in omnia paratus

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Sacrifices for the greater good

On Sunday, August 2, I sold my Scion tC after owning it for only 15 months. It was my first real adult car purchase. I loved my car. So why would I sell it? Between Jericho and I, we have 5 vehicles (1 is his work truck so that technically doesn't count). Of those vehicles, only one was not paid for - mine. With our new marriage and new goals and new budgeting, it only made logical sense to eliminate the vehicle that had a payment. So a couple of months before we got married, we listed my car on Craigslist.

After almost 6 months of it being listed and numerous denials to sellers that expected way too much of their negotiation skills and way too little of my ability to hold firm to my asking price, I was so excited to finally sell the car.

Monday morning, I left my dentist appointment headed to Bank of America to pay off the loan. I had checks in hand and was anticipating the relief of paying off the loan. I walked up to the first teller at Bank of America, told her what I wanted, handed over my checks, my confidence and excitement flying high. "I'm sorry. We can't accept these checks." Excuse me? Come again? She gets another teller. This one comes back and tells me, "Ma'am, clearly you are 10 and have no business handling money. We can't do anything with these checks and you should have known what to do so I don't have to stand here and correct everything you've ever come to know about checks and the banking system." Okay, maybe that's not what she said, but it sure sounded like it. Maybe it was more like, "These checks aren't endorsed properly. Plus we don't take third party checks anyway. Try your personal bank."

With that, I board my huff train and leave for what will be two days of bank trips. In summary, on Monday and Wednesday, I traveled to or spoke to the following banks in respective order:

Bank of America - Chapel Hill. They hate me. See above.

Wachovia - Chapel Hill, west side of Willow Road. Find out the checks aren't endorsed properly. Tells me they need to say "pay to the order of..." and signed by the designee. Oh and also, the designee needs to be present in order to verify that they are in fact signing over the check to me. Grumble grumble grumble all the way back to the office. Vent to Jericho that everyone hates me that day to include my teeth who, I discovered earlier that morning, are silently rebelling against me by inflicting me with 3 new cavities.

Bank of America - Durham. She hated me too and told me I was wrong for thinking I was told from another Bank of America representative that it would take 3 business days to get the title once the money was paid. How dare I believe her coworker over her and her 2-3 week estimation for title turn around.

Wachovia - Durham. "Yes ma'am, you have been told correctly. In order to endorse a check over to you, the person endorsing it must be present for us to deposit the check." "If they are with me, why don't I just have them write me a new check? What's the purpose of endorsing a third party check if it doesn't even work?" "That's just our policy ma'am. We're not very good at what we do." "No wonder Wells Fargo had to buy you out."

Wachovia - Cary. Wins points for best customer service and cracking jokes and not talking to me like this is my first day speaking English. Calls buyer's banks to tell them the policy and why the hold up on the checks. Still nothing can be done with the checks I have. I have no car and no money for the car. I leave for Walmart after this and lock my keys in the car. Individual size rain cloud is officially ordered and shipped directly above my head.

Truliant Credit Union - Cary. Jericho's credit union. He spoke with them to confirm that B of A and Wachovia knew what they were talking about and to help talk me down from my utter frustration and out of my gun turet perched at the ready and aimed on the Bank of America building downtown.

State Employees Credit Union - Yanceyville. 10 minutes from the Virginia border. Home of my buyer's account. They reissued me new cashier's checks in my name. I'm home free. Almost.

Wachovia - Chapel Hill. East side of Willow Road. Deposit 2 of the 3 checks. Big $$ check will have to be on hold since it's a large amount. NO!!!! "So I can't write a check out of my account for this amount until....." "At least after the 7th." Boo. Banks suck. "Can I cash it?" "Not here but you can try State Employees." Done!

State Employees Credit Union - Chapel Hill. "I am praying and hoping that you can cash this check for me." "Why of course!" She hesitates when she sees the amount. She's nervous about me walking around Chapel Hill with $11,000 in cash. Makes two of us. She leaves to talk to her manager. She comes back. I ask her if they can write a check directly to B of A. Yes, they can! Do I have an account? No. Leaves again to talk to her manager. SECU makes an exception for poor, little, sad me and writes me a cashiers check to B of A. Terry at SECU in Chapel Hill is my new favorite bank teller. I may send her cookies.

Bank of America - Chapel Hill, again. Luckily, different teller. I hand her my loan number, my checks, my cash, my tears. Furious clicking of the computer. Zipping of the little machines. Bam, I have a receipt for my deposit into my loan, paid in full! My dark cloud is replaced by a rain of balloons and confetti and celebratory music.

Total PTO spent on attempts to deposit/cash/extract the money I was paid for my car: 7 hours.

After this series of events, Jericho felt even worse about me selling my beloved car. He blames himself. I don't. I love him for being so responsible and for also have a completely dependable car on hand for me to drive until we get me something better. I do miss my tC but do not miss my car payment. Even though I had no problems paying it every month, it is a relief to eliminate a source of debt. Yay for financial independence!

Monday, August 3, 2009

Project Ice Cream

Jericho and I received an ice cream maker for a wedding present. We contemplated exchanging it for something more practical but decided it might be fun to hang on to it. In order to make myself feel like we were worthy of the present, I decided to start making ice cream. The first venture was Strawberry Gelato that turned out surprisingly well. The second venture was Key Lime Pie ice cream, which also was a big hit. The ice cream has been so good and fun to make that I'm really jazzed about finding and making different homemade ice creams.

I decided to make a record of the most recent experiment, complete with photos. Last weekend Jericho and I went to the Raleigh Farmer's Market. Love it. Jericho had never been. It makes me feel so of-the-earth. Like I should start churning butter and making my clothes. While at the Farmer's Market, we decided to get peaches. Peaches are in season and there were roughly 10 different stands selling peaches. So we bought some peaches. What should we do with the peaches? Make peach ice cream!!

Yummy fresh peaches. Picked the day before. The recipe actually only calls for one peach but one peach looked so lonely for the photo shoot.

The previous two ice cream recipes I'd made had a milk base (gelato) and a sweetened condensed milk base (key lime pie). There were a few traditional cream/milk based peach ice cream recipes but I also found one that was a mascarpone cheese base. Mascar-what?? Basically, it's a fancy Italian cheese very similar to cream cheese, just more Italian-y (see above). It's the cream base they use for tiramisu. I had Jericho taste it while I was cooking and he said it "tastes like poo." Not true. But it's kinda weird. I was skeptical.

I creamed together the mascarpone with cream, milk and sugar. The recipe calls for 16 oz of mascarpone cheese but it's expensive so we halved the cheese and substituted it with a cream and it worked fine. (That's my pretty red Kitchenaid from my pretty husband.)

I chilled the cream mixture in the fridge while I prepped the peaches. They needed to be caramelized. How does one caramelize a peach?! I'll tell you! You score them like a mango and place on a baking sheet, douse them in honey and broil on 500 for 10 minutes. It basically just makes hot, sticky, sweet pieces of peach. The next step is to mix the peaches in a bowl with (more) honey and cinnamon. Once the peach mixture is cool, then you start the mixing (see above- that's my pretty red ice cream maker. It was the only color they had. But that's fine with me.)

And behold the finished result. It's technically called Mascarpeach ice cream with caramelized peaches and honey. I changed a few things but it still turned out really well. The cinnamon ended up being pretty potent so it mainly tastes like really creamy cinnamon ice cream with chunks of peaches. I also learned that ice cream makers like mine don't like chunks. Always add any chunky ingredients when it's done churning. It was a fun project though. I liked that it was harder than some other recipes and the mascarpone made it very creamy and rich. Let me know if you have any suggestions for my next ice cream experiment!!

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Summer Book Report

I just finished reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. A couple of attorneys in my firm recommended it to me saying it was one of their favorite books. The book club also read it a few months back but it was in the middle of my wedding planning so I've only just now gotten around to reading it.

Synopsis (from Goodreads): In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's childrearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by her father at a bar). Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them--despite their overwhelming self-absorption--resonates from cover to cover.

The story was very compelling for me. At times you feel like you want to jump through the pages and strangle these parents for being so negligent but at the same time, you develop compassion for them. I read a couple of chapters to Jericho. One described living in the mountains of West Virginia in a 3-room shack with no heat source and the other was about the narrator finding food for herself when there wasn't a morsel of food in their home. I asked Jericho what he thought and he said, "Why would you read that book? It's so sad." Then I read him a chapter about one Christmas when the narrator was a child and they lived in the dessert. Her parents never had money for presents so her father took each of the kids outside that night, one by one, and let them pick out a star as their present. It is bittersweet. That's the best way I can describe the book.

You feel anger and pity for the parents. You feel excitement for the children and for their ambitions and maturity. And also feel somewhat introspective of your own life and whether or not you'd have the gumption and perseverance to succeed if raised in such conditions. Jericho thinks we should read this book to our children when they're young to give them a proper perspective on life. Probably not a bad idea.

Overall, the book is well written. I'm not much of a memoir person but Walls is a great storyteller. It was a quick read without being overly simple. She illustrates her family members extremely well, especially her bohemian parents. You feel compelled to get to the end because all along you've been silently pleading that, after all the hardship, somewhere there is a happy ending.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Mustang 101

Jericho and I were in a music store this weekend buying new drumsticks. Actually, Jericho was buying new drumsticks and I was pretending I knew how to play a djembe. The salesman told us that all the kits were on sale that day (4th of July sale) so I told Jericho that we should buy me a kit and we can have matching drum sets. He responded with, "You just want everything that I have!!" Apparently now we have sibling rivalry in our marriage.

This isn't the first thing that I have coveted. This weekend we also went to the National Mustang Show at the NC State Fairgrounds. As we walked around looking at the all the beautiful cars, I told Jericho that I wanted an old one too (but I want a blue one) and he can teach me how to fix it up and then we could have matching Mustangs. Wouldn't that be fun? I'm still trying to sell him on the idea.

The Mustang show (thanks to Trevor for telling us about it) was really cool. Being only a novice when it comes to Mustang appreciation, and still having a good time, I can only imagine how much fun Jericho was having. I love having him teach me about every minute detail that differentiates each of the cars. His knowledge continues to astound me. I looked up some comparable pricing for some of the cars that were there and some were in the 100k range. Good. Gracious. America sure loves their pony car. My camera died about half-way through our visit so I didn't get all of the pictures I'd hoped for. Here are a few.