Palm Springs

This weekend we needed a break and decided to take a road trip to Palm Springs. Plus this month marks 21 years of marriage and it seemed like the thing to do. This was the second time that we have been there, the first was five years ago.

We stayed at the Renaissance Hotel which was near "downtown" and close to all the touristy stuff, namely restaurants and shopping.  If you have ever been to Palm Springs you know about the mountains that are really striking. They remind me of Hawaii, except these are brown instead of green. The Hotel was really close and I got some great pics.

We also "toured" (in other words we just walked in like we were staying there) a hotel, The Parker Hotel that was really amazing. It is surrounded by hedges and has all these pathways that lead to hammocks/fire-pits/Pétanque court/croquet lawn, etc... We also had a afternoon snack at one of the restaurants, "A" had coffee and a fancy Belgian waffle with bananas/blue berries and a creme brûlée topping. I had a smoothie and some of "A's" fancy Belgian waffle with bananas/blue berries and a creme brûlée topping. This set us back over $30. Did I mention that this place ain't cheap?

Lobby of the Parker.

The first night we ate at the hotel restaurant which was really good, "A" had sea bass and I had salmon.  The second night we ate at a Japanese Robataki, I thought it was pretty good but "A" wasn't too impressed.

We also did some sightseeing, mostly looking for mid-century houses/architecture.  "A" did some shopping at a place called The Estate Sale Company. I have to say it was impressive! Their collection of furniture is all second hand/consigned. So nothing cookie cutter about it and the prices were extremely reasonable. "A" found two chairs for $100 and we were able to get them shipped for $80. They need to be reupholstered but still it was a good deal. However since they kept moving the delivery times around and they pissed me off I told them I wanted a discount and we ended up paying $50.

Wile E. Coyote wasn't too far behind this road runner.

"A's" Chairs

Back to work

It appears that with the passage of the "POMA" (pay our military act) that congress passed put me back to work. The DoD called most of its workers back on Monday and since that was my day off I went back today. We are behind and need some catching up to do but overall it's not too bad. After all it was less than a week.

However this shutdown is confusing. Most government services are open and running, but the open air monuments are closed. Makes no sense at all...but wait it's the government, so it really does make sense, in a perverted way.

Government Shutdown

Wow two posts in one day, how lucky!!

As my readers know, all five, that I work for Uncle Sam. Well the my Uncle is not doing so well and I have been sitting at home since Tuesday afternoon waiting for him to get his S#!& together.

I can only hope that they enact retroactive pay for us, but I'm not counting on it.

Block Party 2013

If you are a faithful reader of this blog, I think there are 5 of you, then you know that I am on our block party committee. But block party is a bit of a misnomer because in reality it is a community party. We usually have 500 to 700 people show up. I'm a little late writing this because Sept 21st was our party, sorry. Anyway here are some pictures and a video from the event. Most of the photos are from the car display we had. Click on the photos to enlarge.

A strange British car that opens from the front.

A VW Bus that had a "convertible" top.

For some reason I cannot connect my YouTube channel to this, so just click on this link to see the Video

The rug we chose is ....

#1

At the store we really liked #2 but once we got it home it just didn't really look that great. If I can offer any advice it is to take a rug home and see how it looks on your floor.

We got #1 and #2 at one store and #3 and #4 at another store. I really liked #4 and would like to have bought that one too but we just couldn't afford both rugs. They don't give them Persian rugs away for free ya know!

Thank you all for voting and maybe I will try another poll sometime again.

Floor Rugs

Now that  we completed the condo our focus can shift back to our house. "A" wanted to reward herself since she has finished paying off her student loans, which is no small feat. We want to have three nice area rugs, one for our dining room and two for our living room. Each rug will need to be approximately 8'x10'. One thing we really don't want is a cheap machine made rug. So we went decided that it would definitely be a hand made rug, but which kind?

We had a really nice rug that we purchased from a local furniture store that was made in India, hand tufted I believe. The problem with many Indian rugs are that they usually put some kind of glue on the back that will keep it held together after the tufting. This glue eventually breaks down and starts to really stink and no amount of cleaning will fix it. That is what happened to our rug, so we decided to go with a hand knotted rug.

Quite a few countries make these rugs (Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran, etc...). I happen to have a few Pakistani rugs that I bought when I lived there but they are too small for our needs in these three areas. We went to the Miramar area and brought home four rugs that we thought would work. "A" doesn't like the typical Persian rugs that have the flowery or flowing type patterns, she is more drawn to the tribal type rugs. So we looked at three rugs from the Heriz area of Iran and one from Afghanistan.

Below are the rugs that tried numbered from 1 to 4, can you guess which one we chose? Please vote to the right of this post. Answer will be given after the poll closes.

#1 Heriz, Persian

#2 Afghanistan

#3 Heriz, Persian

#4 Heriz, Persian

Renovations part 5: completed and condo rented

We finished with the final preparations for the condo on September 1st and it was listed on the 5th. I got word today that it has now been rented. It was actually a little faster than I expected so we are happy. In the end we rented it for $1,345 with a one year lease.

It was a long haul and took much longer than I expected but I am glad we did it. If we ever buy another rental property I think we will try to get a move in ready place. Then again maybe not :)

Below are the before and after photos.