Thursday, February 1, 2007
A Place To Call Home
I'm sure I'm giving you a headache (or at least causing mild confusion) by constantly changing my header photo, but I just can't decide on one I like enough to give such a prominent position to. I'll try to leave it alone for a while (but probably won't, let's just be honest).This one was taken in a black and white photography class almost 2 years ago when I was at Loyola University Chicago. I snapped it in the late morning as I was heading out the door of my flat on the way to class (how I miss those days of leaving the house at 9 or 10 o'clock - what a luxury!). This was the second Chicago flat that Huz and I lived in; in fact, it was just 2 buildings down the block from the first one we moved to. Why the move?
Apparently all of our parties we throw are too loud and unruly.
Not really. It was because after just 2 years of us living there the woman who owned the building up and died. When the estate sold the new owner decided to convert the apartments to over-priced condos, effectively putting us out onto the street because there was no way in hell we were about to pay $400,000 for our 2 bedroom apartment that was being converted into a 3 bedroom condo (Um, New Owner Man? Having a dining room is kind of a good thing, buddy. Don't turn it into a bedroom just so you can get rich, thanks. Now goodbye.).
So we had to move. Luckily we found a great apartment just down the block and moved down 3 flights of stairs and back up 3 flights of stairs. Good times. Then? After a year or so? The owners of our new apartment sold and the new owner decided to convert to...you guessed it...condos. At least we were going to be moving anyway this time because it was just before Huz's first year at Vanderbilt.
Now here we are a year and a half later and still renting, albeit a house this time. Now some of you are probably wondering why we made the decision to buy a house so quickly (I know some of my own friends here wonder that) and I'm sure some of you are curious as to what prompted it. I'll tell you. We are getting kicked out of our home again. AGAIN!
The small university that we rent our house from is expanding and since we've moved here they have purchased every house on our block with plans to tear them down (ours will be the first to go as we're right next to their property line) to build more parking lots and buildings. Hence our frustration and decision to finally bite the bullet, be grown ups, and buy a freaking house. Plus? It's really not a bad idea down here where houses are so affordable. It's only going to cost us $100 more per month to own, rather than rent. That makes pretty good investment sense to me! We're scheduled to close on the house on February 23rd, so keep your fingers crossed that all goes well until then and that this will be the last move for us for a while (at least until Huz gets his Ph.D. and then gets offered a kick ass teaching position). |
