2002-02-22 - 6:12 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: Fleetwood Mac, "Never Going Back Again"

Good grief, where to start?

Work has been hectic this week, plus we had guests last night. I'm looking forward to the weekend.

Poindexter's interview went very well (did I mention that?) and he's fairly optimistic that he'll get an offer. So I'm hoping. He really thinks he'll like the work and the corporate environment.

We seem to have decided something though. Offer or no offer, we're going. We're going to find a place to rent for a while in the Philadelphia area and rent out this house.

Hoo boy! Wow! I'm excited!

We had a whole big go-round about the best way to go about this. Initially we had talked about renting a cheap ($500ish) studio and leaving our stuff here until we found a house to buy. But we ended up deciding that since we will probably take a while to find a house, plus we may need to renovate the one we get, we're best off renting a place and bringing all our crap with us. It could be a year or more before we can move into our own home. So we're gonna look for a place with a garage in a relatively inexpensive area (possibly near my cousin Stacey, which would be fun).

One thing I found out from our discussion: Poindexter is really looking forward to settling down. And, I realized, so am I. Awhile back when Charleston was a possibility, I got excited about moving around and trying new places. But part of me, honestly, is just tired of feeling a little like I'm in limbo. It would be really nice to get a house and stay in it. Make it ours. Neither of us has never been in the same home for longer than two years, not since we went to college. The job market for people in Poindexter's field seems quite plentiful in the Philadelphia area, so even if he has to change jobs we shouldn't have to move. Plus my family's there. It's all starting to sound really, really good.

The last week has been a really interesting process of trying to re-prioritize the house-buying thing.

The starting point here is basically this: We want a room for guests, and we need an office (since I will be working at home), which means a minimum of 3 bedrooms, 2 baths. I've already discussed the parking/garage issue. Given all that, we can't afford to live in Rittenhouse Square.

There's a nice townhouse available there now -- three bedrooms, two baths, one-car garage, only nine years old. $440,000. Sniffle.

I was holding out some hope that some other areas might have this sort of combination for a manageable amount of money. I still have this hope. So far, however, I'm not seeing any evidence of this.

There are some nice neighborhoods within center city that we can afford, but the odd thing about them is that there's nothing much to walk to. Maybe a corner tavern and a dry cleaners, but that's about it. Nothing like Rittenhouse at all, where you walk north two blocks and it's wall-to-wall shops and restaurants.

Other neighborhoods have places to walk to, but they are rather shabby so I wonder if it's a good investment. Poindexter and I are way too conservative financially to take a chance on a neighborhood. Sometimes I wish we weren't.

And frankly, if I can only walk to two stores and I'm not near the subway in these center city neighborhoods, we might as well move out to the suburbs along the train lines. Get a house within a quarter mile of a shopping center, take the train into the city when I want to walk around or eat out, and we're all set.

Plus, Poindexter says he'd really like to play loud music and loud movies without worrying about the neighbors. He says he hasn't played his music as loud as he'd like to since we moved in.

And I'd like some trees. Big ones.

So, with that in mind, we wandered around Upper Darby a bit more. We really liked what we saw. It really is a lot like North Arlington, but, as it turns out, a lot more affordable. We could probably buy a fixer-upper in a nice neighborhood and fix it up for less than we spent on our current house. That would be really, really nice.

There are spots that are close to shopping centers, it's on the trolley line, it's two miles from the first subway station (and 15 minutes into center city from there), and it has smaller, older homes with stone exteriors, with small lots, and trees. I think I could really like it here, or someplace similar.

So, we'll look. Heaven knows I like the looking part. :)

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