Living, AC out, prototype
On the way home from work last night Ali and I had one of our regular dialogues about how she hates her job and how she wishes she could quit. Normally these conversations have no resolution because she knows that unless we could eliminate the mortgage payment, we can’t swing her being home all the time. Well last night I threw out there “Well you know if we sold our house and moved into a condo/townhouse/villa thing we could probably make it happen sooner rather than later”
For awhile I have been really uptight about the negative aspects of our current living situation. The house has felt like more of a burden than blessing in the last couple years. The costs associated with living in a single family house, on nearly 3 acres of land, roughly 25 miles from work have increased dramatically over the last 2 or 3 years. Let’s list the ways.
The doubling of gas prices in the last couple years has taken a nice chunk out of our budget. Even with us carpooling in a subcompact car most days, Ali figured out that so far this year we have spent over $2500 in gasoline alone. Living closer would mean less gas expense.
The cost of insurance and taxes has increased incredibly in recent years due to the rash of hurricanes and the skyrocketing property value in the area.
The dollars spent on house related maintanance is staggering, I don’t even want to add it up. Between the pool and all the things necessary to maintain/repair our house and large parcel of land we drop a TON of dough. Throw on top of that all the TIME involved in chasing after the regular chores that have to be done with such a layout, it multiplies the problem.
We have no sidewalks, and very little in terms of retail located around us. Pretty no much what we want to do, we need to allocate at least an hour to an hour and a half just in travel time for the round trip.
That is just the short list. Of course there are things about our house that we love. When I am not busy with chores, it is a great place to just hang out, it’s comfortable for us. Our house has a lot of room and the remote surroundings lend itself to peace and quiet (most of the time) We have great neighbors and it would be painful to leave them behind. And of course if we moved somewhere else you never know what you will be moving next to which is always a crapshoot. I think the biggest thing that has kept me planted there is we just have put some much sweat equity into it both inside and out. We watched it being built from the ground up, for us to abandon it is a very difficult thing for me to think about.
Ali and I talked about how life changing it would be to live relatively close to things, have very little maintenance and dramitically lower cost of living. It would be a big change, so much more free time. But would I miss looking out my back windows and seeing the pool and huge chunk of land that is our little piece of the planet? Unfortunately I doubt I would know the degree of my remorse until after I would make the move. I may be relieved and thrilled by the removal of that financial and time burden or maybe not. I don’t know.
I did spend some time looking on realtor sites last night at various options. It’s amazing how much more I could get if I am willing to move into Lee county. For the same money that would get me about 1500 sq ft of living space in Collier, I could snag something with 2200 sq feet of space in Lee, that’s a huge difference.
Ironically after we had our conversation on the ride home last night, we were greeted with another home maintenace issue, our AC was flaking out. The fan sounded like it was chugging, like it was changing speeds like it was getting ready to fail. The problem was causing the air filter to bounce up and down in the intake vent making a hell of a racket so I removed it. I looked outside and saw the hose I had connectted to the drip outlet was pretty gunked up so I pulled that off, thinking maybe that was the issue. I poured bleach into the drain pipe as well to dissolve any algae or other living organism that could be in the pipe.
The air coming out of the vents was cold, it just came out at a much reduced rate. Since it was night time it kept the house cool enough. I spent a lot of time trying to find additional contact info for the company that installed the unit. The number I had was out of service and all attempts to find an updated number lead to dead ends. Maybe they went out of business, great.
This morning when I got up I went out to the garage to listen to the unit, it was running but now the flow out of the vents was little more than trickle, I think the blower totally died. So once I got to work I bit the bullet and called someone whom is going to come out this afternoon to look at it. For whatever reason, whenever I have someone coming out to do work for me I assume they are trying to rip me off and overcharge me somehow. Because they basically have you pinned bwteen a rock and a hard place they have no problems sticking it to you. I can hardly wait to see the final bill on this. The merry go round of house related cash expenditures never seems to end.
Mike Boogie won Big Brother last night. Of the two left he was the obvious choice. During the Q&A session with the jury and when they made their final case for winning, he was much more well spoken, much more convincing, and much more personable than Erika. She stumbled through her responses saying very little and what she did say was done very poorly. She came out of the show looking like a big loser. It really is amazing that Will and Mike rode the game to the end even though everyone knew how good they were. Their performance is a testament to how a person with a strong, compelling personality can get really far. They did a superb job of playing everyone else in the house. Now we jump right into racially divided Survivor on Thursday, should be fun!
I came up with an invention the other night in my head. I did some snooping around yesterday and could find no trace of anyone else that has made such a thing. I am going to build my prototype this weekend and see if it works. I seriously think this thing could have legs. Of course I can’t reveal it here because I don’t want it out there for the taking. I’ll reveal the results of my test next week.