My Birthday

Today is my birthday (go, me!!) and I thought I'd post an update on where things stand currently.

The Housing obsession has now melded itself to some other themes of the past year or so in my life; namely, the search for sustainable community and our nerdy avocations. One of the reasons that I've given up haunting the local housing blogs (instead of several times a day, I now check in one or two times a week -- and some weeks, none) is that I'm not seeing much downward pricing in houses that I'm interested in. The houses in areas that no one in their right mind should ever have believed they could flip for a profit are dropping like rocks in price. But in safe, quiet, attractive areas the houses are not affordable to me.
And my demands have only gone up, which doesn't make it any easier to find one. My demands have gone up because the community that we have long sought and found so elusive, we have evidently found in the charming denizens of The Shire of Mountain's Gate. Since our first tentative shire meeting in November, we feel we have finally found our SCA home. We have gone from no involvement and lapsed memberships, to meetings several times a month and sometimes multiple times a week. My sewing machine has showed up again on the dining room table, and I'm still making atrociously poor tunics for family members, but I'm counting on some monthly sewing circles to help me improve. I've discovered beading, which I am not too bad at. I'm going to give embroidery another shot this weekend, while giving inspiration and moral support to the Sig as he embarks on his own journey to hone his medieval martial arts skills. The armor that we had sitting in boxes has been "rigged" with the help of our Shire Seneshal, Geoffrey of Clan Fergus. He has also fitted a very impressive helm for Sig. With the armor and the helm, Sig looks very scarey for his 5'6". We will be attempting to put up our period pavillion for the second time this weekend at the Cynagua Coronet. Sig is in the early fermentation stages of a strawberry mead, and I've got a kegged blackberry cream ale. The herbs have arrived from Wildweeds and all I'm lacking now is the juniper berries in order to make a pretty darned good stab at a very early period gruit ale.
Most of this stuff: armor, brewing equipment, archery gear, pavillion tent, garb; we've had for years gathering dust in our little storage barn. Now, it's out and working. Which is why the criteria for housing has significantly changed. Simply put, we now need room to work on our projects. It doesn't have to be fancy. But we need the usual 3 bedrooms/2 baths plus a larger kitchen, and some room that can be used as a project room (a formal dining room or den would be fine) and storage space. Oh, and a place for the small utility trailer.
The rental house is a very functional base of operations right now. It works well for most of our needs, but there are some problems that frankly, having our own house would solve. It's just that we can't find anything like the rental for sale at a price that would keep our mortgage payment at the same level as our rent. If we could, and if we could get the loan that we could easily have gotten back in 2006, we'd buy. If this were my house, instead of a rental, I'd feel free to get the ductwork permanently repaired, put in solar power and hot water, buy that damn hot tub that I so desperately need but refuse to buy until I have my own house. I'd get rid of the puzzling raised beds in the total shade, and put some raised beds where they could get some light. I'd have the dead chestnut tree removed, and some gentle pruning done on dead limbs on the magnificent old oak. But it's not my house, and the landlord seems to be ok with it just slowly deteriorating. The frustration with the slow deterioration of the house, coupled with the low-level anxiety of renting (you never know when they might sell, or raise the rent, or decide one of their kids needs the house) inclines me strongly towards trying to buy, but there are really no viable options out there and I'm not going to spend 100k to 200k more than I'd spend in another two to four years. At some point, this will balance out, but the scales are tipped too far in favor of renting currently, and I don't think that will change in the next 6 months. I'm hoping it will change in the next year, just as I was last year, and the year before that. But it's obvious that this is such a slow moving train wreck in housing that I don't really need to monitor the market even on a weekly basis, and it's just wasting my time to do so.

On the general economic front, as you can imagine, increased avocations and the SCA in addition to the increased cost of food and fuel have impacted my finances. We did have the basics purchased already, but we have honestly way overspent in the last few weeks on brewing gear, fabric, beads and tools. We've also had to have repairs done to the two older vehicles. My job has been notifying us of some pretty scarey budget problems, and they are not hiring any employees to replace those which have left. This is rather remarkable, as I work in healthcare. It has really brought home to me the realization that when the economy goes sour, no field is really safe from the effects of it. It's rather ironic. During the late bubble, I was a miser and we didn't really go anywhere or do much of anything, because we were waiting for it all to come crashing down. And now that it has, and costs are increasing and my job is flashing yellow and traveling is twice as expensive as it was -- well, of course, now we're going to resume our expensive medievalist hobby.
But hey, I'm not getting any younger!

On Change and Inevitability

Let me state up front that I support Barack Obama's bid for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Philosophically, I wish he were more in the Kusinich and Edwards vein, and I was really torn in the California primary over who to vote for. Ultimately, I voted for Obama, because I trust him. Which is just ridiculous, but there it is. I trust him. I believe that he loves our country, and that he understands the concerns of middle and working class Americans. I also believe that he will people his cabinet with those who deeply understand the course ahead.

I'm a real sucker for idealism. I get teary-eyed reading the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and I'm not kidding. I carried a copy of them around with me for years, during my tenure in social services. I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution as a worker in the old VISTA program, and as far as I'm concerned, that oath is good for the rest of my life. I deplore people who wrap themselves in the flag, but I mist up when I say the Pledge of Allegiance.

And coming from an economically-depressed downstate Illinois city that saw its strong union job base rapidly decline in the Reagan years, I have a love of my own class. The working class. The blue collar class. One of the biggest frustrations of my life has been that my kind of people can't see that they are often played for fools by preachers and politicians.

I'm one of those people, because I believed in Bill Clinton. I cried, and I mean sobbed, when he won the election. And as time went on, even though I was uneasy about NAFTA and some of the social program changes he advocated, I continued to support him. Through budget deadlocks and shutdowns of Congress and Contracts with America and Monica-gate, I was there.
Prior to Clinton, I would vote for Republicans at times. I believed myself to be a moderate and largely non-partisan. I could not see what the Republicans were howling about, and my opinion of them became more and more negative, especially if anyone quoted Rush Limbaugh, who I thought was a self-serving buffoon.
Let's just skip ahead through the past 8 years. Suffice it to say that I moved from shocked numbness, through apathy and withdrawel, to shame and accountability and a re-engagement with the political process.

So, here we are again. And the more I hear from Obama, the more I like the guy. And sometimes, in fact a LOT of times, he makes me cry. When you get to be my age, a lot of your hopes and dreams have fallen by the wayside, and you begin to think that things will never change and that you just have to make the best of it and pass it on to the next generation and maybe they will be able to make progress. You settle. You learn to live with the machine and the inevitable. I believed, right up until recently, that Hillary Clinton was the inevitable machine President. Just like Bush in process, if not politics, and just as unlikely to give any credibility to anyone without a few hundred thousand dollars of influence money. I believed her to be benign, but also to feel entitled to the Presidency.
This is a far cry from the Hillary of my youth, a woman who challenged the role of a First Lady and who many of us as women admired (and others felt very threatened by). I admired her stab at healthcare reform, and her strong and outspoken advocacy of her husband's administration.
Maybe she and Bill were always the manipulative double-talkers that the Right was so frothy about, and I just didn't see it. I think to a certain extent that all politicians are manipulative double-talkers, and most of us accept that -- to a certain extent. But I am really beginning to see some truth in some of the obvious vitriol of the Right.
For many of us, one of the saddest casualties of this primary season may be the loss of the Clinton legacy. We've clung to it for 8 years, to this time of relative peace and demonstrable prosperity, when our wages were going up and our deficit was going down. We've looked fondly on Bill's work post-Presidency in the world community. We've mocked the conservatives who seemed to cling to a "Blame Clinton" outlook through the last 8 years of an increasingly incompetent and flawed W presidency. And let me be clear here: I believe that Bush's tax cuts and pandering to corporations, theocrats and Neo-cons has wrecked our economy and catapulted the US far down the road to the inevitable decline of what has been our empire. But the bottom line is that yes, I believe that some of Clinton's economic policies -- just like Reagan's -- have had and continue to have a negative impact on our middle and working class. Bush's policies have gone beyond "negative impact". We are all in for an epic struggle to move this country forward in a new age; one in which we are no longer ascendant. We can do it. We didn't need all those flat screen teevees and Hummers, anyway. We didn't need to live 50 miles from our jobs just so we could have a huge house on a small lot in a sterile "community". Besides, we couldn't really afford it. That's why we're all in such deep debt. Time to grow up.
But it would have been nice for the Clintons to have left us with that memory of good times. Instead, we are now forced to watch Bill live up to every accusation of duplicitous speech that the Right has been screaming about for years, and to watch Hillary skip merrily down the path of the triangulating neoliberal Democratic Leadership Council that believed that the way to beat the Republicans was to be just like them -- only without the bathroom sex and comb-overs and pince nez glasses.
I mean, come on, people!
No one owes you the Presidency, just because your name is Bush or Clinton or Kennedy or Roosevelt. Didn't we found our country on that premise? That "all men are created equal"?
But years of machine politics and Beltway scheming lead people to become out of touch with the electorate that put them in power in the first place. Massive money and generations of political influence can buy you a Supreme Court, but unfortunately the Clintons are a first-generation political dynasty trying to make a horizontal power move vs. the more typical vertical one, and at this point it seems doomed to failure and it's taking their legacy down with it.

My prediction, and I have to admit that a year ago this would have seemed pretty far-fetched, is that Obama will win the nomination and will win the Presidency. Again, I have hope. I believe that the more you see of him, the better you like him. And yes, I realize that he's not all that far left and that we're going to have to help him a lot to get to a solution to healthcare reform and to economic reform. But we'll get there. We have to. We have no choice.
Things won't be easy, but whether you vote for change or not, it is inevitable. Our lives are different from those of our parents and our grandparents. Some of those changes have not been beneficial. We've fallen behind in education, in work ethic, in sense of community and interdependence on one another. To paraphrase Obama, we reach for a video controller instead of a book or a hammer or our neighbor's hand. We WILL change; our choice is whether to embrace the inevitability and move forward, or fight it and let the world move further and further away from us.

Fork in the Road

When I started this blog, I never really intended for it to garner a lot of hits, which it doesn't. It was mostly a way for me to vent about stuff without bogarting someone else's blog. I'm verbose, but I have the good sense to know it and try to control it.
But lately, I'm feeling the urge to take the blog in a new direction. Maybe because I've gotten most of whatever-it-was out of my system. It was mostly a reaction to the housing bubble and frustration at wanting my own house, and to be truthful, if it was just a question of being able to afford to buy, I'd have bought already. Houses are dropping into my range. But it's moved beyond that, and buying a house is no longer as big a priority as it was.
So, this is going to be the transition post, just in case you stumble by. I am going to TRY to steer myself towards posting actually helpful information about simplifying your wants, meeting your needs, and maintaining your humanity.

My Shameful Pastime

That's me sitting in that purple chair. I'm the skinny pink Wookiee, Bowann, a foot soldier for the Rebel Alliance, a Rifleman and a Combat Medic. I'm actually sitting in a player-created shopping mall, on the planet Naboo, on the Bria server of Star Wars Galaxies. The alien creatures behind the counter are the employees of my other character, Bo'Ann the Twi'lek, who was a slightly notorious and wealthy chef, and financier of the Rebel Alliance. I just finished delivering some inventory for her to her shop-keepers, and I'm chilling. I had one other character, Boann Stryker, who was the mayor of a city controlled by the Rebel Alliance. A city built by players, and decorated by players. Boann controlled the layout of the houses and which style houses were allowed, and where the public starport and cantina and shopping centers were, as well as city hall. Oh, and the Rebel base we had until the "Imps" (Imperial players) came and fought us, and eventually took down the base. Star Wars Galaxies circa 2003 to 2005 took up a lot of my free time. The economy was entirely player-based, there was an active and very challenging Galactic Civil War in which some players were Imps and some were Rebels, and there was just a lot of tomfoolery and zaniness, such as scavenger hunts, silly contests (who can run in their underwear and with only a newbie pistol for defense, through the neighboring Imperial controlled player city, and return to the Rebel cantina -- first one gets a force crystal), pub crawling, and everyone's favorite: shopping at the hundreds of player-controlled and staffed malls, shops, cantinas, merchant tents, etc. SWG was the game that had my friends and family very concerned about me, and Sig nearly broke up with me despite the fact that he and I had both started playing the game at the same time. I was the one who lost it over SWG, and blurred the line between life and virtual life.
Sig, on the other hand, did this in EverQuest. He quite often played for over 18 hours a day, following his neck surgery. I also played EQ, and because I was very fond of Sig I played frequently, and enjoyed the game world, but it never took over my life like SWG did.
Other games that Sig and I have played -- because we always play together -- are City of Heroes (Sig loved it, I barely tolerated it), Dark Age of Camelot (we both enjoyed it a great deal), World of Warcraft (we liked it, but honestly couldn't figure out why everyone in the world wanted to play it) and currently we are playing Lord of the Rings Online. Most online role playing games are based loosely on fantasy or myths of Northern Europe. I think that's why Sig liked City of Heroes so much; because it was based on comic book superhero mythology and was in an urban setting. And I liked SWG because it was science fiction mythology, with exotic planetary landscapes and very modern urban settings. You can only be awed by so many dragons and fall in love with so many Elves before it all gets a little stale, if you know what I mean.

Sig and I spent probably 3 years playing EQ, and another 2 years playing SWG, and we played a year here and a year there playing DAoC. WoW, only about 6 months. City of Heroes, about 6 months. Currently, we've been playing LOTRO since it was released in March of 2007. Sig plays more than I do, but overall neither of us plays nearly as much as we used to. It's mildly amusing, and we have a decent group of players that we hang with (mostly from New Zealand), and we really are fond of the LOTR mythology, but again -- can only take so many drunken dwarves and flirtatious elven maidens. In addition, all of the progression of your character on LOTRO is based on completing game story arc quests, of which the most challenging are usually "chapters" which you complete to finish "books". You can go out into the wilderness randomly slaying Orcs and Wargs if you so choose, but you won't get much experience from it and very little gold or silver, either. All of the games we've played, and loved, have eventually been changed beyond recognition by developers who kow-towed to either very inexperienced and whiney players who wanted the game to be easier or very hard-core elite players who wanted more high-level content. Additionally, some games had broken things from the very beginning (many of the quests in EverQuest, as well as the boat-traveling system; the battleground feature in SWG that never worked) that they never bothered to fix, as they kept adding on newer content.

Most online games nowadays have beautiful graphics and very individual and detailed characterization; my Wookiee , Bowann, was recognizable from several meters away and no other female Wook looked like me. My current avatar, Sciath, is a little fat gray-haired female hobbit. You can customize your eyes, ears, mouth, cheekbones, hair and facial hair, color and body build. Most players invest a lot of their own personalities and looks into their avatars. In searching my hard drive for screen shots, I was saddened to realize that I didn't save many for all the time I spent in these various worlds. I had probably dozens of SWG that I erased when I gave up the game, because looking at them only made me melancholy. In gaming, as in real life, you can't return to the good 'ol days -- once they're gone, once the game has been changed and tinkered with by the developers ('nerfed') it is painful to keep trying to recapture whatever it was about the game that you loved. Sometimes, you become so frustrated that you erase all the game files, and you lose forever your shots of Ketzel and his pink light saber or Sig's Fir Bolg warden.

For some reason, admitting to gaming as a hobby is considered very shameful. When you consider that I was a young woman when Pong first came out, and that I graduated from game arcades where you bought a handful of tokens for a few dollars, you begin to realize that computer and video gaming has really been around a long time. Many of us who were young when the first Sega system began selling, are now middle-aged. We literally grew up with a game controller in our hands. And gaming does not have to be some furtive activity that adolescent males do in their basement. My kids and I played, and watched each other play, console games for an hour or two nearly every day when they were growing up, in addition to other more socially acceptable family activities. My eldest and I stayed in contact with one another when she lived in Maine and I lived here in Sacramento by meeting online in The Realm, buying clothes for our avatars, avoiding being "ganked" by the infamous Mech PK ('player killer') gang and drinking grog. Sig and I played EQ together when he was in Boston studying. Sure, we could have just phoned one another -- but online gaming is cheaper than long distance phone calls, plus it gives you something fun to do together while you're talking. And nowadays, with Teamspeak and Ventrillo and Skype, you can actually talk while you game, instead of typing. I'm old-fashioned. I still prefer typing. Without online RPG (role playing games) I would not have gotten the benefit of the opinions of people all over the US as well as countries all over the world about things that the media in the US does not bother to really report on any longer. You know, inconsequential stuff like the Iraq War and US economic and foreign policy. Without the framework of gaming I would have had no opportunity to talk with these people and form online friendships that enriched my own worldview. When was the last time the Bingo crowd or your bowling team had more people who were proud citizens of the UK, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and Korea than Americans? It happens all the time when you are a West Coast gamer. Sig spends a great deal of time discussing movies and viewing movies, and occasionally making movies, with a wide range of people who have created a virtual Hollywood online through their love of The Movies, which is not a traditional online game at all. There are voice actors, producers, directors, writers, musicians and critics who have given their inner muse free reign. There are even "radio shows" devoted to The Movies, taking place on open channels on Skype at the same time every weekend. And let me tell you, some of the movies that this online community from all over the world creates are excellent. They rival anything that has won awards in the actual Hollywood industry. It boggles the mind that the creative talents of so many people are viewed as an adolescent pursuit, simply because the community producing this art is an online community.

You may have heard of Second Life, and you may have the impression that this is what online gaming is. Second Life is not really a game, it is a virtual reality of largely player-based content. There is no story to it, no quests, no goals, no "leveling" of a character. The people who are making money in Second Life are making actual money, selling virtual merchandise and real estate for real cash. Pornography and gambling are huge industries in Second Life. I tried it, and it was interesting to a point, but without the goals and incentives of the gaming environment I tired of it very quickly. There are "gold merchants" and various sordid virtual services in all online RPGs, but they are only ancillary. In Second Life, they are the game, and that is just a little too much like Real Life.
I'll take drunken dwarves, flirtatious elves, and a good dragon raid over that any day.

Health Care Bubble?

Paranoid Renter over at Sacramento Land(ing) believes that the next bubble will be in healthcare:
"
The bubble I see is one where there are too many jobs created in healthcare and auxiliary industries. So the way I see this playing out:
- Lots of nurse positions; nurse salaries go up marginally. Nursing schools make out like bandits.
- Doctors salaries skyrocket and they start switching jobs like crazy to take advantage of pay hikes.
- Artificial shortages of drugs drive up prices of drugs and help the pharmaceutical industry report record profit.
- Lots of administrative positions created ("director of customer care for the hospital", etc.) and tons of bureaucracy in billing and hospital management. [For the record, my insurance/billing is not yet complete for a blood test I had last March!]. Errors in billing (usually amounting to overbilling) will proliferate.
- Insurance will cover less and charge more resulting in record profits for insurers."


My response, which was too long and not at all housing bubble related:

Nurse positions are chronically underfilled and have been for years. This article in USA Today sums it up fairly well. A bout 4 years ago, I sent away for a bunch of free promotional stuff , including a neat video, to encourage young people to go into nursing. I set up my table and video and posters and brochures at a local high school job fair, and there was enormous interest. During the fair, which also had representatives from Cal State (it has a nursing program) and American River College (ditto) , I was approached by one of the career counselors from one of the colleges, who told me that they had a waiting list several years long to get into their nursing program. The problem isn't convincing people to consider a career in nursing, it's convincing nurses to get the pre-requisite Masters or Doctors degree and teach nursing. Nurses make more by practicing their profession than by teaching it.
Laws mandate clinical nursing instructors supervise a very limited number of student nurses on the floor, as well, and that also tends to limit the number of students that can be admitted to a school.
We are currently importing a very substantial number of foreign nurses to fill positions that Americans want to fill and are unable to find training for.
It is hard to imagine a situation in which there will be an over-supply of nurses. The government already offers incentives to Colleges of Nursing, and while I would not turn down a pay raise, neither do I feel that I am not compensated enough . The laws of supply and demand work pretty darn well in nursing: we're in demand, and we get damn good salaries and benefits. We get paid more in California, because it is an expensive state in which to live and because it has a severe nursing shortage. California law mandates ratios of from 2:1 in Intensive Care units to 5:1 on Medical/Surgical floors. Considering the multitude of drugs and IV fluids/medications, and treatments, and assessments that must be performed a ratio of 5 :1 is not at all generous. Any parent who has ever cared for more than 1 sick child will immediately grasp this. People are not hospitalized for minor ailments any longer. Most routine surgeries go home within a day. My knees, hips and feet constantly ached when I worked on the floor, and it was a true aerobics and weight-lifting work-out. Statistically, the best care is of course one on one, but that is not economically feasable for any but the very sickest patients. Studies show that increasing the ratio beyond 5 patients leads to an increased mortality rate.

Doctors do not usually get salaries; they are usually in private practice and they receive compensation from a variety of sources. The exception is Kaiser docs, who do work for Kaiser and receive a salary. They also don't have to worry about paying their staff, including billers and coders and "authorization" clerks and not just the hands-on workers that take your vital signs when you see your MD. They don't have to worry about obtaining coverage for vacations, seminars or emergencies. They don't have to worry about malpractice insurance.

Medicare Part D has already driven up the cost of pharmaceuticals because the government is not allowed to bargain with drug companies on the price of the meds, and the drug companies are allowed to stop covering a medication in the middle of your coverage period if they want to, but the consumer is not allowed to choose a new plan until the next coverage year begins (and there are over 67 drug plans in California, btw). The Veteran's Administration, who up until the current political administration had provided excellent care to veterans since they cleaned up their act after the Vietnam War, actually gets very good prices on medications by driving a hard bargain. So do several HMO's who provide prescription medicine coverage.

There are already multitudinous layers of bureaucracy in healthcare. Your doctor, your clinic, your hospital (again, unless you are a Kaiser member) must staff entire departments who do nothing but submit and re-submit bills to insurers, trying to meet all their demands for verification and proof, and trying to get procedures authorized. Each insurer, and there are dozens of them, has different rules and paperwork. Medicare is probably the single biggest payer that most healthcare providers deal with, but it is not in the business of denying care to ensure fat CEO compensation and shareholder dividends, so it is tedious but quite possible to actually get paid under Medicare. There will always be administrative costs associated with healthcare; we are talking about people's lives and well-being. We are talking about your child, your mother, your lover. The state has regulations and inspectors, the feds have regulations and inspectors, and most hospital systems have the good ol' "Quality Assurance" department who keeps coming up with new goals to meet. And mistakes STILL happen, at an alarming rate.
Single-payer healthcare is more likely to reduce the need for clerical and administrative staff than to increase it. Knowing one set of regulations and codes is much more efficient than employing the staff necessary to specialize in each and every insurer's regulations.

Finally, insurance has been covering less and charging more for years now. Private insurance costs have risen at over twice the inflation rate in the past 2 years. Things have gotten so bad that even corporate capitalists are now screaming for a single-payer healthcare system -- at least the ones that don't work in the health insurance industry are. At this point, the greed of the few has pushed the tolerance of the many over the edge. Insurers refusing to pay for life-saving operations or procedures which are not experimental, but are very expensive, is now a fact of healthcare in the US.

Is this a "bubble"? I don't think so. Technically, a "bubble" arises in the financial sense when a commodity is irrationally valued without any basis in fact. The facts are that we DO have a growing population, of which an increasingly large number are living long enough to develop chronic illness. Additionally, we have made technological advances and are able to perform procedures that will add years to people's lives. None of this fits the definition of a speculative bubble.

I Give Up

When we moved to this rental in El Dorado Hills we believed that we would only be staying for 6 months -- maybe less.

That was nearly 2 years ago.

In the past week, a Streng atrium model home came up for rent on Craig's List. My daughter and I went out and looked around the yard, pool, etc. and peered in windows and I decided to pursue it. Sig went down and looked at it separately from me, but we both did the tour.
Frankly, it's not worth the rent they're asking. The property management guy did emphasize that the owners would be doing some fix-up and painting, to be fair. But the bottom line is that this Streng was somewhat poorly maintained, and the owners did some things that it would be hard for me to live with in this particular style of house: they took out one of the planters and put in planking which lays beneath the level of the room just enough to trip you, they put up a chair rail in the area off the kitchen (doesn't fit modern style at all, and since you have to look at it from all over the main open room, it's a constant thorn in your side). These are major design flaws that I would not feel free to correct in a rental house. In addition, they removed the Oriental-style lanterns and hung some kind of smoked-glass ugly lights, and of course put ceiling fans in. Ceiling fans seems to be the hot item that original owners switched the great modern globe lights or lanterns out for.

If it had been up to me, a notoriously impulsive person, I would have put a deposit on the place and moved, because I love Strengs. But Sig was not that impressed, and we sat down and made a pro/con list:
Pro: Cmyst likes Streng atriums and this is a Streng atrium.
Con: Sig is worried that the doggies will pee on the plants (not the end of the world, certainly...) and that grandkids will delight in removing the rocks, throwing the rocks, and perhaps eating the rocks (which could be bad if the doggies DO pee on the plants...)
This prompted a discussion on how much I really love this particular model and how it is likely to be what I end up purchasing, one day, if I'm not too old, and if mortgages are ever able to be obtained again without 20% down, and if house prices once again revert to their historical norms.
Pro: The yard is much smaller than the one we have, no lawn, no maintenance other than turning on the irrigation system in the summer to maintain the ground cover. Sig was very excited about this. Our present gardens are way too much for us, consisting of several pathways and decks and gazebo. Even hosting parties of up to 20 people, we use about 1/4 of the available areas comfortably. In addition, we have a huge front garden area that gets used even less. But we must still maintain these areas, as our landlords are notoriously lax about providing gardening services as were promised, but neither have they made any noise about raising our rent so we just do a lot of maintenance and keep our yaps shut.
Con: There is no real area that is safe to host large outdoor parties (which we do about 3 times a year) or to set up the grill in a way that the cook can maintain conversation with any diners. The yard is perfectly fine for a couple who never entertain more than 2 other friends. For a couple with a large extended family, it does not work.
Pro: It is closer in to Sacramento, and the neighborhood is safe. It would be much easier for me, as most of my work visits are in the area.
Con: Sig believes it will be noisier and that there will be more traffic congestion problems. I disagree with him, and really --- I know these neighborhoods lots better than he does.
Pro: No water bills! We are currently spending about $125/mo on water bills, an unexpected expense when we moved from an un-metered Sacramento Co. to metered EDH Co.
Con: Other utility costs MIGHT rise. The incredibly large skylight, which I love, might also be a huge energy cost from lost heat in winter and incoming sun/heat in summer.
Pro: There's a swimming pool and a hot tub, functional, and pool/spa servicing provided. There really isn't any con to this one, and Sig really wanted that pool. He talked a lot about it. Me, I want the hot tub.

So far, we pretty much have balanced pros and cons. But there are a final 3 cons:
Con: We would have to spend $3,000 minimally to move into the house. We will probably get a return of our current deposit of $1800, but that would be long after the Christmas season and it's likely we wouldn't get the full amount, no matter how clean things are. That's just the reality.
So, our entire savings would be depleted and we'd have to borrow for kid presents (only kids get presents in our family, which has made the holiday a lot more enjoyable for the adults) and for a post-New Year's weekend trip that we've already planned and made reservations for.
Con: The rent for this smaller house with a smaller yard in an OK suburb is the same as for our current house in a much safer, quieter and more upscale in reputation suburb.
BIG CON: We'd have to move. Sig feels that since I work outside the home and he doesn't, he'd have to do most of the moving, like he did when we moved here. We'd have to hire movers for the appliances and beds, as Sig had a neck/back surgery history that is supposed to prevent him from really heavy lifting. That would probably cost an additional several hundred bucks. Moving is an incredible hassle and is one of the main reasons that I want my own home: when I do purchase, I never intend to move again. That's it. No more moving.

There really was no logical decision other than to stay put. IF the Streng had been more nicely maintained by owners who understood they had a modern home, not a country home; IF the rental rate had been $300/mo. less; IF the yard had been a little bigger.

So, I'm really bummed now. I had plans to start a new Blog on my rental Streng. I was hoping to finally be done with waiting, even though I still can't afford to buy any decent Strengs that are on the market currently. I took a farewell tour of all the neighborhoods (minus the Elk Grove one, it's just too far to go on a Friday just before rush hour) where I have tracked Strengs: off Hemlock in Citrus Heights, the Northgate area where the rental house was, the Wildflower Circle area of Carmichael. And I gave up. There is no sense putting any more energy into this pursuit because it is fruitless. Prices will EVENTUALLY come down, but until they do I think it's best for me to just put Strengs out of my mind and do what I said I was going to do way back in my first post: settle in here, put up some pictures, de-clutter the boxes from the Den and perhaps fix that upstairs guest bedroom into a little office so I can remove all my work-related stuff from the dining area. Maybe I'll buy a good refurbished hot tub; there's a spa area with 110 and 220 already hooked up just outside. Maybe Sig will get a telescope for the upstairs deck. We talked about all of this when we first moved here, and I think that I've finally accepted that it is time to actually LIVE and that it is entirely possible to do that in this rental house.

The Incipient Moment

For many years, we have been told that the Chinese symbol for "Crisis" consisted of "danger" and "opportunity". In fact, the lower symbol is not "opportunity". It is roughly translated as "crucial point". Our misinterpretation of this Chinese symbol is in itself symbolic of the current
mental state of the housing market.
Many of us have adapted psychologically to housing prices that have been outrageously out of whack with fundamentals. We are at that point now where prices in the Sacramento and Central Valley area have fallen off substantially from their ridiculous highs of 2005. In comparison, some houses are beginning to look like bargains.
But is this an "opportunity"?
Or is it really that crucial point where the market and our economy pause before the crisis in all its full-blown destruction actually begins?

This past week has been a challenging time in my 2 year journey into the Sacramento area housing market. As I have mentioned before, I have a fondness for Streng homes.
These mid-century modern tract homes can be found in clumps and individually from the most exclusive neighborhoods like Shelfield Oaks in the Arden area to rusty working class neighborhoods in Elk Grove and Foothill Farms. No one is building tract homes like these any longer, though in my opinion some of these struggling builders could do far worse than to emulate the Streng's sense of style and add in some eco-friendly materials and energy-efficient components like they are doing with the same old tired stucco designs that have been promoted as the apex of tract home luxury and class. From the first time I ever stepped inside a Streng atrium model, I was in love; but at the time I had a house and I didn't pursue the matter. Now, that mysterious house with concrete paths and indoor gardens is no longer a mystery. I know what it is, and I know where to find it. But it's not any individual house that I'm in love with. It's the design of these homes that I have fallen for. I am currently tracking any reasonably-priced Streng in the Sacramento area. (Those under 400K, which means the Arden area is out of my league). I prefer the atrium models, but the other models have design elements such as clerestory windows and open-beam ceilings, that make them nearly as attractive to me.

My first, and relatively minor, challenge came when a Streng with very good bones came on the market in Elk Grove at a price that was 50K less than the other 3 Strengs in that area were asking, and with much less and relatively easily remedied futzing around with the basic design elements. (These houses can be prey to over-zealous flippers who want to upgrade them right into granite counter top mediocrity). In comparison, this house seemed to be a real bargain. And to give this owner their due, they priced this house with the right attitude. I even went to the trouble of looking into pre-qualification and what my payments would be, and that is where I pulled back. Because even though the house was priced at about 3 x my income, and was the best priced house in the neighborhood, it was still priced too high. It had a paper gain of well over 150K in 10 years, roughly doubling its asking price. Moreover, the crime rate of the area was well over the national average and household income, while still over the regional average, was a little low for the asking price. Because I recognized that the seller had at least made an effort to price well and was offering the most home for the money in that area, I was actually pleased when it went pending. A month or so later, though, it was back on MLS and had taken a further 10K price reduction. This caused me to reflect a lot on the advisability of buying in to what is still a sinking market.

Then, this week I was driving through Foothill Farms and decided to tour a neighborhood that I knew was loaded with Strengs, just to look at them. I like looking at what people have done with their Streng, and will never pass up the chance to detour into neighborhoods where there are a lot of them. Sometimes I eat lunch and do paperwork in my car in these neighborhoods, just basking in the hip wonder of it all. And to my astonishment, there were 2 houses for sale that I had missed in my weekly MLS trolling. When I got home to my computer and looked them up, it turns out they were priced below my parameters, which I set months ago in order to eliminate houses that were too far gone to rehab. These houses were not too far gone, and the neighborhood was solid and relatively quiet, filled with other Strengs that showed a lot of pride of ownership and a commendable level of respect for modern design. One of these two Strengs is a foreclosure, and it's being offered at just over 200K. It needs some work, and I've no idea what the inside is like, but on either side are very nicely maintained neighbors. Now, 200K is pretty damned reasonable in general. And I am inclined to want to look at this house more carefully, which would mean involving one of the Sacramento Bubble bloggers who is an agent -- and I don't want to do that unless I'm really serious. But it's hard to know if I'm really serious without seeing the house on more intimate terms. And even though this house is priced pretty well now, will it hold that value? If prices revert to their 2001 averages, it would not. In fact, if prices revert to 2001, this house in Foothill Farms is still priced about 70K too high. It's still 4.5 x the median household income for the neighborhood, which is still a little high -- though admittedly not as crazy high as the 10 x income in some places. There are other things to consider, too: the neighborhood isn't bad, but it isn't stellar. The house is not the atrium model that I love. There is multi-family housing in the area. Even from casual observation of the outside of the house only, it needs some serious sprucing up. Will other, more "move in ready" Strengs start hitting the market at the same pricing level in the next year? Or will it really take as many years as some people are predicting for the market pricing to fully correct to a sane level? I am not getting any younger, and while I don't want to throw money away, neither do I want to rent until I'm too old to be physically able to landscape and paint and renovate. I would like to spend a few productive years "coming home" to a place that I can make mine, instead of spending those years in a rental that I don't feel the freedom or inclination to modify to meet my needs.

Is this the opportunity within the crisis? Or is it the crucial point where the crisis really begins?
When in doubt, it is prudent to stop and think. Perhaps the turning of the year will bring further illumination.