Pimp my House

Since I have no idea what my finance professor is currently talking about (and he's been talking for three hours now and writing very complex looking graphs on the board), I decided to post to get input on potential homes that I've been looking at.

I've been renting or living with my family since my return from Mongolia in 2003. My rent has ranged from $333/month in Lebanon, NH to $935/month in Pearland, TX. My current rent is $856/month which DOES NOT include water, sewer, pet rent (really? Why does my cat need to pay rent every month if I've already paid the pet deposit? Do you have any idea how hard it is to make her do chores around the house to earn her allowance?), apartment billing fee ($4/month to get told how much I owe a month. Mandatory fee. No joke. I offered to opt out of the service and was told no). The total month check that I write to my 1970's apartment complex is usually in the range of $923/month. Property in Texas is notoriously cheap. Google tells me that I could live in a $187,500 home with a monthly payment like that.

My friend Mark that lives in W. Virgina likes to tell me how much land and house he gets for less money a month. Then I stick my tongue out at him, but that doesn't quite have the same effect since we are usually IMing. Anyways, I've been looking at buying a home for the past year. I wanted to avoid renewing my lease, but I didn't have enough for a down payment in December 2010. Picture me with a sad face here.

Here are the numbers: Price range = $105,000 - $125,000 (yes, property is really that cheap here, which makes my rent that much more ridiculous), <=3 bedrooms, <=2 bathrooms, >1975 home, 4.5% interest rate on mortgage, FHA loan with 3.5% down = $3,675 - $4,375, annual HOA dues >$200/annually, monthly payment $532 - $633.

So...I've selected three properties that could work for me, but they all need a little help. I'll include a couple of pictures and a link to the posting. What would you change about the house? Do you like it? Am I an idiot for considering this home?

338 Capehill Drive

This is the most expensive home with a list price of $124,900 in Webster, TX. I love the french doors in the Master Bedroom and the tile in both bathrooms.

Although it's a little hard to see around the paint color in the dining room and kitchen. That would be one of the first things to go in this house.

The realtor boasts that this is new paint....umm...clearly these people have never seen the show, "Sell This House!" on A&E.

16004 Eastcape Drive

This is probably the worst shot of a house that I've seen, but that makes me wonder if not as many people would go and look at it and I'd have an upper hand when negotiating. The list price is $115,900.

The maintenance fee is $295/annually, but it's a larger home at 1,595 sq ft. I heart this living room/den combination, but I'll be honest, I don't have nearly enough furniture to fill that much space.

That's also a large expanse of beige and white.

Here's the "Master" bathroom, which leaves a lot to be desired.

I can't really see under the vanity, but it looks very 1970s from this photo. It makes me wonder what the second bathroom looks like.

17310 Heritage Bay

This is the least expensive house at $109,900. The picture of the front of the house makes me wonder why the realtor didn't have the van moved, but maybe no one was home at the time. I'm not sure. I'm not a realtor. I just like to critique photos

The realtor is also VERY impressed with the tile work in this home. Almost all the photos focus on the tile and there is tile everywhere. From the floors, to the shower, to the counter top. Note the dolled up tile work in this photo.

Then there is more tile in the kitchen, in the same pattern

The tile in the bathroom looks like it was having work done. There also isn't much of a backyard with this home, but it is the cheapest.

So the big question: Which house would you pick?

12

I stepped on the scale this morning and was down 12lbs. Since I had my surgery on February 24th, that is roughly 3w1d. I'm starting to see some change in my clothes, but not a whole lot, which makes me think that the first 8-9lbs was actually water weight.

BUT, it's so nice to get on the scale now and see progress.

The Eyes Have It

Hmm...I’m not even sure what happens when I step away from the computer that long. I swear it feels like I just updated, but then I check and see that it’s been two weeks. I’ve learned some important lessons during that time:

 

• I have to always chew my food completely before I swallow. This sounds self-evident, but once you realize how much food you swallow only partially chewed, you’ll see why this was such a big lesson to learn. My little, un-filled band opening can only tolerate so much food before food backs up directly in my esophagus, somewhere in my chest. It does feel a little like what I imagine a heart attack might feel like, only there is also queasiness involved. Also, there is a lot of grabbing of my chest and gulping down air feeling like I’m being quickly suffocated under the pressure of my food

• Passing a Group 1 life, accident, and health exam does not mean that a person suddenly has a license to sell insurance or variable annuities. It means that I passed the exam. The license is applied for separately.

• I’m really slow when it comes to cold-calling businesses and individuals. Even when I try to be fast, I only get about 35 calls made before I start to wonder if I should be calling at a different time. Like Saturday. Maybe I should quit school with one module left and just cold call all-day Saturday and not go into the office on Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays. Just a thought.

• I think I’ve lost 10lbs of water weight since there is no super noticeable difference in the way my clothes fit. 

• I can’t stress how important it is to get a regular eye exam, especially if you are overweight. See below for more details.

 

Those are the primary lessons that I’ve learned. In reference to #4, I went to my optometrist after a blurry spot developed in my vision in class on March 5th. I had been having horrible, horrible headaches with pain radiating from my eyes and had talked to Aunt Jen about headaches related to hypertension. She said basically that they would be the worst headaches of my life and most likely I’d stroke out before I had time to complain about how bad my head was hurting. She’s comforting, that one. Her vast knowledge of medical conditions and symptoms just makes her a little bit of downer sometimes.

 

So, I was at the optometrist and she says that my eyes are dry, but even more concerning to her, she sees visible damage to my optic nerves. Then she told me to not go back to work for the day and go immediately to the optomologist she was recommending for me. I went and had a battery of eye tests done, including dilation and vision field. The doc came in and discussed my results. There was a circle of occlusion around my left eye and large swaths of blindness in my right eye, around the periphery, where I couldn’t correctly see the small, blinking white light. Then he showed me the optomap picture of my inner eye. It turns out that optic discs are supposed to look clear, relatively flat, with well-defined margins. My optic discs look….freakish. Just imagine holding onto a balloon in the middle. Then squeeze your hand. See how the top of the balloon puffs out from the air pressure? Now imagine that happening in the back of your eyes.

 

He explained that the lack of blood into my optic nerve and blood vessels around my optic disc hemorrhaging were causing my headaches and blurry vision. The medical profession has come up with a great term to describe this phenomenon. It’s “pseudotumor cerebri” . Pseudotumors have symptoms like a tumor, without actually having a tumor. These symptoms include: headaches (check), blurred vision (check),and increased intracranial pressure (check and check). But then he said he had to rule out an actual tumor and he continued the doctor shuffle to a neurologist.

 

The next day, the neurologist confirmed the previous two doctors’ findings and ordered a MRI and MRV. He also put me on acetazolamide to reduce the pressure in my spinal fluid by getting rid of excess water. Side effects include: increased urination (check), bad taste to carbonated beverages (check – I’ve finally had to reduce and occasionally eliminate Diet Coke and beer), and tingling in outer extremities, like hands and feet (check). He said, and the U.S. National Library of Medicine concurs, that the condition occurs most often in obese, premenopausal women. My acne medication - minocycline - also has increased intracranial pressure as a possible side effect. I've stopped the medication, but haven't seen any improvement in my vision. Sometimes there is no known cause and the only treatment is to lose weight.

 

MRI and MRV were normal. My spinal tap to check for infection in my spinal fluid and to monitor my spinal pressure is being scheduled now. Cross your fingers for the best.

 

I Ate a Meatball and Almost Died

That title could be a post all by itself, but since I’m a blogger, you get the full story. I went back to work on Monday and made it basically through the day. There was the part where I had to go home and lie down for a long lunch hour, but that can happen even on my non-surgical recovery days. I blame Vicadin really. Now that the pain is more on the outside of my stomach and my abdominal muscles, as opposed to literally feeling the band tightening my stomach on the inside, Vicadin does me little good. Right now, I’m still sore from Sunday when I decided that I needed to actually take my recycling to the recycling center for the first time in months and months and months. That really wasn’t my brightest idea. Lots of bending down caused a searing pain to shoot through my right side. It’s calmed down and now only aches when I stand up and walk. It’s basically where I imagine my appendix might be, if my appendix went on a field trip to a random spot on my right side, between my ribs and belly button. Right there. That’s where it hurts.


In addition to overdoing it physically, I have to confess that I’ve been testing my gastric limitations. I was on a full liquid diet for two days after my surgery, then started sneaking in solids. Mostly there were in the form of scrambled eggs, macaroni and cheese. (because soft is almost a liquid, right?), chili with no beans, and chopped tuna and chicken (because being pre-chewed is totally three steps closer to liquid than a solid in my mind). I kept drinking broth and throwing away the rest of the soup, which is fairly unsatisfying. Then on Sunday I demanded that Clicker take me to the sacred house of pancakes and let me eat one. He tried very hard and very valiantly to talk me out of it, but I wouldn’t hear of it. Pancakes are very soft! Sometimes they even fall apart when you try to pick them up with a fork. I ate two of them very slowly with some scrambled egg substitute. Then I wasn’t hungry for the remainder of the day.

I’m at work today and the office orders Potbelly sandwiches for lunch during our wholesaler meeting. I’m hungry. I ate/drank my soup around 10:30am and I don’t have any other food. Then I see a meatball sandwich on wheat bread and I think, “I can do this. The meat is ground together and the bread is wheat instead of white. It shouldn’t get stuck. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp”

Then immediately I knew that I had made a very large mistake.

Three bites into the sandwich, I get a searing pain in my chest and I have to rush out of the meeting. I started walking around the office, much like a pregnant lady with contractions. I sat down at my desk and a wave of nausea rolled over me. I got out my trash can and willed the food not to come up and upset my sore appendix site and delicate stomach. Then my breathing got a little harder and it felt like I couldn’t catch my breath, which caused me to try to breathe even harder in a panic. Fortunately, a I’ve been training for the past couple in the art of mastering anxiety attacks and I’m now a Jedi master – er- scratch that. I’m now at least able to appear normal in public. I walked around some more and felt a hard lump right at the edge of my diaphragm. I have to assume that it was part of the meatball because I don’t like to think about my tumors growing heads and talking back to me.

It took about two hours for me to feel somewhat normal again. I’m now firmly back on liquids until Friday because I’d rather drink my meals than have an aneurism and die at work from a renegade meat and some whole wheat bread. No sandwich is worth a trip to the ER. I just wish that Jello tasted better.

Blink

I'm not really sure what just happened there. I was going to write all this great build up to my surgery, including another post with my unreasonable expectations and then, I dunno, I blinked. I went to school two days after work to work on a take home final. Then suddenly it was the day of my surgery, on Thursday, February 24th.

I woke up at the normal time and started to get Zac ready. My Mom came over to take Zac to school and my Dad came over to drive Clicker and I to the hospital. Of course, we were 30 minutes early to the hospital, but the nurses managed to get me into a temporary room within 15 minutes of arrival. Then this happened:

Even with bed in a banana boat position, I promptly fell asleep for close to two hours with Clicker and my Dad in the room. Apparently, my nerves weren't enough to prevent me from enjoying a good solid nap at 9:30am. When I went to sleep, both Clicker and my Dad were on their iPhones for what I assume was the entire time since they were both playing with them when I woke up. Eventually, a nurse came to get me and move me to pre-op. I said good bye to my family and boyfriend and they wheeled me away. I wasn't even nervous then, just anxious to be in the recovery stage.

Pre-op seemed to take forever, although my nurse was incredibly nice. She started my IV and then a lovely woman came to "give me something to relax," which I was told was something along the lines of medical grade Valium. It worked. I was veeeerrrrryyyyy relaxed.

Then I went into the surgery room and the nurses were all talking to each other and basically ignoring me and one of them must have slipped over and gave me more sedation because the next thing I remember is waking up. My actual memories from waking up aren't particularly memorable so I'll just skip to the next step. I got wheeled into a "Transportation" waiting area. Then I started getting angsty. I wanted to see Clicker and my Dad and pretty much knew that my Dad would be nervous until he saw me again. I tried to dose a bit during the transportation waiting phase, but I couldn't fall back asleep. They finally rolled me into the Recovery Room and I saw both of them for five minutes and then a nurse escorted them out. Then I went back into the Transportation area and waited for a doctor to monitor my upper GI x-ray.



Like before in my pre-op appointment, I had to swallow barium while the doctor watched on the monitor. Unlike before, I was in a decent amount of pain and didn't really want to be swallowing anything, even if I had gone without water or food for close to 15 hours. The worst part was when they laid me back and made me roll on my side to get a picture of the back of my stomach (note: it looks just like the front, but with more ribs involved). Then I waited some more for another person from Transportation to wheel me into a hospital room where I saw Clicker and my Dad again. My Dad kept saying that I looked better than he expected and, of course, he wasn't surprised when my campaign for water kicked into high gear. I was tired and very thirsty. It was close to 3:30 - 4pm by then and I hadn't had anything to drink since midnight the night before.

Once in the room, I was told all the tasks I had to do before I could be discharged home. I was glad that the nurse gave me a good 45 minute notice before she expected me to pee. That gave me enough time to get all the saline that I had received through IV out of me. Once my pee was measured, I got some water, ice chips, and Vicadin, in that order. Codeine on an empty stomach really doesn't work for me. I almost got sick, but managed to walk up and down the hall four times with Clicker (who I must say is really quite a task master).

I got to go home around 6:30pm and struggled though the manual transmission of my Dad's car in Houston traffic. Again, my memories go a bit fuzzy. I just remember getting into bed and waking up every 1 - 2 hours or so every time Clicker came into room, opened the door, breathed in my direction, or I woke myself up. He gave me codeine every four hours and we finally got to sleep around 2am.

I took off the pads and tape on my five incisions in the shower, with the firm instructions that I wasn't supposed to remove the steri strips below. I joked on facebook that it look liked I had been in a prison brawl with a sharpened toothbrush - and lost. Here is what my stomach looked like after multiple showers and a couple of days of healing:

I'm guessing the longer of the incisions on my right is where they went through to put in the band. There was a steri strip in the middle of my belly button, but it fell off this morning. As of this morning, I'm down 4lbs from soup, jello, and applesauce. So much soup. More soup and broth then I had after my C-section, although my Mom swears that I'm walking better now than I did after Zac was born.

Tomorrow I'm back to work. Here I go.

Conflicted

I've been hiding out a bit...

On Friday, Clicker came down to my part of town and, after a rough start, we drove to Galveston, Texas for the weekend. We ended up having a pretty fantastic time and on Sunday I urged Clicker to earn his name and go into full-out photographer mode.

Here are some shots from the trip. It was beauitful and a sunny 65-68 degrees and we spent some time just looking at the water, even though we didn't go in:

 This was the view of the pool from the room, even though it was too chilly to go in.

 I woke Clicker up, accidentally, at 6:45am on Saturday and he took this picture of the sunrise at the coast.

 The view of the hotel from a breaker in the water.

Clicker and I (this time with permission to post - and yes, I realize that we both have our eyes partially closed. It was very, very bright.)

I could never get this kind of shot on my own. This shot definitely comes from dating a former photographer who could tell me what to do and where to look. I like the final product.

Now I come to the conflicted part of my life right now. Here's the condundrum: I haven't been this happy in a long time AND I've never been bigger. I got weighed today at my final pre-op appointment and I'm now officially heavier than I was when I was pregnant. I was so big that I actually felt shame at the number. It was the kind of deep-seated shame that I can't even write about very openly. It's the kind that starts out with, "How can anyone love me? How did I let myself get to this point?" and it spirals down from there. Trust me when I say those are the kind thoughts that I'm thinking when I go into the dark place. I have to remind myself that my friends, family, and boyfriend love me for who am I, not what I look like. I need a little bug on my shoulder to remind me that it's ok that I'm uncomfortable in all of work clothes and can't imagine meeting clients they way I look now, that doesn't make me a less qualified Financial Advisor.

On the flip side, I'm very, very happy right now. I like my job and the days pass quickly. I'm excited to start my own business and learning more about the financial services industry. Things have been hard with Clicker recently, but we are trying to work through it and when he holds me in his arms, the world quiets down and I feel calm. I especially love my time with Zac. Five years-old is a great age. He's so smart, funny, and kind. I can honestly say that I look forward to getting off work because I know that I get to spend the evening with him. We just hang out most nights. Sometimes we are both on our laptops and I laugh to think that I'm raising the yuppiest kid ever, but damn, he's just so cool. He knows more about space than I do and likes to make up songs about multiplication. How cool is that?

That's my guy. I know that I need to be around for him. I just wish that my outside matched my inside.

Series 66

No, I have no idea why it's called that either. All I know is that when I got hired onto my company in late October 2010, I knew that I would have 90 days to pass the Series 7 and the Series 66 examinations. Series 7 is a 250-question, five hour test with an hour break in the middle. It's over federal law and the test designers seem fixated on options and municipal bonds. I was told point-blank by one of my coworkers in the office that if a client ever asks about the underwriting of a municipal bond, that I should fire them as a client. No joke. Basically, once you pass the tests, you aren't really required to retain the information, especially since most of the public will have no idea what you are talking about if you start mentioning bear straddles or naked puts. It kind of sounds like both of those should be done in private, no?

The Series 66 tests your knowledge of state laws, without actually being specific to any one state. The State Administrator, who is a shadowy figure at best in the study materials, can require that an investment advisor representative (aka: me, known as a broker or financial advisor in most circles) take the test before they can trade securities in any state. You can see why taking just the Series 7 would be problematic then. I suppose I could sell securities in Puerto Rico or Guam, but since I'm not planning on leaving one of the 50 states anytime soon, I also had to take the Series 66. I like living in a state. States are good.

The actual test is 100 questions long and they give you two-and-a-half hours to complete it. I found that I either know the answer to the question or don't. 99% of the questions on the Series 66 don't involve math so it's basic problem solving and memory recall. Does the State Administrator have this power? What about this one? If we blindfolded the State Administrator and put him in a room with three issuers of corporate securities, a rabbi, and two investment advisors, what do you think would happen? That sort of thing.

There was a couple hard questions that I'm kicking myself for not knowing, mostly because I feel like after 18 months in a MBA program I should have known them. I had to completely guess on how to find the alpha of a stock when given the stock's beta and the expected return. Uhh...6.8? Yeah, that's what I went with too. Then there was a question about the minimum value of an investment needed to fund a monthly stipend of $1,000 in perpetuity with an expected 3% rate of return. There wasn't enough information to do present value calculations since I didn't have the risk free rate so I just started doing some math long-hand with my calculator. It was only after I submitted my test that I realized I had assumed a 3% MONTHLY rate (or 12% annually,  which is huge if you imagine getting that rate of return forever) instead of a 3% ANNUAL return (or .03/12 monthly, which is much more reasonable). I think I've actually had this question in one of my finance courses and I'm pretty sure I got it wrong then too. Fortunately, most people think about college tuition or retirement in terms of an annual amount of money. I'll leave the calculations on monthly cash flow streams to annuity providers. They have charts and everything.

Today also coincides with Day 1 of my liquid diet. I had some eggs this morning because I didn't want to feel sleepy during my test. I had a protein shake for lunch and I'm about ready to go have another. The commercial that got me today while I was watching tv was for an Italian restaurant, but I managed to stay out of the kitchen, although I'm back to feeling hungry and a little stabby right now.

13 more days of this. Really?!?