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Reservations for Dining in Midtown Sacramento for Friday Night
Elizabeth Weintraub in Midtown, Sacramento
The only time I ever watch trashy daytime TV is when I’m getting a manicure over at Galaxy Nails in Land Park. Can’t help it. It’s right there in front of you, and I admit to getting sucked in to view some of the most ridiculous stuff I’ve ever witnessed in my life. Don’t get me started on Dr. Oz, either. The show yesterday was Steve Harvey promoting crowdsourcing dating, and some woman who claimed to have her life booked out 4 months in advance, which means she has no time to date.
I cannot in a million years imagine booking my schedule so heavily that I couldn’t turn around for 4 months without bumping into my next appointment. That seems insane. But that’s how people are today. As I drove past Crocker Elementary School on Riverside, a person could not help but notice the number of parents standing on the sidewalk and meandering about the grounds with their children.
No comparison to my past — just saying if my parents had come to my grade school to pick me up, that would have been because President Eisenhower had just blown up the world and we were in the middle of a nuclear holocaust.
You can’t even get a dinner reservation on a Friday night at a decent restaurant in Midtown Sacramento if you suddenly decide on a whim, like I generally do, that an evening out dining would be a spectacular way to spend some quality time with your husband. It’s difficult to go dining in Midtown because most of the top spots require dinner reservations a week in advance. Now, one can go to Ella Dining Room and Bar and sit at the bar without a reservation or dine outside, but it’s too cold outside.
Through Open Table, I was lucky to snatch a reservation at the Waterboy. Every other restaurant I desired for dining in Midtown was booked solid through my preferred dining hours, and by all rights, Waterboy should have been as well. It was a fluke.
I remember the old adage about living in California: the only place where people stand in line at midnight at 7-11.
Still, I wouldn’t trade living in California and selling Sacramento real estate for anything. Well, maybe a house on the ocean in Maui — when I make my next $5 million.
Did Karma Close This Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale?
Do you believe in karma? You might be surprised. My husband and I had dinner last night at one of our favorite restaurants in Midtown Sacramento: The Waterboy. When the bill arrived, my husband whipped out a gift certificate. Who sent us that? Turns out it was a gift from a client. A husband and wife for whom I had done a Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale. They were a couple another Sacramento real estate agent might refer to as high maintenance. Agents call clients “high maintenance” if clients behave outside the norm or require more work, reassurance, or explanations than other clients.
I call it business. I’ve been around the block.
This couple had asked me to come into the office on a Saturday to talk with them. I ordinarily do not consult with clients about a short sale because I am not a lawyer. I don’t really give in-office consultations nor do I charge an hourly fee. I get paid on commission. Believe it or not, I do most of my real estate business via phone and email. Very little of it is in person. I am not high pressure nor would I ever try to force a seller into doing a short sale. Sellers typically need to come to that decision on their own, but I’m happy to help walk them through the pros and cons of their particular situation on the phone.
Although I do sell real estate on the weekends, I don’t do it in person. I don’t get dressed up, put on makeup and drive down to the office. I paid that price years ago, and I don’t do it today. If a client wants to meet with me in person, we meet during the week in daylight hours, like any other business person. It’s a misnomer that an agent must be on call 24 / 7. I am not ashamed to say that I have over $20 million in closed and pending sales so far this year, so if I’m telling you that I don’t have to go into the office on the weekends to be successful, it’s the truth.
Yet, this client desperately needed to meet on a Saturday. She and her husband lived out of the area and they could not meet any other day in Sacramento. So, I made an exception for them. It wasn’t a big transaction, either. It was a small short sale in Antelope. Around $125,000. I might have grumbled a little to my husband, but I went. You know why? Because these people needed my expertise. Who else would do a Bank of America Cooperative short sale for them? There aren’t very many short sale agents in Sacramento who know how to do this kind of transaction; in fact, I don’t know of any. I specialize in Cooperative short sales. They needed help. They were also really nice people. I like working with nice people.
Every client is different. They don’t always fit the mold we agents set. Some need a little bit more help and explanations than other clients. I certainly wasn’t expecting a gift certificate from them to The Waterboy, though. That was a surprise. See, karma has a way of coming around.
