Wednesday, March 26, 2008

It's the little things

A few mornings each week I stop for a bagel and coffee at a deli on my way to work. When we moved up here and I started this ritual, I noticed two things:

- Bagels, as every transplanted New Yorker laments, really are better here. Don’t ask me why. I had always thought the complaints were a little irritating, but I understand now.

- The cashiers, without fail, put or try to put the coffee in the bag with the bagel. I’ve stopped at more than a dozen different delis in midtown, depending on my destination and route, and it’s always the same. They give me a bag with a bagel and my coffee in it. Is it a throwback to the days before the cardboard cup sleeves that keep us from burning our hands? I’ve never seen it done anyplace else except here. It annoys me because I assume, as a klutz, that I’ll do something that causes the coffee lid to come off and soak my bagel, thus ruining my breakfast.

If anyone has theories as to why this is standard practice, please share them. I’m baffled.

So I guess our big news is that we’re looking at condos and houses, since we’re planning to move anyway this summer. Whether we rent or buy depends on what we find, but there are affordable properties out there than I expected. It’d be nice to buy, since I’m tired of our nomadic lifestyle.

Much of our research for mortgages and homes, not surprisingly, has been online. I knew our site had a homes section, so it was one of my first stops. Sure enough, a whole section on home mortgages helped me learn what I needed to know.

Meanwhile, Tim wanted a site that would tell us how much homes in neighborhoods we’re interested in have sold for. He found exactly what he wanted in the Homes Web Guide.

And finally, our site’s features section has an account of our honeymoon to the U.S. Virgin Islands. Writing it made me want to go back, even though we were down there in June.

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