About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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June 26, 2013
The Exhibitor list for this year’s Comic-Con has been posted. Time to start plotting who to visit, which booths to patronize.
Does this ever get old? Normally the answer would be *insane cackle* “Of course not.” And in a lot of ways, nope. It really doesn’t. Mecca, after all.
But even I have to admit, after the Badging Debacle of 2011 (wherein my intrepid beloved never-to-be-sufficiently-thanked husband sat up ALL NIGHT among hordes of other similarly intrepid fans to buy our tickets for 2012’s SDCC solely because he knew that the prospect of not going to SDCC the next year would cause me *hic hic hic* “But .. but .. ok .. but but” *hic hic* speech-impaired grief), and after the Sit at the Computer Ready for Anything and losing out on Preview Night 4-day passes Debacle of 2012, a little of my pure, shining, glorious joy in going to Mecca has been tarnished.
I hate crowds, I’m not a huge fan of people in general and you know how I feel about paying ridiculous prices. And yet I’ll plow headfirst into every one of those conditions for Comic-Con, because there’d always been something utterly uplifting about going to SD just for fun. The one time in my year when work wasn’t allowed, when it was completely about fun and nothing else. When it was ok to spend money on myself if I wanted to, and not spend 3 days looking for a bargain first, and then talking myself out of it.
Life isn’t nearly so bleak these days 🙂 but there’s something about keeping the traditions originally built into the Annual Pilgrimage that’s homey and comforting. I started out watching every penny, parking out back of beyond, staying with friends because they’re awesome, and buying gifts for people six months early because you can find unique gifts there. Most of it sort of stuck.
It’s the one time in the year we spend quality time with certain friends; it’s awesome if we can find good presents, or at least ideas, well ahead of Christmas; walking the Con floor from end to end is like navigating an obstacle course collecting bonus gifts on the way. It’s really too bad we can’t hit a box for bonus coins or lives but this is good enough.
In recent years, the Con has grown exponentially, promotional events and booths spilling over the edges of the Convention Center itself into neighboring hotels, into the Gaslamp District and clear through to PetCo Park. It’s a sight to see, I tell you.
The main casualty of this growth is their ability to properly sell tickets. It’s become a situation where attendees can’t buy tickets in a sane manner on site for the next year, the vendor managing sales cannot serve up tickets online only without servers collapsing under the weight of anxious buyers and no one knows how many of what kind of tickets will be sold at any given time. It’s a bit of a mess.
There’s no longer a guarantee that this year won’t be the last year that we can get tickets and that’s terribly dispiriting. It seems easier to get a ticket if you went the previous year because you get two shots at the ticket purchasing gauntlet so once you drop out of attending, you almost can’t plan to go back. (Pessimist.)
On the other hand, if this is the last year, we’re going to make the most of it. (And look, I typed that whole statement without having to hold my breath or tearing up. I’m finally making my peace with it. Probably.)
Which means: we’re staying at a hotel in the Gaslamp District at conference rates (only hotel we could get at the time), sharing out the cost by rooming with friends, and planning to make the most of what little time we have left. I have a lot more flexibility with regard to work than I ever have before, so there’s that.
:: Have you got any travel/fun-only traditions? Any that you’re going to have to (or have had to) let go of?
June 24, 2013
Pardon the really dark photos of the sushi, they don’t do the food justice.
The burger craving is an intense and life-enhancing phenomenon. So is the sushi craving, but I hammer that one down more often than not, sushi’s too expensive in the Bay Area to enjoy frequently.
Usually, the need for burgers means we have to trek out to one diner or another and pay about $25 for a couple of burgers and fries. It’s mostly good but not so amazing that I don’t get a little squinty-eyed over the cost vs my satisfaction.
Then miracle of miracles: a mega sale on ground turkey AND I found the most amazing, simple turkey burger recipe. With a few Just Because alterations and voila! Magic!
Makes 8 fat round patties
2 lbs ground turkey ($5)
1/2 onion, diced finely ($0.25)
1/2 garlic bulb, diced finely ($0.30)*
1 egg white ($0.40)
2/3 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
2 Tbsp breadcrumbs ($0.20)
Burger buns ($2.49)
Combine all ingredients in a bowl and form into 8 patties. Cook over medium heat until they reach an internal temp of 180 degrees.
I made the patties, and the potato salad, then let PiC do the cooking and prep of the condiments and sides. His execution was flawless: he made surprise bacon! I danced with glee.
Sides: sprouts, cheddar cheese slices, grilled onions, sliced tomatoes, thinly sliced red onions, sliced avocado, grilled mushrooms, bacon, ketchup, mayo.
These burgers were, I kid you not, the best burgers ever. Perfectly cooked, delicious, way more flavorful than turkey burgers I’ve gotten at any diner. Three bites in and I was already worrying about my next portion because clearly, I can’t have just one.
Total: $8.64 for eight burgers
*Strictly speaking, the recipe only called for a couple cloves of garlic. But you know me, I’m constitutionally incapable of using less than 4 times the recommended amount.
Potato Salad
1 lb sliced fingerling potatoes
Vinaigrette
1 Tbsp dijon mustard
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp water used to boil potatoes
1 Tbsp diced capers
(2 sweet onions) – used 1 shallot and 1/2 green onion
Boil potatoes until tender, 6-8 minutes. Reserve 1 Tbsp of the boiling water for the vinaigrette. Pour potatoes into a medium mixing bowl. Prep the vinaigrette ingredients: mustard, vinegar, water, in a separate bowl and whisk until mixed thoroughly. Pour over the potatoes, add capers, shallots and green onion (or sweet onion), mix evenly. Add salt and pepper to taste. I didn’t use any.
*The original recipe called for 5 cornichons sliced thinly and 1/3 cup of olive oil for the vinaigrette but I don’t know what cornichons are and I just plain forgot the olive oil. It was good anyway!
That’s the burger craving taken care of … about that sushi!
Now Serving: Sushi
We found Sushi Tomi in Mountain View with four star ratings from 1000+ reviews; that was promising. We ordered a soba, a hamachi don, and a sunomono with octopus.
The nine hamachi slices topping the sushi rice were thick slabs of fresh, delicious fish. I haven’t seen sashimi that size ever. The sunomono was full of great big pieces of octopus, not fried, but a little on the chewy and unseasoned side. Possibly how it’s meant to be but I was rather expecting to see the salad be dressed in some way. It was good enough not to induce regrets but I won’t order that again.
PiC’s soba was good, but since he always uses a bit of wasabi, slightly off-putting to me. The perils of sharing food! 🙂 It was tasty and flavorful even if I thought the portion was on the small side.
The bill would have been more reasonable except I misunderstood PiC saying he had added tip but not tax. That’s backwards to how I do it, adding tax to the main bill we split and then adding tip afterward, so our miscommunication led to a $50 bill. Not the end of the world, but pretty irritating that it went right over my head. Be more careful next time!
And speaking of next time, we wouldn’t make the drive just for the sushi but if we were in the area, we’d definitely go back and try other things.
Final assessment: I’m not the kitcheny genius that @mochimac is, so we’re not going to master the art of Japanese cooking anytime soon but perhaps that should be a project on our list.
Egads but I love good food. I’ll eat not great food too, but I really really appreciate amazing food. And more so when we learn how to make it at home. Mom was always a whiz at that. She could taste a meal once or twice and with some experimentation, reproduce it exactly or better.
:: Am I the only one for whom food is a wondrous thing?
June 19, 2013
We recently had the fire alarms go off midday when I was hanging out with Doggle and it wasn’t clear if it was just a drill/test or if it was the real thing. Of course the first thing I did was what you’re not supposed to do: went to open the front door without feeling it first to see if there was heat behind it.
In my defense, I knew it was a bit stupid to do at the exact moment of doing it, but I could hear neighbors’ voices very nearby so it was more of a calculated risk than just a stupid impulse.
It wasn’t clear from the babble if anyone knew what on earth was going on but since Doggle and I were already prepping for our walk, we poked out around outside to see if there was any reason to believe there was really an emergency. All we saw were confused neighbors milling about asking if I spoke their language and chattering to one another.
We meandered until we found a repairman apologizing profusely for the false alarm and lack of advance notice. About 30 times over, because every resident in the crowd interrogating him had to ask the same questions that were asked before:
1. This is a test?
Yes.
2. Why didn’t anyone tell us?
I don’t know but I’m really sorry about the inconvenience and for alarming you.
Poor guy. The false alarm was annoying but it was even more annoying not to be able to ask my legitimate and original question over the clamor.
What have we learned?
- A lot of our neighbors are panicky and annoying.
- We aren’t prepared at all for an actual evacuate-now emergency.
I immediately sat down and started a list of emergency packs I should make up in case we ever do have such a calamity. It’s most likely to be an earthquake considering we ARE in the Bay Area, but anything could happen. All of these have to be portable in case only one of us is home at the time. And I pray that one of us IS home if anything happens, I can’t imagine Doggle figuring out how to find us, microchip or not.
- Doggle, on leash
- Doggle’s pack (that I wish he could carry for himself) prepacked with: 5 lb bag of food rations, 1 L water bottle, 2 travel bowls, paw gloves in case of bad footing, extra leash, a dog blanket, 1 large and 1 small towel, poop bags.
- People pack: Water, food bars, (2) changes of clothes, towels, hygiene pack (toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, contact solution, nail clippers), Swiss Army knife, med kit (bandaids, triple antibiotic ointment, gauze, med tape, antibiotic wipes), water purifier, flashlight, extra batteries.
- Mini Radio?
To pack on the fly/seasonal stuff:
1. Information pack: computers, external hard drives, charger pack, phone charters, passports.
2. Jackets, gloves, hats, extra socks and shoes.
We don’t have everything on hand so these won’t come together right away but most of Doggle’s pack is done.
It feels like I should have stuff that I associate with the wilderness/camping like a shovel, matches/lighter, can opener but maybe that’s overkill?
:: How prepared are you for a disaster? What should I add or remove from my packs?
June 14, 2013
“We have to get this guy a house.”
Back from our various vacationtimes, we immediately saw that, while Doggle was thrilled to see us, he was also happier, peppier and more engaged than ever before. He’d been hanging his shingle in a house with a yard, kids and other pets for a week and amid the shameless spoiling, it was clear that he’d been taking dog lessons from someone.
Apparently the quiet life in a small apartment with DINKs doesn’t quite inspire the still-reticent Zendog to come out from his shell and do a doggy dance, or dash around happily pouncing on his toys four times a day nearly so much as the chaos of a full house does. It’s probably too much to hope that he’d picked up the notion of catch, but we actually have hope now that he might try.
So are we serious about getting a house for the dog?
Well, we’d been kicking around the idea of buying a house for some time now, and we designed our budget this year with a specific goal to save for a new down payment. It does feel like providing a yard is the next best thing we can do for our beloved Doggle. And yes, we want it for ourselves too, but let’s be honest, we’re doting parents and the dog is our happy excuse for a lot of things.
But … real estate around here is absurd.
Early explorations of Zillow and Trulia revealed real estate listings that are literally jawdropping.
We’re planning to stay outside the city. Many 20 and 30-somethings may find it appalling that people would actually prefer suburbs to the bustling city, but it’s true of us. We love visiting the city but it doesn’t feel like home to either of us. Between the traffic, the lack of (free) parking, the tight quarters, we’re just not city people. And with the tech industry out here, and the salaries they pay, we couldn’t afford the city if we wanted! So, y’know…
We’d like to be within fifteen or twenty miles of the city for reasonable commutes, which also suits my need for a warmer microclimate, so that was our first search parameter. We’d definitely be paying more for the luxury of better weather and saving time on a daily basis. If we were willing to be in say, Hayward, where I know the weather is as hot as even I would like, prices would be far closer to reasonable. But the compromise is better weather for me, not great for me and utterly crappy weather for him. For this, we shall pay.
We’re looking for at least two bedrooms, we’d really like two bathrooms and a two car garage, and a decently large kitchen is important to me. If there was a room I could start converting into my own private library (The Dream), that’d be the best but I will settle for a good amount of wall space and storage. We have no storage where we are now.
Last, PiC is reminding me to keep searching in specific areas where the schools are better. Which is sensible, this may be where we stay for a really long time. It needs to be a pretty safe neighborhood with some staying power. Which also means we probably should look at more than 2 bedrooms if we’re going to have any spawn. I grew up in a small 2 bedroom apartment but as an adult, I don’t really want to do that again, albeit from the other side, if I don’t have to. It might be character building but I’ll find another way to impart that.
Search results: moderately horrifying
We’re finding one and two bedroom, one bathroom, one car garage single family homes in moderately close/decent neighborhoods are starting at A. Million. Dollars. Seriously.
This shouldn’t be any surprise when in some neighborhoods, $800k hardly gets you more than a two bedroom, x bathroom(s) condo or apartment.
And three bedroom, two bathroom with garage SFHs run more like 700K-3M.
*gulp*
The estimated monthly payments on those homes that are 3k-7k (in more extreme cases) are almost beside the point. I’d only feel comfortable to committing to a new loan if we had 200K in cash with a healthy uncommitted cash flow. We do not have 200K in cash.
We could make a pretty good run at it but it’s not going to happen overnight and as much as I fantasize about taking another job, that’s not going to happen either. Freelancing, maybe. A whole other job would be crazy and crazy-making.
Making it happen
We still hold hope this can work and maybe even in the next year or so. Not that I expect the market to get much friendlier over the next year, but we have steps to take to increase our buying power, and reduce our stress.
1. Reduce our current fixed expenses, including the current mortgage to make a significant dent in the down payment goal. We’re refinancing and going over all the other expenses to trim back.
2. Keep those fixed expenses low – I don’t want to commit ourselves to either too much house (payment) or too strict a budget. After nine+ years of living on a shoestring income to debt ratio, I refuse to find ourselves coming up empty on cash for the sake of a house.
3. When we get a decent cash cushion in place, I’ll focus on foreclosures to see if we can’t stretch our buying power.
4. Hope hope hope that mortgage rates aren’t abominable twelve to twenty four months from now.
It’s time to dig deep and turn on the saving engines again. It’s not worth cutting off our allowances, I don’t think, since it’s not much per month anyway, but I’d love to pull back a little bit everywhere.
::What else should we be doing?
June 11, 2013
Say hello to the klutzoid
It was like a scene from one of my You’re Awkward as *#$(@ nightmares. Or a really stupid, scripted tv show.
Rushing out to meet my friend, I grabbed a super bulky bag, shoved my feet into flipflops and locked the door behind me, leaving my phone behind because I was only running out for a second. I never leave my phone behind, not even to take out the trash or get the mail. But THIS day ….
As the elevator door opened, I juggled the dangerously slipping bag to get a better grip on it. In hindsight, I should have just dropped the cursed thing.
To my slow-motion, too fast to screech or catch, horror, both the bag and my awkward right hand smacked my kangeroo sweatshirt pouch at just the “right” angle to bounce the house keys right out of the pocket. They hit the wall, slid down, bounced on the ground and fell. Right into the elevator shaft. I heard it more than saw it: *smack* *jingle* *smack* *splash* as it descended to the unknown depths.
I stared at my friend. She stared at me.
Locked out. Keys invisible to the naked eye. PiC not due home for another hour.
My friend could barely contain her horrified, chagrined laughter but it fell on deaf ears. My otherwise benumbed brain was too busy trying to figure out how to break down the elevator shaft, or fish around on the lowest floor in hopes that the keys would be hookable.
No such luck, of course, there was no way to find them peering down into the two inch chasm. I always knew that thing was a disaster waiting to happen!
Stupid tax, stupid tax, stupid tax!
The call to the management company was possibly worse than kneeling on the floor of the elevator calling it names. They’d charge $400 just to call out the maintenance guys, plus labor.
Abandoning the keys would be a security risk – when they finally did come out for a routine check-up, chances were good they would find the keys and then someone would have a set of keys to our lives. Fantastic.
Replacing the keys and locks? Start at $200 for a key fob for the car, and keep adding the costs up from there.
This was too stupid, even for me. It fell into the realm of horrifically embarrassing, even, because it wasn’t just me leaning on the locking door dramatically sobbing quietly. I was keeping my friend hostage to the errand she couldn’t run without getting in our place.
Always have a spare
Neither cost was something I was prepared to pay. It’s more than we budgeted for an entire year of stupid tax/fees!
Luckily, we did have a spare set, otherwise we’d have been pulling out the credit card and docking my allowance. After a few rounds of calls, the company finally conceded that we could wait for a routine maintenance check, whenever that happened, but at least when it did happen, they would retrieve the keys at no extra cost. In a month, or three.
We’d just have to keep phone stalking them until that call was scheduled.
True story: It’s actually possible to be relieved and so angry you could spit at the same time!
In the end, it took a few months of nailbiting and waiting to get a confirmation the elevator servicefolk were coming out and we’d get our keys back without the hefty stupid tax attached.
Please, share a stupid/stupid tax story, stupidity likes company just as much as misery does.
Keys now go into a zipper pocket and get zipped in. Always.
June 10, 2013
From top left, going clockwise…
Our three across the top are Happy Hour appetizers from a little place called Cactus, in Kailua. The waitstaff looked to be shorthanded: they were a bit harried and slow, though very nice. We never make it to Happy Hour anywhere on the mainland but took advantage of our slightly more relaxed schedule on “vacation”. They had both indoor and outdoor seating, and moderately good food. Our friend didn’t like half the dishes we order (by consensus, mind you!) but since I’ll eat just about anything once, it was good enough for me.
Happy Hour beer was a Negro Modelo for $3 (staff took the initiative to substitute it for the foamy and warm Dos Equis) and frozen margaritas were $4.
Meal for three: 7 appetizers and 3 drinks for a total of $32, tax and tip included.
Cactus (tripadvisor reviews)
767 Kailua Road Suite 106, Kailua, Oahu, HI
Lower right corner: sauteed mushrooms.
Honestly, I’m selfish. I don’t even want to tell you about this place because the wait is long enough now if you don’t get there early enough. But it’s pretty amazing. We did a family style dinner, ordering WAY too much food for two people: sauteed mushrooms, pan fried pork chops, fried rice. I don’t even like mushrooms and I would eat these every day and twice on Sunday.
This was much pricier than our usual meals up to that point, having eaten rather frugally, generally speaking.
Meal for two: 2 beverages, 3 entree sized dishes for $59.50, including tax and tip
Side Street Inn on Da Strip Kapahulu Ave (tripadvisor reviews)
614 Kapahulu Ave, #100, Honolulu, Oahu, HI
Middle bottom: plate lunches
We were searching for a musubi specialty place and ended up here. Ironically? Stupidly? The place we couldn’t find was actually called Iyasame Musubi. And Sugoi didn’t have any musubi at all. What the hell.
Anyway, we got great lunch plates anyway: an amazing garlic chicken and chicken katsu curry. Mmm.
Neither of us was a fan of the mac salad though, it was absolutely glued together with mayo. I’m a fan of mayo but not in that quantity.
Meal for two: 1 beverage, 2 mini lunch plates (1 scoop of rice, 1 scoop of mac salad, entree) for $15.50
Sugoi
1286 Kalani St. #B-106, Honolulu, HI
Bottom left corner: Taiwanese style shave ice
This is why I hate paying cash (aside from not getting points): I can’t remember where we went for shave ice and I have no credit card statement to refer back to. It was pretty good though. It was walking distance from the Hawaii Convention Center though.
We picked the mango combination flavor and shared between three people.
Middle left: Hot pot!
We were told that we couldn’t leave Honolulu without trying this hot pot restaurant. You get to pick your broth which is prepped and brought to the table, order meats from the servers, and fetch everything else (vegetables, seafood, seaweed, etc.) from the two fridge units. They also had a sauce station with about a dozen sauce options for you to mix and match. All my mixes were terrible. Turns out you really can go wrong when experimenting. But it was good.
Oh, and the funny thing? They get so much business that they actually put you on a dining clock. You’re allotted 90 minutes to eat and git! We didn’t keep very good track of our time so we overran by about ten minutes. The one server was pretty grumpy about it.
Meal for three: water all around, about 12 plates of meats, vegetables, noodles, mushrooms, seafood balls, tofu for ~$50.
Sweet Home Cafe
2334 S King St, Honolulu, HI 96826
Other great foods:
Leonard’s Malasadas: A dollar for either a sugar or a cinnamon sugar pastry. Absolutely AMAZING. We’ve decided a hot, fresh malasada is basically the best dessert in the world. [feast your eyes]
Rainbow Drive-in: A bit of a classic recommendation for plate lunches.
Honolulu Cookie Company: they have yummy shortbread cookies and bins of samples in their stores. Mmmmm….
Garlic shrimp trucks: You can find these on North Shore, there’s one in Waikiki and a great one on the way down to Lanikai from PCC.
PCC: If you’ve never done a luau, the Polynesian Cultural Center’s supposed to have a good one. I didn’t feel the need to go to another luau this time because I really just want the food and not the show, but they also have (rather expensive but good) Dole whips here.
Over to you: have you got any favorite Hawaii foods? Did I miss any crucial Must Eats in this list? Or favorite travel foods you’d go the distance to eat?
June 6, 2013
This post about all the reasons a house is a terrible investment (via nicoleandmaggie) made me laugh a little. Most of these ring true as financial reasons my pocketbook doesn’t want a house just yet, even as we’re staring at homes in the area, and starting to save for a new down payment.
If it were a purely financial transaction, I’d really think about six more times about trying to buy a house given the real estate market here in the Bay Area. Everywhere I look: astronomical prices. Apparently this is the “Paradise Tax” according to @isobelcarr, but my heat-loving soul protests.
I grew up renting all our lives and I still think it was a relatively simple way to go considering my family didn’t have steady and at least a bit consistent income. They could manage rent but managing the costs of maintenance and ongoing property taxes probably wasn’t likely. So despite being good friends with people who were firm proponents of real estate as investments, I had trouble picking up that attitude.
I can’t think of my home as an investment, not the home that I live in.
It’s my home and retreat and I’d love it. But I wouldn’t be so enamored as to think we’d ever resell at a high enough price to recoup: down payment, all fees associated with the hunt and the purchase, all the interest (yes, it may be tax deductible but still), any fees associated with refinancing as we’d probably do at least once, and of course, principal payments, insurance.
Given the high unlikelihood that a home would reliably turn a profit, it’s a purchase, in my opinion. Unless it’s to be rented out, in which case you have a whole other set of calculations, but we’re talking about a home you live in for the sake of argument.
The case for buying?
There are certainly good reasons to buy. As a homebody, it’s the place I’d spend the most time. Owning would mean having general, if slightly limited, control over the routine monthly costs when I made the initial financial decisions: down payment, term of loan, interest rate (which is still ultimately determined by the market rate).
Assuming no HOA, I would have generally free rein to do with the house as I pleased, and most importantly, rescue any kind of dog I wanted. None of this stupid breedist crap you get from HOAs which assume that large dogs are dangerous when my experience shows that 80% of the small dogs owned by our neighbors are untrained, unsocialized panic or aggression-driven little craps that go for Doggle’s throat every time.
The case for renting?
There’s definitely something to be said for only being responsible for your own conduct in a rental, and not being responsible for routine or emergency maintenance. Having to fix your own EVERYTHING is expensive and exhausting according to multiple homeowning friends. I’m not greatly familiar with the rules outside of CA but landlords must respond to problems within a reasonable period of time, and if we preferred to handle calling in for services ourselves, our landlords tended to be fine with our deducting the bill from our rent.
A good renting and credit record tends to buy you leniency and cooperation from a hands-off landlord too: they don’t mind accommodating requests that might be slightly out of the ordinary.
Having the flexibility to pack up and move with a month of notice may be important if you’re a university student, a young adult starting out with a new job, an adult looking for new jobs in a tight job market, a retiree who doesn’t like to be tied down to a mortgage or a single place … in other words, the flexibility of renting could be important to just about anyone. There’s something incredibly stressful about, say, getting a new mortgage and then unexpectedly getting laid off in a recession or bad job market, even with the best of emergency funds.
The variables…
Cost effectiveness of renting v buying: Depending on where you are, the supply of rentals may be low, driving the cost of renting an equivalent home higher. Or it may be high, in which case you have lease incentives, and more expansive options to lure you as a renter. Toss-up.
Your living space: If you have a good and reasonable landlord, you may have relative freedom as to personalizing your home. Or not. Or your landlord may suck at doing repairs in a timely manner. Or you might, as a homeowner.
HOAs: There’s a bunch of stuff I hate about HOAs. It is nice not to have to worry about the long-term maintenance but I’m not sure it’s totally worth the trade-off. And we feel that much more tightly bound to our neighbors. The good ones, the horrible ones, the really horrible ones. It’s a crapshoot whether the people who run for a seat on the board will be competent as well.
Over to you: what are your priorities when it comes to your living arrangements? Are you a renter, buyer, both? (neither…?)
Confession: I always dreamed of buying a house outright with cash. I don’t think that’s going to happen soon.