I wonder if you could train chimps to operate that machine while wearing tuxedos. Sure, that machine would be fun to operate yourself, but after the 100th or 1000th time, you might get bored....

Sara, even though it sounds like it may be too late for this advice, you don't want to be emotionally invested in the house and you have to be prepared for the possibility of walking away from it if it's not a good deal. Honestly, it won't take a year to find another one, you've only been looking for a couple weeks, right?

Things can get tough if you are emotionally attached if the inspector report comes back with some nasty surprises, or if the owner tries to to play hardball in negotiating the final selling price.

I know we felt angry and burned after all was said and done in our negotiation, because I wouldn't walk away. And I think it led to a LOT of extreme anxiety experienced by Tom especially for at least the first year or so we lived there.

My buyer-broker was worth every penny of her sliding-scale fee and then some, because I got great advice and hand-holding as needed, plus reality checks about getting too attached and all that.

Okay, now I want to buy the 1-br apartment that's for sale in my building and open a wine bar with that corkscrew and a staff of trained monkeys. I WILL MAKE MEEEEELIONS!

I think if something arises that I know I don't/can't cope with, I can walk away. Sure, I'll be disappointed. And it'll suck. That's life. I honestly don't think I could make this kind of committment without an emotional investment. I know that means sometimes, it'll either be getting disappointed if I don't get what I want, or getting what I want and later being blindsided by a tree falling on it or the plumbing exploding.

Okay, now I want to buy the 1-br apartment that's for sale in my building and open a wine bar with that corkscrew and a staff of trained monkeys.

The only potential flaw with this plan is insuring the monkeys against any attack of customers might prove to be too expensive.

That's why I'm forming the Bernard Madoff Monkey Attack Insurance Ponzi Scheme Monkey Insurance Co. - "Where you will always be insured against your monkeys attacking your customers - as long as we can keep paying claims by enlarging the pool of insured monkeys."

Fiona, your problem sounds a lot like my parents' problem when I was B.'s age. I was the kid who got nearly-perfect scores without even trying. And from kindergarten through 8th grade, I was in a fairly small rural school district.

To complicate matters, I was small for my age until I was about 15 and one of the youngest kids in my class because I just made the cut-off. To complicate matters, I was socially awkward. So when the school wanted to move me up two grades (from 1st to 3rd), my parents refused to allow it.

I did some of the tutoring, especially in math. There was a problem there, though you might not have to worry about it. I tended to work a lot with kids two grades behind me. That was my younger brother's class. Result -- even more sibling tension than already existed.

One thing you didn't mention that I did quite a bit of, independent study. When we'd come up on a unit that I clearly knew going in, the teacher would ask me to come up with a project to do on my own. So one year, while my classmates were studying punctuation in English class, I was in the library writing a report on South Africa.

In some ways, I was lucky that this all happened during the late '60s and early/mid '70s. American schools were experimenting quite a bit. It affected my school system in some ways, even though it wasn't in the vanguard. My 3rd grade teacher set up four or five stations around the classroom. When you were done with your classwork, you could go to one of the stations and pick a slip of paper out of several in the envelope kept there. Each slip had an activity written on it. Some were educational. Some were fun. One just said, "Think."

later being blindsided by a tree falling on it or the plumbing exploding.

Or the basement flooding! Again and again and again and a...

My parents have both had so much house trouble over the past couple of years, I'm not sure I ever want to buy at all. But good on you, sarameg. I think it's a very grown-up and difficult thing to do.

Much like getting a millipede out of one's bathtub.

Seymour Hersh claims that the Bush Administration had adopted a policy authorizing the use of summary executions of adversaries as one of its tools, and that the operation reported to Dick Cheney.

Did Cheney Run a Murder-on-demand Program?

I will so totally cry if it slips away. And spend the next freaking YEAR finding its equiv.

This is sort of what Nora was saying but I don't think it will take you a year to find another house you love if this one doesn't work out. Maybe a couple of months but not a year. And the house probably will work out. I wouldn't be able to help getting emotionally invested either. But it would be good to know what will be show stoppers when you get the inspection done. Needing to get a new roof, when you have the money to do that, really shouldn't be one. Or cosmetic changes (like the old medicine cabinet).

I think your idea of sending letters to the adjacent homes is great. I'd love to get one of those! (haha, of course!) I did talk to my neighbor for a while when she was looking at the house she then bought.