Giant love

Personal photo taken at the train station in the morning, Nov. 2
after the Giants won the World Series on Nov. 1

Let me start by saying I am not a big baseball fan. Until quite recently, I did not even know who the Giants were. I am marrying a Dodger fan. But, Giant fever bit me this year.

At work, everyone was in a tizzy the last month over the Giants. During a very important dinner with some very important diplomats, most of the dinner guests spent the entire time checking their phones every two minutes to see the score of the Giants game they were "forced" to miss. On Halloween, little kids dressed up as Giants players. Everywhere you went in the area, Giants memorabilia lined storefronts, train stations, offices. Orange and black became representative of the baseball fury instead of Halloween. Target dedicated an entire isle to Giants (and Sharks) jerseys, hats, bats, balls, toys, etc. Co-workers left work at 1:30 to either attend games or make sure they were home in time to watch them on TV. Dedication at its finest.

This reminds me so much of being 18, living in Southern California, and the Lakers winning the championship for the second year in a row. Everywhere you went, Lakers. Everyone you talked to, Lakers. Everyone from Philadelphia was a sworn enemy. Anyone not sticking Lakers flags on their car was a traitor. This was a world or excitement, of anticipation, pride, innocence. It was June in 2001, and just a couple of months later, the world would change for ever. I would leave home to start college. While in Europe, I would watch the TV as New York bled and smoked. L.A. pride turned into American pride. Lakers flags were replaced with U.S. flags. The Lakers would go on to three-peat and win the championship again at the end of the season, but by that time it was getting harder for me to find the time to watch the games, harder to get as excited. Sports mania had somehow passed me by. It's never come back in full glory, but this year I witnessed it as a disinterested onlooker instead of manic fan, and I have to say, it warmed my heart to know so many people are being so fulfilled by "their" team's win.

It is wonderful to again be living in a place that gets to celebrate a victory like this. It makes me take pride in the place I live, as if by having a celebrated sports team, my choice of where I live is somehow validated. Also, seeing the faces of Giants fans lit up with pride reminds me why sports are so important in this world -- they bring folks together, give people something to hope and live for. Two nights before the midterm elections, the Giants gave everyone what they had been waiting for for so long -- a win in the world series! The morning after the elections, the Giants parade again gave the city and the fans something to either take their mind off the election results, or perhaps a reason to get out on the street and celebrate a two-fold win. Regardless of politics, the thousands of people who crowded the trains, the freeways, the parking lots, and the fast food restaurants today were excited, celebrating a victory that they'd had no part in. They were, simply put, happy. Nothing is bringing these folks down.

The power of vicarious happiness is pretty incredible. We may not be athletes ourselves, but when "our" team wins, we feel victorious. We may have best friends from all over the world, but in the final rounds, we protect "our" territory as if a conquering tyrant is threatening to take it over. We may not have ever met a pitcher, a quarterback, or a point guard, but we call these people by their first names, sometimes even by intimate nicknames, we have mental conversations with them, we scream at them from our peanut gallery seats or our couch, we project onto them heroics of Homeric stature, and somehow, mysteriously, we become better people in our own eyes when "our" team, "our" athlete, takes the win.

So, Go Giants! I am going to revel in the fact that I live in a place where people walking down the street have been smiling to themselves, saying hello to each other, laughing with strangers on the train, all because they are under the euphoria of a home team victory. Their happiness lets me forgive the belligerence on the train this morning when thousands of Giants fans crowded the commuter trains on the way to San Francisco for the Giants victory parade. Their happiness makes me happy.

In the spirit of sportsmanship, no matter what team you root for, the following sentiment expressed by a Giants fan and AT&T park usher who participated in the parade today sums up the glory of a hometown win:

"This is Christmas, New Year's, and your first-born all rolled into one. I'm on cloud nine."

City box

On September 30, 2009, M and I closed on our very first home, a midrise condo in a major metropolitan downtown area. Even as recently as June 2009, I was deeply skeptical about our ability to purchase a home in the area where we live, defined by any given statistic as one of the highest cost of living places in the United States. However, once M and I started seriously discussing our options, we realized that home ownership was in fact possible. The stars sort of aligned last year. We were able to take advantage of the First-time Home Buyer's Credit, the decrease in interest rates, and the fact that our home was pre-approved by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) which meant we could have a very low down payment (still comparable to a very reasonable down payment for homes in say, most other parts of the country, but that's a rant for a different day).

We came across our home in one of those fateful moments of chance. We went, we saw, we totally loved. We did not visit too many other places in person, but we looked at listings online for what I can only estimate to be hundreds of homes/condos for sale in a relatively wide range of zip codes within an hour's distance of where we lived at the time. But nothing came close in what that first place offered -- location completely commute-friendly, two bedrooms and two baths, and a new construction. Both M and I have this dream of purchasing a home (house-home, not condo-home) with a yard (or several acres), with lots of do-it-yourself projects that we'd take on and sweat over, but right now we are not at that place in our life. He is working full time and at the time had two years left of grad school, which means we have no time to dedicate to things like mowing lawns, raking leaves, gutting bathrooms, building sheds, and so on. These all sound dreamy for one day, but that day was not now. After many conversations, we decided to go ahead and take the plunge, and commit ourselves to the place we had first considered. That was the easy part. Then came several weeks of insanity.

You hear that there are lots of papers to sign, contracts to read, people to call. You have no idea until you go through with it. They make you feel like you are about to sign away your soul and your first born. You also start doubting yourself as you have to explain every little bank transaction in the last upteenth months. "Sign here, initial the next 43 pages, make 4 copies, fax to this number, email to this person, and meet with so-and-so four times this week." Huh!? It was crazy.

Our initial lender was nice enough but rather sloth-like, so we switched to a different bank and completely lucked out by working with a woman who I can only liken to a blond bulldozer. She promised us we'd close in thirty days, and by golly, she made it happen. August and September of 2009 are a blur comprised of nightly calculating and re-calculating of budgets, and emailing and calling our lender. I think both and M and I were incredulous at first when we realized that we could afford to buy this home, and yet once we decided to do it, the sacrifices we'd have to make in order for it to work started sinking in. There goes my boot habit, his Starbucks addiction, our movie date nights, Thai every week, our gym (I still miss you, Equinox!), and the little insignificant expenses that really add up every month. But, we hankered down, and on September 30, 2009, we became home owners!

Now, you might wonder about the title of this post. Well, "city box" is what I call our little home. You see, we have no yard, no balcony, and we are on the equivalent of the fifth floor. So, literally, we live in a box. An 1,100 square foot box. The first thing we did before even moving in was paint each room. This was the first time either M or I had lived somewhere we could paint the walls, so we went color nuts. A red kitchen, a half-red bedroom, green living room, blue bathrooms (there was a gray situation in there as well but it was recently redeemed).

One thing we learned about being home owners is that you don't have to have everything right away. So what if we lived for nine months with no window coverings in our living room windows? Our view looks out to the hills so no one can look in, and we really enjoyed the view. That is, until I nearly started breaking out in hives at the thought of looking at the black metal window frame for ONE. MORE. SECOND. So, Bed Bath and Beyond, we spent way too much money on your curtains! But, we now have lovely curtains.

So what if we (still) have tension shower rods holding up an amalgamation of shower curtains and old curtains in both bedrooms? They keep out the sun, and they are a vast improvement to the first couple of nights when, I kid you not, we blew up our air mattress and stuffed it in our bedroom window to keep out the light and noise from the train (Oh, have I not mentioned Pete and Bob yet? They will get their own post, I am sure).

So what if it took months and months of internet searching and penny saving until we finally bought our shag rug in the living room? Every day I step on it and smile, happy to have found him for half off at Macys.

So what if we searched high and low for the perfect duvet (who knew there's a word for that?!) until we finally found it for $29 in the clearance bin at Bed Bath and Beyond?

So what if for the first six months, I never stepped foot in any other department than the "HOME" department at Macy's? I didn't even realize it, and frankly, didn't miss it (I miss it now, because my boot habit is starting to rear its ugly head again).

So what if for the first ten months we only had a tiny little round bar table and no real chairs? We waited til the perfect moment and finally have our beautiful seats-8 table with high-backed chairs, from World Market.

It was an incredible feeling purchasing each of our big items, and even our little ones, like our plants.

We've also learned a whole lot. For example, hard water is a bitch. Yes, I said it, it's a bitch! But a $5 purchase of Lemi Shine from Target has literally changed my life. Or that Whirlpool service people might be in the same category as postal office or DMV workers who wish to suck your soul. Or that you should always be very careful about what you believe to be "real" hard wood flooring. It seems like all we have to do is breathe hard, and our hard wood floors dent. Or that black granite counter tops look lovely, but are a ginormous pain to maintain. Every drop shows, so M is constantly wiping them down. I call him "Cinderelly." Or that having a washer and dryer in my own home makes me happier than I could have ever imagined. Or that when you see how many tens of thousands of dollars have gone no where NEAR the principal, and are all in interest or taxes, no one is there to make it be just a bad dream. You also learn all sorts of fun acronyms like FHA, HOA, PMI.

I will be honest, it took a while for our city box to feel like home. But now it has, and I can't imagine not living there with the love of my life -- at least for the next few years, by when, God-willing, our property value will go up and we can upgrade, and start this crazy process all over again!

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