> So everything is stored and you can't get to it. I hate when that happens. If you need a

Yep. It's not like it's a storage garage, where you can just walk in and look around. The moving company people just put all our stuff in wooden boxes and set them wherever it is they put things like that.

>good house, the one across the street from us is for sale. Three bedrooms, two fireplaces, central heat and air, above-ground swimming pool, two acre lot, pear trees, garden in back, paved drive with two-car garage, detatched workshop, big shade trees. But it's over 40 years old and needs some repairs. Probably not located right for you, but you can buy it for 60,000 pounds.

Hey, sounds great. But Tennessee (that's where you live, right?) is a little far for my dad to commute to California every day.

It's difficult trying to find a house here. The demand is very high (the list of people looking for houses in the paper is longer than the list of houses selling), so owners of the houses to rent are starting to "raise standards"--i.e., no pets (we have a dog and a cat), no smoking (my dad does--blech), no kids even. And we much prefer to rent. Plus this is a no-growth county, because of water scarcity, so no new houses can be built. Plus houses that advertise as having acreage tend to have land that is all vertical. That is, unusable. Looks like I'll be living in a motel for a while.

Aya"While we were house-hunting the other day, I saw a sign outside someone's house that said 'The Stoddard's'. The misplaced apostrophe seemed pretty jarring for someone with Sam's last name. :)"ko