Stop! Thief!!

So yesterday on the way home from work I stopped at the CVS across from my apartment. I grabbed a plastic hand basket and got what I needed. I checked out and headed home. While walking up the sidewalk toward my place, I got behind a woman and her daughter walking kind of slowly. The woman glanced back at me. Then she did it again. I thought maybe she felt like I was too close, so I backed off. Then she looked AGAIN. I thought "Gee, what's your problem, lady?"

Then she looked back once more, and at my questioning glance, nodded at my arm and said "You've still got their basket." I looked down to discover that, in addition to the purse hanging in the crook of my arm, I also had a bright red CVS basket. That's right, I shoplifted a CVS shopping basket. I assume I would have noticed eventually.

And yes, I took it back.

So Tell Me Again...

...about how gay people shouldn't be allowed to get married because it will degrade the institution.

And Then Something Happened

Just a few minutes ago I wrote and then trashed a post about how nothing had happened worth blogging about. Then I decided that didn't merit its own post. I closed out and wandered around the internet for a few minutes, and lo and behold, I stumbled on this.

It seems that Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol has broken up with her boyfriend/fiance. Their baby is two months old. I feel for her--every personal, embarrassing thing she's been through in the last year has happened in public. But I sure can't say I'm surprised.

It's too bad they didn't get married (like her VP candidate mother wanted) when she got pregnant--obviously that would have solved everything and they would have lived happily ever after.

The Housing Crisis Comes Home

I used to blog on MySpace (back when people other than sex offenders and 14 year old girls still used MySpace), but I got distracted a while back and never picked it up again--until now!

Welcome to my Second Inaugural Blog. Like my MySpace blog, this one will cover politics, feminism, whatever random stuff from web catches my attention that day, and strange/annoying/hilarious things that happen in my life. I'm actually going to remain semi-anonymous this time around, so extremely identifying details will be omitted.

A couple of things (the aforementioned distractions) have happened since the last time I told the internets all about my life: I acquired a second job (probably blog about that later), and I met my Significant Other, to be known here as Mr. A.

I know that's a dumb nickname, but there's a reason. I told him I was thinking about blogging again and asked him what he wanted to be called, since, you know, he might be featured. He suggested Mr Amazing. Um, no. But he actually is amazing much of the time. His Real Life first name starts with A. And a word I might use to describe him when I'm finding him other than amazing also starts with A. So Mr A it is. I think it works.

So on to the actual post.

Mr A and I are now in our 13-16th (depending on when you start counting) month of mostly blissful coupledom. We've met each other's parents, we each have a drawer in the other's home, and we know each other's email passwords. It's officially serious. We've recently started to speak of moving in together as a "when" rather than an "if." We're not in a hurry, but it's on the radar.

Yesterday afternoon, for the first time, we took a "well, just hypothetically, what could we afford to buy together" peek at local real estate. And now I'm depressed. There are significant obstacles. Let me sum it up by pointing you to the photo at the top of this post. This is a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath bank-owned property in a desirable (read "you probably won't get shot") area of our nation's capital. It's listed at the bargain basement, housing slump price of only $629,000. We don't have $629,000.

Living in the District proper wouldn't actually be practical, since he works in suburban Virginia,

but the situation in the close-in, public transit accessible areas of NoVa isn't much better. A back of the envelope calculation suggests that if we aimed for a mortgage payment equal to the combined total of what we're both paying for housing now, we could comfortably handle a maximum mortgage of around $450,000. That thought alone is sobering. More deflating is the fact that you just really can't get much for that amount. Worse is the notion that for even a sub-optimal 10% down payment, we'd have to come up with $45,000 up front. Yeah, right.

And all that is if we could even qualify for a mortgage, what with my student loans and his current mortgage. Oh, did I forget to mention that he already owns a townhouse, and that it's way underwater?

But why don't we just plan on my moving there, you ask? It might come to that. But there's a major quality of life issue. His commute is only about 15 minutes--it's why he bought the house where he did. MY commute from his house, on the other hand, would be soul-killing if I had to do it every day. I could either spread the misery by making him get up early, take me to the train, and pick me up every night, or get a car I don't want, pay for vehicle expenses and parking, and sit in the unbearable traffic by myself every day. I suggested that maybe it could work. His response? "No, you'd bitch about it." He's right--I live where I do now PRECISELY because I find that scenario intolerable.

I guess it's a good thing we aren't in a hurry, because figuring this one out is going to take a while.