Our landlord is declaring bankruptcy. Apparently, his lawyer told him that he actually has to be living in our house to have the proceedings go through. He just gave us a month's notice to move. (We're on a month-to-month agreement). He was very apologetic, but said there was nothing he could do. We've lived here for three years.

It is really, really, really hard to find decent rentals in Orange County that will let you have two big dogs and a cat.

I suppose we could try to buy a house, but we would incur penalties for taking the down payment money out of a CD that hasn't yet reached maturity, and I still don't know if we really can afford it. Even if we could buy a house, wouldn't that still leave us with nowhere to live for a while?

Another long real estate day... we just finished writing up an offer on a house in Cypress. We don't like it as much as we liked the house in Long Beach, but after looking at crappy house after crappy house this afternoon, this one was a huge relief. The kitchen is sub-par, the rooms are on the small side, the closets are rather little, and the mirror in the main bathroom was obviously installed by someone who is way over five feet tall. I can only see the very top of my head.

However, the house includes what is quite possibly one of the swankiest rooms I've ever seen. It's a patio that's been enclosed and covered. There are windows on all sides, a wood burning stove, and a flat little carpet that leads up to some very 70's-looking tile. The tile is necessary because there is an enormous, pink, marbled jacuzzi in the corner, nestled in a dark wooden berth. The whole room is probably a good 400 square feet.

At dinner (J: "Do you want to eat at the Ninja Grill?" Me: "Ninja Grill? The sign says Inka Grill." J: "Well, I had the I, N, K, and A right." Me: "Honey, there's no K in 'ninja.'"), we brainstormed some possible names for that part of the house:

+ The Ski Lodge
+ The Charlie's Angels Room
+ Decadentia
+ Ponch & Jon's Place

We've already mentally put in a wet bar, a foosball table, and a drawer full of toothbrushes.

This house has multiple offers, too, but I can't imagine that there are offers from anyone who would develop the level of affection I already have for Speedo Palace.

My friend S. has been collecting quotes from her friends for years and posting them on her web page. I was looking over them today and rediscovered this one:

A: "So, this weekend, I saw that new Kubrick movie, 'Sleeping Out Loud.'"
S: "You mean 'Eyes Wide Shut.'"
A: "Yeah, whatever."

I haven't explained my username since way back in September. In case you were wondering, it's from Wallace Stevens' "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction." Here's the portion of the poem in which it appears:

He imposes orders as he thinks of them, As the fox and snake do. It is a brave affair. Next he builds capitols and in their corridors,

Whiter than wax, sonorous, fame as it is,
He establishes statues of reasonable men,
Who surpassed the most literate owl, the most erudite

Of elephants. But to impose is not
To discover. To discover an order as of
A season, to discover summer and know it,

To discover winter and know it well, to find,
Not to impose, not to have reasoned at all,
Out of nothing to have come on major weather,

It is possible, possible, possible. It must
Be possible. It must be that in time
The real will from its crude compoundings come,

Seeming, at first, a beast disgorged, unlike,
Warmed by a desperate milk. To find the real,
To be stripped of every fiction except one,

The fiction of an absolute—Angel,
Be silent in your luminous cloud and hear
The luminous melody of proper sound.

We had our inspection on the new house done yesterday, and it went just smashingly. The sellers were there, so we got a chance to meet them—I think they took a semi-paternal interest in us. They have kids who are our age, and one just bought a house of his own, so I think they were glad that we are so excited about the house. Moreover, the wife was an English major and the husband was a math major. Hooray for happy parallels.

We had no idea how much work they've done on the house. They did a full termite treatment, put on a new roof, replaced one full sliding glass door, painted, treated some dry rot on the rafters, roto-tilled the back and front yards (new grass just got planted yesterday)... I know I'm forgetting some things, too. Because the sellers have worked so hard to fix everything up, the inspector really only had a few, very minor concerns. I got more and more excited about moving there with every minute I spent in the house.

Our loan officer says she might be able to have our loan closed as early as the 31st. She rocks my world.

After the inspection, for which I had to get up way earlier than I ever get up on a Saturday, we returned home, took a disco nap, and rallied for dinner & drinks with a friend, who came over to pick up her fuzzmonster. I helped her start her own LiveJournal account last night. Now all she has to do is post in it. ;-) She very dear to me, and I do hope some of you will wave hello to her when she joins us in full force.

Later in the evening, I had a good, long talk with J—a sort of "state of the relationship" talk. We haven't done that enough lately; it's altogether too easy to get caught up in life's quotidian rhythms and forget about stepping back a little to see where you've come. Where we are is mostly good, but we both have some concerns, and I think we were able to discuss them in a constructive way. It was one of those talks that reminded me why I got married.

To the Vegas crew: I missed you this weekend about as much as it's possible to miss people you've never actually met. I wish I could have been there with you. Soon, though. I'll even buy the drinks.