Badass Adventures in Real Estate

Today Sarah and I went hunting for a new house. First of all, let me give a shout out to our agent, Georgia, who was friendly and extremely helpful and made the whole thing a blast, even when we were viewing the lousy houses. And oh, Lord, there were some lousy houses.

House Number One: This house came with a bad first impression, in the form of a shared driveway that was narrow and had little room to park in. I'm still not sure how one house gets two cars parked without causing a turf war. But the rest of the house: gorgeous. A beautiful kitchen, tons of space in the bedrooms, a large living space downstairs, and a big old yard that Lina could run around like a maniac in (once we fenced it in). Sadly, this house was the highlight of our day.

House Number Two: Corgi house! Whoever lived here looked like they were actively stalking Lina: just a ton of Corgi portraits, statues and other furnishings. Unfortunately the actual Corgi wasn't present, just a cat I never saw because it bolted immediately. Also a deck that looked like it was going to fall apart, a driveway that mandates a parking brake, a door that leads to empty air, and half a fence. I admire whoever lives there (excellent taste in dogs and reading material), but I'm not going to.

House Number Three: A horticulturist's dream! I'm not kidding about that: there were plants growing in every room in the house, and the backyard looked like an enchanted fairy forest. Great if you like gardening, but I want a yard where Lina can run around like a psychopath, not something I have to pay someone to keep trimmed. To its credit, the house did have good bathrooms and a spacious (if not modern) kitchen.

House Number Four: This is where we really started running into trouble. And tenants. Someone had called the girl living at this house and told her our walkthrough was cancelled, and she ended up spending five minutes throwing things in one of her bedrooms before she left for her job at the local barbecue hut. The house was decorated in Rue Morgue Red carpeting and featured all the amenities you'd expect to find in a college dorm. The outside included a messy backyard, house-killing trees, and a spider the size of God.

I think he was the landlord.

House Number Five: This one started off well with a covered driveway with ample space. The rest of the exterior was a bit overgrown and crumbly, but that didn't seem like a big deal once we got inside. A beautiful kitchen and living room, with a furnace and a cast-iron stove/fireplace. I also liked seeing ceiling fans that weren't threatening to crack my skull open. Aside from the yard and some slightly undersized bedrooms, it was a fine house, and a nice palate cleanser for House Number Four. Which was good, because next was...

House Number Six: Or as Sarah keeps calling it, the meth lab. Have you ever seen a house where the sidewalk looked decrepit? Because that was our first sign of danger. The second sign was the lack of a For Sale sign. The third was the fact that the door was ajar, and Georgia had to yell inside for the tenant to put his shirt back on. There was a door with what looked like knife scratches in. There was a shattered ping-pong table that didn't come with the house, and a massive hole in the ceiling right above it. And the asking price was the same as what House Number One was asking. Georgia shooed us out of there before we saw the second story.

That was supposed to be our last house for the day, but Georgia had seen a listing for a house that had been on the market for a long time, and she was curious as to why. So we drove out to...

The Bonus Mystery House: Which is called that because we never saw the inside of it. Georgia recognized it as soon as she saw it and advised us not to go inside. We understood why as soon as we saw the fence in the back. Still, morbid curiosity prodded us to carry on; but the driveway was narrow, hilly, and positioned right off a main road, and we didn't have the heart to make Georgia drive down it (and possibly get us all killed in a T-bone accident). She ended up showing us the local Adam's Ribs restaurant instead, which was probably for the best.

So! No real luck today, although House Number One is going to stay on the list for now. But we'll keep looking, and we've got every confidence that Georgia will have us sorted out; if not by Christmas, then shortly after. We're not in any rush, after all. Neither is Lina.

Hell, she'll wait forever if we let her stay in that corner.

The Irene Retrospective

So I'm still alive! I'm sure you were all extremely worried.

Sarah and I took Hurricane Irene seriously from the get go: shopping for non-perishables, wrapping bungie cords around the Crepe myrtles in our backyard, that sort of thing. Our friends, Tara and Mike, took things a bit more seriously, because they live in Queen Anne's County and they had to deal with an evacuation order. So come Friday night my house was temporarily converted into a refugee shelter / hurricane party.

Despite the circumstances (read: a honking great hurricane bearing down on us), we had a great time hanging out together, and I heartily recommend getting together with friends if you know you're going to get hit with a big storm. Super Mario Bros. Wii filled a lot of time before the power went out: we actually were about 40 seconds from finishing off Bowser when the storm finally cut us off. There may have been a bit of screaming at that point (don't worry, we'll get him one day).

This is a marked dinosaur/dragon thing.

We should have known it was coming. Saturday was pretty much all rain and wind as soon as we woke up. We got through most of the day on our supplies (pancakes, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches), but we did end up ordering Chinese food from the local Joy Luck for dinner, maybe an hour before things started getting nasty. They were willing to deliver in heavy rain and winds with a massive storm incoming, and for that I salute them (and tipped well).

Irene took out our power around 8:30pm. We ended up playing a couple rounds of Uno (which I was stomped in unmercifully), followed by a team game of Trivial Pursuit (during which Sarah and I stomped our friends unmercifully). At one point Tara left the room for a moment, and when she came back in Lina jumped on her leg in greeting. Tara may have screamed, which may have caused Sarah to scream, which may have caused me to shout a bit when she dug her nails into my arm. I didn't see Lina chuckle, but I assume it happened.

The following morning was damage control, which mostly meant cutting up tree limbs that fell in our yard. Queen Anne's County lifted the evacuation early on, and Tara and Mike said their goodbyes once they got their power back. We figured we'd have our power restored similarly quickly.

Oh, how wrong we were...

As it turned out, Anne Arundel County was one of the hardest hit areas in Maryland in terms of power outages. Only Baltimore had more outages (the city, but the county came in third). Our local power company, BGE, had prepared for about 500,000 outages, but we ended up with close to 750,000 throughout the state. So even with a few advantages (i.e. living right off a major highway), it was 48 hours before we got our electricity back.

The details of the outage are inconsequential, to paraphrase Mike Myers. Suffice to say Sarah and I spent a lot of time reading, keeping our phones charged up enough to stay on the grid (which involved cannibalizing my laptop's power supply), trying to get Lina to stop barking at nothing, and plotting a takeover of our neighbor's generator.

A scenario we narrowly avoided.

I strongly recommend the Mighty Bright clip-on Kindle light if you need a good flashlight, by the way. It lasts for hours and hours, is bright enough to illuminate a room, and can clip into place if you want to read something.

We gave up on sitting in the dark early this afternoon, and visited my mom's house to recharge our batteries, both literal and metaphorical. Also to get out of the stifling heat of our house, which is what happens when you have no power in August. By this point Sarah was constantly tracking BGE's press releases, local blogs and her Facebook friends to figure out when we'd get our power back, and we'd half convinced ourselves that we'd be powerless until Saturday (BGE's worst-cast estimate for the county - and if anyone actually reaches that estimate, you have my deepest sympathies).

Fortunately reality trumped the ironically evil hand of Bad Luck, and the power kicked in just after Sarah went to bed. She sat up to try to figure out how the fan was running, and was treated to the sight of me dancing for joy in the bedroom.

I'm scared it looked like this.

So the power's back, the house is nice and cool again, and the dog finally seems willing to sleep with both eyes closed. All things considered, we got off very lightly. We spent a weekend with good friends and family, played a lot of cooperative games, and ate a ton of junk food. If I'd remembered to go get booze before Irene hit (and if the power hadn't gone out), I'd have rated it a 10/10.

The missing ingredient.

And happily, it doesn't seem like I missed anything major on the Internet while I was (mostly) offline. Oh, wait...

Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On

I was standing in the bathroom at my office, washing my hands, when the sink began to bounce in front of me. I felt dizzy and vaguely nauseous. "Oh holy shit," I thought, "I'm going to pass out in the sink." My chronic sleep deprivation was finally going to do me in, and in an office bathroom of all places.

Then my brain flipped, and I realized I was in the middle of a damn earthquake. Not just any earthquake, mind, but a record-setting (for Washington, DC) 5.8 magnitude earthquake. The last one we had in my area was only a 3.X, and I never even felt it.

There is something profoundly disturbing about an earthquake that you're not going to understand unless you've been in one. It's not like being in a bumpy car or a carnival ride: reality itself is warping around you. The ground, that thing you understand as defining "solid", is now juddering like a living thing in the grip of a seizure. If you're indoors, your whole world could literally come crashing down on your head.

5.8 on the Richter scale. That's peanuts compared to what hit Japan, which was an 8.9. And Richter isn't linear: 5.8 to 8.9 is a difference of tens of thousands in terms of destructive power.

There wasn't any real destruction in the area: a few damaged chimneys, some minor bits and bobs that fell down. I think the only injury near my home was an older man who fell down in his shower (and I do hope he's okay). My office was evacuated and I was sent home as a precaution. A pipe may have broken on the first floor; I'll have to call in to see if I'm going to work. That's 5.8.

I'm going to send some money to the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund tonight; also the Red Cross. Late, I know, but still not too late.

I got to my cell phone half an hour after the quake ended, but the lines were still choked with traffic. By the time I got through to Sarah I only had 5% of a charge left on my battery. That was hours after the actual quake, and we only had enough time to make sure the other was okay.

5.8.

Comics I Liked This Week

It's Wednesday, and that means another in my intermittent series of comic book reviews. I'm just focusing on what I liked this time, so if you don't see something here assume it got 3/5 stars.

Here Comes... Daredevil #2 is probably the best comic this week, and honestly I think the new series is the best Daredevil has been in years. Don't get me wrong, I'm not slandering the past couple of (much darker) runs, but I like Daredevil as a happy-go-lucky, witty, gymnastic... well, daredevil, and Mark Waid is nailing it. (And if you'll permit me a brief tangent, the same holds true for Nightcrawler. Marvel, if you bring him back, bring him back as the fuzzy swashbuckling elf we loved for so many years. Please?)

Legion of Doom #3 wraps up this Flashpoint tie-in miniseries in high style. If you don't know, Flashpoint is an alternate-reality crossover where heroes are villains, villains are worse villains, and you've seen this before. Legion of Doom follows longtime Flash villain Heat Wave as he attempts to escape from a supervillain prison (modeled after the Legion of Doom's headquarters) and take revenge on his nemesis (in this reality) Cyborg. The in-prison villainy is pretty cool, but the real standouts here are Heat Wave's crazy ass and a surprise guest star who isn't quite as heroic as he usually is. All three issues are well worth tracking down.

Journey Into Mystery #626 continues Loki's adventures behind the scenes of Fear Itself, Marvel's summer crossover. Having been reborn as a somewhat innocent child, Loki is trying to help Thor by wheeling and dealing with some of the most diabolic beings in the Marvel Universe - and somehow, so far, he's coming out on top every time. I've found Loki is much more interesting as a hero than he was as a villain, and this series shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon.

Abin Sur: The Green Lantern is another Flashpoint miniseries that wraps up with its third issue this week. For years, Abin Sur's only been the dead alien who gave Hal Jordan his ring (except when he was being manipulated into an early grave by demons under Alan Moore). In this series Abin is alive and well, and proving that he's a more than worthy predecessor to Jordan as he takes on his best friend, Sinestro, and tries to preserve life on Earth at all costs. A fine read for Green Lantern fans.

Avengers Academy #12 continues strong this week, as the kids take on two supervillains that have been turned into Asgardian demigods (Fear Itself again... I swear, tie-ins...). This book's traditional superhero action: fantastic settings, dangerous villains, and heroes trying to save the day while dealing with their own life issues, all done excellently.

Finally, Thunderbolts #162 sees the team of former supervillains start to fracture while battling an army of monsters. Baron Zemo, the original team's founder, is making his presence felt in the book again, just as half the team decides to break away and turn villain again. Whatever comes up in the next few issues should be damn interesting to read.

From My Phone

Continuing with the Android theme, I'm writing this blog post from my phone. It's two-thumb typing with the slideout keypad, fairly quick but no PC keyboard. I sense that this will not be a regular occurrence.

Anyway, for indulging this little experiment and because I ought to test out the image feature, here's a picture of my Corgi Lina in a bee costume. You're welcome.