I love having my own house. I was always afraid I would hate having to take care of everything, but I don't. If I had bought an older place that needed a lot of fixing up, I'm sure I'd feel differently about it, but this place is only 11 years old and well-maintained, so it's not likely to break my wallet anytime soon.

In retrospect, I'm really glad I didn't glad buy a condo in New Jersey when I had a chance to. I wouldn't have been as happy with basically owning an apartment.

I'm too lazy (and drifty with martinis) to Google it up, but I'm pretty sure that some economist did an in-depth analysis a short while back that suggested that the Bay Area is one of the few weird spots in the US where renting makes much better financial sense than owning.

Dinner tonight: martini, ibuprofen, dark green salad loaded with dense lush tomatoes and kalamata olives, and for dessert a waffle with Captain Kirk's face, slathered in butter.

Jilli, OMG those pictures are gorgeous. Pure fun slathered in gorgeous. Can't wait to see the rest of them.

The Star Trek waffles are so much cooler than the Star Trek pasties (eta: [link] ) I saw earlier today.

ION, space shuttle Discovery is launching soon....

link is more or less worksafe....

Dinner tonight: martini, ibuprofen

I aspire to be you. Mine was ibuprofen and wine. I can improve just a little, I think.

I don't want to be awake. I was having a really nice dream in which I was headed to London and buying myself a kindle.

I love having my own house. I was always afraid I would hate having to take care of everything, but I don't.

Yes. This. That said, I've found that with a house vs. an apartment, you can end up putting not just a lot more money into the place, but a lot more time. I can easily spend a third to half of my weekend doing basic upkeep chores around the place. I love it, and get a lot of satisfaction from it, but still...

I don't want to own a house as much as I want to own property around a house. I love gardening much more than house upkeep. Right now my dislike for house upkeep (and my kind landlords who let me play with a patch of dirt next to my building) is winning out over my wish to garden more.

Calli, you can come play in the dirt around my house. My love for gardening is mostly theoretical. As my scraggly rose bushes will attest.

I love the stability that comes with owning my own place. In NYC, it's really unusual to have a lease last for more than two years - after that pretty much everyone goes month to month, and you can be kicked out or have your rent skyrocket with basically no warning. With a baby on the way, we didn't feel we could take that risk.

Had we been more informed about the state of the building at the time we were looking, I think we would have made a different decision about where to buy, but I don't regret leaving the renter's market one bit.

Having lived primarily in the south and midwest, owning always made much more sense even though Lewis and I rented for the first four years of our relationship. Mostly because we were both still in school. But in the south, the majority of apartment buildings/complexes are corporate owned, so it's not like you have a "landlord" you can talk to about your rent, etc. And in the south/midwest, you generally can get a nice piece of property, depending on where you buy, and of course, with me and the dogs, property is a big plus.

Calli, you can come play in the dirt around my house. My love for gardening is mostly theoretical. As my scraggly rose bushes will attest.

Yeah, I have a black thumb. I love pretty landscaping, but I can't keep it up. Plants look at me, laugh, then die horrible deaths.