You Won't Leave Empty-Handed

There is one day of the year when it is socially acceptable to wait in line for hours for a store to open (You hear that, gamers? Only one day). That one day is Black Friday, which is descending upon us in a couple days. I've never actually ventured out to any stores on Black Friday but I have heard plenty of horror stories of people not being able to get what they came to buy or worse, being trampled. In order to help you get what you came for on Friday, I've come up with some methods that will ensure your success (I can't prevent you from being trampled other than telling you not to be at the front of the line) and make sure your loved ones get this year's hot fads. Let's jump right in.

1. Physical Violence: This one is simple. If you see someone snatching up the last copy of season 2 of Glee, just give 'em a right hook straight to the kisser. If you act quickly, you can snatch up the prize and head to the register before they even know what happened. Another factor working in your favor is the absolute chaos and pandemonium of Black Friday. If the punch doesn't land as true as you had hoped, tackle a random shopper and yell "Got 'em!". Since no one was able to definitively peg you as the puncher, you are instantly the hero. I'm not going to promise anything, but the appreciative management may let you into the stock room in back to shop in peace.

2. Employee Uniforms: Have one for every store you are going to on Friday. This will allow you access to anywhere in the store. Don't see any more Blu-Ray players on the shelves in Best Buy? Head into the stock room. Can't find the latest knockoff Gucci purse at K-Mart? Raid the layaway department. Just make sure to bring a different shirt to put on before heading to check out your items. An employee spending their time shopping on the busiest day of the year is sure to raise some eyebrows.

3. Teamwork: If you are a guy, have your wife or sister (actually, any willing woman will suffice) yell "Ryan Gosling!" followed by frantic screams as she runs towards the front of the store, pretending to chase him into the parking lot. This will cut the crowd down by 75%. You and the other men will be free to roam the store unencumbered. If you are a woman, your male teammate should follow nearly the same script, with "Ryan Gosling" changed to the name of your local sports star. It is absolutely vital that your "team" consists of both genders. For example, it is not believable as a woman for your female teammate to run while yelling Ryan Gosling's name without you following close behind. He is apparently that good looking.

4. Shop Online: I could've started and ended with this one but that wouldn't be any fun.



Real Estate Note:  The housing market is heading upward and the media is finally starting to catch on. Here is some good news from CNN Money: Home Sales Rise in October

My Wife Is Fascinating

Sometimes my wife surprises the living daylights out of me. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of meeting her, she is a short, petite southern belle who loves scrapbooking, tea parties, and fashion blogs. She is a bubbly breath of fresh air when everyone else is being "Negative Nancies". The only time I ever heard her burp, a rainbow flew out of her mouth and she just giggled as she skipped away to go cheer up a sick unicorn. She loves Otis Redding and can quote the entire script of the Notebook without thinking. She lets me watch football at home on Sundays even though she hates "the violent sounds" of it and when I'm sick, she tends to all my stupid whinings and wants without rolling her eyes. She wears a sunhat. Knowing all of this about her, I am surprised when she does something that I think doesn't fall in line with my perception of her. Here a couple of examples.

Once, when we were dating, we were hanging out at her house, trying to think of something to do and she suggested that we go outside and shoot some hoops. I hesitated for a moment, thinking about how lame it would be when we had to stand no more than two feet from the basket so she could at least get the ball up to the hoop and I would have to say "Oooh, so close" every time she took a shot. I said yes because as a guy in a dating relationship, "Yes" is the answer to every one of the girl's suggestions. All you single guys need to take note of this. It is very important:

"Hey babe, do you want to have a picnic in a field of daisies, eat brie and crackers, and journal about our feelings for each other on pieces of parchment that we can bind together with wax that has been melted with a candle that we will light together, signifying the light and heat of our unity?"

"Yes."

See how easy that is? Don't put up a fight. If you do, she will be hurt and you will be back to spending your time playing Call of Duty, talking smack to 12-year olds while you wait for E-harmony to find another match for you. Anyway, we went outside and began to shoot hoops. We started playing H.O.R.S.E. and I quickly found myself worried about losing. She had the best shooting form I had ever seen! I couldn't shake her. I resorted to trick shots, such as shooting from a window on the second floor of the house. I made it and so did she. Luckily, I won (barely) but the game took forever. We haven't played since.

Another surprise came just a few years ago. A friend of mine was the lead "singer" of a scream-metal band and said I should come to one of their shows on a certain Friday night. Jamie and I had planned on going on a date that night so I asked her if it would be alright if we just stopped in and checked out a song or two before carrying on with our date. She said that would be fine and we showed up right as my friend's band was getting started. The place was tiny and the music reverberated through our heads like a jackhammer. My buddy was on the stage, screaming into the microphone as if the microphone had wronged him in the most heinous way possible as people thrashed around, throwing themselves into each other and making me nervous. If someone had slammed into Jamie, I would've felt like the lowest of the low for bringing her in there. I can't verify this, but I think I saw a cat being sacrificed in the back corner. It was an absolutely crazy scene. After the second song, I looked at Jamie with a look that said "I am infinitely sorry. Let's get out of here". She just smiled at me and yelled "This is pretty cool! Let's stay until the end". What?!!? If you brought a flower within 100 ft. of this place, it would've wilted and disappeared in a puff of smoke and dust. Yet here she was, taking it all in and having a great time. She won't watch Die Hard with me because it is too violent but if you invite her to a death-metal show complete with blood and fear, she'll ask "What time?"

She is completely and utterly fascinating.


Real Estate Note: I recently showed a house that had laundry everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE. It looked like 3,298 people were in the house before being abducted out of their clothes by aliens. Needless to say, my buyers quickly scratched the house off their list. If you are thinking about selling your home and want it to look enticing to buyers, check out these cheap ways to make it look great:
 
6 Cheap Ways to Stage Your Home

Make Sure You Have A Plan

With Halloween over, it's time to start looking forward to and planning for Thanksgiving. This is typically the holiday that ushers in the Christmas season (the best time of the year by far) and is the only day in which it is acceptable for a man to wear pants with an elastic waistline while eating as much as possible. There are some who say that this is a disgusting, gluttonous example of American greed and selfishness and that we should be ashamed of it because there are starving people in the world. Normally, I would wholeheartedly agree. But on this day, when the whole point of it all is to see how much we do have and be THANKFUL for it, I say go nuts. A great way to show thankfulness for a gift is to thoroughly enjoy it. Also, someone who is truly thankful for something will be more aware of those who don't have that particular something and will be more inclined to share it because they realize that they are not entitled to it, but have been blessed with it. So, with all that in mind, take 1 day out of the 365 and relax the tension on the bungee cords of dietary self-control. Here are some different methods to make your turkey day eating a success. Some are better than others.

1. The Abstinence Method: This method is for beginners only. It seems logical when preparing to eat as much as possible to not eat anything at all in order to have a maximum of free space in the stomach. However, this actually seems to diminish the stomach's holding capacity and can leave the participant feeling full but greatly disappointed. Feel free to point and laugh.

More effective than Ambien.

2. The Stretch It Out Method: The exact opposite of the abstinence method. The theory behind this method is that eating a lot on Thanksgiving morning will stretch the stomach, allowing for plateful after plateful to be consumed during dinner. I can remember using this method inadvertently at the age of 6 when my dad took me to Denny's on Thanksgiving morning so that we wouldn't be in my mom's way as she prepared the dinner. I ate all the pancakes I could handle and we then took a walk through some woods where we came upon a pond. The light snow that was falling gave the scene a very Norman Rockwell-esque look. I immediately proceeded to fall in the water. I will never know whether the large amount I consumed for dinner was due to the large breakfast I had or the hypothermia I was trying to stave off. Jury's still out.

3. The Come Back Method: This involves eating a normal amount and then going back for more while everyone else is watching the football game. This is cheating and cowardly. Don't use this method and then spend Friday telling everyone how much you ate on Thursday. You didn't do it during the meal time. I didn't make this rule known at the beginning because it just seems obvious, much in the same way I don't need to tell you not to shave your grandma's head while she naps. It's obviously outside the bounds of civilized decorum.

4. The Apocalyptic Method: The is the most advanced method, requiring a great amount of mental fortitude and imagination. The user must mentally convince himself that civilization is coming to an apocalyptic end and they may have to wander the wastelands, not knowing when their next meal is going to present itself. Like a squirrel gathering nuts for winter, the user eats the Thanksgiving meal with reckless abandon, storing up energy and calories. Actors and LARP (Live Action Role Playing) players tend to be the best at this method, as fiction and reality are easily blended in their minds. This method does not provide a particularly enjoyable eating experience but the user is usually pleased with the results.

Make sure you have a plan going into Thanksgiving. Having a goal without a plan to make it happen is fruitless. I hope this helps!


Real Estate Note: I keep hammering home the point that right now the market is providing an absolutely amazing opportunity to buy a home. Case in point: Across the country, per capita income has rebounded to 2007 levels while home prices continue to hover around 2002 levels. Those factors, combined with near record low interest rates, have made this a historically great time to buy a home. To read more, check this out: KCM Blog

Not My Favorite Holiday

I never got really excited about Halloween as a kid. The thought of having to get all costumed up and knock on people's doors in the dark to ask for candy never appealed to me. First of all, I was never a fan of candy. It's not that my parents were health nuts and wouldn't let me have candy, I just didn't care for it. Desserts, such as pie and ice cream, were much more up my alley. If someone was handing out French silk pies to trick-or-treaters, not only would I have slapped on a Mr. T mohawk and knocked on their door, I would've asked them to adopt me. Secondly, I wasn't a naive kid. I knew that there were weirdos out there who had the potential to do some weird/dangerous stuff to the candy they were giving out. Our neighbor, for instance, was a physicist who would periodically have all of his physicist buddies come over to get drunk and talk about physics as loudly as possible (by the age of 11 I had heard enough alcohol-induced physics arguments to get at least a C- on a college-level physics exam). No way am I taking candy from those guys.

I did go to Halloween parties at school, though. It was fun just to run around with my friends and play all the games (even though candy was the only prize). Except for "bobbing for apples." Again, I wasn't a naive kid. I understood the concept of germs. If I wanted to basically open-mouth kiss all the kids in my school, I'd want more than a "red delicious" apple for my trouble. Those are the worst kind of apples.
I could even be persuaded to put on a costume for those parties. I never cared what it was so I let my parents pick it out for me, which led to some pretty weird results. One year, I showed up to the party as Rush Limbaugh. I didn't even know who that was but my parents thought it was the funniest thing in the world. They had me put on a suit, put a pillow in my shirt, and slick my hair back. My dad even pinned a dollar bill in the shape of one of those AIDS ribbons to my suit jacket. The hilarity was lost on me and my friends but my friends' parents made me pose for roughly 10,000 pictures which took abnormally long because they were laughing too hard to hold their cameras still. The next year I dressed up as a baseball player so I wouldn't be bothered and I could devote all my time to conquering the cardboard box maze.

I even found some ways to enjoy Halloween through high school. One year, me and my friend Seth took the candy we were going to give out up to my parents' roof. When the trick-or-treaters would knock on the door, they were met with a furious hailstorm of candy. The kids loved it. Except for one kid named Stuart. He must have had a previous bad experience with flying candy because he ran out of there screaming like he was having a war flashback. We knew what his name was because his mom went crazy, running down the street hand-in-hand with her son screaming "THEY'RE SHOOTING CANDY AT STUART! THEY'RE SHOOTING CANDY AT STUART!". We thought that was going to keep all the other kids away and we were going to have to wrap it up. Instead, kids' ears turned up and they showed up like vultures to a water buffalo carcass. Our "clientele" doubled.

All that said, have a safe and happy Halloween and if you come across anybody giving out French silk pies, I need to be notified.


Real estate note: Are you wanting to refinance but are "under water" on your loan? Check out this government program that a coworker of mine, Seth Peterson, explains pretty well: http://madisonrealestatedeals.com/

Staying in America From Now On

I usually travel pretty well. I can sit in a plane, car, or train for hours and thoroughly enjoy every minute of it. This has been true since the day I was born. My parents and I used to make the 9 hour trek up to northern Minnesota to visit relatives every year and I would sit in the back, silently contemplating the deep mysteries of existence and looking forward to the day when I would be able to read what all the road signs said. I'm fairly certain my parents had this exchange more than once:

Dad: "Christopher hasn't made a sound in 6 hours. Take a look back there and make sure he's okay."
 (Mom turns around and we make eye contact. I raise my "sippy" cup toward her in a gesture that says, "Yep. Still here. Now turn around and let me resume my nose-picking in peace.")
Mom: "He's fine. The weirdest kid ever, but fine."

This personality trait has served me well over the course of my life. I've traveled to quite a few different countries and have always enjoyed the long flights. I've even enjoyed the ridiculously long layovers in overcrowded airports (At an especially long layover at the Incheon International airport in Seoul, South Korea for instance, I parked myself on a chair that had a great view of the entrance and exit to that horizontal escalator thing that all airports have. More people have trouble getting on and off those things than you might think. The hours just flew by). I've sat in a car and driven through Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska without wanting to fling myself out of the car just to escape the boredom. The only time I've had any traveling issues came as a result of my big mouth.

The year after I graduated from high school I went on a spontaneous road trip with my friends, Grant and Jon. We decided to pack some clothes and toiletries and just start driving. And that's exactly what we did. We started driving east and ended up going into Canada at Niagara Falls, where we encountered a very strange Canadian border patrolman:

Canuck: "What's the purpose of your visit to Canada?"
Grant: "We've never been to Canada and thought we'd check it out."
Canuck: "You've never been to Canada?"
Grant: "Nope."
Canuck (now strangely angry and red in the face): "YOU'VE NEVER BEEN TO CANADA?!!?"

Anyway, we spent a few days making our way through Toronto (probably the most beautiful city I've ever seen), Ottawa, and Montreal and decided to re-enter the US in eastern Maine. It was late at night, possibly very early morning, when we came to the border crossing. We were extremely tired and I was not handling it well. You know when you're overly tired and everything makes you laugh as hard as you do when you see a video montage of old people losing their balance on America's Funniest Home Videos? That's how I was that night. We pulled up to the border patrol station and a soldier with a machine gun slung over his back took our passports and began grilling us with questions. Most of the questions revolved around where we worked and it was obvious he was suspicious of us doing a late-night drug run. The air was thick with tension and Grant and Jon were obviously nervous. My sleep-deprived delirium did not allow me to be nervous, leading to this exchange:

Soldier: "What are the chances, if I searched your car, of finding drugs, weapons, or other illegal paraphernalia?"
Me (leaning from the passenger seat to the driver's side window): "Oh jeez. I don't know. I'd say slim to none."

Slim to none?!!? The soldier's eyes instantly widened and he turned his back, speaking into his radio. Grant and Jon were furiously apologizing on behalf of their momentarily deranged friend as other soldiers appeared, guns no longer confined to their backs. One of them searched underneath the car while another one came to my window, asking what kind of drugs they had a "slim to none" chance of finding. I'm pretty sure a german shepherd was sniffing around as well. After not finding anything, the soldiers came to the conclusion that Grant and Jon were making a seemingly good point about their idiot friend and decided to let us go.

As we pulled away, Grant turned to Jon and said, "What are the chances we let Chris talk to anybody else on this trip?"

Jon replied, "I'd say slim to none."


Real Estate Note: Do you know of anyone looking for a gorgeous, unique home on Madison's east side? Check this out: http://717woodlawndr.com

I Know I'm Not the Only One

I'm fairly certain that I am a pretty manly guy. I am a great driver (no implied offense to the ladies, but us men take a lot of pride in our driving abilities), I consider a t-bone steak and a cold beer to be a well-balanced meal, and I have broken a remote control in a stupid burst of rage when the Packers have stunk up the joint. I can even sit down and not talk or even think for hours and be totally content, a trait that women, for the most part, do not possess and completely baffles my wife. But there is one area where my manliness takes quite a hit. It's something that those closest to me know about me, but I thought I'd share it here in case another guy out there who is in the same boat as I and needs to know that he is not alone. Here it is: I love chick flicks.

I should quantify this a little bit. I don't like the depressing sap-fests that exist solely to make you cry and make you feel worse at the end than you did at the beginning. There are a few exceptions, though. Hope Floats had just enough feel-good material in it to make it worth my while. In fact, that movie was the first chick flick that I remember liking and also the only movie to make me actually cry (other movies have made my eyes well up but Hope Floats made the tears flow like a Fargo flood). I saw it at the age of 13 with my girl cousins who were making out with their boyfriends for the whole movie and there I am, sitting by myself, crying my eyes out. Probably an odd scene to walk into.

Romantic comedies are where it's at for me. Light movies that make you feel good. Is this shallow and very un-hipster-like of me? Yes. I don't care. You can go on and on about how Fight Club was a brilliant social commentary that was one of the best movies ever made and I would probably agree with you. But every time I watch it I am left feeling like I just spent a week in the dark and slightly depressed. Give me While You Were Sleeping or Notting Hill, a steak, and a beer and I'm on cloud nine. What's there not to like? Boy meets girl in some cute way at the beginning, something goes wrong in the middle, and they end up together at the end. And as a bonus, there's always some goofball supporting actor/actress (Spike in Notting Hill, for instance) who more often than not delivers the most memorable lines of the whole movie. I know it's a movie-making formula that has been done to death and there are some who wonder how those movies continue to get the green light from studios. The answer is people like me. And I am now "out and proud" about it.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, romantic comedies aren't the only kind of movies that I like. Braveheart and Gladiator are two of my all-time favorites, for example. They stir up the testosterone in me, making me want to go find an injustice and beat the crap out of whoever is perpetuating that injustice. In fact, whenever someone has asked me what my favorite movie is, my answer has always been "Oooh. That's tough. Probably a tie between Braveheart and Gladiator". That was never a lie. But it was never the whole truth, either. My answer should have been (and will be from now on) "Oooh. That's tough. Probably a tie between Braveheart, Gladiator, and You've Got Mail. Now wipe that smirk off your face before I do it for you."

Real Estate Note: Want to purchase a home but don't have enough income to qualify for a regular loan? Check out this program that some of our clients (who never thought they were able to buy a house) have used: http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/LP_Subject_HousingAndCommunityAssistance.html

Why Not?

This blog touts itself as having a "side of real estate." Well, for today, it will consist of some real estate with a side of......nothing. I'm putting on my real estate hat, using some exclamation points, and keeping it short and sweet.

Interest rates are at the lowest level they have ever been for a 30 year mortgage! Some of you are probably sick and tired of hearing about these historic rates from the news, realtors, etc...But it's going to continue to generate a lot of buzz so get used to it. It is absolutely crazy. With the right credit, you can get a rate of 3.875%!!!

Here's what that looks like on a monthly basis: For a $100,000 loan (which in this current market can get you a good amount of house), the monthly payment would be $470. That's near half of what most people pay in rent! If you are on the fence about buying a home, now is the time to go for it.

If you or anybody you know is thinking about buying a home, I would love to help you/them out!