11:59 a.m. - 12 April 2001
Colds and houses
I am sick. Again. Counting today, I have been out two and a half days in the last several weeks. I am tired of being sick. I am tired of not being able to breathe. I am tired of my voice generally sounding like crap. I am tired of medicating myself into oblivion every night. But life goes on, so I guess I'll deal with it. I'll tell you one thing, though, it's a lot nicer to be sick with a cable modem, since I don't have to sit through daytime TV, even if I can't properly focus the whole time.
We have been house-hunting like fiends all week. We met with our real estate agent again on Monday, and she gave us more information, and had some houses that she thought we might be interested in. Since we both have the day off tomorrow, we'll probably spend most of the day riding around and looking at houses. Lee's found a couple of 10-acre lots that he's interested in, and there is a house or two that I wouldn't mind seeing the interior of. I actually found a house plan that I really like, so we may see about getting it built as a custom modular to put on the land, since that will be much less than having it stick built on site. We're still waiting to get some information from modular home companies, too, to see what we like.
Most of the modulars that we've been able to go into here in town are really sort of glorified trailers. They're built to local code, which is the main difference between a modular and a trailer, but they look like boxes. Lee does not want to live in a box. Period. He really dislikes ranch-style homes, and unfortunately, that seems to be most of what modulars are. But some companies do have much nicer floor plans and exteriors, etc., such that you'd never know it wasn't stick built. That's the current plan -- buy lots of land and kind of skimp on the house. We can add on to the house later, but it will much more difficult to add land later.
Lee's basic criteria is that he wants to be able to run around naked outside and not have anyone see. I don't know if that's really possible, but that's what we've been looking for. As long as I can have a nice big garden, I'm not too picky.
