Thursday, June 28, 2007

Homeowners

Look what we get the keys to July 20th:

Exterior

Living room

Master suite 1

master suite 2

We now (almost) own 1000 square feet of real estate in Los Angeles. It has 2 master bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 11 ft ceilings with crown molding, a small but updated kitchen with the following conveniences we don't currently enjoy: microwave, dishwasher, WASHER/DRYER. It has a "quaint" (TINY) balcony, underground parking, central air/heat, a swimming pool, and an exercise room. This happened more quickly than we could have ever imagined. We're trying not to think about the fact that we just moved into this place four months ago, or that we're more than tripling our outgoing payments every month (trust me - this isn't saying much, with how little rent we currently pay). We are only thinking of Our Home. And we're thrilled.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

I feel like I've been writing this post for a year.

My friend Kim and I were talking a while ago, several months ago in fact, before this little rascal came along (her beautiful baby boy Brady - her second son), about my blogging habits. She reprimanded me during one my particularly dry spells. "You need to post more." All I could say was, "Yeah."

I forget that I actually have (some) people who read this and who might want to read more of it. I finally admitted to her that I've run out of not-so-important things to talk about, and I'm not quite sure I'm ready to talk about what I really want to talk about, and in this process of losing all of the non-important things in my life, I feel like I've lost my wit, my charm, and my grasp of sentence structure and of the English language. If I weren't traveling all over the world, I'd certainly have more time to post, but what would I post? Me standing in front of the Hollywood sign? Or, more appropriately, me arm in arm with the hookers that parole my street on Friday nights?

Well, I've finally decided to come clean. The truth is, I'm ready for my life of living for myself to be over. I'm ready to live for other things - for my relationship, and for my children. Yep. Children. One of the wonderful things gina and I have in common is our strong, overwhelming desire to become parents. We also want a dog, a house, and new cars. And we're both wanting it all right now. At the same time. We can only compare it to one of those tile puzzles where's there's only one piece missing, and you just have to figure out how to, without removing any tiles, make a picture.

Recently, the conversations about kids and houses and dogs and cars has amped up quite a bit between gina and I. And we're finding we're excited, frustrated, overwhelmed, nervous, and thrilled beyond belief. But the important thing is, we're at the same place. It has taken us so long to get in the same place, geographically and mentally, and we've arrived, and it feels indescribable. It's amazing, really.

After speaking with a mortgage broker, we've determined the next step should be trying to buy something, and start putting our money into something we own as opposed to something we're renting, albiet for a ridiculously low amount of money. We're both afraid of waiting, and we're both afraid of not waiting. But the waiting finally seems more scary than the not waiting, so we feel like that's a good sign. We're also motivated by the thought of a dishwasher! And a washer/dryer! And PARKING!

More important than any of this is that we have room for our family. At this rate, we might even get married. Weird, huh? We've come a long way from band camp.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Is it me, or is this kind of weird?

On my way to work this morning, I saw a Toyota Prius on the side of the highway, out of gas.