Tag: homeownership

When kids make grown-up money

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was in the fifth grade, I was a huge Mighty Morphin Power Rangers fan.  This was one of those things that publicly amongst my school peers, I kept under wraps because that shit was for kid-kids, i.e., the ones in the third grade or younger.  Yet I was still captured by the campy acting, bad voiceovers and the fight footage more sliced and spliced together than a Kardashian.

I even learned how to program my VCR timer because of Power Rangers, because the show always came on at 2:30 when I didn’t get home from school until like 3:45.  That’s how much I grew to love Power Rangers, that I forced myself to learn things in order to enjoy a mindless and stupid kids show.

That particular winter, when Power Rangers really began merchandising, I decided that I really wanted a MegaZord and/or a DragonZord.  I wasn’t necessarily a Transformers or Voltron fan, but I loved the Transformers/Voltron-like manner in which the Zords transformed and connected together, and I really, really, really wanted some Zord toys of my own.

Unfortunately, this winter was the winter when Power Rangers toys were the hot item for the holiday season.  The equivalent of Tickle Me Elmo, Furbies, hoverboards, NES Classics, or whatever that one thing is during each holiday season in which there aren’t ever enough of, and the demand becomes so great, it achieves a modicum of mainstream attention at just how hard it is to get them, perpetuating the cycle of unavailability to the next level. 

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The wrestling belt display rail

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is a wall in my office.  It makes me tremendously happy whenever I look at it.  Fewer things I’ve created in my life give me the amount of satisfaction that an eight-foot plank of wood with some boat snaps in it does currently.  Mostly because it was an idea that came to me that executed nearly as accurately to its concept as I had imagined it, and there’s seldom better feelings than when a plan goes according to plan.

While I was living in an apartment during the transitional phase between homes, my treasured wrestling belts had all sat in storage.  I always knew and treated the apartment like the transitional domicile, and put little effort into doing much decoration or adorning it with much of my own personal effects.  The belts remained in storage because I didn’t feel like unpacking them, I didn’t want to bother re-packing them, and frankly they’ve always been something of a challenge to display without consuming too much space.

When I moved into my new house where the whole world of home living was full of possibilities, I actually didn’t have much clue on what I was going to do with my belts.  I knew that I had dedicated one bedroom to become my personal office space, and that’s where I wanted to have my belts, but the question was always how I was going to display them.

My old corner shelf was no longer an option, because it only had five shelves and I now had ten belts, and being the stickler for symmetry, refused to have half my belts displayed in one fashion, and the other five displayed alternatively. 

I didn’t want to go the route of a glass display cases, because wrestling belts are no small things, and with ten of them, I would require a lot of glass display, which would also have been very costly, and frankly space consuming.  I know a new, larger house has lots of extra space to accommodate things, but I’m also kind of minimalist and don’t like too many bulky things to make me feel claustrophobic.

I liked the idea of hanging my belts off the wall, because being on the wall would mean they wouldn’t be on the floor, and not being on the floor would mean they weren’t necessarily cluttering up my place.  But I was really very much against the idea of affixing them to the wall like the Miz does, because he’s actually drilling screws through the physical belts themselves; I know he’s a professional wrestler who probably gets his replicas for cheap if not free, but I don’t, and I care for my belts a little bit more to where I don’t want to physically add any holes that I don’t feel needed to be added.

My thought was, why not use hardware that already existed?  As in the snaps on the belt themselves?  But wouldn’t affixing snaps be perilous and risk coming undone, especially under the weight of belts, which can weigh anywhere from 8-13 lbs. each?

But then a cursory search revealed the existence of screwable marine snaps, which would be the perfect things to bore into a plank of wood, to which I could then paint to match my wall and hang up to hold my belt collection.  And then the idea was underway.

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Weekends are for working

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

No lie, ever since I moved into my house, I’ve worked more during each weekend than I have been at my actual job.  At least in the sense of doing things that physically tire me out versus my cushy office job that I do almost entirely while sitting down in a chair.

But ever since I moved in, just about every single weekend has been marathons of painting, moving things, assembling things, installing things, unpacking boxes, taking trash out, and other time-consuming tasks that have me scratching my head wondering where the days go, and why is it 10 p.m. already?  I am so over painting now, and I hope to not have to do any more painting for several, several years, although I can already think of areas of my house in which builder beige will not be tolerated in the long run.

Weekends fly by with me scarcely getting any substantial computer time, and by the time I do mundane things like checking my email or looking at Facebook, I’ve usually got a lot of new email and my Facebook feed has several days’ worth of peoples’ mundane status updates and inconsequential humblebrags and notifications.  Aside from the shit I can play on my phone, I haven’t touched a video game in weeks, and I haven’t played League since my desk and my desktop were still at the old apartment.

The thing is though, this isn’t me complaining at all about it.  It’s entirely factual that I’ve been busier on weekends than I am during the week, but ultimately, there’s a sense of gratification and reward with every task I finish and progress made towards the ultimate completion of moving in.

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Writing because I suddenly have nothing else to do

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Ever since the move, things have been pretty busy, to say the least.  Between all the unpacking, resolving of the old apartment, clearing out my storage unit, and doing stuff in the new place like painting and organizing, and on top of it all, planning and preparing for mythical gf’s birthday party, I began to make a joke about how I was going to work so I could relax.  While at work, I could sit down, not be doing physical activities (except for going to the gym) and actually be somewhat dormant.  In my downtime, I could actually write a little bit.

But then work got busy, and I didn’t have time to write, and the workload at home didn’t relent, so I couldn’t really find time to write there either.

Fortunately, the party has come and gone, very nicely I might add, and suddenly the rush and the urgency in which things needed to be done, came to a screeching halt.  Whereas I’ve been working my ass off for the last three weeks and change, suddenly I don’t have to have my foot lead-footing the gas anymore, and I’ve hit points where I’m actually hitting walls of progression where I can’t actually accomplish tasks without requisite materials or conditions.

Needless to say, I have time again, and frankly I don’t know what to do with it all of a sudden.  My televisions and computers haven’t really been properly set up yet, both of which are also relying on requisite hardware/conditions in order to do so, so I can’t just do what I’d been doing in the past, and marathon some show to pass the time.  I can’t really do that many more chores or tasks just yet, because some require more time than I have after a day of work, and are better suited for weekends.

So last night, I did something that I haven’t done in what feels like ages; I retired pretty early, crawled into bed, read a book for a little while, and then went to sleep at a sensible time.

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Photos: Mythical GF’s Jazzy 20’s Murder Mystery Birthday Party

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note] This was unposted content back from 2017, mythical (then)-gf’s 25th birthday party; but not just any old birthday party, it was a murder mystery party, where everyone was assigned a role, and played a part throughout the evening, as the story of the Grand Gatsby’s speakeasy unfolded.

Looking back through these photos, it was a wonderful party, where everyone participated to the nines, and it was a fantastic way to break in our new home with a big party that was part-housewarming, part-birthday, and part-murder mystery costume party.

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The other side of the table

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As closing day for my new home approached, I knew that I was going to meet the sellers of the place eventually.  There was admittedly a little bit of apprehension in the thought, since these are basically the people that I’d been playing hardball with in negotiating listing prices, how much of the closing costs I wanted them to cover, and the additional costs I made them incur in repairs and requests found through home inspection, and now I was going to have to face them so they could hand the keys of their property over to me.

This was somewhat a new experience to me; the last time I was at the closing table, I was the seller, and the buyer was tremendously low-maintenance, was willing to cover most of the closing costs, and barely asked for any work at all.  And the first time I purchased a home, it was brand new and purchased directly from a builder, so there was nobody on the other side of the table that I had the innate feeling that I was taking something from them, regardless of how legitimate and normal the transaction was.

Furthermore, I had my suspicions initially based on an errant piece of litter on the property that the prior owners may have been Asian, and it was confirmed during the process that despite not being anywhere near Duluth or Suwanee, they were in fact Koreans.  Yeah, I lol’d too at the strange coincidence of it all that I would of course, pick the home of other Koreans to choose to plant my new roots into.  So, I knew going into closing day, that I would be coming face-to-face with other Koreans, after I had kind of put them through a little bit of the ringer, just so they could sell their home.  I wasn’t necessarily scared to face them, but there’s no denying that my requests probably cost them a little bit of money they probably were hoping to not spend.

Regardless, the whole closing process wasn’t at all a bad one; the seller(s) were really nice people, and there was no indication that they were at all sour over the expenditures necessary to make the sale happen.  I was amused by their realization that mother couldn’t speak to daughter discreetly in Korean without me being able to understand it, so most of the correspondence was kept in English, for the sake of the other non-Koreans involved in the process.

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A new chapter

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously, I’m pretty hush-hush when it comes to the process of getting to things like this, but let’s cut right to the chase: I’m a homeowner again.

Apartment life wasn’t terrible, but the reality is that renting always feels like throwing money away, and that the end game is always a home where I can stash all my shit and have a place that I can always call my own, and potentially work it to something that might actually be able to make me money in the future to boot.

I came to a realization not that long ago that I actually managed to amass enough money to where I could actually get back on the path to homeownership, and then once the home-buying bug bit, it was off to the races with trying to find a home that suited a lot of my mental checkboxes.

It all happened pretty quickly and has been quite the whirlwind, and I will say that honestly, this moved rapidly throughout the course of a month.  Yeah, sounds like a lot of major decisions being made in a short amount of time, but I had a particular area in mind where I wanted my next house to be, and that made things a little easy in the sense that I wasn’t going to be searching all around the entire Metro Atlanta area, and had more of a specific zip code in mind to narrow my choices.

So there we have it; I have a house again.  Maybe some of it is sticker shock after dropping a massive sum of money for a downpayment, or maybe it’s the surreal feeling that I’ve already moved onto my second house.  Grown-up adulting may be one of those things I always say is kind of weird to consider, but if I’m already successfully capable of owning my second house, I’m clearly doing something right.

Life is fascinating sometimes, and I look forward to embarking on this new chapter of my life in my new house that will hopefully be full of good memories, lots of growth, and abundant potential for the future.