Insert standard statement on head-exploding-low housing prices in Gud's area.

The differences are amazing, but they aren’t arbitrary.

My house was designed by an iconoclastic female modernist architect in the 1950’s. It was featured in House and Garden magazine in the 1960’s and is still occasionally mentioned in architecture journals, mostly because of the unusual (for the time)feminist angle. It sits on a two acre lot that backs up to a 1400 acre nature preserve including the lake that was the original source of water for the city. And it is a 10 minute bike ride from my office in the center of campus. If this house were available in the places that academics actually want to live (e.g. Boston, Seattle, the Bay area) the price would be astronomical.

Wait, is Rick bragging about his multi-million dollar house? Nah, I don't live in any of those places. I live in a small university town in the Midwest. We paid $200,000 for the house, and we probably overpaid impulsively because we are both modern architecture fans. That’s a modest condo in one of the academic paradises.

We have no ocean. No mountains. It’s a four hour drive to get to a first-class museum. If you want to go to the theater, you better like what is available, because you only get one choice each weekend. And be prepared to eat at every decent restaurant 50 times, because there is such a limited supply of good resturants. It’s cold in the winter, and hot and humid in the summer.

Everything is a trade-off.

We have one bedroom, an office and Another Room, which is the guitar/amp/workout/inflatable bed guestroom. You have to walk through it to get to the office, so it's not an ideal bedroom. It's a small room, but we really rarely use it, which seems like a waste. I really want another bathroom, since we only have one (plus a half bath outside) but that is very unlikely unless someone suddenly gives us a big pile of money.

Hey. Rick, was your house designed by Chloethiel Woodward Smith, by any chance? She designed the modern house I grew up in.

We have three bedrooms --our bedroom, Bob's office, & the Middle Room. The Middle Room is our closet and library room and where I put makeup on. It's a mess and needs to be redone when we redo the bathroom which won't happen this year due to having to buy two cars.

That's really cool, Rick.

That's the kinda awesome thing about the whole building process...we do genuinely use every room in the house every day.

Every so often I think we overdid it and I wouldn't mind being in a smaller space, but it would need to be a well-designed smaller space.

My house. It loves carrots.

But yes, it is also a forty minute drive to the grocery store and a twenty minute drive to the gas station, so you'd better plan.

Hey. Rick, was your house designed by Chloethiel Woodward Smith, by any chance?

No. Our house was designed by Elaine Doenges, whose work is mostly limited to a variety of university towns as her husband moved from faculty position to faculty position. Smith is a much bigger name, I think, with important commercial and urban development work in addition to residential.

Very exciting to grow up in that house! Did you know that you should be excited at the time?

Congratulations, Gud! (Insert standard statement on head-exploding-low housing prices in Gud's area.)

So true. Also, that is wonderful Gud! A real sense of freedom must come with owning your home outright. Some day!

Our house (rental) is a 4/4 and also has an office. We use 3 of the bedrooms as such, and the 4th is a guest bedroom / game room. There is a desk and computer in there and a big screen tv with game machines attached. After we sell our house we will investigate buying this one since it has been in foreclosure a couple years. If we can work something out directly with the lender that would be good because the price would be too high if it went to market.

There was a beautifully restored Victorian B&B going that way, but I don't think it's in business anymore. I think I probably pointed it out to you.

Yes, it was one you pointed out while we were walking thataway with Law.

Ugh, for some reason I thought SF in August wouldn't be insanely expensive, but I was wrong. Think I'm gonna Priceline it.

We've got 3 bedrooms, which we thought was glorious when we moved in. I had a room for my stuff and a room for storage. Then we discovered a friend was living in her car, so there went one room, and my room became storage. Then she moved out, I got a room back, then two friends became homeless. Hubby is utterly unable to keep from inconveniencing us in his drive to be a patriarch. (Yes, I'm a tad bitter).

It's worked out, though. The 2nd friend moved out a couple of years ago, I've got my room back--though with more storage than I like--and the 1st friend is available for heavy lifting as needed, can help Hubby with the things he'd hurt himself doing by trying it anyway, and friend has gone from endless fast food jobs to working decent computer jobs.

I'd like to have my room to myself and storage separately, but Hubby and I are fairly good at raising young adults through the post-school "how the hell do I cope with this grown-up thing?" stage.

We currently have one friend living in his car until closing goes through on the house he's buying for himself, his wife, and kids (who are at his mom's house a hundred miles away), and Hubby's offered the backyard. This works because yet another friend who's living in his car after losing his job is out of state on a new roofing job for another week.

Hubby frowned last night and said, "Why are so many of our friends homeless?" "They're young and male. Puppies need to learn," I said. Hubby would be terrific as a chieftain in charge of a mead hall, giving a place for all the restless young bucks who need something to occupy themselves. We attract the young men who don't fit into the Utah Mormon world, whose families have expectations and don't understand why their sons won't conform. Lots of philosophical conversations in the backyard. Hubby expounds on an adventurous life, and I help them learn how to deal with a grown-up woman who isn't like their mothers.

I suppose it's a fair trade for not having more room for my books.

Our current rental is 4 bedrooms, and we use the 4th to keep the cat litter boxes in. (Okay, it is technically also a study and sewing room, but mostly, cat litter.)

I have two bedrooms. It was not my intent that dog have her own room, but that's kind of how it's played out.