it.

Secondly, the elevator is not working right now, this is not a little lock down issue like we had this summer for a week, this is an honest to goodness not working elevator. We realized over the weekend the noise it was making was extremely loud, so Neil and Julie made the executive decisions to shut it down. The elevator man came out on Monday and then back yesterday to whistle a tone in the amount of $16,000 in repairs because the ball barrens broke. This is 16k if they are able to work on the elevator in the building, if not we will need a crane to come lift the elevator out of the building and that could cost an additional $2,500 a day. So we have no elevator and we have people living now on the 4th and 5th floors. Yikes. This of course will be a pretty penny by the condo association…… Worcester Elevator told us that the developer of the building was told he should replace the “vintage” motor and he declined and made a bad business decision. The motor is the original motor from the building in 1930, a manufacturing elevator at that.

So I understand there are some great things about the building. We have a functioning condo association even if my boyfriend is so wrapped up in building bullshit 90% of the time. We have one new owner on the 4th floor, sorry Chris that the elevator just shit the bed. We have all units that are sold lived in either by owners or tenants. The fullest the building has been yet, still nice and quiet. But I think I am holding onto my guard with this building and will let it down once we are truly out of the storm.