Yay! I just finished writing two essays - one for English class and another one for History class.

As long as I can remember I was always complaining when I had to compose an essay. I think my mom got totally used to it back in the days. The task of formal writing is somehow always daunting. Interesting introduction, meaningful ending, persuasive body… Brrr… Not to mislead you - I am good at writing formal essays; it’s the knowledge of a lengthy creative process that makes me whine. On the other hand, I kind of enjoy it - forcing a brain to exercise is always rewarding.

Writing in English is very challenging though. Thesaurus at www.dictionary.com is my dear friend. Yesterday to my everlasting amusement I’ve noticed the definite improvement in my ESL skills. The thing is that for English 2150 class I had to write a “How To” essay. Professor Kyd suggested describing a cooking process as one of the alternatives. To make my life easier I’ve decided to take the recipe from my older Lagman post. Well, I had to rewrite some of the stuff - it just looks so cumbersome and… I don’t know… Russian?

I’m sure that this post is far from perfect as well, but still somewhat better in terms of language. I’ve decided not to fix any of the previous posts, however, and let them stay the way they are for historical purposes.

After years of waiting we decided that this is the right time for us to buy something of our own. We’ve been actively occupied by the search during the past several months. Have given a couple of offers here and there, but nothing worked out quite yet.

I just wanted to leave a couple of words on the blog, since this is the thing that is on my mind most of the time these days. Currently we have found something that we like, but there are certain issues that we have to deal with before we can move forward. The problem is that we need some help from the management company to accomplish anything, and we all know how much those people are willing to help. Either way, right now we can do nothing, but sit and wait, and I’m really bad at that.

A couple of words on the state of buying at the moment: even though it seems that the prices are crashing down all over the country they keep growing in NYC. It definitely slowed down lately, no question about it. But if you’re buying a place for yourself and plan to stay there for 5 or more years it makes all the sense to buy.

We’re doing it to raise our comfort of living (bigger, nicer place), save money on not paying rent and getting tax breaks because of the mortgage payments (makes a lot of sense if you have a high salary and can afford to buy something) and to basically make sure that we have money for down-payment for a nice house when Alena finishes school - buying something and paying it off monthly forces you to manage your finances better.

There was a interesting article published in New York Times recently that paints a good picture of the current state of the market and the minds of New Yorkers. Everything that I’ve seen in the past several months seems to confirm that it’s accurate.

A couple of quotes from the article:

Since the new year began, a burst of activity has broken out in Manhattan and several Brooklyn neighborhoods as New Yorkers frenetically hunt for co-ops, condominiums and town houses, sending prices higher despite sluggish sales in many other cities.
…
But now, the three largest real estate companies in the city agree: for January, at least, both prices and the number of signed contracts rose in double-digit percentages compared with the same month in 2006.

We decided to try to load the video into Youtube and post it on our blog for those who wasn’t able to make it to our wedding. Youtube rejected it because it was “too long”, but I was able to upload it to Google without any problems. Of course the quality went down, because I tried to compress it as much as possible, but it’s better then nothing. My favorite part is the way Alena was crying throughout the whole thing.

Update: Trying to upload it to MSN made the quality much better then that of a Google. Who would’ve thought?

Spent a whole night playing Rayman on Wii today with a lot of friends. At one point Maruk started making videos with his phone. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. The best one is of Ignat doing a dance.

P.S. First video post of ours, so excuse the sound quality. You have to make it quite loud to actually hear the background sounds.

Today I ended up with a bit of free time towards the end of the day, so I decided to try something new with the theme. I ended up liking it, so I have redone the whole thing. Basically the same design, new color scheme. I was getting really tired of the old thin stripes … so I guess I made new ones.

Would love to hear your opinions on the new thing vs. the old thing, or just the new thing.

Today we had a lot of fun playing Eldar’s new toy - Nintendo Wii. I actually wanted to try it out after learning about it from different sources - magazines, personal blogs and of course our friends. In fact, Maruks bought it a couple of weeks ago and were inviting us over to play, but we haven’t had a chance to visit them yet.

I like the whole concept of this game console - characters in the game imitate your movements. Well, kind of. A player has to hold a very sensitive remote control in one hand, so hand movements are reflected pretty accurately; other parts of the body are involved too, but the intensity of the movements depends on a game. You don’t really have to run, or jump, or do other silly stuff in order to score high. Unless, of course, you can’t help it!

I couldn’t quite imagine what it was like to play using Wii’s remote control before I tried it. And like the majority of the people who played, I must confess that muscles in my right hand feel pretty sore ( , who’s not working out?).

Looking at other people playing is fun too. The face expressions are sometimes hilarious! I don’t think that Wii is a valid substitute for a gym, but you certainly can burn some calories while enjoying this alternative gaming style.

I’m going crazy, yet again (it’s one of my common moods it seems). We are currently in a frenzied search of an apartment to buy, however we’re having no luck.

This weekend alone we have seen 10 apartments, and each one has something wrong with it. Some have too high of a maintenance (over $700), some are in horrible condition with walls which are barely standing, some cost way to much in respect to everything around them and one place which looked good (even though not in the best possible location) is demanding 20% down payment, and we only have 10. Haven’t been a problem at any other place, but as soon as we find something worth consideration it becomes an issue.

Our lease will run in less then 2 months, and if we extend it we get locked in for another year. We are really tired of our current place - management is horrible and is impossible to deal with, the apartment is getting too small for our needs and our neighbor keeps driving us crazy with his “your computer fan is too loud, I can’t sleep” deal.

Plus it seems we’ve managed to get my parents into the same “going crazy” state with the whole apartment search. I really hope we all can find something. Soon. Very. My mental health is in danger of going … mental. Yeah. That’s right.