Round and round we go

Yesterday I found two potential houses to rent. One in Houston Heights (near north), one near Rice University (near south). After work we headed out to look at them, choosing the north one first.

It's $2400 per month, 2200 sq ft, built in 2006. On paper it looks OK, and when we get out there ... it IS OK. We can't get inside, but we prowl around the yard. Looks clean. I like the front porch. There's a little problem with standing water in the front where it looks like they had a pipe leak. But, generally, not bad. The neighborhood is older. They must have torn down an old house to put up this one. GoogleMap says 11 minutes to the office. It looks like a bus stop to downtown is only a couple blocks away.

Then we drive about 20 minutes out south to the other place. Wow. We're in the upscale area now. Beautiful huge homes. Older, some built in the 1930s, but immaculately kept. It's cool. We find our house and, unfortunately it's right on the busiest street. Looks cute though. This one was built in 1950! It's only 2000 sq ft. They're asking $2250 per month, but I'm not living on a busy street. Sorry.

We drive around the neighborhood. We find one house we like after another. All older, but beautiful with big trees. Stately. Even Wife allows how she might relax her new-new criteria for these. Of course, we imagine that they are all over $1,000,000. They're huge. Here's an example.

I suffer a severe brain cramp and beg to go home.

We decide to eat out. We drive out W. Gray Street and pull into the same shopping center that had the Cafe le Jadeite we liked so much. Next door is Tony Mandola's Gulf Coast Kitchen. It's packed. The hostess says, "Wait two minutes and I'll get you in." And then she does. The menu is fabulous: straight out of the New Orleans French Quarter. Gumbo. Oyster dishes. Snapper. Salmon with shrimp and crab meat. We each have a glass of Kendall-Jackson chardonnay and consider the options. The waiter strolls up and says, "The specials today are blackened snapper ..." with some stuff that I immediately forgot, because then he says "... or tri-color fettuccine with grilled salmon, scallops, and shrimps in a zucchini, tomato and garlic-olive-oil sauce." For me: end of story. Wife reads every item on the menu, as usual, and then picks "Salmon Sophia": salmon topped with lump crab meat. I decide a cup of gumbo couldn't hurt me either. We order. Hot French bread shows up. Yummy. Wife's salad and my gumbo arrives. Gumbo is not QUITE as good as my own, but darn near. It's got a huge crab claw floating in it. The entrees show. All conversation stops. Wife loves hers and won't even share a bite. I love mine and share 1/4 of a scallop, which is still almost more than a mouth-full. On the way out we tell the hostess, "We'll be back."

Brain cramp was totally relieved.

... And It's Not Near A Landfill & Other Good Things

Other good things first: my boss told me nice job today. I'd prepared a position paper outlining my proposed strategy for a new software licensing and support contract our project needs to negotiate with an existing vendor. My boss sent it to her bosses, who have to approve the contract eventually. They came back happy to her, and she came back happy to me. I bit my lip to keep from crying. It's been a long time since I felt useful at work.

In other news, Wife and I have grown increasingly frustrated with our realtor. We felt like we were not making progress. When I added up the time we had spent actually looking at houses we realized that it was seven calendar days out of the twelve we've been here. And if you count "looking-days" it was only five because four of the days were really half-days. Now, I admit some of the fault is mine because I've had to work, but still ...

Then yesterday Realtor calls and says, let's go look this evening. I worked until about 5pm. Wife picks me up at designated spot at designated time driving new car. We'd spent an hour at lunch time rehearsing the process. Practice makes perfect.

I get behind the wheel and start the drive northwest of Houston toward the town of Cypress. Traffic, to put it mildly, is a bitch. We figured it would take us an hour to get to the housing development; it took five minutes more than that. BUT ...

The houses at Sydney Harbor are all brand new and all sit on a man-made "lake". We walk into the first house and we love it. We find out that the lake is usable. All the houses have little paddle boats or canoes or what ever sitting behind them. The lake supposedly is stocked with channel cat and bass, but I didn't see any indication of that: water was pretty ugly. Lots of ducks swimming around though. This picture at the left would be the view from our bedroom window.

The area is very nice (no land fills that we could find ... or nuclear power plants or refineries). Lots and lots and lots of shopping just down the street. Golf course right across the road. Six minute drive to my commuter bus stop. Community swimming pool. Lots to like. Oh, yes, and the house has a balcony off the upstairs game room as you see from picture at left.

We only found three things that gave us caution: (1) The commute, as we discovered, is awful. It would take me an hour by bus to get to work. I'm thinking: take my laptop and do my writing for two hours a day. (2) The builder is not very careful: cabinets were dinged and scratched, paint where paint shouldn't have been, electrical outlets in strange places. We'd have to work all that out with the builder if we decide to buy. (3) The "lake" is narrow at the point where the house sits. We look right across at the people on the other side as you can see from the shot of our bedroom. Still, compared to houses we've seen, that's tantamount to the other house being MILES away -- most have been within spitting distance of our backdoor.

This builder has one other floor plan we are interested in and has two other houses available with the same floor plan as the one we saw. Other builders also operate in this subdivision. I suspect we'll be back out at this subdivision on Saturday to give all these a tour. Our realtor also has two other houses to show us in other subdivisions. Those houses are also on lakes (although the lakes are just to look at and not use). One of the houses is also part of a golf course community. All these houses are about the same one-hour commute.

We're happy last night and we drive home. It's now about 8pm. It only takes us 35 minutes to get back downtown.

We're hungry and we drive around near our apartment looking for a likely spot. We find a nice new strip mall with what appears to be loads of restaurants. One called Cafe le Jadeite calls out to us. We're severely under-dressed, but the maitre 'd is happy to seat us. Very friendly staff. Nice wine list. Lara is on La Crema chardonnay, I'm having Beringer. Lara has pumpkin soup with seafood and I have seared tuna for appetizers. We both have grilled halibut for entree -- hers with steamed mussels, mine with grilled shrimp. Superb, but they're Texas sized portions: we struggled to finish it all. Total cost: 64 Pounds Sterling (sounds better than $130). We'll be back.

Now ... if we just see some more houses we like ....