Hopeless Homeowner Series: Solve the Mystery, What Does This Do?

At times like this, I wish I knew a detective who moonlighted as an electrician.  Can you help me solve this mystery?

Our house - built in the mid-1950's and owned at first by an electrical engineer - is full of quirks and surprises.  Many of these are located in our (currently unfinished) basement, which is the nerve center of the house.  It holds the washer, dryer, boiler (we have hot water baseboard heat) and hot water heater, in addition to pipes leading out the back of the house for reasons I don't understand (the house used to have an in-ground pool, and now has a water feature out back that we've never plugged in or used), and a creepy closet that we are hoping to completely gut at some point over the next few months.

While making some measurements in the basement closet (which, did I mention, is a very creepy place) earlier tonight, I noticed a strange combination of devices.  First, there was a secret outlet atop the cinderblock wall of the basement.  Our house is a split, the cinder blocks begin at roughly ground level, and the wall faces the front of the house.  The outlet seemed relatively new (or at least had been updated) as it was of the grounded three-prong variety.  Next to it is some kind of metal box with very thin wires sticking out (I think this might have been a previous doorbell wiring set up, judging by the gauge of the wires, but I am not sure).

Beneath the outlet, not plugged in but dangling from the wall, is a very new timer (set to begin at 6 pm and end at about 11 pm - I checked). 

The plug attached to the timer, however, seems to be from the 1950's.  The wire travels about three feet down the wall and then disappears into a hole leading out, presumably underneath the front yard.

 

As I write this, it's becoming clear to me that this is an old set up for some outside lighting.  Or, I could be wrong.  Maybe this is an invitation to put up a ridiculous number of Christmas lights.  But how would I find where the wire ends up outside, presuming that it does end up outside?  Would I have to dig?  How many silverfish would I see throughout the process?  (This is why I would make a terrible Bob Vila/detective hybrid; I'm terrified of silverfish.)

So, if anyone reads this who is inclined to think critically about such mysteries, what do you think, and how can I test your theory? 

Rutgers to the Big Ten

Cincinnati at Rutgers, September 2009.  My first game as a season ticket holder, and the only time I ever saw the stadium this full in three-plus seasons.

Earlier today, I posted on Facebook that Rutgers moving to the Big Ten (hereinafter referred to as "the B1G") is like Christmas in November. 

As a season ticket holder for the past four seasons, and as someone whose tenure as a Rutgers undergraduate (2002-06) aligned perfectly with the end of the "Rutgers as national laughingstock" era (a 1-11 campaign during my freshman year) and the beginning of "wait, they've got something brewing here and there's potential for the future" era (a 7-5 season and a bowl berth during my senior year), I never really expected a major conference to come calling.  It all depended on our football program (football is often the only revenue-positive sport for a college athletics program), and our football program seemed to be cursed with terrible timing: horrible when the Big East was worth purging, improving when nobody was expanding, and disappointing and failing to meet expectations when the Big East was worth purging again.

I am still a little unsure why the B1G chose us, and if someone could pinch me, I'd really appreciate it.  That said, their decision seemed to have been influenced by some combination of the following:

• Location, location, location: the B1G felt that Rutgers had a good chance of bringing the NYC market, which is something they coveted in an ever expanding college sports landscape.  There's lots of stuff on the Internet today about how NYC doesn't really care about college sports (or, at least, they don't care about college football) - this is true for the most part, but it's worth noting that neither Rutgers nor Syracuse (the only two football teams that could potentially carry NYC) have been a part of the national college football conversion for over a dozen years.  So it's hard to pull the two factors apart.  The Empire State Building did turn scarlet and white in the fall of 2006, though, so I'm pretty sure that the market potential is there; it's more a question of whether Rutgers (football or basketball) can hit that level of promise and performance again.
• Related to the first point is cable revenue: plenty of people in the NYC market have cable, and very few of us use a cable provider which carries the B1G network.  This will change once Rutgers joins the conference (and will change similarly for those in the MD/DC area), leading to a notable increase in cable revenue for the conference.  I've also heard that the B1G network could potentially simulcast Rutgers games on the YES network, due to a recent partial buyout of the network - formerly owned by the Yankees themselves - to FOX (which also owns some portion of the B1G network).
• Finally there is academics.  Unlike the SEC and Big 12, which don't give a hoot about whether their football programs graduate more than the bare minimum percentage of players allowed by NCAA statute, the B1G (and also the ACC) take some steps to ensure their membership only includes academically strong institutions which try to recruit and graduate intelligent athletes.  Additionally, in the case of the B1G, a university's research ability plays a huge role.  Rutgers is a massive research institution and will only get bigger with today's confirmed UMDNJ merger, so that made us even more attractive to the B1G.

There are no bullet points above for performance or stadium attendance, which is good, because Rutgers has been disappointing its football fans with a let down game every season of the last six (costing us a legitimate chance at a BCS bowl bid in 2006 and 2011), and rarely selling out High Point Solutions Stadium (though this may change once we stop hosting Temple and UConn and start hosting Penn State, Ohio State, and perhaps Michigan on a regular basis).  Had these been factors, it is hard to imagine that the B1G would have ever chosen Rutgers.

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While the Rutgers program did collectively step in a bit of shit, getting so lucky as to be hand-picked by the conference with the highest per-school revenue disbursement in the nation, Rutgers fans should take a second to consider how the program will fare in a more competitive football conference.

Currently, Rutgers is ranked #18 in the BCS standings - higher than every B1G school except Nebraska (currently ranked #14), and one spot ahead of Michigan at #19.  (Ohio State and Penn State are not allowed in the BCS standings due to NCAA sanctions, but if they were allowed in the rankings, Ohio State would be ranked well into the Top 10 and Penn State might be close to a ranking, as well.) 

This season's Rutgers football team has an exceptional, grown man defense/special teams and a run-first offense which struggles mightily at throwing the ball.  In other words, they are just like every other team in the middle of the pack of the B1G right now.  The bottom of the B1G is fairly awful, with Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois each holding four or fewer wins.  This specific Rutgers team, 9-1 in the Big East, could easily be 7-4 or 8-3 in the B1G this season. 

Because of our program's history and because we are from New Jersey, Rutgers fans will hear a great deal of hate from haters who have to hate on the Internet in the weeks and months ahead, but assuming the football team continues to recruit strongly and maintains a physical presence on defense, it's likely that the team will play representatively well within the conference once they formally join it in 2014.  I doubt they'll ever represent the B1G in a BCS game, but a good season for the Scarlet Knights could leave us in the top three or four of the conference.

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Lots of people far more qualified than I will be speculating on the next steps in college conference expansion.  With the trend ever stronger toward five mega-conferences (Pac-12, Big 12, SEC, ACC, B1G), each conference could have up to 16 football teams by the time the BCS playoff system begins in 2014.  But to conclude my post, here's my completely wacky idea, which will never happen - except that I think it might make sense in some obvious ways:

If the B1G is worried about competition from the ACC to the point that they stole a desperate Maryland program just to corner the Washington, DC cable market, why not make the "evil genius" move right away and expand to 16 teams by recruiting Syracuse and Pittsburgh away from the ACC?

Here's what the B1G would gain:

• In addition to crippling the Big East (once UConn goes to the ACC, the Big East as a football conference will essentially crumble), the ACC would be significantly dented by the loss of two future programs.  This wouldn't be a death blow like that experienced by the Big East, but the ACC would still be left with a fairly geographically fractured football landscape.  They'd keep a few good football teams (Va Tech, FSU, Clemson), but mostly be left with bad ones, putting them in a "Big East 2005-2011" situation that would likely not be sustainable in the long run
• Unquestioned viewership dominance in the NYC football market and possession of the two most important football programs in Pennsylvania, and all of its ancillary benefits (increased revenue for the conference, more money in schools' pockets across the board, etc.)
• An additional rivalry game in football each season (Syracuse/Rutgers and Penn State/Pittsburgh)
• Natural 8 team, 2 division layout (Illinois and Purdue could move to the ridiculously named "Legends" Western division)

From the schools' perspectives, Syracuse and Pittsburgh would get more money than they'd ever get in the ACC.  Of course, both schools may have elected a move to the ACC because they wanted to focus primarily on basketball (the ACC has Duke and will soon have UConn, so it will be a much better basketball vs. football program over the next decade), but I don't see how that makes sense financially since football brings in more money than basketball.

More likely, both Syracuse and Pittsburgh made a pact to bolt from the Big East at the same time because they saw that the end of the conference was near, which was an accurate judgment.  But it now looks like their decision was a bit rash, and Rutgers' patience (or, possibly, their lack of desirability to the ACC) might have made them much more money over the next 15-20 years than they ever could have made in the ACC. 

Could Syracuse or Pittsburgh have said no to the ACC?  Perhaps not (in poker we would call that a "hero fold"), but had they done so, we could easily be talking today about one/both of these schools, not Rutgers, raking in $25M+ per year in annual profit sharing from the B1G.  Of course, this would be moot if the B1G decided to poach these schools from the ACC (which I sort of hope happens, even though it won't).

Wrestling with Sandy

I am happy (and incredibly lucky) to report that - at least for the moment - our lives have pretty much already recovered from the devastation of Hurricane Sandy.  Our house lost power for 142 hours (just under six days), but we seem to have had our power restored around 7 pm tonight (Sunday evening).  The house, which dipped down to a frightening 52 degrees during the last night we were willing to spend there after the storm, is currently warming up into the low 70's.  In the storm, we lost several large branches from the trees outside our house, but none of them landed on the house (most landed just off to the side).  Our neighbor across the street did lose a huge tree, which landed across our street and in our neighbor's driveway, ripping a power wire in the process.  Any of these factors could have gone in a different (and more damaging direction).

Below is the power line, which landed on the sidewalk outside our house.

The experience of riding out the storm itself was... well, incredibly frightening.  It was perhaps the most scared I've ever been of anything in my life.  The wind was already howling early on Monday morning, and only became worse throughout the day.  This was just a manageable tease, however (I was even able to nap on the couch for a bit between 7 and 7:30 pm).  Starting at around 8 pm, as the storm made landfall in southern New Jersey, the winds shifted to the east and havoc was wrought.  The front of our house faces east, and we do not own a storm door.  Our front door has a single locking mechanism, and with each, more ferocious gust, the door began to curve inward.  Looking down from the upstairs (where the below picture was taken), I could actually see outside through the door when the gusts were at their worst.

I suspected that if the door busted inward, we'd experience the type of damage that would ruin our home (if not permanently, certainly for a long time).  So I improvised a fix, buttressing the door with all of the heavy boxes I could find in our garage at the bottom, and bracing the top with two extendable paint roller extension poles that I used for a previous project.  Under pretty stressful conditions, this may have been the home improvement hack of my life, because the bracing worked as I planned and the door survived the night.

At its worst, the storm felt like I was at cruising altitude on a plane to hell.  My sinuses were cracked and dry, my head kept popping, and the insides of my teeth (at least the ones with fillings) hurt.  I called my father, who had made it through a terrible storm called Hurricane Dora which directly hit Jacksonville, Florida in 1960, to ask him about this feeling.  He claimed this was normal, a result of the incredibly low barometric pressure which accompanies hurricanes.  During Dora, he said, it felt like the hairs on the insides of his lungs were tearing.  That was a Category 2 storm, at landfall.

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Tuesday was even worse than Monday night.  Walking outside and surveying the damage, the only sound we could hear was a far off siren.  No one, it seemed, had power, and we resolved to live off the perishables we had purchased before the storm as well as the lanterns and other gear we had purchased after Hurricane Irene.  The tree that landed in my neighbor's lawn, which would eventually be cut into cord wood, was the talk of each neighbor that passed by (in a disaster, everyone talks to their neighbors).  We wondered aloud how long power would be out - we were the last customers in our utility's service area to be restored after Irene, waiting almost three days to get our power back.  With deadly accuracy this time around, we guessed about a week.

We did somehow make it out of the house on Tuesday to get dinner, and Wednesday I worked for a while from my office (my company had its power restored ridiculously early, perhaps by virtue of being in the same shopping center as a grocery store).  I snapped this picture while stopped in traffic in Flemington, NJ on Wednesday, while driving home from work.  The line stretched as far as my eye could see, and these were the hackers trying to get a shortcut with their red gas cans - the line of cars on the highway stretched for miles.  This was the beginning of the current fuel panic.

Through the generous hospitality of others, we were never forced to spend a night at home.  We stayed with friends on Wednesday night, and family on Friday and Saturday night.  At each stop, we carried the dog in and dealt with her messing a strange house (she gets nervous when things change, and everything was in constant flux this past week).  We were exhausted after five days of shuffling back and forth from house to house, and - honestly - the only things that kept me going were the knowledge that we'd get our power back eventually, and when we did, we'd actually have our house back (unlike some, less fortunate, people). 

I routinely followed PSE&G's Twitter feed, checking for updates even though in the aftermath of such a disaster, misinformation always seems to rule.  At one point, PSE&G's total number of customers without service increased by about 50,000 over a twelve hour span (which struck me as nonsense). 

Even though I selfishly wanted my own power back, the stories I was reading about the conditions down the Jersey Shore were scary.  My mom, who still lives in Middletown, was fine for the most part - her basement flooded a bit and they lost power until Thursday, but she made it through with the help of a neighbor's generator.  More low laying parts of Middletown and the Shore in general, I read, were completely decimated.  It hit me like a ton of bricks when I read a list of areas and locations that were completely wiped out by the storm on the Asbury Park Press' mobile site.  When I realized that literally every place I went with girls while in high school to hang out by ourselves (and, sometimes, make out) no longer existed, the gravity of the disaster took full effect.

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One of my favorite all-time books is Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, the bestselling firsthand account of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.  I've been meaning to re-read this book for a while, so forgive me if my memories are fuzzy.  But one part of the story that I consider especially germane right now is toward the end, when Krakauer returns home to the United States and begins to re-acclimate himself to the creature comforts of home.  He recalls getting up to use the bathroom at night barefoot, and climbing back into bed alongside his wife.  These were things he once took for granted, and now almost moved him to tears because of the practically inhuman conditions he endured atop the world's tallest mountain.

Being back at home, typing on my desktop PC and drinking a homemade beer in my warm and bright house, I maybe understand 10% of this feeling - tops.  But there are literally tens of thousands of people down the Shore who will not know what "home" is for a long time, and - in deference and in respect to my childhood,  my memories, and my past down there - I've never felt more personally motivated to help make something right in my life.  All that I can do with my meager hands and my sometimes-even-worse-than-meager checkbook, I will do.

I am sorry if this is mean, but I could care less about the millionaires who lost their vacation homes.  They are very likely to be insured, and independent of this, they are sufficiently well liquidated to handle the repair costs no matter what.  The extraordinarily wealthy Long Beach Island - where my friends and I have happily gone on vacation each summer since 2006 - will be back in roaring fashion by summer 2013, I have no doubt; money makes the inevitable happen faster.

But scrappy, working class places like Keansburg and Keyport, Union Beach and Highlands will need our help.  These places were struggling before the storm, and the people who live there often necessarily lack the resources to manage such a complex and difficult situation.  More importantly, they need their homes rebuilt.

I don't know how to build houses.  I can barely fix my own (as anyone who's read this blog over the past year and a half should know).  But I see this disaster as an opportunity to help other people and help myself learn how to do this kind of work at the same time.  I think I would like to help rebuild these areas.

If you're reading this and you can give me any information on how I can get started, please leave it in the comments section or reach out to me privately.  I also plan to spend some time this week researching groups, such as Habitat for Humanity, online. 

But above all I hope that tonight you are warm and comfortable in your bed, and perhaps (like me) a bit more aware of the creature comforts you previously had taken for granted.

The Scarlet Fred Report: Game 3, Rutgers 23, USF 13

Note: This is an idea for a series of blog posts I've been thinking about doing for a while now.  I'm not sure there are many useful Web resources for fans of Rutgers football at the present time, mainly because... well, it's Rutgers football, so maybe the audience isn't that huge.  But as an RU alum who occasionally blogs about other things, and a season ticket holder of four (!!) years now, I feel wholly qualified to share some random thoughts about college football as a direct result of watching TV in my living room.

Huge win for the Scarlet Knights on Thursday, defeating a solid Top 30 USF team, on the road, in a game televised by ESPN to a national audience.  I was legitimately concerned for this game before it began; after two incredibly dispirited and mediocre performances against FCS Howard and should-be-FCS Tulane under our belts, there was a distinct possibility that USF would completely overpower us.  I was particularly concerned with regard to the disparity between their seemingly high-flying offense and ours, which over the first two games of the season performed like... well, a 1970's Chevy Nova. 

Historically, Rutgers does play well against USF, but I've been generally willing to throw historical comparisons out the window this season since so much of the Scarlet Knights' coaching staff has changed (for better or for worse).  Here are some random thoughts from throughout the game:

• I was surprised to see a Las Vegas spread consensus of USF -7 to -7.5 today.  I realize that home field alone is typically worth four points, but as a general rule spreads should be tightened up when the underdog possesses a solid defense (and I think we knew that about Rutgers from the outset).  I don't bet on sports, but a betting man could have easily taken Rutgers to beat that spread in this game, assuming that either a win or a close loss was in order.
• Heard Schiano was at the game tonight, but he must have done a nice job hiding himself, since I didn't notice ESPN's cameras catching him at all.  (I did miss the first quarter entirely, and listened to most of the second quarter on the radio, due to work obligations - so maybe I just missed him.)  Either way, it's pretty cool that he was there.
• New Coach Kyle Flood really does maintain a calmer demeanor during the game than Schiano did, right?  He also delivered a fantastic interview to ESPN's sideline reporter at the half.
• Driving to the Hillsborough, NJ, Five Guys to pick up a "wife's out with friends and I'm about to watch football" dinner, I was listening to the USF radio feed on XM satellite radio.  This was my first sign that Rutgers could have been in for an auspicious night; USF's analysts - who seemed reasonable enough if a bit homer-ish - were talking about Rutgers (both offensively and defensively) as if they were just waiting to destroy an objectively inferior USF team.  On the radio, I listened to a few of Nova's second quarter third-and-long conversions.  It was pretty clear just from listening to USF's radio guys that our WRs had too much height and physicality for USF's secondary, and that over the course of a 60 minute game, those differences would be too much for USF to handle.
• The established Rutgers blogs that do exist were about ready to impeach new offensive coordinator Dave "Chestnut Hill" Brock before this game for his plain vanilla play calling; I wonder if they will change their tune on Friday? 
• That being said, I'm still surprised that the vertical game went so well for Rutgers tonight (and frankly, it could have been even better, if not for a few drops that could - not should, but could - have been caught, as well as the ill-advised HB option throw in the 3rd quarter).  Going into the season, the WR position was considered tall but inconsistent and certainly prone to the dropsies.  Tonight should be a huge confidence boost for these guys in particular, because everyone (especially Tim Wright and the oft-maligned D.C. Jefferson) looked solid.
• Not much to say about the running game except that I will now be surprised when Jawan Jamison does not run for 100 yards.  He did yeoman work on Thursday night, running the ball a ridiculous 41 times (for 151 yards, a 3.7 average which looked much better than the average).  Good thing they don't have pitch counts for collegiate running backs.  I realize our offensive line is much improved over the past two seasons, but Jamison showed some really wonderful vision tonight - and the spin move on the game-sealing TD run was positively Marshawn Lynch-like.  
• I am still not 100% sold that Gary Nova was the correct choice to command the Rutgers offense this season, but that said, he played very well tonight.  Did my ears deceive me, or at one point did ESPN analyst Jesse Palmer state that when Nova sets his feet in the pocket, "he throws like Tom Brady?"  Interesting comparison - his clutch third down calmness reminded me more of a pre-2007 Eli Manning, though.  It seems like some QBs pay more attention and perform better on high stakes plays, and pre-Super Bowl 42 Eli was like that at times.  (Or it could just be inconsistency and jitters for both guys; the fact that Nova stays locked in on one down out of three, on average, was enough to beat a good team tonight, which could augur good news for the future.)
• Previous jape toward Jesse Palmer aside, I always enjoy ESPN's Thursday night college football announcing team.  They aren't the most knowledgeable team around, but those guys do seem to have a good time in the booth, which automatically makes them better than 60% of announcers (100% of those named Joe Buck).
• The defense spoke for itself with another dominating performance, this time against an offense notably more diverse/talented than Howard or Tulane.  B.J. Daniels is a grown man with years of college experience, and a chip on his shoulder about playing Rutgers to boot; he was mostly kept in check on the ground, and absolutely kept in check in the air (15/33, 0 TD, 3 INT).  Overall, our new defensive coordinator Robb "Young Wolf" Smith gets another A+ for game prep and play calling, mainly because he routinely blitzed but almost never paid the price (except for on two plays, the Hail Mary type throw early in the game, and the tip drill 50-yard completion to the 1 yard line in the second half).
• CB Logan Ryan had an overall sick game, after looking a little exposed against Howard and Tulane.
• The pass rush, which consists of at least 8-9 guys so I won't name them all, did a great job of confusing Daniels and the O-Line with different blitzes - including a fair number of CB blitzes, which we obviously didn't see much of in the first two games of the season, but worked well enough to flush Daniels out of the pocket (where he uncharacteristically brokered a throw-first, run-second approach for most of the game).
• Special teams obviously needs to improve, with a botched hold costing us three points and a couple of terrible punts costing us field position (luckily our D was able to compensate for the punts).  I believe there was a botched punt return by Mason Robinson as well, but I didn't see it - if that happened, that's another issue, because sixth-year seniors shouldn't be making concentration errors at all.  
• The new freshman kicker (who shares a hometown with both Tim Tebow and Scarlet Fred; how about that) did hit a long bomb 52-yard field goal at the end of the first half, though, which stands in stark contrast to RU's hesitance to let San San Te kick from far beyond 40.  Might this be the first time since I was in college that Rutgers had a placekicker to write home about?  And why do I even care?

In a notable understatement, I am really excited for next Saturday at Arkansas.  The Razorbacks will likely be 1-2 at that point, but one of those losses will be to #1 Alabama (the other, unfortunately for us, will be to perennial powerhouse UL-Monroe, who - and I watched that whole game - would have easily beaten ANY team in the Big East last weekend when they beat Arkansas in OT).  But given the extent to which even the mediocre SEC teams are held to high esteem, back-to-back wins against USF and Arkansas would have to put RU at least in the conversation for the Top 25 (Top 30, at the very least) going into a late September bye. 

Realistically, RU may not beat Arkansas (my opinion is they will, but that's just my opinion).  Even if they do not, the team has to be taken seriously as a Big East contender right now (if only for their stifling defense).  If this team's D continues to dominate good college offenses they way they did tonight, even replacement level offensive production would be enough to win most of the games on our schedule.  I think a truer test for our D than even Arkansas will be Syracuse on Oct. 13; they've had the best offensive performance thus far in the Big East (small sample size note applies), even though they've been playing just a torturous out-of-conference schedule this year. 

Diners, Drive-Ins and Divebombing Expectations for Food TV

I recall an apartment party I attended years ago where I sat on a couch and watched Food Network's "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" late on a Friday evening.  Earlier that night, I had become drunk on heated absinthe, and later had imbibed a liberal amount of the hosts' (expensive) marijuana.  I was eating chips and hot salsa - or maybe it was homemade popcorn - by the handful.  I think maybe I brought some store-bought chocolate chip cookies to this event.  I do make a wonderful house guest, don't I?

With the exception of my wife, I had met everyone around me just a few hours before.  This mattered not at all; spurred by what was on television, I had entered the arena of food hedonism, and was truly in a happy place.  And though I've tried mightily to chase that dragon in the years since, it was the only time in my life I have ever enjoyed watching "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives".

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I am absolutely not against the glamorization of crappy food on TV.  Many people learn to cook healthy food each day by first learning to cook what they like (I certainly progressed that way), and even that aside, crappy food is a wonderful indulgence that everyone should enjoy from time to time.  What some people call "food porn" is a legitimate genre, but it needs to be well executed in order to work. "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" seems to be the opposite of well executed; it is the type of food porn that is filmed in low-rate motels outside Tampa.  You can watch, sure, but it's like watching a train wreck, and you feel really terrible afterward for having watched it.

To me, the show doesn't really focus on cooking.  Nor does it focus on location, or ambiance, or restaurant history, or anything even remotely relevant to the act of deciding to leave your house and go someplace else to eat dinner.  It seems to exist entirely in a narcissistic hell space devoted to host Guy Fieri's misplaced insistence that he is both funny and capable of carrying on a normal human conversation.

But with the possible exception of New York Yankees commentator Michael Kay (who also, somehow, has managed to earn an interview-style show on TV), Fieri is the most socially awkward man on television.  He seems to lack all creative vision and all artistic ingenuity above and beyond that of a sexually frustrated seventh grader.  Whatever fourth wall ever existed between shitty food and banal conversation is destroyed by his mentally challenged attempts at junior varsity jock humor-slash-"banter" with restaurant owners and chefs.  (NOTE: I've spent a few summers working in restaurants, and I know that the back of house is not a place for mature humor or for delicate sensibilities.  But the least interesting person I ever worked with at a suburban Pizza Hut is a more engaging character than Guy Fieri.)  There is no easier joke than a dick joke, and as a result, the dick joke needs to be executed well in order to actually be funny - someone needs to tell this guy that not every joke should be a terrible and sophomoric dick joke.

Somewhere in the kernel of "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" is a show that I would find legitimately interesting.  The show could focus on regions or themes of food, for instance (like Travel Channel's criminally underrated "Adam Richman's Best Sandwich in America", which is hosted by a much funnier and significantly more interesting personality, far more elegant in executing the aforementioned dick joke).  Something of a focus for what a particular restaurant signifiies to a community, or to a type of people within a community, would also improve the show.  To be fair, the show does spend some time profiling the restauranteurs and chefs for each restaurant, but these profiles are shallow and seemingly pointless.  Segments and episodes are not interlinked, even when obvious connections exist.

The star of "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" should be the food, but it does not seem that the food is intended to outshine the host.  Each restaurant has its own flair, and I am convinced that a story could be told about each that is both serious and lighthearted.  But this would have to be left to a more talented host and production team on some other galaxy, because dishes are explained in ways that disrespect the audience, implying strongly that no one watching the show at home would ever want to try to copy them.  When food is tasted, the imbecile host Fieri describes them in a way that you'd sort of have to be both drunk and high in order to understand.  And frankly, I don't believe he even enjoys half of the stuff that he tries.

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There are people out there who love the show (it's been playing for over six years and two hundred episodes), and some of these people would tell you they are pretty damned serious about food.  But they want their high culture food to remain high culture, and their low culture food to remain low culture.  I guess I'm the high-falutin' guy who does not get this; I want even my low culture guilty indulgences to mean something. 

I love the chain burger restaurant Five Guys, for instance.  Their burgers are delicious and the "small" french fries includes an additional metric ton of fried potato slices, scooped indiscriminately into a paper bag.  But I love the place as a business story, as well - Five Guys is a model in devoting resources to high quality ingredients, independent of cost, as well as an owner-centric franchising plan.  Additionally, I love the ritual of going to Five Guys.  You place an order, and you wait.  You wait a damned long time, munch a few peanuts, and read the self-promotional articles on the walls (NOTE: Did you know that Five Guys was Washingtonian Magazine's #1 Best Burger for seven years in a row?!).  Then you finally get your paper bag of junk food and grease, go home, crack open an ice cold beer or six and watch some sporting event, wallowing in your own indulgence.

To that end, Five Guys isn't just food for me, it's an exercise in self-actualization and a part of my own existential being.  It's a big part of who I think I am, it's fucking analysis, and I think it might help explain why I believe "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" is, in contrast, so incredibly stupid.

It's probably because the show would fit better on MTV's slate of crappy reality programs than the Food Network.  The show advocates the absence of thinking, replaced with pure gluttony - eating while only caring superficially about taste and basically just shoving crap down your gullet (and whether some cole slaw happened to drip down someone's face while eating, ahem, giggity).  It is, now that I think of it, probably no coincidence that Triple-D marathons are commonplace on overnight Fridays and Saturdays on Food Network.  It is the Taco Bell of food television; potentially enjoyable in the moment, but not worth the long term repercussions.  It is universally regarded as terrible, and yet some people still unabashedly adore it.  (I'd throw in White Castle as an analogy instead, but White Castle-as-drunk-cuisine kind of rules.)

But can't we all agree that if we all stop watching the show, the network will cancel it?  Can't we all agree, on just this one thing?

Losing a Dozen Pounds: Fred Goes on a Diet

Over the past two months, I've been consciously monitoring my weight and through some diet/exercise changes, I've managed to lose just over ten pounds.  I am now at almost the exact same weight that I was when starting college, a decade ago.  

This post is about how that process worked for me, and also about some things I've learned about losing weight that I thought might be worth writing down.  Let's get to it, but first, here's a line chart of my weight loss over the past two months:

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Long story short: I was a plump kid growing up.  During my junior year of high school, I tipped the scales at 230 pounds (I'm six feet tall).  Fed up with my chubbiness, I started running the summer before my senior year of high school, and right before starting college, I started to smoke cigarettes - owing no small favor to my youth and fast metabolism, this very non-traditional combination seemed to work throughout my college years, with regard to my weight if not my overall health (I was a stable 183 lbs. throughout most of college, even after I had quit smoking for good).

But somewhere between college and the present day, a combination of my diet, exercise routine, and/or metabolism had conspired against me to start the process of storing adipose tissue for a long hibernation that never happened.  To be honest, even when I started thinking about dieting earlier this summer, I never felt I was seriously overweight (though from a technical perspective, I was pretty heavy for a man my height).  I continued to train for half marathons in the spring and in the fall, with improving times each race, but my eating and drinking patterns stayed the same throughout the year.  As a result, my weight would oscillate about 10-15 pounds throughout the year, depending on whether or not I was training for a race (race training involves up to thirty miles of running per week).  Late last July, I tipped the scales at 199.4 pounds, which was a warning sign, and in early July of this year, I was pretty close to that same number (195.6) and heading in the wrong direction.

You ask, what changed that made me take action this year?  Well, I noticed some things about myself that I didn't particularly like.  Clothes I had reliably fit into for years started to feel tight around my stomach and waist.  Walking up the steps to where I work started to feel "different."  Looking in the mirror, my face didn't look as chiseled and hot damned sexy as I would have liked.  And my wife, who had had an amazingly positive experience losing some weight via Weight Watchers over the last year, was inspiring me to give "conscious weight management" - that is, dieting - a try.

July 3rd used to be the day when Red Bank, NJ, had fireworks, and it remains a day of barbecue and good times among my friends.  This year, I'd decided that day that I would make a lifestyle change.  So here's what I did.

I knew that Weight Watchers worked for my wife, and I wanted to see if it would work for me.  But I didn't want to pay for it, because I'm frugal as shit, so I went online and found the formulas for determining one's daily allotment of "Points" using Wikipedia.  You can view the math by clicking the link, or an image of the 300-level college math type formulas (in that font that only exists in college math textbooks!) is presented below:

It took me some time, because I was rusty on this type of math, but I was able to convert my height to meters and my weight to kilograms in order to work out the formulas for myself.  At the end, I determined I was able to eat 43 "points" worth of food per day (plus a weekly allotment of 49 additional points), and in doing so I should in theory lose one to two pounds per week.  (You can look up the point value for most foods online, and most "diet" food you get at the grocery store helpfully lists the point value on its packaging.)

Armed with this information, I started to track and monitor what I consumed.  The first "wow" moment for me - and I think anyone who has lost a few pounds will tell you the same story - was when I realized how many points I had been eating before.

Right after college, I'd enjoy a post-workout snack of light yogurt, an apple, and some mixed nuts (all reasonably healthful choices).  These days, after a long run, I would often scarf down not one, but two, peanut butter sandwiches.  I was thinking that because I used healthy peanut butter and whole wheat bread for the sandwiches, it was a healthy snack, but those two sandwiches were a combined 18 points (more than a Quarter Pounder with Cheese from McDonald's).  Other examples: I did (and still do) love to drink beer, but each cold beer I consumed was five points, and that tall glass of OJ was at least half a dozen.  So I also found I was drinking lots of empty calories.

I knew something had to give, so my first step was tweaking my diet in order to get below my daily points goal.  Here are a few things I added/changed:

• Tried to have a vegetarian salad (zero points) and some piece of fruit (also zero points) as part of my lunch as frequently as possible
• Minimized drinking calories, including sticking to water, tea, seltzer, almost black coffee, and one diet soda per day (all zero points), and also limited alcoholic beverages - for the most part - to once weekly
• Made lean protein and/or seafood (extremely low in points) and vegetables a key staple of each dinner, and minimized carbohydrates (which are very high in points) as much as possible (though I certainly treated myself on occasion)
• Chose wisely when it came to snacking - light yogurt (2 points per serving), mixed nuts (4-5, but extremely filling), hummus and carrots (2 points), or homemade no-bake energy granola bites (3 points) were all good choices
• Limited myself to one peanut butter sandwich per day, and only if I had the points to spare
• Hershey's Kisses became a clutch go-to for a chocolate fix (2 points = 3 Kisses)
• Finally, I limited all food intake after 9 pm

The above steps were somewhat limiting but also mostly bearable.  I rarely felt hungry, including at night time (midnight snacks are a legendary weakness of mine, but I've mostly been successful against them during this diet phase).  Over the past two months, I've allowed myself to drink alcohol socially once a week; I've eaten more than a couple of cheeseburgers; and when friends offered me chocolate or sweets, I almost never passed them up.  I simply controlled how much of the above, delicious products I ate at a single sitting (i.e., portion control).  

ASIDE ABOUT DIETING "POORLY": Speaking of cheating on a diet, no serious nutritionist would mention this because it's (a) completely true and (b) goes against 99.9% of nutritionist dogma, but the cheeseburger is an ideal guilty pleasure while dieting.  They're delicious, eating them makes you feel awesome and fat and disgusting, but they are loaded with fat and protein and are therefore extremely filling.  A McDonald's Quarter Pounder with Cheese is 16 points; not great for you, but a 200-lb man could eat light for breakfast and lunch, grab some McD's for dinner (without fries) and not gain any weight.

ANOTHER ASIDE ABOUT DIETING "POORLY": Same goes for eating pizza without meat toppings.  Plain/veggie pizza is only 5 points per slice, so that same 200-lb man could house half a large pizza for 20 total points and not gain any weight (as long as they took it easy the rest of the day).  Pretty amazing, when you consider that all pizza contains dough and mozzarella cheese, but ultimately true.

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Exercise played something of a role, too.  You can earn "activity points" through exercise, which supplements your daily points total.  I didn't know for sure how to calculate them, so I assumed conservatively that 100 calories burned = 1 activity point.  By this math, a three-mile run was worth five activity points (which compensates for one - ONE! - cold, frosty beer, perhaps proving the old adage that "you cannot out-run a shitty diet").  Five miles earned me eight activity points, as did a 4 mile run + 20 minutes of weight lifting.  

While in retrospect, I feel dieting was way more valuable than exercise in losing the weight I've lost over the past couple months, and though I definitely agree with the argument that weighing yourself within one day of a spirited workout session is a terrible idea (my body seems to want to retain water afterwards, which artificially inflates my weight for a while), exercise was also beneficial.

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Looking at the line chart at the top of this post, there were definitely peaks and valleys in my journey over the past two months.  I weigh myself each Tuesday morning, and there were Tuesday mornings where I hated the number I saw on the scale, and immediately wanted to say fuck it, I'm going to pick up some Five Guys for dinner tonight, go home to eat the whole thing and down a six-pack while I am at it.

The fact I dieted throughout the summer did not help with respect to weight loss consistency.  On weeks where I took it easy on the weekend and had no events or parties to attend, I would lose two to four pounds per week.  But weeks where I ostensibly went hog wild, eating and drinking to excess on the weekends (there were a few of these), would lead to a weekly gain of up to two pounds.  On average, this ended up being exactly the result the formula suggested - a net loss of just over one pound per week (not bad for continuing to drink beer on the weekends). 

Again, in retrospect, it's easy to look at this like training for a road race and say that, just like a training program has good weeks and bad weeks, so does a diet.  Saying that doesn't make the bad weeks suck less, though.

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Some people have a lot of weight to lose; I harbor no illusion that I was one of those people.  I had a little pouch around my stomach I wanted to minimize, and I ended up shedding the equivalent of one of those ridiculously light weights from the gym floor.  But oh well, I am happy that I did it, and I plan to maintain my current weight as long as I can.  Now that I am maintaining my weight, I am giving myself a few extra points per day, and I am now also officially training for a half marathon in November (TBD).  Though this isn't a direct goal, I may end up losing a few more pounds just through training alone.

And yes, I do plan to celebrate soon with Five Guys and a six-pack of beer.  But in doing this, I would also plan eat really healthy the rest of the day - it's a trade-off, just like going to work each day to earn an income is a trade-off.  I don't want to have to do this all over again, which is perhaps the most motivating aspect of all!

The Hopeless Homeowner Series: Installing a New Tub Surround

(The Hopeless Homeowner Series is something I write about on the very rare occasion that I think to take pictures of a home improvement project while it is ongoing.  These posts are typically funny because I am just now learning to be handy, and often make mistakes in the process.)

 

Our house has but one full bath, and before last weekend, it looked like the above picture.  (Note that the faucet and the hot/cold water knobs have been removed for maximum groatiness.)  The above picture aside, we actually keep a pretty clean shower; we routinely clean it with bleach so there is very little mold or mildew and the tile behind the peeling white paint is actually structurally sound.  For this reason, we had no existential motivation to completely gut the tub, but we obviously didn't like showering around peeling paint and 70's-era pink tile. So we settled on the "in-between option" of a tub surround.

I'd heard about the idea of a tub surround from a friend of mine, but was immediately concerned by many poor reviews for existing units on Home Depot's website.  (For those who do not know, a tub surround is a three- or five-piece fiberglass apparatus that can be adhered permanently to either tile or drywall to simulate the look of brand-new tile.  The cheapest ones are under $100, really fancy-shmancy fake granite ones can approach $500.)  Then, I realized that the people who post reviews on HomeDepot.com almost always breathe through their mouths, so I decided to bypass that particular bowel of the Internet and check some other DIY-focused websites.  

There I found that installing a tub surround was not a bad idea, but could be deceptively difficult (often because the walls surrounding tubs are not perfectly square and require some creative fitting of the tub surround pieces).  Our case would be somewhat easier because the tiles behind the surround were structurally sound (meaning we didn't have to ply off the tiles and build up the drywall underneath to match the surrounding tiles) and because our walls were plumb.  But it was also more difficult in a sense, because we have a window in our shower - Giggity! - which would require some intricate cutting to get the fiberglass pieces to fit.

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With me on this project was a family friend who had done this before, and was more handy than I.  We began at noon with a trip to Home Depot to pick out the tub surround.  April and I selected a middle of the road option - the ASB Distinction, at $227 - and also purchased three tubes of Loc-Tite tub surround adhesive and two tubes of bath/shower caulk.  (The grand total after taxes was about $270.)

The reviews of the ASB Distinction, while often mouth-breathing in nature, imply that the fiberglass material is rather flimsy (this was true in our case; the top of the right corner cracked and had to be caulked into place at the end of the job).  Installing each of the three pieces was easy.  Measuring their fit, on the other hand, was not.  The main issue was the window in our shower; it had a ledge that jutted out 1/4" on the left-hand side, but not at all on the right-hand side of the window.  This led to an asymmetry in our measurements, compounded by the fact that the - bear with me, imagine you're facing the shower while you read this - left-hand side of the window almost (but not quite) matched the right end of the "left-hand side" piece of the surround (which was intended to cover the left, back corner of the shower).  This meant we had no margin for error and had to use a utility knife to shave razor-thin bits of the "left-hand side" piece of the surround, so it fit just right into where the window ledge and molding began.

Also challenging, from my novice perspective, were the holes for the faucet and hot and cold water dials.  Here, there was some margin for error, because each hole would be more than covered by the fixture itself, once it was re-installed.  However, if you severely misalign the holes on a horizontal axis (like I almost did, forgetting here to measure twice), caulking would not fix the mistake and you would be out some money.

With the help of a utility knife, 2" and 1 1/2" circular drill bits, and a Dremel, we were able to measure and cut the three pieces in about two hours of painstaking labor (mostly checking and double-checking our numbers).  Then we applied one entire tube of Loc-Tile tub surround adhesive to each piece and installed the pieces, slamming each piece with our bare hands and then bracing each piece against a wall (which you'll see in the picture just below this paragraph).  We also taped the surround to the wall in sections, just to help the pieces stay up while the adhesive bonded to the tile, and before we were able to caulk.

Before we began to caulk, we wanted to re-install the fixtures, and this is where we hit our biggest snag.  The hot and cold water dials reattached easily enough, but for some reason the original faucet would not screw back into the plastic nub you see in the very top picture.  We tried everything - left-twisting, right-twisting, light touch and brute force - and brute force ended up snapping the plastic nub in half.  Using a wrench, we were able to gently remove the rest of the plastic nub from the underlying 5/8" copper pipe.  I was now off to Home Depot, muttering and cursing under my breath, for a replacement bath faucet.

I found a replacement bath faucet in brushed nickel (which doesn't perfectly match the other fixtures, but was close enough) for $25 - which was fortunate, because I easily could have spent $100 or more on a brand new shower head and bath faucet combination set.  While I was out shopping, our family friend was able to handle most of the caulking (the seam you see on the right hand side of the back wall in the above picture was the trickiest junction, requiring multiple applications of caulk to provide a seamless look).  

Upon my return, we were able to (presumably) adapt the 5/8" copper pipe in the wall to the 1/2" plastic nub included with the replacement faucet.  We tested it by running the faucet for 30 seconds (big mistake), thought everything was fine, and cleaned up for the day at about 4:30 pm (the faucet added about half an hour to the project).  The picture of the finished product is below, with an (EPIC FAIL AHEAD) appendix to follow.

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On Monday morning, while my wife was about five minutes into what should have been an enjoyable first shower in prettier surroundings (although I'm certain she missed the hot pink disco tile), I was downstairs in the kitchen filling my travel mug and about to leave for work when I thought to myself, I'm going to check in the basement one more time, just to make sure there isn't a slow leak with that faucet.  I feel like I have a sixth sense for smelling disasters - I always trust my inner paranoid psychopath.  This time, He was correct, because on the way downstairs, I heard a rapid drip coming from our downstairs half bath (right below the main bath) and thought to myself: Shit. This can't be good.

I must have caught the leak fairly early, because the ceiling was only leaking in one place in the middle, and the paint was only distended in a 3" x 3" circle (I grabbed the utility knife and cut the distended paint so that the water would leave the ceiling ASAP).  The ceiling itself didn't distend, which was also good news.  Our basement is unfinished and when I ran down there next, I also found water leaking to the floor of the wall facing both bathrooms.  So water must have dripped down from behind the shower wall, through the wall insulation to both the basement and the bathroom ceiling.  I ran upstairs - thankfully my wife left the bathroom door unlocked - and screamed something like "Babe.  You're going to have to turn off the shower.  Major leak downstairs."

She complied, finishing her shower across town at her parents' house and later that day filing for divorce.  (Only two-thirds of the above statement is true.)

At this point I knew the problem was outside my realm of understanding, and it was also 8:15 on a Monday morning and I needed to get to work.  So I called the neighborhood plumber - who is generally great and also fair with his prices, if not cheap - who called me right back and was over the house within an hour.  It look him about 30 minutes to determine the issue was two-fold.

First, the copper 5/8" pipe that I mentioned before had been loosened from the main pipe from the basement to the bathroom.  With significant water pressure over 1.5 showers, it eventually started to leak.  Also, the plastic 5/8" to 1/2" adapter that came with the $25 replacement bath fixture was - as you might imagine - of poor quality.  He replaced it with a brass fixture.  We then proceeded to run both the bath faucet and the shower for ten minutes apiece and determined there was no further leakage.  The plumber charged $135, mostly for his time, an understandable sum that left a bad taste in my mouth only because it was such an oversight in the first place.

Assuming the downstairs bathroom ceiling does not need to be partially replaced, and assuming the walls can survive this one-time water intrusion, the entire tub surround project cost about $450 (counting gas money and beer for our family friend).  I'm hopeful there will be no lingering after effects, because the ceiling seems to have dried without any problems that are visible to the eye, and also because I placed the dehumidifier on max-dry setting right up to the insulation once I discovered the leak.  The $450 figure is not bad in my opinion, especially compared to a bathroom renovation, but still higher than it should have been due to user error and my inexperience.  Next time I'll definitely remember to double-check each and every fitting - and also remember to use Teflon tape to ensure that each fitting is properly protected against pressure leaks.

A Tale of Two Real Estate Appraisals

Before we moved into our first home last May, the house was independently appraised on behalf of our mortgage lender.  Last month, we were given a "Godfather offer" to refinance by the same lender - no closing costs, with an interest rate under four percent.  Once we realized the offer was not too good to be true, we said yes in a heartbeat.  As part of the refinancing process, a different local appraiser assessed the value of the house - for the second time in fifteen months.

This strikes me as a unique opportunity for an analysis and a case study, as not much has changed in the house (or the local market) over the past fifteen months, and because in theory, two appraisers should independently assess the value of the same house in the same way.  Superficially, this was the case, as both appraisals came in at the exact same value.  However, upon further review, it seems that each individual took a completely different approach to reaching that same number.  It may be useful for prospective home buyers to read this analysis, as a low appraisal can sidetrack a closing, and some of the findings below (in my opinion at least) imply individual variability across appraisers.

(Of course, it remains to be seen whether our refinance will close on time, as our loan processor this time around may be the dumbest idiot alive, but that's a complaint for a different audience at a different time.)

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First and foremost, both appraisers used the same method to assess the value of our home - the Marshall and Swift Residential Cost Handbook.  (It's possible they used different editions, as the website does not indicate how frequently the book is updated, and it's not the type of thing a person can purchase on Amazon.)

Using this guide, presumably the appraiser takes the following steps in determining the value of a home - I should mention here that I am not an appraiser, nor am I a real estate professional, so this is what I assume from reading both appraisals in detail:

1. Determining the "statistics" of the home itself (size, number of rooms, number of finished rooms, etc.) as well as the quality of the structure
2. Determining the size of the property itself
3. Analyzing the "context" of the home (neighborhood, trends in the local real estate market, etc.)
4. With items 1-3 in hand, they then look at comparable properties that recently sold in town or locally, weighting each of these homes' sales prices upwards or downwards, respectively, based on improvements or detriments with respect to the property being appraised
5. Finally, taking a weighted average (sometimes overweighting a house that may be especially similar to the house being appraised) of the recent comps in order to hit an actual value for the property being appraised.

Because the appraisals took place fifteen months apart, each of the houses used in the comparison analysis were different in each appraisal.  Here's what else changed between the two appraisals:

• We added a new, energy efficient central air conditioning system.  The unit we had when we bought the house was 25 years old and our energy bill last July was $400.  Plus, we suspected the unit was about to break.
• Based on our naivete as homeowners, we (probably) do a more amateurish job of general upkeep on the property than the previous owners.  It hasn't been enough for the neighbors to complain, but I think it's the case.
• The housing market in our area went sideways.  An identical home on our block sold for the exact same amount we paid, back in the spring - the house had a finished basement (our basement is unfinished) but our kitchen is much nicer (we think).  So that's more or less a wash.

So far, nothing interesting.  But here is what I mean when I say that the approaches that each appraiser took were completely different:

• The 2011 appraisal listed our home as about sixteen hundred square feet, while the 2012 appraisal listed it as over nineteen hundred (!!) square feet.  That's a huge difference - basically half the size of our basement.
• The 2011 appraisal listed our garage as a one-car garage, while the 2012 appraisal listed it as a two-car garage.  Our garage could not fit two Mini Coopers, even if one were parked on top of the other.  I am not sure how this mistake was made.
• The 2011 appraisal listed the house as being 54 years old; the 2012 appraisal listed the house as being 42 (??).  We should all be so lucky.
• The 2011 appraisal gave us $55 per square foot for our basement, but $0 for improvements.  The 2012 appraisal only gave us about half as much for the basement, but twenty grand for improvements (such as our fireplace, new central air unit, and patio).
• In assessing comparable houses, the 2011 appraiser docked each home a ridiculous $10,000 for not having a fireplace.  (Our fireplace is so small that our realtor warned us that burning more than one Duraflame log at a time would surely burn our house down.)  The 2012 appraiser was more realistic, assessing a fireplace as being worth only $3,000.

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In our instance, it is impossible to say which appraiser was "more correct."  After all, they came to the same conclusion.  However, it is clear that the 2011 appraiser was both more accurate and conservative with the size of the home.  On the other hand, last year's appraisal was far more generous regarding the value of the structure itself, allowing twice as much money per square foot for a part of the house (our basement) that is mostly unfinished and currently uninhabitable (unless you are an earwig).

This year's appraiser had the benefit of a house down the street that was identical and had recently sold for an amount just under the agreed, appraised value of our house.  It is possible that having a bad-ass kitchen (if I do say so myself) is slightly more valuable for a home than having a finished basement with no bathroom, as is the case for the house down the street.  More likely, though, the appraisers had different aesthetic tastes (as evidenced by the 2011 appraiser believing ludicrously that our teeny fireplace was worth ten grand), and these tastes impacted their assessments at a pretty fundamental level.

Given the variance mentioned above, I do believe we were fortunate that both appraisals came in at the same amount.  Had the second appraiser not asked me about recent improvements to the house - such as the new central air unit - it is possible that this year's appraisal could have been significantly lower than last year's.   For other people, a low appraisal could mean the difference between a relatively easy transaction and the whole damned deal going down the drain.

So, what would my amateur advice be for someone who is staring at an appraisal they disagree with?

1. Read the details of the appraisal and make sure you agree with them.  An appraisal should have a "Uniform Residential Appraisal Report" which lists all the pertinent statistics regarding the home, neighborhood, and market.  For instance, did the appraiser correctly estimate the size of the house?  Did they accurately state the age of the home?  In one of our appraisals, both of these pieces of information were off.  If you have evidence to suggest that the appraisal low-balled the house's size, or operated under the assumption that house was older than it actually is, it may be either correctable with the first appraiser, or worth springing the money for another appraisal.
2. Also in the "Uniform Residential Appraisal Report," there is detailed information regarding the comps, or recent local sales that the appraiser used to generate data for their analysis.  Take a close look at this information and try to understand the appraiser's underlying assumptions for the value of certain improvements (e.g., a larger garage, major appliances, finished basement, fireplaces and patio/decks).  You might catch the appraiser either undervaluing something that you have, or overvaluing something a bigger house has.  Don't think for a second that my fireplace is worth ten grand, and be skeptical about the assumptions that the appraisers make as well. 
3. Later in the "Uniform Residental Appraisal Report," there is a breakdown of how the value of your home is derived.  I've spent an hour trying to understand the formula, and it still doesn't make a ton of sense, to be honest.  But I can tell that liveable sections of the home, basements and garages are assigned different dollar values (on a per square foot basis, in my basis).  The 2011 appraiser felt that the livable spaces of the house were worth more per square foot than the 2012 appraiser; but the 2012 appraiser saw more value in my mostly-unfinished basement, assigning it almost double the value per square foot of the 2011 appraiser.  My point is, you may notice a systematic under- or overvaluation of these numbers, as well.

It strikes me that real estate appraisal is a highly inexact science, and there is great room for individual interpretation of a home's value.  As homeowners, we are all probably biased about the value of our home, especially if we have been living there for a while and have built lots of memories there.  Our lenders trust these independent appraisers to confirm whether they should give you a mortgage, so in my opinion it is our duty as consumers to hold appraisers accountable for the accuracy of their data.  As with every transaction, the devil is in the details, and hopefully my over-detailed analysis of our two recent home appraisals is helpful to someone out there.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a real estate professional, nor do I appraise anything professionally.  There is some chance that anything I have stated above may be fundamentally incorrect.  I have tried to be diligent to let you know when I am making an assumption in the above post - you should assume that everything I've written is an assumption, as a matter of fact.  Finally, I am sorry if this post bored you.  It is different from what I typically write about, I must confess.

Why Don't We See Each Other More Often?

(Author's Note: This entire post, including the very strange but completely honest 4 AM time stamp, is brought to you courtesy of double espresso.  Double espresso, keeping insomniacs awake since virtually the dawn of time.)

Last night, we ventured to New York for an event in the honor of a close relative on my mother's side of the family.  (My parents are divorced, so I naturally delineate my family into two "sides", as if they were Hatfields and McCoy's.)  The event was attended by many distant relatives, second and third cousins, mostly, and I had no frickin' clue who most of these people were.  My mother and aunt, who have the benefits of closer ties as well as memories of a time when our extended Italian-American family was closer knit, did know more of the guests and at one point my aunt uttered the classic line, "We only see these people at funerals any more."

(Observing other families, I've heard the related phrase "...weddings or funerals", but not in our family.  It's only funerals for us; weddings aren't that crazy huge in our family anymore.)

This led me to think, why is this the case?  And taking it one step further, assuming that it is true that extended families are breaking apart, does it even matter?

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I'll keep my discussion of the obvious reason for extended families to diverge over time fairly brief.  This is the simple fact that - for immigrant families in particular - geographic shifts occur over generations.  This is what happened on my mother's side of the family, for example: my mother was born in the early 1950's in the Bronx, New York.  At that time, her entire extended family lived in a small enclave in the Bronx.  (Her mother and father were both born in the United States as well, but their parents were steerage-class immigrants from Italy/Sicily who made it to the States around 1910.)  My grandfather on my mother's side was both handy and intelligent, and wanted an ostensibly better life for his family, so he purchased a home in "the sticks" - Middletown, New Jersey, specifically the same home where I grew up and my mother and sister still reside.

This story is uninteresting except for that it is extremely common.  Some other relatives on that side of my family joined my grandmother and grandfather in New Jersey; many others moved to the northern suburbs of New York City; some others stayed in New York City for their entire lives.  Measured in miles, the distance between these factions of my mother's side of the family was not that great, but philosophically I think it was fairly significant.  The New Jersey side of the family has its problems, but as a whole, I think it's a pretty smart group of people.  And even half a century later, we've always felt obligated to defend our forefather's decision to move out of the city - for some inexplicable reason, even though New Jersey is an underrated and awesome place to live, we've always had an inferiority complex, compared to the New York side.

ANYWAY, that's my theory for my family.  This is getting way too specific, so let's move on.

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My mom's side of the family has clearly diverged over time, but some readers might argue that their extended family has stayed close, perhaps through the benefit of extended family reunions.  These reunions are nice, when they occur, but my opinion is they occur at considerable time and expense - and require people who have a great deal of money, as well as the desires to both organize and fund the events.  Some families attempt it once or twice, but like most traditions, they burn out and fizzle over time.  Many others simply cannot afford the financial and emotional investments of reunions, so they settle for the next best thing: weddings and funerals. 

Personally, being cynical by nature, I love the idea that people actually don't want to see their extended families more often - the "weddings and funerals" line that composes the key thesis of this post is just another white lie that people tell themselves because they want to feel what they think is the correct way to feel.  Here's why I like the idea:

• It's fairly established that many people can only keep a fixed number of acquaintances in their memories (there is disagreement on the maximum number, though popular psychology likes to state that it's in the ballpark of 150 friends and acquaintances).  For me, the number is probably more like thirty, but that is because I am a robot with a heart made of silicon - let's say 150 people at most.
• Relatedly, each additional social connection or friendship that a person undertakes carries with it a significant time and emotional investment.  Family ties carry baggage, and grudges with relatives can last generations.  It's certainly possible to remember the good times in a superficial manner (and over a fixed period of time) with distant relatives - at weddings or funerals, for instance - but maintaining relationships with large numbers of relatives over months or years can be incredibly taxing.
• Social media can maintain a desired level of closeness with distant relatives, without so much of the in-person emotional baggage.  Speaking from personal experience, it's way easier to manage the annoying aspects of someone's personality when you have the ability to limit or completely hide their appearances on your Facebook News Feed.

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To the extent that maintaining deeper social connections with extended family is emotionally healthy, it is probably a wonderful idea to reconnect with extended members of one's family.  But I really don't think, for most people, that the above statement is true. 

In general, I am currently far closer with my father's side of my family than with my mother's side, but I am ten times closer with my close friends than I am with either side of my family.  That is because, for the most part, spending hours with my close friends is mentally stimulating, engaging, and fun, while spending hours with my extended family is exhausting. 

Why is it exhausting?  Trying to remember dozens of names, trying to remember where you met so-and-so fifteen years ago (at a funeral, most likely), and keeping small talk chit-chat while leaving aside matters of differing philosophy - the extended family on my mother's side is mostly conservative and deeply religious, and I am neither - are not things that come naturally to me, to say the very least.  My extended family mostly seem to be good people, and they mostly seem to be genuine when they ask me about how my life has been - but that's really all.  Given this, there should be absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to keep these relationships at arm's length.

I think at its core, this post is about the value of close friends.  (And also explaining why only older people care about genealogy.)  Arguably, the main reason anyone has a relationship with anybody is because it "helps that individual out".  (I'm speaking really colloquially here on purpose, to leave it to your interpretation of what "helping" might mean.)  To that end, it might make some utilitarian sense for families to break up as they establish themselves in some country over generations and diverge from a socioeconomic standpoint.  People (mostly) want to be friends with people who have similar viewpoints and philosophies and intelligence levels, and I think that as families diverge, those close family bonds change to relationships with close friends.  There's no reason why that change shouldn't be a healthy one.

For my life, certainly, that is a good thing to have happen, and it makes me happy that my grandfather moved to New Jersey almost sixty years ago.  For others, it makes them lament times when their family was closer - but lamenting this is, in my opinion, as silly as lamenting evolution.  Both are inevitable, and both should be recognized for their benefits.  Until the next relative dies, extended family!  (I don't want anyone to die any time soon.)

Restaurant Review: Sushi Palace, Somerville, NJ

Readers of this blogspace know that my wife and I are willing to drive long distances for good sushi.  We both consider ourselves sushi connoisseurs, having dined at most of the casual (and some of the legitimately upscale) sushi establishments in the area.  And why not: sushi, at its best, is an incredibly awesome and ridiculously healthy food, served in a unique style that allows for a considerable amount of culinary creativity.  It also can involve sitting at a bar, which is an activity that I endorse at every available opportunity.

Because we are both trying to eat conscientiously these days, sushi has become a once-weekly menu item for my wife and I for the past several months.  Lately, we've been faithfully driving to U-Yee Sushi in Iselin (forty minutes, round trip) for especially delicious but increasingly time-consuming "utility" sushi.  Earlier tonight, we decided to drive about five minutes to Sushi Palace in downtown Somerville, at the long-unheeded suggestion of one of April's coworkers, for a change of pace in the sushi department.

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The short story is: Sushi Palace, though slightly austere with regard to "specialty" rolls, is a remarkably delicious and reasonable budget sushi choice.  It is a BYOB establishment with a $19.95 per person weekday "all you can eat" option that actually pleases the palate and offers a multitude of choices (from sushi and sashimi to teriyaki and tempura; including soup, salad, diverse appetizers and five ice cream options).

But before I get there, I need to gush a little bit about the awesome plethora of dining options that are generally available in Somerville, New Jersey.  The second biggest positive surprise of where we now live (second only to the front-row seats we receive to country club fireworks each Independence Day) is how fun and delicious it is to eat in Somerville.  Compared to more hoity-toity and gentrified New Jersey towns of the same size (think of Red Bank, New Brunswick, or Morristown), Somerville is not given anywhere near its proper due with respect to culinary quality.

These are just a few mentions off the top of my head, but Somerville has great standard family Italian (the original Alfonso's), great Cuban food (the wonderful Martino's), great Irish pub fare (Mannion's), about seventeen different Asian food places, as well as a multitude of hole in the wall Mexican places, all within a twenty square block, walkable stretch of Main Street proper.  Somerville is way more blue-collar and not as "pretty" as the aforementioned New Jersey towns, but dollar for dollar and inch by inch, it out-noshes all of them.  With the exception of Ethiopian food, I cannot think of a type of food that (a) can be found elsewhere in New Jersey but not in Somerville, and (b) that Somerville does not represent at least adequately well.

Look at the below subset of only the Japanese options in Somerville, and consider this in the context of a town that has only about 12,000 residents as of the 2010 census:

• Shumi Sushi on South Doughty: If you asked a hundred sushi fanatics in the area where the best sushi in Somerville is, 82 of them would say Shumi.  (This is a fact; I did a study.)  I think Shumi is slightly overrated and slightly overpriced, but it is delicious.  Tucked into the back of an inside mini-mall with no outdoor sign, you feel a bit like you are dining in an illicit speakeasy at Shumi.  The fish is extremely fresh but best served as sashimi because the preparation is somewhat dry and lacking in sake and rice wine vinegar. According to the reviews, you can dine there omakase (chef's choice), which I may actually try one day.
• Wasabi on Main Street: an Asian fusion place that also has a sushi bar, it is slightly less well received overall but apparently they have a slamming sea bass crunchy roll.  I've never tried it, but probably will in the future.
• Yutaka, also on Main Street: Mainly a hibachi place; I've only been there for hibachi, on a double date that turned ridiculous when I decided, in a fairly severe misinterpretation of proper social conduct, to chug sake for 90 seconds in response to one of those corny "sake-bomb" gags that hibachi chefs sometimes do.  Anyway, I can attest that the food was fantastic that night (though I became quite drunk on sake).
• And finally (keeping in mind I've definitely overlooked a few places), the aforementioned Sushi Palace, on South Division.

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Sushi Palace is exceedingly pleasant, and from the outside, it does not look at all like a place where a group of four could conceivably dine on a four-course meal (and down two bottles of wine in the process) for only $80 + whatever you paid for the wine at the liquor store + tax.  Mostly hidden at the less traveled end of a pedestrian mall, with small side entrance doors, it feels a little badass entering the restaurant - like you're on a secret mission to hunt down sushi.

You may be offered a menu, or the hostess may immediately assume that you want the all you can eat paperwork (it's not a "menu" per se, it is two sheets of paper; you can order anything you want - as much as you want - from both sheets for $20 per person on weekdays).  All you can eat is a good deal, even if you're not feeling particularly gluttonous, as each category on the menu is not limited to the cheapest few options (like many sushi places).  There is even a section devoted to "Special Rolls," which clearly include more pricey ingredients - amazingly, even these are included in the "all you can eat" price. 

The ambiance is more steakhouse than sushi place - you sit in dark leather booths amid mood lighting.  Wine glass racks exist alongside the dark and sleek sushi bar.  Service is fast, polite, and unassuming, and the green tea is delicious and flavorful (unlike many sushi places in this price range, where it is way too weak).  Even on the Fourth of July and while enduring 100 degree temperatures, the restaurant was half-full with families and friends enjoying delicious sushi, which suggests the place becomes decently packed on weekends.

We chose eel and salmon sushi, salmon and tuna rolls, as well as dragon and summer rolls off the "specialty" list, with fresh edamame to begin.  The eel sushi was the fairest and sweetest we've tasted - though it was provided with a small portion of the "typical eel sushi accompaniment sweet sauce" on the side, we did not really need it.  It was also served at the correct temperature (eel served too cold gets too rubbery).

Further, I always consider the simplest rolls (salmon and tuna) a barometer of a sushi restaurant's success, because they are deceptively challenging to make.  Not only must the fish be impeccably fresh (there is no Japanese mayo or avocado to conceal flaws in these rolls) but the preparation must be nearly perfect to match the texture of the fish.  So many "budget" sushi places get this wrong, either by messing up the preparation (less frequently) or simply not having high enough quality fish on hand (more frequently).  Sushi Palace, at least tonight, nailed the balance perfectly - we noshed on the salmon and tuna like it was a bad habit, and these rolls disappeared the quickest.  I then enjoyed a pleasant but fairly generic green tea ice cream (one scoop was enough) for dessert.

Almost by default, the "specialty" rolls were the weak point of the meal (though they were not weak).  The summer roll was deliciously understated, with no mayonnaise aftertaste (I hate mayonnaise in almost every form), and the dragon roll was also decent (but with too much cucumber presence for my taste - I don't like it when something as preternaturally bland as cucumber is the dominant flavor in a sushi roll).  I understand the restaurant needs to make money, but I was also a little surprised to see the "Specialty Rolls" were the same size as the regular rolls. Most people would be satisfied to spend an extra $1 per "specialty" roll if they knew that the chefs would not skimp on the ingredients or the size of the roll itself.

That criticism aside, Sushi Palace was a delicious and unexpected delight.  I definitely recommend it to those in the area who want to eat a lot (or even a moderate amount) of sushi and not waste their entire wallet in the process.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars (ratings take into account food quality, drink quality, service, ambience/atmosphere, and last but not least, value).

Best for: Sushi when you want to drink wine or Japanese beer (the restaurant is BYO); Sushi when you want to gorge yourself on sushi; a pleasant and quiet couple's meal

Average price: Don't go to Sushi Palace if you're not going to use the all you can eat menu - $20 per person on weekdays, $25 per person on weekends, cannot, to the best of my knowledge, be beaten for sushi of this quality, in this part of the country.