Nope.

Well, we didn't get the house we put an offer on. We were the lowest offer and they decided to go with another offer without even counter-offering us.  Luke and I are trying hard not to get discouraged -- after all, we've only been doing this process for a month.  However, it's so frustrating because it feels like home prices are going up and we don't want to lose our awesome interest rate.  It feels like the perfect time to buy a house, yet nothing perfect is happening.  We're used to getting everything we want, when we want it.  This will take some damn adjustment.  But then again, there are people in our country getting the fucking bubonic plague from squirrels, so my life is pretty damn good.

Speaking of good, my boss asked me that question today where he wanted to know what my career aspirations are and where I want to go from here.  Typically, that is an easy question for me to answer.  "Up!" I would gleefully exclaim.  This was the first time, honestly, that I have felt completely and totally comfortable existing exactly the way I am.  I have a pretty sweet gig.  I'm the Studio Director at a company that makes iOS games, but I work from home.  It gives me wonderful autonomy to work when it makes the most sense for me, yet be available for my team at all hours.  I spend a whole shit ton of time talking to my dogs and wondering why they're not laughing at my jokes.  I don't get the fancy free catered lunches anymore, but I've traded it in for the freeing ability to wearing whatever the fuck I want all day long.  90 degrees out today?  Okay, I'll skip wearing a shirt entirely.  Don't feel like showering and making my hair look good this morning?  I don't.  These are luxuries I don't want to lose.

I have to admit that it's a strange feeling to be comfortable in my skin and with my career.  I think I'm doing what I'm skilled to do.  I'm enjoying the ride.  If I answered his question with 100% honesty, I'd tell him that my next stop is getting pregnant, quitting, and staying home to raise my future child.  I don't suspect that would be met with congratulations, and I feel like it's almost me "giving up" or losing all that ambition I once had.  I moved up really fast in my career, and I've rarely gotten to stop and think about what I want to be when I grow up.  I knew I wanted to become a Producer, but I so quickly skipped right through that experience and was promoted so fast that I never thought about where I want to go from here.  VP of Something-Or-Other, I guess.  The likelihood of nailing that kind of sweet deal while working remotely is pretty damn slim though.  Which is why I'm totally fine just being me.

I feel like society is constantly encouraging us to want more.  Through material things, whimsical dreams for ourselves, wistful jealousy of other people.  All of this is only spurred on by an obsession with sites like Facebook and Pinterest that show you just how goddamn perfect everyone else is but you.  The emphasis on possessions and DIY skills and any sort of display that shows how much more worldly you are than everyone else...it's sickening.  Yet, I find myself playing right along into it sometimes and wondering if the person I am on the internet is getting closer to or further from the human being I play in real life.

Herringbone and boring purple hair

I'm feeling in a slump today, so maybe writing here will be a bit cathartic for me.   Today was a rather emotional day.  I woke up early to head to our home inspection for the house I talked about, and immediately after walking in I just felt regret.  The house is beautiful on the outside and in a really nice neighborhood, but I couldn't stop thinking of how small the home was.  Imagining being in that house for over 5 years with Luke and I, three dogs, and a future baby....that all sounded too cramped and uncomfortable.  We went and looked at a couple more houses during the day, and one of them was beautiful and 300 square feet bigger.  I had the weirdest mixed emotions, because I knew it was a better buy for us.  For some reason, it made me feel emotional to cancel the offer/contract on the first house.  I knew it wasn't the right one, and I didn't want to keep it, but I felt like removing it from the list of potentials was losing an old friend.  It was odd.

The new house is nice though.  It's more of a "blank slate" yet still upgraded.  It has nice charm, hardwood floors, nice covered patio, and a big den space that will really come in handy.  I'm pretty excited about the possibility of getting this one, except we're competing with a few other people.  Offers will be reviewed tomorrow and they expect to finish negotiations by Wednesday.  We will see what happens....

On Saturday I spent like four hours browsing the web looking for hairstyles, trying to figure out what the fuck to do with my hair.  After all this saving of images, scouring over Pinterest and Tumblr, and Googling so hard my fingers hurt afterward, I ended up getting the same fucking hairstyle that I already had.  I'm contemplating shaving the other side so that I have a long mohawk, just to do something different.  I'm bored with my hair, despite it being bright fucking purple.  Odd.

Lately we've been pretty homebodied and not doing very much, so it was really damn nice to get out Saturday night to have dinner at a friend's house with a bunch of other game devs, then go out to a wonderful dinner last night at Herringbone in La Jolla with one of Luke's former coworkers and his wife.  This week, one of my best friends from SF is coming to visit, and we have a Disneyland trip planned for Sunday. I'm really excited to have a fun week, though I have a somewhat tedious business trip for tomorrow and the stress of hoping our offer is approved for the house is getting to me.  It's been hard to have motivation to do much of anything lately, so that really needs to do a 180.

In other news, I love my new horse, I forgot how much I like the vibe in Ocean Beach, I am really in love with our new Dyson vacuum, and my dogs are batshit insane.  I've been getting baby fever big time lately, I'm annoyed with conservative political posts on Facebook, I want to go to a sewing class so I can learn some useful crafty skills, I'm excited to paint our cabinets white in whatever house we end up buying, I'm reading a lot on my iPad lately and want one of those new fancy Kindles, and I'm kind of sick of just about everyone on Twitter. 

Luke has lost lots of weight and he's super adorbs and I'm slightly jealous yet not jealous enough to stop eating everything in sight on a regular basis.  So that's something.  

Finding a voice on the internet

In the real world, I'm pretty comfortable and confident with who I am.   I'm of the age now where I'm no longer struggling to "find myself" and I'm pretty set as far as life goes.  But on the internet, my god.  I'm like a walking contradiction.

It's not news to anyone that I have a lot of blogs.  Whenever I'm feeling interested in something, I want to start a blog about it.  When I'm playing WoW, I read tons of WoW blogs and need to start one.  When I am feeling particularly interested in the social game industry, I'll write about it on my domain name attached to my full name.  When I'm wanting to rant about sexism in video game culture, I'll head over to The Border House.  When I'm updating about my weight loss progress, I'll post to my exercise blog.  I have a couple other mostly-abandoned blogs focusing on riding horses and indie music.  And I have some freelance gigs on the side when I want to get paid for all this text.  I really fucking love to blog.  I've been blogging since I ever bought a computer, it's what got me a job in the game industry in the first place.

Other than The Border House, I don't have what I'd call a "successful" blog.  (And the success over there is attributed to a ton of people by the way, it's not a solo endeavor by any means).  You know, something where the comments are flourishing and I get a lot of traffic and people really care what I have to say.  I'm envious of some blogs on the internet.  I feel like I'm not funny enough to entertain people like on Autostraddle, I'm not intelligent enough to run a blog like Shakesville, I'm not good enough at writing to know what my voice is and manage to grow a following anymore.  I miss what I used to have on my gaming blog back in 2006-2007.  It was a real community, a camaraderie, a place that I was so excited to log into multiple times per day and speak my mind (and people enjoyed commenting there too).

I could do this at The Border House, but it has such a serious tone over there.  The posts that get real traction are the longwinded academic posts, and that's not me.  I don't know enough about feminist concepts, nor do I play enough games nowadays to really contribute in a huge capacity to the editorial output over there.  I mostly play a "behind the scenes" role, which is less exciting than being the one to sling words all over the place.

I don't know what I'm looking for.  I want to write about something, but I don't know what, and I don't know where.  I have this entrepreneurial spirit that's dying to come out, and I don't know where to concentrate my efforts.

This helps.  I like just typing on this blog and seeing what happens.

Offer accepted!

Our offer was accepted on the house!  This is a surreal moment in my life, because I never thought the day would come where I'd be buying a house in a San Diego zip code.  I am so fortunate because I'm sharing this experience with my soul mate.  I consider myself to be one of the luckiest women on the planet.

Next stop is wire transferring the escrow money over, which happens today.  We have our home inspection on Monday morning, which I'm sure the house will pass with flying colors.  Feel free to pinch me, because I'm definitely fucking dreaming.

Slice of Instagram Life

Resurrection

Holy shit, I'm back.

I just decided to dust this thing off and see if anyone is out there.  I have a lot of blogs, but none of them feel like the place to rant about whatever comes to mind.  I miss the days on LiveJournal where I'd speak my mind and there were people there to rant with me.  I don't really want all that crap tied with my real full name, which eliminates this blog as a possibility.  And I have more interests than just video games, which eliminates this one and this one.  So, that leaves Tango Bango.

Luke and I put an offer on a house today.  When we rolled up in our real estate agent's brand new Lexus out front, we were basically stunned.  We immediately assumed that this house was way over our budget and was incorrectly priced, but were shocked when we found out that it was well within our price range.  It's only a wee 1100 square feet, but it's been gutted and upgraded to the hilt.  There are beautiful dark laminate floors throughout, an upgraded kitchen with nice gas stove, 3 bedrooms, 2 beautifully upgraded bathrooms, a huge backyard with room for a future in-ground pool, and a droolworthy private backyard space with a built in stone BBQ.  It's a dream.

We already had an offer in on another place, but ultimately we decided not to answer the counter offer and walk away.  The neighborhood wasn't as 'homey' in the other house, and we'd be paying the same amount for a much larger yet completely unfinished space.  We'd have a lot of expenditures if we tried to update the thing, and we didn't particularly want to end up being the nicest house on the block.

We anticipated many months of home searching because realtors in the area told us that it's a grueling fight in our price point because inventory is low.  I just hope we got lucky and found our place in the first month.  Although we always run the risk of some investor coming in with a cash offer and putting us out of the running.  We're optimistic though, and we know that there's always another house out there.  However, crossing my damn fingers about this house because it's perfect.

The Home-Buying Dilemma

Luke and I are only about 3 weeks into our great home search, in which we're finally planning to throw down the banner of renting and start building equity in our first purchased home.  It just began, and we're kind of stressed out about it.  Don't get me wrong -- I absolutely LOVE looking at houses and the idea of buying and upgrading our place is super exciting, but we're having some mixed thoughts on where and what to buy. The thing about San Diego, is that it's HUGE.  It's very much sprawled out, being 372 square miles.  This means that from area to area, you'll get a much different experience.

Our favorite areas:

Hillcrest & Mission Hills (92103) - There are hardly any single family homes here for sale, and the ones that are are going for $351 per square foot.  Keep in mind those prices include condos, which we're not interested in. Single family homes are much higher (Starting around $500,000).

North Park (92104) - Small homes, and the nicer area (Morley Field) is some of the most expensive real estate in San Diego proper. $310 per square foot but that value is brought down by condos.

University Heights (92116) - Another favorite of ours.  Small craftsman houses, little parking available.  $334 per square foot.

 Our budget is interesting, because we're trying to only consider one of our incomes in how much we can afford for our mortgage.  The reason for this is that some time I'm going to be out of work for having a baby and raising him/her through kindergarten at least.   And San Diego doesn't have that many jobs in the game industry, so we have to be cautious.  We don't want to end up in a house that requires us to both have full time jobs.  Right now on our current salaries, we could afford a $650,000 place.  But we are limited to a budget of $425,000 if we just take one of our incomes and our 5% down payment.  That means we can't really be in those areas we want, unless we get an 800 square foot house with only 1 bathroom and a tiny yard.

The areas we're looking in:

Clairemont (92111 & 92117).  These range from $250- $283 per square foot, giving us the ability to afford a 1400 square foot house with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths and a yard.  Convenient to freeways, but very hit or miss with the neighborhoods.  Not ideal.

Serra Mesa (92123) - This is an ideal location because it's very close to different freeways.  As a community though, it's not really what we're looking for.  Like Clairemont, it's hit or miss and kind of run down.  At $243 per square foot, the price is great.

Mira Mesa (92126) - This is where we rent now.  We don't really want to live here.  The location isn't awful, but it's a 40 minute drive from my ranch.  It's kind of run down and there are a LOT of rental properties.  But at a price per square foot of $229, we can absolutely get a lot for the money.

Poway (92064) - It's a long way away from the things we like to do, very far from the ranch, and not exactly the culture we want our future child to grow up in.  On the flip side, $258 per square foot, great school district, lots of horse ranches.

Our must-haves:

• Must be within a 25 minute drive to Del Mar to Luke's work
• Must be within 30 minutes to Tami's ranch in the Tijuana River Valley (preferably)
• Must have some kind of backyard space (which rules out condos and 99% of townhomes here)
• 2 bathrooms (or room to put another one in)
• Safe neighborhood, not next to an apartment complex
• Ideally at least 1200 square feet
• Dedicated parking for two cars.

Other factors:

• Turn-key.  It doesn't have to be.  If we can get a place for $399,000, we wouldn't mind the sweat equity to make it ours.
• Pool.  We'd love to have one, and we're willing to live in one of our less-desired neighborhoods if we get one.

The thing about the neighborhood is that we are completely enamored with the uptown neighborhoods (Hillcrest, North Park, University Heights, Mission Hills, Normal Heights, Kensington) and that is our ideal place to live.  We want to be close to the restaurants, the culture, the events, the shops.  I am pretty clear about wanting to raise 'future baby' up in a diverse neighborhood where gay and trans people are walking down the street without a second glance.  It's very important to me.

Option 1: Buy a bigger house in a neighborhood we don't really love (Clairemont, Serra Mesa, Linda Vista, Poway, Mira Mesa), hoping that at some point we could afford a larger home in one of those uptown neighborhoods.

Option 2: Buy a smaller house in the neighborhood that we do love (Uptown) hoping that at some point we could afford to upgrade to a larger home in the same neighborhood.

With Option 1: We'd have a large yard, maybe a pool, more interior space.  We'd have to drive further to immerse ourselves in the neighborhoods that we love, which means we wouldn't end up doing it often.  We wouldn't love our neighborhood, but it would likely be "fine" and safe. With Option 2, we'd be sacrificing a lot to get into the neighborhoods that we love.  We'd get very little yard space, a smaller, older house, and probably little parking.  On the positive, the house would have older charm/character, would be easily rentable and resellable because of the desirable neighborhoods, and our quality of life would be better because we'd be surrounded by the culture and life that we enjoy.

 Argh.  What do we do?  Decisions, decisions.