House-hunting

I have been doing a lot of house-hunting. And maybe some soul-searching. Mostly the former, but the latter sneaks in as I'm driving around at night looking at neighborhoods and streets and jotting down "For Sale" sign information on the back of envelopes in my car.

Anybody want to buy drugs in Jersey City in the middle of the night? I can tell you the best corners for that.

Not to imply that Jersey City is rough. It's impressively gentrified since I moved here three years ago. In fact, I feel like Laura Ingalls Wilder in the Little House books. I remember her describing one day when her father heard someone else chopping wood in the Big Woods, so he knew it was time to move further west because civilization was encrouching.

When I bought this house, it was the frontier. They'll be putting in Starbucks here soon.

My work here is done.

I don't have to move immediately, and I have ideas about places I'd like to go. I found a place I like, just a leetle tiny house for tiny money, which I was thinking of buying to live in for the moment and then rent out when I find another house I might like better. It's not just that as part of my committment-phobia a move a lot (though that is true)-- It's that to defer taxes, I have to spend as much money as I am selling this house for. So I may end up buying two properies in a bad part of town that looks like it wants to improve itself. And then I'll sit and wait for Starbucks to find me there.

Of course I still have my house in Vermont. And though I can't live up there full time without starting to type "All Work And No Play Makes Cupcake A Dull Girl" over and over again, it's nice to know I won't be, technically, homeless, even after I've sold my house in Jersey City.

So that's why I haven't been posting much. I've been preoccupied with real estate and strongly doubt any of my five readers are interested in my comparing the various benefits of Jersey City's diverse neighborhoods.

But I miss hearing from people, so feel free to drop me a line. Perhaps it will inspire me to write something nice.