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Wedding Woes
Casadena
member
Wednesday
in Wedding Woes
SSDD day here. Still fighting a bad cough so WFH all week probably. What's up with everyone?
Re: Wednesday
If anyone has always wondered about those Halara ads on social media you see, I will say their quality is really good! They started off as athletic clothing but there’s a lot more options now. The fits are all over the board though. I purchased some clothes and one was labled long but still short on me, and one pair of pants were way tighter than the other two, same size. So I started a return. I couldn’t go on further without uploading a picture! I’m sure they wanted to see how it didn’t fit me, but I didn’t feel like putting them on again and just took a picture of the clothes laying on my couch. Lol. One of the options for the reason of return was “camel toe” LMAO. I mean yes - but putting “tight around the thigh” seemed more classy.
Anyway, the return policy was “keep it, we’ll give you a giftcard” or “we can refund it to you, but you have to pay shipping costs back to us”. So I said I’d just reorder correct sizes with the gc. I think it’s free shipping to me again on 2 items. But anyway, I think they have really good customer service AND I do love the quality of the clothing if you’ve ever been curious.
But I got a response back today, so less stressed about that! Turns out it isn't a physical key and they just need to give me the code. That should be simple enough!
I haven’t heard of the company before @CharmedPam but I’m sure I will see an ad now that we’re typing about it lol …that’s an awesome return policy!
but honestly a lot of small businesses and banks and docs and stuff don’t work late hours. Many times I have to schedule something right at 5 (and leave early) or 5:30. Has anyone tried rescheduling a dental or doctor appt lately?
There are so many reasons it's a bad idea and best to avoid unless it's a situation that literally can't wait.
I hate buying pants with a fiery passion but I really needed them.
Not much update otherwise. SFIL and MIL were at palliative care seeing SFIL's dad - they're in full ppe so freaked BK a little. We explained to her about the situation, and she was sad for SFIL
Explaining death isn't easy
We have a wine tasting dinner tonight at our favorite Italian restaurant. It should be delicious and fun. Other than that SSDD.
And I agree about the 5:00 meeting! When I was still working, I always had to take at least a half day off for drs/dentist appointments.
I did win a small battle at work, with my attorney asking me and his 2nd paralegal about those forms at the same time, both of us told him we have been using the generated reports because it's faster and easier, attorney finally admitted he didn't give a damn about the forms as long as he knew we were tracking and uploaded the generated reports. Hallelujah. I don't always like this man paralegal I'm working with, but we both work very similarly and like being efficient, so I think that's going to work out well for us.
Also, it occurred to me to check my F1 fantasty team. Um, I did pretty darn well for the first time playing from the beginning of the season and abandoning it half way through. I was in the top 7% of the global leaderboard, coming in 150,371 of 1.43 million folx! Kinda fun, but I'm not sure I'd play again. It was a long time and there was more to manage than I was really interested in.
Cheaper because we didn't have to pay for an extra night at a hotel. Plus Wednesdays are my WFH day, so coming in last night meant I've been able to work most of the day, today. Though I definitely slept in!
Overall, we're giving Cincinnati a thumps up and are planning to move there in spring. Though it wasn't as nice of a city as I originally thought. Older city...neat! Lots of historic houses/buildings. But the negative of that is there are also a lot of rundown, "meh", and industrial looking areas.
Unfortunately, we also discovered that there is no way we will be able to buy a house ahead of time. We'll have to move there first and rent, then go house hunting. Way too many quirky things with neighborhoods that were an obvious dealbreaker once we were on the street, but couldn't have told that from pictures. For example, the area of town my H is the most interested in (for me it's #2 or #3) has a LOT of narrow-ass streets that are also two-way. It's basically cars parked on both sides, leaving only enough room for one vehicle to drive down. So it's very easy to have an impasse where a car is driving down from each end, but they can't both drive down at the same time. I don't care if I have off-street parking and it's a perfect house, I'm not dealing with that at all.
In some ways, moving first before buying is easier. If my current job won't let me WFH, I and/or my H can hopefully find another one before buying a house. That would give us more options and things to consider. I also don't have to worry as much about selling my real estate here, first. It gives us a little more freedom to just leave when we are ready vs. relying on our own house selling first. But I hate moving and trying to temporarily store things with a passion, so that is going to be a big hassle and hardship for us. I really would have preferred our next house already purchased, so we could just roll right in.
I probably can't afford a super cute and good condition historic home in a nice neighborhood without upping my budget (possible). But we saw a few we absolutely loved that only needed a little, *cough* or a lot of *cough*, work.
People generally seemed nice. Way better drivers, though that is an exceedingly low bar compared to NOLA, lol.
Another positive discovery. Yeah, it's going to be a lot colder in the winter. We've already resigned ourselves to that. But I was surprised how much more comfortable "low 20s" felt there, than in NOLA. People associate humidity with heat and being too hot. But the humidity level is super high here all year long. And when it's humid and cold, it's a lot of moisture in the air that makes it feel so much colder. I think we actually might survive our first winter there, lol. I do realize it will be a lot colder in Dec./Jan. But it was a good start and I was truly surprised at how much more comfortable I was, even with my barely adequate winter clothing/coat. Which I will obviously upgrade during next year's Black Friday deals, lol.
Not very impressed with the food. Granted, we only ate at a few places. But they were all highly rated. We did try the famous Cincinnati chili, lol. Specifically at Skyline, which is one of the more famous places. Kind of what I expected. Sure, it's a really good chili. But I'm not that much of a chili person and this place didn't change my mind. I just had a bowl, but my H did it full Ohio style. Over spaghetti noodles, lol. I also tried goetta sausage. I'd never heard of it until I started scoping out Cincinnati. But it seems popular there. It's often an option for a breakfast meat and I also saw it as a pizza topping. I've never had scrapple, but it sounds similar to that. My H really liked it. I liked it okay, but will stick to bacon, lol.
I was really looking forward to going to a German restaurant, because there is a lot of that influence over there. We went to one of the most highly rated ones and "authentic" (what a joke), but it was disappointing. Their German potato salad was really sugary! Just gross. I've previously always been able to count on German potato salad being savory and vinegar-based. Not sweet AF like those fluorescent yellow Amercian potato salads. I also got pork schnitzel. Which is supposed to be a layer of pork that is hammered down and thin, with a light breading. This was a thick piece with a heavy breading, smh. Geez, I bought a mass-produced/packaged pork schnitzel at Costco last year that tasted better.
But I think they brewed their beers in-house and the 16 oz. steins were $7. Those were delicious and a bargain.
Our best food day was actually on the way home yesterday, lol. We had wanted to stop at the Brown Hotel in Louisville for a hot brown (they originated it) on our way up, but were driving through too late in the day for lunch. So we stopped on our way back out. Delicious! Definitely worth the stop. Me thinking to myself, "I really shouldn't be eating this awesome, cheesy mornay sauce by itself. It's a sauce that goes with the rest of the meal." As I was totally spooning up that mornay sauce and eating it straight when I ran out of food to eat it with, lol. We split a petite one. I also had a mint julep. Pretty good, though they never put enough mint flavor for my liking. I always think of them as being a "girly" drink. But don't be fooled. They are mostly straight bourbon with a little water and muddled sugar/mint, lol.
My H used to live in Birmingham and his favorite BBQ place is Dreamland. We stopped at the original Tuscaloosa one for dinner. I wasn't that hungry and suggested we split a half rack. He looked at me like I was crazy and we ordered a whole rack. I had two of the ribs (that was all I wanted) and he voraciously ate the rest, lol. We also brought a bottle of their sauce for home.
I was the office manager for a tree care company. It was one of my first jobs in NOLA. The 100% owner was fairly young (early 30s) and this business made a LOT of money. TBH, without him having to do much because he hired the right people (if I do say so myself, lol).
His romantic history was being in a long-term relationship. The woman pushed for marriage, even though he's always said he will never get married. And then they break up after 2-3 years because he won't marry them.
I was working there during one of those break-ups. He went WILD now that he had his freedom. He'd be out drinking with his buddies until the wee hours of the morning, even during the week. Roll into the office in the late afternoon.
One day, he started giving me this big list of urgent things he wanted me to do. It was past 4:30 and I usually left at 5:00. I was jotting it all down and, once he was done, I pointed out that since it was already 4:40 and I would need to do most of it tomorrow, what would he like me to start on first. He looked totally shocked and looked at his wristwatch. Said something like, "Oh, sorry! I got a later start on my day and didn't realize the time."
The KY side is considered the greater Cincy area. For people living near the river, they are much closer to downtown Cincy than most of the rest of Cincinnati, lol. There's even a bridge with a protected pedestrian walkway that will drop you right in downtown. You are remembering that right!
Overall, we are avoiding condos. But I saw one on the KY side that had the most amazing views. It's $210K for 2 bed/2 bath about 1300 SF, great condition. $440/month HOA fees. It's near the river and on a little bit of a hill. From the 2nd story balcony it's a 180-degree totally unobstructed view of downtown Cincy and the OH river. Terrible "bang for the buck" compared to houses. But that view was everything!
That northern KY area is my H's #1 favorite neighborhood. Though we only liked the properties we saw that were fairly near the river.
There were a lot of great and charming neighborhoods also throughout the Cincy area. I was just surprised and a bit disappointed that the rundown or "okay but I wouldn't live there" neighborhoods were a lot more than I was expecting. On the plus side, there were only a couple spots that I felt might be unsafe at night. So it at least wasn't safety concerns, just areas I didn't care for. I didn't realize how bougie I'd become! Lol.