Nostalgia

Nat and I are busy cleaning the house and going through old stuff. Nat found a card that I gave to her either right before or right after we got married, where I said that we would move to Israel one day (I'm a prophet) and that it would be difficult but we'd manage.

As some of you know Nat and I were good friend long before we ever dated, we found letters and cards that had been sent in those days. It's funny to see some of the things that were said back in those days. There was a letter were Nat said our friendship must be weird for my then girlfriend, not that she (nat) was "a threat to her" I guess she called that one wrong (me a prophet nat not so much:))

Then Nat just went through some old E-mail forward questionnaire that I had filled out about her when asked about my first impression I plead the fifth . and under did I ever have a crush on her - I don't think so but you never know. The final question was what do I ( nat) love - I said Israel..and me

The old bait and switch

There was an ad in this weeks paper for a laptop at circuit city that, after mail in rebate, cost 399.00. Nat needs a new laptop, or rather I do since mine is a work company laptop and I'm leaving the company and Nat is still working for them, be that as it may we went to the store to buy the computer.

We get their and the sales guy says they don't the computer on display, but they have it in stock. There is one similar we can look at if we like, which we do. Then they bring out the box, and tell us that they added an extra 30.00 to the price because they optimized it. Which meant they set it up and deleted all the junk programs so it starts up faster. They do this with all these laptops because their main customers are college students who just want to leave the store and boot up. Nat asked if they do that at all Circuit City's or just this one, and the guy said they do it everywhere.

I'm sure that's very nice of them, but I don't know why they don't give me the option, especially since the ad didn't mention this.

It seemed pretty shady to me, but the price was still good so we bought it.

Lift Troubles

Our lift is scheduled to come pick up our stuff on August 6th, which is perfect because our renters are coming in on the 12th.

We just found out today that our stuff will arrive in Israel in the first week of September, and we have 4 days to clear customs or we get charged a lot each day.

There are a few problems here.
1. We don't arrive in Israel till the second week of September
2. We planned on living in a temporary (free for the first month cheap for the second) apartment for the first two months. We had heard from others that it takes forever for the lifts to arrive.

I had some thoughts of rectifying the problem
1. We see if we can move our Aliyah date back to August 12th, then we get in before the lift, have the free months rent and look for an apartment.

2. See if we can rent an apartment starting when we get there. The problem here is that it would have been really nice to not pay a lot in rent for teh first two months, since I'm jobless:(

3. See if we can push back our shipping date, which will mean keeping all our stuff somewhere in our house, for the most part it won't be a problem, except for our couches. I don't know what our renters are doing about furniture, but if theyhave couches, their isn't much room for 2 sets of couches. Unless, we put it in the office.

I think that is the situation in a nutshell, hopefully it will be resolved soon. I'm pretty sure option 1. isn't going to happen.

tragic

I was making pizza this evening, and I decided to invite my grandparents, get in some nice quality time.

I don't know why, but something evil was going in my oven today, as my grandparents were coming in I noticed tons of smoke billowing out of my oven, I quickly opened up, ignored the burning and tearing going on in my eyes, and grabbed the pizzas. Which still had a few minutes left in teh oven. Sadly the pizzas were done, the bottoms was all black and nasty tasting.

Something must have dripped or caught on fire, I never had that happen to me. We ended up salvaging the night by ordering from Jerusalem pizza,

Crazy coupel of days

Life has been beyond stressful last week, we went from highs to lows and then back up high, and then reality started to sink in.

About a week and a half ago, someeone from my shul contacted me and asked if we would be interested in renting our house for a couple of years to an Israeli family that will be in Detroit for a fw years. I sai that sounded great, he told me that nothing is certain yet, they are still looking at another house.

Over Shabbos my brother in Israel was talking with the head of the program, who said that if everything checked out, they would rent our house. Their whole objective is to bring people to Israel so of course they would choose ours. I called the moving company set up a date for them to come, this whole thing started to seem real again.

On Sunday we spoke with the Israeli guy and reiterated that to us, as long as the family approved of the pictures we shouldn't have any problems. They wouldn't look elsewhere.

On Wednesday I get an Email that the family liked the house, but the Detroit contact was still looking at a different house. I called the Detroit guy to find out what was going on, and he said that he was talking with the people who contacted before me. He would have an answer for me before Shabbos. On Friday afternoon around 4:30 he called to tell me that they will rent our house.

Now reality has set in, we have about 2 and half weeks to get our stuff in order and get out of the house, the movers are coming in the beginning of August, the renters will be here in the middle around August 13th or 14th. The rent is a little lower then our monthly payments, but seemed like it was take this offer or we wouldn't be going, so we took it. Now we are trying to refinance, take out a 40 year mortgage something that will lower our payments.

Nat started getting ready for an estate sale, that will take place I believe on the first Sunday in August, and then on September 7 we get on a plane and head to Israel to start the next chapter of our lives.

Accomplishing day

I called the shipping company today that we were planning on using and they said the quote they sent us in late May early June is no longer valid, so they will send us a new, higher one. The guy on the phone said it wouldn't be much higher. Imagine my shock when I saw the price had jumped $1200 dollars!!!

I called the guy to find out what happened, and they blamed thd dollar and said since it's so low, import has been crazy busy and there arent as many lifts available.

I called a different company that sent us a quote around the same time, and their price hadn't chnged, so I booked them. We will be packing up, god willing, on August 6. (boy do I hope the renters don't fall through - that would blow big time, we should know hopefully tomorrow) Then we will move into my parents house untill we leave the good 'ol USA.

That means in theory we could have made the August flight we were originally scheduled on August 12, but there is no way we would have been ready. I just sent in out Visa application this morning.

Decisions decisions decisions

Now that we finally know what our story is, it's time to make some choices, we are going to bring the kids with us :-)

Over the past few months we've had 4 different moving companies come through, point out what we plan on taking, they somehow tally all that up and give us a quote. All along we have been steadfast in decision to bring our couches. They are the only furniture that we bought new, and they are comfortable.

Here is where the issue is, I was surprised to find out that all the movers said we should bring a 20 foot lift, other than the couches we don't have that much stuff. One of the movers said that the couches are so big that we couldn't take anything smaller and fit it all in. Nat wondered if it would make sense to leave the couches, and then the lift will be much smaller and we can take the money and buy couches in Israel, and hopefully we will save a lot of money. We may end up selling one of the pieces ( we have a 3-2-1 setup) because I've been told that Israeli apt. may be smaller then my house.

I talked to one of the moving companies today and they didn't think it would make that much of a difference, but they will send a new quote.

I'm back

After a long break, I again have things to say, so I'm back :)

After a summer of not knowing if we are staying or going, it looks like we are really going to make עליה. I will fill you in with the details once they become final.

Anyways after a summer of saying that he wanted to go to ישראל Jonah decided that he loves Aiden more and therefore wants to stay in Detroit :( we told him that Aiden also wants to move, and he will make new friends and go to a new school, and he can still be friends with Aiden and his other Detroit friends.

Tonight, Nat asked him what he wanted to do in Israel, and the first thing he said was to daven at the כותל , then he said meeting new friends, and then he said going to his new school.

I think he'll be OK

R.I.P. XBOX

This evening I sat down to play some baseball on my beloved XBOX after destroying the San Diego Padres, I heard something like a loud clap. I got up to shut off the XBOX, and I noticed that she shut herself off. Then I saw the smoke billowing out. I don't know what happened, the TV was still working, they were plugged into the same surge protector, and there wasn't any fire.

In the past years I've spent many an hour with the XBOX, I've had multiple versions of Madden, although I did leave the madden franchise for one season to play ESPN football. I won many super bowls and drafted and molded many young players into star players. I had a couple of NBA Live seasons, MLB 2K7, halo 1 and 2, Two Grand theft autos, some war games and random other games.

I know XBOX was looking forward to moving to Israel with us, the challenge of playing on a different continent, but she will be buried here in Detroit, and live on in my memory.

Here's an old favorite post from a few years back

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Jonah vs. XBOX

Yesrday as we moved into a differnt house in White Oak, Natalie noticed that I held teh XBOX with more care then Jonah. I informed her (jokingly ) of ocurse, that we'll probaly have more children, but if teh XBOX broke, I doubted shes go get me another one. She then threatened to toss the game system ouyt teh window. But it got me thinking, about Jonah vs the XBOX.
while Jonah wakes me up in the middle of the night to play games
the XBOX keeps me up late at night playing games
Jonah is much cuter then the XBOX and will find me a nice old age home one day
XBOX will keep me comapny in the home.
Jonah is the product of the love between me and my wife
XBOX is the product of the close friendship between me and a bunch of friends from college
In the end Jonah will win out, and the XBOX will get replaced by ayounger prettier model, but for now, I can handle this twisted triangle



of course it hasn't all been a smooth ride

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Trouble with the XBOX

My XBOX is very important to me, not as important as my wife and child, but its in the top 5. This week she's especially important because without Nat and Jonah, things tend to get lonely, and XBOX gives me hours of enjoyment. Lately I have been playing NBA Live '05, it’s my third season, and I still haven’t won a championship. Last night I was playing a good game, I came back from down 10 points to force OT, and with about a minute left, and my team up a few points, the thing froze up, and relayed a message that there is an error or a scratch on the CD. This isn't the first time it's happened, so I wiped of the game, and went to sleep. This evening, I was playing again, and dominating this game, I was up 20 or so in the 4th quarter and the same thing. It's really frustrating because it doesn’t save the game, so basically everything that I did, both in terms of stats and my life was wasted. I have three options; I can buy another NBA Live '05 or just keep playing and hope it doesn’t happen. My last option is the one I'm going with tonight, I'm switching to ESPN 2K5 football. I tried playing the other day, but I just wasn't into it yet. Maybe once training camps really get started it’ll feel more right, but for now I'm desperate, so I'm gonna give it a shot.