Yin Yang of House-hunting (and Life)

We will get to the part about house-hunting in a short while (or long while depending on where this wandering mind of mine goes). But first of all, I want to know what it is with dogs (or at least our dog, Kutti) and thunder. We had a bit of strong thunderstorms this afternoon and she was so scared that she was trembling the whole time. She wanted to cuddle so much that it was very touching but then even though I like our dog and cuddling, there is only so long I can do that, right? Anyway, I went and searched for dogs and thunder and found that the best way to "desensitize" a dog to thunder (or fireworks) is to record the sound and play it repeatedly (starting at a low volume, mind you) over a period of several days. Now that is one advice that I am not going to follow as there is only so long I can cuddle with Kutti. The storms passed and it cleared up some and so we went for a walk. Everything looks cleaner and greener after rain (I just love it) and I even got to see a rainbow.

One more thing before we get to the house-hunting part (only one more, I promise). I am glad that Blogger has introduced labels but then I am also not happy about it. Here's why. I labeled my posts today and realized that I don't (can't) have one for Books. I used to be an avid reader of books (mostly fiction) but that is in the past now. There are several reasons (read excuses) for my not reading books anymore but I am still disappointed. A little less TV and blog-reading might steer me towards books but I am not sure when that will happen. But till then, my goal would be to post enough to create a label called Books.

Ok, now we come to the house-hunting part. We went house-hunting (they don't call it hunting for no reason) two weeks ago, as we are moving to Houston, Texas in September. When we woke up one hot and muggy monday morning, our mission was to find a house in the next four days. That seemed daunting and possible depending on the time of day. We were prepared to do that as we had done extensive searches on the internet and created several lists (what else would two engineers do?!). So we go look at about five houses that monday morning, with our realtor. We didn't like any of them. Needless to say, we were quite upset. We discussed strategies and alternatives till it was time to go look at more houses.

By the end of the first day, our realtor had a better understanding of what we liked and didn't like. So the rest of the hunting was better. We drove by some houses on our list to find that we couldn't live in that neighborhood or the color was a turn-off and that made the house hopping a bit easy. We saw about 20 houses in two days, but then depending on whether it was before or after lunch, I remember different things about them. When we went to look at houses after lunch, I had a hard time leaving the bedroom as my inclination was to take a nap. But luckily, my more rational half took notes on all the houses we saw (hey, I took some too).

On the third day, we decided that we can't keep up with 10 houses a day. But by then, we had a good idea of what we wanted and what we can get (sometimes, that helps). We cherry picked a few more houses to see. Finally, we had two houses that we really liked. Unfortunately, we didn't get our first pick. Fortunately, we got our second pick. But the whole process was exciting and frustrating at different times (just like life). So now all that is left is to move there and start the next chapter in our lives.