Category Archives: Michigan

I live in Michigan, been there all my life, generally in the Detroit or East Lansing areas.

The Wash Haus in Dearborn – Review

Poor customer service has always been a annoyance to me. Be nice and be courteous and try to deliver it with a smile. Especially in this economy, how can you afford not to be nice and courteous?

That said, the folks at the Wash Haus (in Dearborn, Michigan) have always been extra-nice and ultra-courteous. They have a laundromat, drop off laundry, dry cleaning and they do alterations. I’ve got a washer & dryer at home so I only use them for dry cleaning and repairs/alterations. And when I say repairs, I mean some stuff that I wasn’t even sure if they could fix.

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Today, I dropped some items off today to be dry cleaned and an odd shoe repair (my Five-Fingered Vibram shoe has a tear in it) and he took my number so he could call me to let me know if they could fix it (he’s called me before about repairs).

I think it’s just the way the owner talks to me, he’s just polite (maybe even respectful) and it doesn’t matter if I’m in shorts or a suit (and I think the owner has been there every time I’ve been in). And it’s not like I’m their best customer, I probably haven’t been there much more than a half-dozen times in the last year, he actually remembered that it’s been about six months since he’s seen me.

Bottom line, if you’re in the area you should give them a try! They’re at 5280 Schaefer Road on the south side (between Ford Road and Michigan Ave.) in Dearborn; before this year, the place was under different management so if you didn’t like them before, there’s new folks in charge. Check out the photo since there’s a competitor a block over; plus I thought the blue sky came out awesome for just stopping in the road and using my phone for a quick snap. I couldn’t find a web page but they do have a Facebook fan page (which has a year old price sheet).

The poor economy helps me with my Mortgage!

When I purchased my home I thought I’d stay in it around four or five years, give or take a year, next month will make eleven years! I’d never owned a home before, but interest rates were good, I had a condo that I liked and when the rent on my Southgate apartment jumped way up, it sealed this was the deal for me.

Mortgages For Dummies, 3rd Edition Eric Tyson, Ray Brown The rates on the 5-year Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARM) seemed pretty decent; I knew rates were down but I like to cover my bets, and any year after five years the mortgage could go up 2% a year. Silly me, I was worried that if the economy got better I’d have a higher mortgage rate; but I never thought I’d live here more than seven years (when it would have the opportunity to have jumped up 2% two times).

Well it’s that time of year again and my mortgage adjusted, it went down 1/8th of a percent. I’m now paying 3.125%, this is much less than my original 6.875%. While I understand the value of my home has probably dropped, at least I’m not paying a higher mortgage at the same time, the lower value means less property taxes.

Year Rate
1998 6.875%
1999 6.875%
2000 6.875%
2001 5.25% (paid $750 to lower rate*)
2002 4.25% (paid $750 to lower rate*)
2003 4.25%
2004 4.25%
2005 4.25%
2006 4.25%
2007 4.25%
2008 4.875% (first yearly adjust)
2009 3.25% (yearly adjust)
2010 3.125% (yearly adjust)

I was paying the higher rate in the beginning when I owed a lot more money, so the higher interest rate did affect me more, but at the time it was a low interest rate. I think the rates were around 7% at the time and I paid a few hundred dollars ($300-ish) to lower it 3/8ths of a percent, which was supposed to take three-and-a-half years to make that few hundred dollar fee back, but since I paid the $750 to lower the rate I lost out on that (I think it was three years to the day) but only the $30-$50 I hadn’t recovered; I still think that was a good decision, who could have predicted a crisis of 9/11 proportions would occur?

I’m living on the East side of Dearborn (Michigan, United States) and they’ve finally removed the old deserted Montgomery Wards building and finishing a new office building which might help (a tiny bit) in revitalizing this side of town…

I made pretty good money decisions on this for my first time. The one big mistake I made was at the time of purchase I did have the ability to put 20% down (I had put down 15%) and I wish I had done the 20%; yes I know that’s a lot to put down these days, but my mother always taught me to be a good saver and I knew I’d want to buy someday. Here’s why: The PMI insurance, this is the insurance that you pay for to guarantee that you won’t default (but only for the first 20%), was harder to drop than they made me believe: you had to pay for an inspection and if the value of the house had dropped it wouldn’t be 20% and it wouldn’t get waived so I was a little nervous and a little annoyed. But it was $35 a month that I was putting towards nothing (for me, at least) that could have been towards my house and I didn’t like seeing it on my statement. It was about $35 for every 5%, so if I’d put down 0%, it’d have been $140 a month (that’s $1440 each year!). But if something had happened at the time and I needed the money, that would have been gone from my reserves (but I’m still kicking myself for it).

So other than my PMI rant, the whole home owning process has gone really really well. I’m still happy with the home. It’s been very centrally located to the three different jobs (Allen Park, Redford, Hamtramck) I’ve had since I lived here.

*Surprisingly, when I paid the $750 for the ARM to adjust adjust the rate, it actually restarted the 5-years over! So when I ended up changing to the 4.25% rate, it held for the next 5 years.

Turtle swimming in the aquarium

A turtle swimming around in a aquarium at the Belle Isle Nature Center. I’m not even sure what kind of turtle it is, it was just a “regular turtle” until I really liked the photo. I’ve really been liking green in my nature photos lately.

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And of course you can click for a larger version.

I really do like the way this photo came out, he(?) was kind of fussy and wouldn’t hold still for very long, but I did get a few shots of him, this is just the best one. I’ll have to put together a few of them to share with you…/garysaid

My video of a Longnose Gar Fish

I was at the Belle Isle Nature Center the other day and got a picture of this interesting looking fish called a Longnose Gar (sometimes called Garpike, Needlenose Gar or just Gar Fish (or Lepisosteus osseus). See the wikipedia or the Animal Diversity Web entries for more information.

I got pretty lucky with this video, it was my first try and it’s as if we rehearsed the scene. I tried more than a few more times and I just couldn’t get the camera lined up (or the fish to perform properly)

If you’ve got a fast computer be sure to watch the Gar Fish in HD and be sure to click the full screen option at 720p.

See, doesn’t it looks like we planned it that way?

FYI, I shot this on my iPhone 4!

Black Friday 2009 line at Best Buy

Wow! They’re already lined up at Best Buy in Dearborn. They store doesn’t open until 5 AM!!!

Here’s a link to the HQ video.

That’s insane, I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like later on…

Sunsets in Michigan

So I was in southwest Michigan the other day and managed to catch the sunset. I snapped a few photos with my Digital Rebel XT. Actually I snapped a bunch of photos, but I picked these three to share…

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These were all taken in a little roadside park in St. Joseph, Michigan.


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I really like this one, but I wish the bushes had a bit more detail.


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I’ll have to play around with these and see if I can get a little more detail out of the trees and bushes.

Beautiful colors on Hines Drive today

Great day outside on Hines Drive today. Lots of great colors as fall approaches. Here’s a panorama I took with my iPhone (and stitched it on my iPhone with the AutoStitch Panorama app on the phone too!).


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I think it took eight or nine images to build the whole thing and it came out to 4000×506 pixels. This program works quick: I took the photos with the camera app, ran the AutoStich program, clicked the photos, it built a tiny thumbnail, I clicked the stitch button and few minutes later I’ve got the panorama on the screen!

Click to enlarge panoramic image, if it doesn’t load correctly, here’s a 1024 wide image.

Dearborn had fireworks tonight!

The City of Dearborn was supposed to have fireworks earlier this summer but it got rained out (I think that’s why it was delayed) and tonight was the make up day.

Wow! It was amazing, it was a constant barrage of fireworks for about 25 minutes. Very cool.

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I love how red this image came out!


This is a few short clips combined.
Even though the preview is small the video isn’t


This clip is short, but the video came out more focused than the other.

It was an impressive show. I won’t miss another one at Dearborn’s Ford Field if I have a choice about it.