Attached Single-Family
Sometimes being an adult is scary. Not because we're all so much taller than we used to be and from way up here ants look like ants. There are drugs to control the vertigo attacks. I probably shouldn't generalize about the growth experience though. I'm told I was a special case. I went from 4'2" to 6' in the space of four days when I was 17. Very painful. Don't recommend it. I was like the re-animated Spock on the Genesis planet in Star Trek III.

And there, I just proved that even though someone might grow to be 6' tall, personality and interest-wise they can still be a 4'2" 75-pound nerd. It all comes out in the references.

The scary thing is that there is no one in an oversight position that you have to run your decisions by before you carry them out. I'm not saying it's all good or bad, but it can be scary.

For instance it's good when I want to stay up all night eating Cheetos and watching pay-per-view lesbian clown porn. There's nobody to tell me I can't. It's the next morning when you're bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, out $400 dollars from the PPV charges, your fingertips are permanently stained orange and you're all out of whiteface, that's when you think maybe a little supervision wouldn't be so bad.

My wife and I, as the sole representatives of the fused-growth-plate set in our house, have almost literal absolute power. Anything we say or do is law. All decisions are final, no returns. It's kind of awesome. Within the walls of our house, it's like I'm Jesus and she's... whatever the female version of Jesus would be. Madonna I guess. The singer I mean, not the Mother-of-God lady; what's she ever done for anybody? Or maybe Oprah.

The problem is that when your whim is rule, it's really easy to get yourself into trouble. Usually very expensive trouble. Very quickly.

For instance, the new thing down in the Newport/Irvine area down by my wife's work is to build these condominium blocks amongst the corporate campuses and office buildings. You know, just like a real city.

She drives by these every day. She actually drives by a great many things in her 15-20 hours per week commuting, but these she noticed. Between her drive time and the $3/gallon post-Katrina gas prices, she said to me one day "Man, it would be cool to live in a place like that. I could walk to work."

I say something innocuous like "Haha, yeah, tell me about it" (that's the basic gist of my normal vocal conversational usefulness, by the way. Just thought you'd like a taste.)

And then we're looking at websites. And then she's going on her lunch break to pick up pricing lists. And then we're trying to figure out what we could sell our house for (minus the realtor commission). And then we're plugging numbers into mortgage calculators and making plans to e-mail our real estate agent. You know, just to see.

In the space of three days we've gone from everything-regular-normal to about a 50/50 chance we might move by the end of the year.

Like I said: no supervision. It's scary being an adult because you no longer get to innocently wish for stuff. You absolutely know if you can do it or not. Which sucks.

Hey, anybody want to know the reason why it's 50/50 and not 100%? Who wants to guess what a 2 bedroom (plus loft) 1,200+ square foot brand-new condo in Irvine goes for. Anyone?

$687,000

Yeah, that's a little above what we've got going on right now. That's actually more than double what we paid for this 4-bedroom 2,000+ square-foot house in December of 2003.

But Irvine is in Orange County. If you want to live in "the OC", you have to pay the price. I blame that stupid TV show, The OC. It gave Orange County that retarded nickname (we used to just say "OC" or actually "Orange County"... we were such squares, man) and everyone knows that when a city or region has a nickname, that's when housing prices really get ridiculous.

Used to be in New York City you could fall right off the boat from Noplace, Europe with nothing in your pockets a rock, a length of twine and one good eatin' mouse and still were able to afford housing for you and 25 of your closest relatives in style (at least compared to the dirt-floor hovel with the thatched roof on fire you left behind in Oppressovania). Then some smart-ass started calling it "The Big Apple" and pow! A rat-infested one-room (not one bedroom, one room) shithole with no running water is $8,000/week AND you have to kill a guy whenever the landlord requests it. Argue if you want, it's all clearly spelled out in the lease.

So that's the main stumbling block, that $687,000 thing. It's also a serious downgrade in space and we'd have to get rid of our dog. And there'd be no lawn to mow or edge or weed or water...

O sweet deliverance, thy name is Condominium.

More news as events warrant.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.9


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:20 AM