I know it's been a while. I've been busy. Mrs. Geek and I have started house hunting. This is something we've been putting off for a long time in the hope that I would be able to find a job where housing is cheaper. That doesn't seem like it will come to pass, so we're now moving on to Plan B: Buying A House Where It Is Incredibly Expensive To Do So.
The process has not been without its share of marital strain. I felt like we were in some kind of impasse last week as far as housing choices are concerned. Mrs. Geek was enthusiastic about buying a real fixer-upper because of the view. I just saw that every room in the place needed some kind of work... and since I'm the handy one in our relationship, I objected. That made me very tense... but we were able to talk things out and it's been better this week. We finally found a place we both like yesterday... but were both very sad to discover that it is $50K more than we can afford.
*sigh* Well, we've seen one. There's got to be another out there somewhere.
The unfortunate part of the process is that we can't really afford a "move in ready" house in a good neighborhood. We need to rely on fixer-uppers, houses in marginal neighborhoods, "short sales" (houses being sold in a hurry to avoid foreclosure by the bank on a variable interest rate mortgage reset), and foreclosures owned directly by the bank. These last two cases are especially sad... and it seems odd to be profiting by them in some way. Then again, I didn't make people believe that interest only, 100% financed mortgages are the way to safely buy a house.
Through all of this, Mrs. Geek is going rather "Rain Man" on me. She has a marvelous memory for places and times. So, when I suggest that "you know, we should have taken pictures to keep track of all these houses", she just says "Oh no, we've seen 24 houses... 10 this week, 8 last week, and 6 the week before. I liked numbers 4 and 24 so far... you know the one we saw yesterday and the second one we saw two weeks ago Tuesday."
I've never experience this side of her before. It probably bodes ill for me in the long term -- I going to be hopeless at remembering what we did on every one of our wedding anniversaries or some such thing.
said drgeek
on 2007-07-20 at 11:08 p.m.
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