Today is “Cyber Monday” here in Charlotte, North Carolina and across the country… and maybe even across the world?

What is “Cyber Monday”? Well, you probably already know, but I DID NOT know until my wife told me today!

It is basically a continuation from “Black Friday” and the whole huge shopping weekend. I am sure you know about “Black Friday”, the biggest (and CRAZIEST) shopping day of the year! People line up at midnight, 2AM, 4AM, etc… outside of stores to be the first to get in and buy the door buster items for Christmas gifts or just for a good deal for themselves.
This is why it is the biggest shopping day of the year.

On Thanksgiving here in Charlotte I saw people camping out at Best Buy on Independence Boulevard already! Crazy! They wanted to be the first ones in the door.

So, “Cyber Monday” is the biggest ONLINE shopping day of the year. BUT I had actually NEVER heard of it. I guess I am behind. There are all kinds of deals out there on the internet today. Up to 75% off at a lot of places!

Unfortunately one item I would love to have that is on sale is in the UK and on a UK website and it would be a great buy for only $40, but it is actually forty pounds! And now that equals about $60 and after tax and shipping it would be $80 so I won’t be able to buy it.

Charlotte NC. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte NC Real Estate.

Well, it is the end of another great Thanksgiving Day here in Charlotte North Carolina. And it was absolutely awesome weather here in Charlotte. And like I wrote about in the last post, this is an absolutely great reason to live in Charlotte, North Carolina.

I talk to people ALL THE TIME who move from places up north like New York and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and Maine and Maryland and LOVE it here in Charlotte. The main thing they love is the weather. It is so nice here.

And then there are also a lot of people I talk to who have moved to Charlotte from places further south like Florida and LOVE it here in Charlotte. They talk all FALL long about how they love this Autumn weather.

The weather was absolutely beautiful today for Thanksgiving. The big Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was on as always in the morning in New York City (who did not have weather as beautiful as we did) which is a long standing tradition on Thanksgiving morning.

I ate a lot of turkey with my family over in Farmwood in Mint Hill. We ate turkey twice and were stuffed twice. We watched a lot of football too.

My wife worked at University hospital all day in Labor and Delivery so she was delivering babies all day on Thanksgiving. There was a lot of thankful moms and dads for sure!

All in all it was a great Thanksgiving here in Charlotte.

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(This is part four of a series here on My Charlotte Home Team called “You should live in Charlotte, North Carolina”. The series is ALL ABOUT Charlotte. I will try to include a lot of things you maybe did not know about Charlotte. But of course there will be a lot of things you already know. Much of these facts and information were obtained from real estate statistics and other informative websites. Enjoy!)

Today’s post is not like the last one in this series where we talked about how much Charlotte has grown and how it compares to other major big cities across the country.

Nope, today I am just talking about how great it is to live in Charlotte North Carolina because of our amazing weather! I absolutely LOVE the weather here. And honestly, pretty much everyone loves it. People move here just for the weather. If you live in Charlotte I bet you love the weather. And if you don’t live here I bet you wish you did!

We have the best of both worlds! It is really only cold for less than three months. And for all you northerners, our definition of “cold” is probably something you would laugh at.

It still hasn’t been cold here in Charlotte up to this point! The weather has been great this fall. Today I was out in my yard enjoying this beautiful weather in a t-shirt and shorts. Where else can you do that at the very end of November? The day before Thanksgiving and it’s actually great weather.

You should definitely live here in Charlotte, North Carolina!

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My wife and I have been talking about joining a gym for the last few weeks. She has been a member of the YMCA for a long time, but a membership there is SOOOO expensive.

We are interested in even talking to personal trainers and would love to find a gym that offers that for free. Also we would like to join a gym that is open 24 hours a day and seven days a week. We think that would be a nice option to have. Also we would like to work out at a gym that is not over crowded like a lot of gyms are where you have to wait in line with tons of people to use some of the equipment.

We think we have found a good option in the new to Charlotte franchise “Snap Fitness”. Snap Fitness was rated the number ONE Health and Fitness franchise in Entrepreneur Magazine.

I see there are already at least six to seven locations in the Charlotte area. There are two near us coming soon. One is near Old Statesville Road and Prosperity Church Road in the North Charlotte area.

A great thing we like about Snap Fitness is that there are no contracts to sign! It is just month to month and you can stop at any time.

We also just saw a commercial on TV that the WSOC TV website is offering some type of promotion for 6 months free at Snap Fitness! That is definitely worth checking into!

Charlotte NC. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte NC Real Estate.

We are taking a little break today from our series on “Why you should live in Charlotte North Carolina” to talk about lunch today at Dorian’s Restaurant in Matthews North Carolina just near the Charlotte, North Carolina border. Honestly, I guess this could be another reason why you should live in Charlotte North Carolina?

I have written many times on this site about the brilliant restaurant that is Dorian’s in Matthews North Carolina. It is the epitome of the QUIET, hometown, unassuming restaurant! The people who eat here are just quiet, everyday people.

But today, I was eating lunch with five of my friends - our staff from Ridge Church plus one extra friend visiting from Raleigh North Carolina… and it was his birthday actually. It was an absolutely normal day. I was having my usual = a Reuben sandwich with their amazing homeade chips and seasoning with ranch dressing to dip in.

Toward the end of our lunch we looked out the window and saw a police car at the entrance with it’s lights flashing. Next to the police car was a man with his hands up in the air. We kept watching. Eventually the whole restaurant was watching. Eventually there were three people = two men and a woman with their hands up in the air and then they were getting handcuffed and finally getting into the back seat of the car.

None of us could leave either because by that time three or four police cars had shown up and were completely blocking the entrance and exit to Dorian’s restaurant right on Matthew-Mint Hill road.

We still don’t know what happened, but it sure made our lunch at the usually mundane Dorian’s VERY exciting!

Charlotte NC. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte NC Real Estate.

(This is part two of a series here on My Charlotte Home Team called “You should live in Charlotte, North Carolina”. The series is ALL ABOUT Charlotte. I will try to include a lot of things you maybe did not know about Charlotte. But of course there will be a lot of things you already know. Much of these facts and information were obtained from real estate statistics and other informative websites. Enjoy!)

In the last post we were talking about how BIG Charlotte, North Carolina has become in recent years. In 2008 it was the 18th largest city in the country and only growing faster and faster and bigger and bigger!

But I think you would be very surprised to know some of the cities that Charlotte has a bigger population than. (These are based on the strict/ technical, not the 2.5 million I mentioned yesterday that is in Charlotte’s “combined statistical area”.)

Of course you could probably guess the b.iggest cities in the country. Those are easy.
New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago are the biggest three cities in the United States respectively.

But Charlotte is BIGGER than cities like = Washington, D.C.! (27th largest); Boston (22nd); Atlanta, Georgia (33rd – which I always assumed was bigger than Charlotte); Miami, Florida (43rd); (Memphis, Tennessee (19th); Baltimore, Maryland (20th); Oklahoma City (31st); Denver, Colorado (24th); Seattle, Washington (25th), and TONS of other big cities that most of us probably assume are much bigger than Charlotte for whatever reason.

That probably gives you a different perspective on how big Charlotte is doesn’t it?

Charlotte NC. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte NC Real Estate.

(This is part two of a series here on My Charlotte Home Team called “You should live in Charlotte, North Carolina”. The series is ALL ABOUT Charlotte. I will try to include a lot of things you maybe did not know about Charlotte. But of course there will be a lot of things you already know. Much of these facts and information were obtained from real estate statistics and other informative websites. Enjoy!)
Charlotte is obviously the largest city in the whole state of North Carolina and the main city of Mecklenburg County. But did you know that it is the 18th largest city in the United States! In addition to that, you may not have known that Charlotte is also the biggest city on the East Coast between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Jacksonville, Florida! Is that not crazy!

Most people do not consider Charlotte to be a big, powerhouse, major city, but it definitely is! And also one of the fastest growing of all the major cities!

In 2008, Charlotte’s technical/ strict population was to 671,588. But that does not really do the size of Charlotte justice because that is just the number of people packed into a small city area.
Also last year, Charlotte’s metropolitan area had an estimated population of 1,675,495. And Charlotte’s combined statistical area (which is the number most cities will use when talking about there population) had almost 2,500,000 living here in 2008! WOW!

We are a seriously big city. We’ll be talking more about this in the next post!

Charlotte NC. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte NC Real Estate.

I am beginning a new series here on this site called “You should live in Charlotte, North Carolina”. The series will be ALL ABOUT Charlotte. I will try to include a lot of things you maybe didn’t know. But of course there will be a lot of things you already know.

For instance - if you live in Charlotte (and even if you don’t) you probably already know there is a big NFL football game here in Charlotte tonight at Bank of America Stadium. The Carolina Panthers are hosting the Miami Dolphins on prime time football at 8:20Pm Easter Time.

But what you probably did not know is that as early as 3pm the roads leading into uptown Charlotte were already sitting still from traffic. I am guessing it was everyone going early to tailgate? But who would have thought that traffic would begin to back up as early as 3pm?

I have actually been sitting in this uptown Starbucks - at Trade and Tryon (the center of Charlotte) - watching the city go by and it is like one big Panthers celebraion. Everyone is decked out in their Panthers gear.

This Carolina Panthers game is part of the cause of a major dilemma for me tonight. The Panthers play at 8:20, but so do the Carolina Tarheels - my favorite college basketball team. I cannot be asked to choose between the two!

Just DVR one of the games, you might say. I am already two steps ahead of you… and the problem is that FOUR of my wife’s TV shows are on Thursday nights and already hogging the DVR!
What is a Charlotte guy to do?

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We are in a new community group this Fall with Ridge Church. Well actually, two community groups merged to form this one we are currently in here where we all live in Charlotte North Carolina. So, I know half of the group really well and the other half we are just getting to know better over the last couple months.

One of the “new” couples live near us in Charlotte and are just a year or two older than us and got married less than one year before us. The husband was telling me about this house he used to live in when we was going to architecture school at UNCC just a few years ago and he was showing me the pictures of the house.

The house was right in Dilworth and it was this really nice, unique, nicely remodeled home. Awesome hardwood floors, three or four bedrooms, and the coolest character to this brick home. Plus, there were three of them living there as roommates and two of them were architecture students… needless to say that had done some cool, innovative, and creative stuff with the home. I saw picture after picture of all this cool stuff they did.

If you live in Dilworth, you know the phenomenon that has taken place there over the past several years. Homes there are selling for a lot of money now and they didn’t used to be worth that much! When these three guys graduated from UNCC this owner offered to sell them the house for only $187,000! They knew it was a steal but they had just graduated from college and had NO money.

So, the owner put it on the market and sold it TWO DAYS LATER for $350,000. Wow. Talk about a “steal” if they could have somehow come up with the money.

But now my friend is married to a great wife and they bought their own home together. I think everything worked out for the best.

Charlotte NC. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte NC Real Estate.

A whole lot of people around the country have their attention turned to Charlotte tonight! Well, they are at least aware of Charlotte… specifically the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. (What used to be known as UNCC is now referred to as simply “Charlotte” for the past few years. I like it.)

Because tonight Charlotte is playing the Duke Blue Devils in front of the Cameron Crazies at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Everyone around the country will be watching because this is the kick off to the college basketball season. This is part of ESPN’s 24 hours of basketball to kick off this season. It’s called the “College Hoops Tip Off Marathon.” They did something similar to this last year. They are showing consecutive basketball games at every hour throughout the 24 hour period!

This game tonight with Charlotte at Duke is one of the final games of this marathon.

Duke is ranked number 8 this season and picked only second to the Carolina Tarheels to win the ACC. Duke is expected to blow Charlotte out of the water.

Now it is actually deep into the game and Duke is winning by over 30 points! Charlotte won’t let this probable loss ruin their season though. They have a promising year ahead. They have a great Junior forward who transferred from ACC team Boston College who should really boost their play as a team.

Go Niners the rest of the year and I know they will all be hoping Carolina beats Duke at least twice later on…

Charlotte NC. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte NC Real Estate.