anyone check the temperature in hell lately?
So... the White Sox won the World Series. Last year, the Red Sox won the Series. Add it to all the natural disasters going on around the world this year, and I'm beginning to think that Armageddon is approaching.
So here's my theory: if the Cubs win next year, and the Buffalo Bills win the Super Bowl on a field goal kick, we're all doomed. ;)
Labels: sports
the reporters respond
The Washington Post has a pretty good system going with many of its thought-provoking articles: they offer 1-hour chats with the reporters. Of course, sometimes you just end up discovering that the reporters really didn't go very in-depth with their questioning; other times you end up finding gems of commentary offered by readers.
Here's a
link to the chat transcript.Labels: life
read it and weep
There was an interesting
article in the Washington Post today regarding young people and the madness of the real estate market... it's a bit long, as it profiles several people in their twenties and thirties and their rather, ah, creative [or crazy] efforts to afford housing in and around DC. The common thread is that they all fear that if they don't buy now, they'll be priced out forever.
My husband and I have been debating this very thing for a couple years now [basically, every time a friend of ours buys a house and we receive peer pressure to do the same]. While we debated whether or not we'd enjoy a steady diet of ramen noodles in exchange for a mortgage, we really did get priced out already. Thing is, we live in a pretty nice apartment complex now, so to go in over our heads would not only cause undue stress, but we'd end up relocating to some pretty sketchy neighborhoods... I see that as a step down, really.
[btw, yes, I am aware of interest-only mortgages, and no, we're not interested in being shell-shocked by skyrocketing payments in 3 to 5 years. My cousin is a broker and he has also advised against it.]
Some interesting tidbits from the article:
"In Maryland, for example, the median starter home price in 2001 was $117,801, according to the Maryland Association of Realtors. By June 2004, that figure had rocketed to $214,446 --
an increase of 82 percent."
"Iobst recommends a few tricks to help his young clients stay competitive. One is to
have their parents take over monthly bills for a few months so their bank accounts can stay full -- making it appear to lenders that the buyers really do have the cash on hand to seal the deal." ...LOL ... does this even warrant a comment?
bueller? ...bueller?
So I took an unexpected and unexcusable leave of absence from da blog. Chalk it up to equal parts busy-ness at work and computer avoidance at home.
What's new with me? I've been taking a watercolor class, which I love [more on that later]. My one-year anniversary is coming up this weekend, so I suppose I'm no longer a newlywed, lol. The chinchillas are still trying to escape, the guinea pig is more hermit-like than ever, and our big household purchase of the season is a Dyson vacuum... which is especially great b/c Jamey may vacuum from time to time!
Labels: life
