Our New Addition....

Since we bought our house, Noah has hinted at how much fun it would be to have a dog. Little did I know that he had already found the perfect addition for our family. One of his guitar student's mom owns a pet store and also raised a bunch of dogs. They had a puppy German Shepherd that Noah fell in love with...and consequently brought home pictures of her, to win me over.

Her name is Bela and she is now an 8 month old puppy. She is extremely well behaved, can sit, come, lay down and shake. She is a very good looking dog, and I call her the "Cindy Crawford" of dogs due to her beauty mark on her cheek. :)

Luckily for us, Don Quixote and Batman "get along with" her. More specifically, Batman and Bela ignore each other. However, Donny and Bela have been caught playing and cuddling together.

The picture below is Donny and Bela meeting for the first time.

How the world rips us off...

So, Hillary and I are now homeowners. We are for sure, super-excited. Let me tell you, it is so nice to have a place that is yours (or at least sort of yours-after all, it is only yours after 30 years....). We really love it. I finally have a garage parking space, which means tomorrow morning, while all of my friends are scraping off their windshields, I will just start and drive my car to my destination. Garages really are a great invention.
With the new home comes all of the extras. Yeah, trips to Menard's, Home Depot, Target, etc. can be expensive, but lets face it, it is really fun to have new stuff for new rooms in a new place. Hillary and I even bought a new TV for our new basement. I have always wanted a big screen TV. We settled on a 50 inch flatscreen for our basement. After 2 weeks, I can say I am definitely happy.
The fact is, when you purchase a TV like that, the only reason you are doing it is so you can get a bigger, BETTER picture for stuff like movies, shows, and SPORTS. With the world we live in today, TV and sports have teamed together to make it nearly impossible to follow your favorite teams without paying for cable television. On top of that, you are nearly forced into cable if you want to take advantage of all of the "HD" options your new TV comes with. So, after living without cable for almost 2 years, Hillary and I broke down.
When dealing with Comcast (you pretty much have to in our area, you have a choice between Comcast and At&T-while I like At&T's cell phone service and internet, they only have the option of a dish for TV in our area and I just dont want to deal with that), you have to jump through hoops, many many hoops. Everytime you call and ask someone about pricing, they tell you something different. It could be 30 per month, but it goes up after 6 months, or it could be 55 a month but you get this other thing, etc. Then the installation fees, that is what gets you. You see, when I go to a restaurant and order one of the "specials," I want to know exactly what the price is. I dont care if the lobster dinner is 30 dollars or 70 dollars, but I want to know before I order. Same with cable TV. When Comcast says it is 30 per month (goes up to 60 per month after 6 months) plus 25 for the installation, my first bill should be around 55-60 dollars. Sure, lets be safe and add an extra 10 dollars for taxes and whatever, so it makes it 70 per month for the first bill.
We received our first bill: $121.00!!!!!
I was really pissed off. They charged us for everything they said originally, and added 9 bucks for the "HD receiver," plus 6 for the regular box, per month.....Then they charged us 27 bucks for the "activation fee" for the HD box, and 18 bucks for the "activation" for the regular box. Activation/installation? Same thing in my book. Plus there was a "cable service fee" or 7 dollars.
I know, companies can charge wahtever they want. However, I tried to order this online, only to find myself e-chatting with a comcast specialist. I asked him over and over, "Are there any extra fees or charges?" He said no, so I went ahead with it. Because I dont trust these people, I saved the transcript and printed it out. Comcast's website even had an option to print it out from their website-I did, it even listed the exact time of what was said between both parties. I printed it out along with my own that I imported into word just to be safe.
When I got my bill, I called the company to dispute the extra charges. After talking to 3 different reps, being hung up on once because of bad reception or something, I asked to speak to a supervisor. I debated with the rep for quite some time, finally he made me wait 15 minutes to speak with a rep. Finally I got to talk to the rep. She basically told me she couldnt do anything without the transcript in front of her. I offered to email it to her. She said she didnt have email at her office. NO EMAIL AT THE COMCAST OFFICE? THEY ARE THE *&&^*^$ INTERNET COMPANY, BUT THEY DONT HAVE EMAIL? BBBBSSSSS!!!!!
I got even more frustrated, was transferred to another department, etc. My evening had gone south an hour ago. Hillary and I decided it was too stressful to cook, so we ordered a pizza from one of our favorite places, Barnaby's.
I finally gave up on the Comcast thing. Hillary made a good point: they werent going to do anything with us on the phone, so we were just going to go to the Comcast office the following day with transcript in hand. I started to calm down, and we drove to pick up the pizza.
We walked into Barnaby's: really cool place---dark, dim lighting....a ton of booths with old tables and rotting woodwork. Every other table was packed with families, groups of friends, etc. and at least two pizzas and 2-4 pitchers of beer and/or pop, complete with those cool old plastic glasses that are ripply red plastic that make your coke look and taste really good.... It looked and smelled great. The place is a true old fashioned pizza parlour.
We got in line for pick up. When we finally go our pizza, the lady asked, "is this to go?" I said "yes," and she charged us 30 cents. I asked her what for, she said "for the pizza box." AFTER BEING RIPPED OFF BY COMCAST I WAS BEING CHARGED FOR A PIZZA BOX? I was really mad. Hillary didnt want to make a scene. I made a few smart ass comments to the clerk, and we let with our pizza, costing us 30 cents more than expected.
The moral of the story (should it even be called a moral?) is that businesses naturally have costs that realistically have to be passed on to the consumer. What these businesses dont seem to realize is that they are really upsetting their customers by tacking on these prices to what they originally declare "the official price." I dont mind paying a little extra, but I get really agitated when they tell me it costs ______ and it ends up costing an extra 30-50 bucks....or cents. I will pay the price for the goods, just tell me what it is.......................without playing games please..........................

WE ARE HOMEOWNERS!!!

We are excited to announce that we now own a home (or at least paying back the bank for the next 30 years) in Niles, IL! It is a 3 bedroom / 2 bathroom brick ranch. Look for pictures of our move in the near future.

We celebrated our closing with a steak dinner and martini's.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank both sets of parents. Without their support, help, and love we wouldn't be where we are today. Every night we realize how lucky we are to have such great families, wonderful jobs, each other, and now, a new home!

Hillary and Noah with our key!

Sharing some fun for the holidays

So, we have discovered over the past year that we are pretty bad bloggers. We have posted what, only about 4 posts in a year? Well, I guess it can be a new year's resolution to post more regularly.

Anyway, we wanted to share this with all of you. As you know, we don't have any kids (yet), but are still the proud owners of two lovely cats with some wacky personalities. Batman (who is a female) is the skittish, shy one who still finds a way to come out and say hello. On her adventurous days she plays fetch, only with bottle caps, which is more of a trick than our other cat, Don Quixote will ever be able to do.

However, Don Quixote is probably the most social cat I have ever encountered. He is such a nice cat, and really active. We still can't understand how he can weigh so much (he weighs 18 lbs, which is as much as our 1-year old neice Adelaide!) and still be so active. We really don't feed him that much (even less than the recommended by our vet), but he still seems to look the same. Still, he seems pretty healthy, and brings joy to our lives.

One of my favorite students (Molly) gave me this ceramic bird-whistle for the holidays at school today. I took it home and filled it with water-it really sounds like a bird!!! We are not sure here if Don Quixote is trying to make-out with the bird or kill the bird! Either way, check out this hilarious video of Don Quixote with the bird-whistle!!!


PS- Mr. and Mrs. Schroer as well as our cats Don Quixote and Batman say....
"Thank you Molly, for the wonderful gift!!!!"

-Noah Schroer

Election Night...History in the making

When I was in fourth grade, my teacher asked us to interview our parents about historical events that our parents remembered vividly. Events that burned into their memory, where they were and what they were doing at those points in time. Both could recall where they were when JFK was killed. I remember saying, "I can't image what events would happen that would be so significant in my lifetime". Discussing this tonight, Noah and I recalled where each of us were on 9/11. Now, we have a positive historic event to tell our future nieces, nephews and kids about. It is so exciting to see another political page turned in our history. We can say that we watched the votes roll in, while enjoying a bottle of wine, celebrating an African American as our 44th President!!! How exciting to be from the city where the rally for Obama is happening!

Rockin' With the Ridgeland Ramblers

Last night Noah's band the Ridgeland Ramblers had another gig at the Onion Pub and Grill in Lake Barrington. My parents came and brought my neighbors Dean and Debbie. We were all able to eat dinner together before the show and it was fun to have people to hang out with. Theresa and her husband also came with a group, and we were later joined by Noah's biggest fans...mom and dad!

For those of you who have yet to hear them perform, here is a little background.
Steve plays lead guitar and sings, Mark plays pedal steel guitar, Mike plays drums and Noah plays the bass.

Noah was the last one to join the group and found them through an ad on Craigslist. They have a blast playing together and sound great!

The bar they played at last night also loves them and at the end of the evening they were asked to play the first Saturday of every month. Yay for consistant gigs!

Happy New Year!

Last night we rang in the New Year with Jonah and Sarah at our apartment. We drank wine, ate great food and played Life, Scrabble and Spongebob Ants in the Pants!

Just before we served our steak dinner we took our guests over to see a pretty spectacular sight. Someone built a snowman around the post on the 10th hole of Peter Jans golf course.

While walking home we saw another snowman and decided to honor the end of the Bear's Football season with a tribute to Brian Urlacher:

Dinner was fabulous and then we went outside to bang pots and pans at midnight. It was a wonderful evening and we hope you enjoy the pictures and video as much as we enjoyed making them!