No Dice

Well, our prospective house is no longer a prospect... Our house still hasn't sold, the news is still bad in OC, and the builder wants to close on the new one in less than a month, which means we're out.

I still can't figure out what's going on in OC. Not much in the world has actually changed since March, but somehow housing is worth 10% less than 6 months ago? And STILL no one has decided it might be a good time to buy a house? What are they waiting for? Ours is listed at 20% less than 5 months ago, and still almost no lookers... that's a lot of money, and its still an awesome house. It don't make no sense! But apparently whining about it hasn't helped.

On the theme of whining, we're getting really, really tired of hotel/apartment living. The place we're living in has started wearing away at our sanity bit by bit, like chinese water torture. Here's a fun list of annoyances that has led us to our respective breaking points:

• Its on the 3rd floor, so we're walking up and down steps multiple times every day to come and go, and to take Ella out for walks (the funny thing is, she tries to exit on the second floor every time - she still hasn't figured out how stairs work)

• The fitted sheet over the mattress somehow doesn't stay put, so every morning I wake up with bare hotel mattress in my face.

• The "kitchenette" (pictured in a previous post) is so absurdly tiny, you can't wash the dishes without banging your head or smacking your elbows on the wall 6 inches from the sink.

• There's no couch, so we watch TV in bed, which is completely uncomfortable and gives us backaches

• The fan in the bathroom sounds like a jet-engine

• Our neighbor feels the need to slam his door as loud as possible every time he enters or leaves, and yaks on the phone with a booming arab accent every night around bedtime (the walls are too thin would be another gripe). No joke, he just slammed the door as I was typing.
  

• The gas barbeques don't work at all

• There's a huge dog across the way that has an enormous bark. And there's also a bird in the same room. Every time the dog barks - which is totally jarring if the window's open - its followed by a bird call (or more like a squeal).
  

• They're doing construction on the three rooms across the hall from us, so there's construction workers, tools, cigarettes, yelling, sawing, banging, etc., all day long that Jenna has to listen to the days she's here alone.

So... we're starting to consider finding an actual apartment somewhere around here to rent, since it looks like we're in it for longer than we ever could have imagined... The thought has also occured to us, since you can buy a 1 bedroom condo here for $50-80K, that we might just buy one and keep it later as an income property, since the monthly payment would be much less than the rents we're seeing... but we'll see. That might be a genius idea, or totally stupid, we still need to research it.

All that to say, we're not exactly in the best of spirits. We are looking forward to seeing our friends Steve and Jill from Maryland this weekend and checking out the new art museum that opens on Saturday (and beating Mike Heldt at fantasy football)