That was the worst open house ever!

So, obviously, Kim and I need to eventually get a house closer than 1000 miles to her new job, so we've spent some of the last week-and-a-half looking at neighborhoods that we might want to live in. On Sunday we were in one of those neighborhoods -- which was pretty nice other than the mondo power lines that cut the subdivision in half -- and we saw a FSBO open house. The house backed onto a main road, and it seemed a little small, but we thought, hey, we're curious, let's go in. So, we walk up, and the owner opens the door. Immediately, before even stepping foot in the house, we notice two things: (a) The owner's wife is cooking dinner, and (b) the dinner she is cooking is an incredibly oniony, incredibly curryey Indian dish. The only thing I remember about the house now, only five days later, is the meal they were making, not the home. An F for them in FSBO 101.

Other than the above catastrophe, we haven't walked through any houses yet, but we do have some good ideas on which neighborhoods where we'd like to live. Our favorite, only about a 15-minute rush-hour drive from Kim's work (she drove it yesterday): A 560-home, 25-year-old subdivision that has two parks, a decent-sized lake, and no mondo power lines that cut the subdivision in half. (That last quality is shared by surprisingly few large subdivisions in the area.) There's also a nice diversity of style to the houses that's not always the case in preplanned subdivisions, and the schools are quite good. "Let's not fall too in love with it before we see inside the houses we can afford," he cautioned himself...

To answer questions in the comments: We're in corporate housing for two months, and then we're out sleeping in the park. (Or in Kim's parent's house.) We can also extend housing if we want, but we'd have to pay for it, and it ain't cheap. The apartment's nice enough for our purposes, and it's just down the way from one of the swimming pools. Kim's dad and I drove both cars to Chicago, and Benji was entertained by Kim in one of the cars (since she wasn't driving).

I [heart] the Internet.

We finally have it back, after almost two weeks of extremely limited surfing. More posts about Our Chicago Life to come.

Chicago.

We are here. Yay Chicago. Boo not having Internet access.

Seen on the webpage of a preschool in the Chicago area.

"By the end of preschool the children:
* will be able to count to eight
* will be able to recognize numerals zero to eight
* will be able to identify the four basic shapes (circle, square, triangle, rectangle)
* will be able to recognize and complete AB, ABBA, AABB patterns
* will be able to complete simple sequencing tasks"

Um. Benji can kind of already do the first three of those things (except he can only count from 8 to 12, not 1 to 8). I guess it's almost time to get him ready for kindergarten...

"My kind of suburb, the Chicago suburbs are."

Oh yeah. I probably should have mentioned this earlier, and since almost all the HPS readers already know: Kim and Benji and I are moving somewhere north of Chicago in the shockingly near future. Yay Cubs, Bears, Bulls, and whatever the WNBA team is.