Life's a Filet of Fish: This is blasphemy...this is madness!

No. THIS...IS...March.

Leonidas isn't so mad now

That means it's no longer freezing cold and we can walk around outside without parkas. On one of our walks we found that our area of Houston appears to be part of a larger scavenger hunt.

Can you find it?

Well, it never really was cold enough to constitute parkas. Comparing a winter in Houston to that of, say, Odessa of '06 is really kind of silly. The Gulf of Mexico doesn't freeze, unlike the Black Sea.

Yes...we were standing about 20m from the shore.

Anyways, some of our new friends in the ward suddenly made the plunge into home ownership, right after Alison and I started thinking about houses. There's a bit of a trick to it, since I still have another year on the lease. Regardless, we went and started looking.

The Great Expanse of 2920

I had picked out a few new developments to poke around through some internet searches. Most of them are farther north of our current location. The first development we looked at was near the soon-to-be-completed Grand Parkway, for better or for worse. We stopped into a model house, where we were greeted by a salesman who assured us that by the afternoon we could have the house we want, financed and agreed upon. I decided this wasn't the way I wanted to go about it.

Not that it wasn't nice.

They were all semi-custom houses, and we could rearrange things however we wished. Problem was that it all cost about 50% more than I was even imagining. After a year of saving. I wasn't about to get myself in all kinds of trouble.

The salesman had to go, but he asked his assistant to collect our information so he could harass us further. I recommended that we sneak away and head over to Hufsmith-Kohrville. This was a bit farther off the beaten path, but I liked it much better.

The houses in the neighborhood were built by D.R. Horton, someone I at least had heard of. The sales guy was much more laid back and understanding of our situation. Plus it helped that he offered drinks and snacks while we looked about. He gave us oodles of information about the neighborhood.

I have to admit, I was almost sold on the first street we turned in on. "Knights Quest." There was a major medieval fantasy theme going on here, with other street names like "Magic Spell," "Maidenfair," and "Arthurian Dream." With some amusement, I wondered what it would be like to tell Bill that I bought a +3 house.

-$200,000, +8 reputation

Well, now that the house-hunting bug has bitten me, it seems like everyone and their dog are relocating. Everyone's talking about how Houston's house market is one the hottest in the country. And we're kind of stuck in our current place, at least for the next little bit. However, with the time we have to wait, we're thinking that maybe having a new place built for us would be the best option. It's all a bit much to take in, but I guess we'll have to grow up sometime!

It turns out USAA offers realtor recommendations, and I sort of impulsively called in. We've now got a nice lady running housing searches around our area. Her huge list includes some 100 properties, that are all quite attractive. We just can't buy anything yet!

Of course, our current place is quite nice. Sometimes we get cool looking sunsets.

Our ward can be pretty fun too. The Cub Scouts were doing a Pinewood Derby last weekend, and even though I had no reason to be there, Alison did, so I tagged along.