House Hunting and Decisions to Make

The last week has been really busy. Saturday, I went to look at apartments in Hagerstown with Kimba and Anna. The first one we looked at was in downtown Hagerstown, and wasn't in all that good of a neighborhood. The other one was in Smithsburg, and would cost way too much, even if I had Stacie living with me--not to mention, I wouldn't be able to save up enough for the security deposit.

On Wednesday, Dad, Anna, Kayla and I went to look at the mobile home that's for sale in the mobile home park down the road from their house. It's kind of small (the second bedroom is tiny--not really bedroom size at all, more like a den), and at first I thought I wouldn't be able to afford it alone, but I've done some figuring. I might be able to afford it after all. There are a few cons, but there are a lot of pros too, which goes for all of the choices I've looked at so far.

For instance, the walls in the house are covered with dark paneling. If I can paint over the paneling, that would be great, and it would make the place look more open. If I couldn't paint over the paneling, I'd just cover the walls with posters or something (I certainly have enough).

After looking at the $8,000 house, we went to Hagerstown to look at a house at the Fleetwood dealership there. We saw one with two bedrooms and two bathrooms for $36,000, plus $12,000 placement. So I'd need to get a mortgage for $48,000. The Fleetwood dealership offers financing, but you have to put 10% down (about $5,000 in this case), and I don't even have $500 to spare, much less the $2,500 I'd have to fork out to get that through with Stacie. I figured out that I could probably afford it if I moved in with Stacie though.

Yesterday, Kimba called me at work to say that one of the people she works with may have a room available in her apartment starting around mid-July or so for $450 a month, plus some utilities (I haven't found out which yet--gotta e-mail the girl after I finish this entry). That's a little late for me, so I'd probably have to store all of my stuff in my parents' basement and sleep on their couch for a month or so. I'm not looking forward to doing that.

I looked online for financing I could get with 0% down, and I found one site. They had a form to fill out for more information, so I filled it out twice--once for the larger house and once for the $8,000 house, so they could let me know if I could possibly qualify for either loan.

I have to say, this living with roommates thing is kind of getting old. I wouldn't mind living in the smaller trailer by myself. I'd have to wait until after I pay off my car in April of 2010 before I could 1) save any significant amount of money per month (though I could possibly still save a little), and 2) repaint the walls (if that's even possible), but that would be okay with me. There should be plenty of room for my furniture, and the site rental plus mortgage payments would only come to $490-500, which should be doable since the power and heating bills will be a lot less there than they are at the townhouse. I don't know if the size of the household has anything to do with my current cable TV and internet bills, but those might be less too, and even if they're not, I have a little of leeway about how much I can afford for those. Also, I might be able to get wireless internet from my parents' house (I'd help pay Dad's internet bill) if I put a high enough mast on the house and Dad got the necessary equipment on his end.

If I live in one of the two trailers, I'd be able to walk to my parents' house and visit whenever I wanted. I could bike too, and that would help me get in shape. But if I lived with Stacie, I might have to sell furniture in order for both of our stuff to fit. The wireless internet mast could also work here, since there's a vacant lot in the mobile home park there.

Apparently, Kimba's friend's apartment is near my work, so I might be able to walk there if I lived in the apartment. But there might not be enough room for all of my furniture in the apartment, and I'm not sure I have enough time to find someone to buy any. I suppose I could just give it away, but if I sold it, then I'd have more money available for a security deposit and such (if Kimba's friend would need a security deposit).

Once I've gotten a reply to my impending e-mail to Kimba's friend, I will adjust my financial figurings to reflect her estimates on utility costs. Since an apartment can't be much bigger (or smaller) than a mobile home, I figure the costs for utilities are at least a little bit comparable, as opposed to the costs for a townhouse that fits five people comfortably.

Also, these financial figurings will only be for the first few days of living wherever I end up living. My 3-year review at work comes up on July 5, so I'll be getting a raise of at least $500 per year (the largest raise I have gotten so far was $1,500 per year). It's not much, but it will help me to afford a little bit more. But first, I have to get whatever housing I can afford right now. That way, when the raise comes, I'll be a little more comfortable than I would be at my current salary.

Tonight is D&D night. We finished our adventure during last week's session, but I've heard that we will have a couple of options to continue with the same characters in different adventures. One option is to join a game in the Greyhawk setting. The other option is to stay in the same setting (Eberron) and make our characters 2-3 levels higher than they ended up. I'd like to stay in Eberron and level my character naturally, since I've never actually played a campaign where my character earned the experience and levelled up without artificialness.

Yay DSL!

Well, after nearly 2½ hours (at least half an hour of which was pure frustration), we now have not only our DSL internet set up, but our wireless network as well.

I started out trying to hook up the modem to Stacie's desktop computer, but I couldn't find an Ethernet port. So I took it up to the common room and hooked it up to Kayla's computer, like the old one was. I figure, I'll give Kayla my old computer, then Dad can fix it up for her (I'll pay for a new hard drive, if neccesary) and we'll just keep the modem on the current computer and not use it for anything else. I'll have to talk to Kayla about it.

Anyway, the modem got set up without a hitch after that, so I started trying to figure out how to set up the wireless network.

It took me at least half an hour to find the "site" to go to for configuration (http://dslrouter), but then it asked me for a password. I spent 5-10 minutes trying to guess, with no luck, before I decided to try the verizon.net Live Chat support.

In less than the time it had taken me to find the "site," I was in. It was just a generic administrator's username and password, but it was one I hadn't thought to try.

Anyway, after that, I logged off the chat, set up the wireless network, then connected my laptop to it before I left notes for everyone else about the network name and key.

It's nice to have reliable internet access again.

Ok, no need to panic . . .

This morning, I had trouble staying asleep. I woke up around 6am, looked at the clock, and then tried to go back to sleep.

I had a nice sleep, then I realized that it had probably been too long to wait for my alarm. I looked at the clock, and and it was completely blank! So I went downstairs and looked at my cell phone--it was 7:49! We had had a power outage sometime between 6 & 7 this morning.

I turned off the laptop (the dock had no power, and the screen had frozen, so I had to take out the battery), looked out the window and saw all the snow, so I called work and left a message saying I wouldn't be coming in because the roads were un-driveable. I probably wouldn't have been able to get my car out of the street anyway.

So, I tried to get on the 'net and make this post once the power came back on, but my wireless connection wasn't working. I thought it was the wireless card, because the wireless router seemed to be working fine. Turns out, it was the internet connection itself.

Dad couldn't help over the phone, but Kayla fixed it a little while ago. She fiddled with the connections to the router, and then flipped the light switch for the internet connection on and off. All I had to do was restart my computer after that, and connection was a snap!

Thank goodness. I'd've hated to have to wait until tomorrow for any sort of internet connection (at work) and then have to wait until my dad could get here to fix the connection. He already needs to help me with the drapes in my room.

I took some pictures of my new place while I was waiting for the computer to re-boot, so I'll get those uploaded and then post them later.