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What's new, one might ask? My response would be, "This house hunt." Here's a quickie on the houses so far:

It's in Olivette, not too far from Olive and 170. It's a ranch house with a front porch and a really small back porch. The lawn isn't that alive or big, as the right picture shows. The house looked alright on the inside, although we didn't get to inspect it as thoroughly as I'd have liked.

Another ranch in Olivette. It has a larger yard and a smaller porch, but we didn't get to sneak around the innards.

That kind of reminds me of the days when I was 7 or 8, and my neighborhood friends and I found that one of the unoccupied houses for sale down the street was unlocked. We just barged right on in and had a blast rampaging through the house. It didn't stop the house from being sold, but in retrospect, I'm sure someone had to pay for cleaning up the dirt we were constantly dragging into the house. It took several months of this before the house was finally fully locked up.

Smallish bungalow house in Brentwood. I liked what I saw, not that I necessarily knew what I was looking at. At first glance, it would've been a great investment as the price was more than reasonable, but then I didn't really know whether the house was worth it. For example, there was a leak in the (very clear) concrete-block basement. At the time, I didn't know that I should've been looking for unintentional curves on the wall that was leaking. Not that it matters now, as the house was sold by the time I looked at it again.

A ranch house in Brentwood. Overpriced. The inside needed work- the hardwood floors had some permanent blotches, the basement had a serious moisture problem (apparently the previous owners even went to far as to install a gutter system along the basement walls!), the basement also came with loads of random garbage under the stairs including a pair of cowboy work boots, the walls were kinda chewed up, and the basement windows had several layers of concrete built up around them (apparently the previous owners also elevated half of their back yard in a really unintelligent manner - pouring dirt and concrete everywhere until it was at the desired height. Never mind that the yard was on the verge of spilling into the next door neighbors'.). Anyway, this all was as-is, due to the house going onto the market as a forclosure. However, it had a very nice new 2-car driveway, which my realtor suggests could have been the driving cost behind the forclosure. At any rate, I wouldn't even consider it unless the price was cut maybe 25%.

Then there's at least 10 houses we looked at to varying degrees that I won't go into, just because I don't have photos. However...

One particular house we looked at in Brentwood was cursed somehow. What you see here is a toilet in the unfinished half of a basement right next to the furnace and water main, complete with toilet paper roll on the floor. On the opposite side of the basement against an adjacent wall were a shower stall and sink, all plumbed. There were neither walls nor carpeting anywhere. The closest things to carpeting were the cracking, loose asbestos floor tiles and jumping spiders. The house had a lot of other, rather severe problems and needed lots of work. At least the carpeting upstairs was new, although it was too bad that most of the doors couldn't move, seeing as how they weren't trimmed for the new carpet.

So those are some of the house hunt highlights. I like what I saw in Brentwood and Shrewsbury. I'd rather be closer to mid-town than Shrewsbury, but the price is definitely right there, and the neighborhoods so far all look good.

Michelle and I visited Springfield a couple weeks ago. So what happened there? Read on, intrepid viewers...

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Zephyr gives me a striking glare.

Here's a view from downtown Springfield. Apparently downtown Springfield is undergoing a rejuvenation; There's a lot of cool smallish resturaunts, cafes, coffeehouses and the like.

We met up with Michelle's friends Sarah and Terry at the Mudhouse. It's an awesome coffeehouse downtown that makes some mean drinks. We were in luck when Michelle contacted Sarah, as they also just happened to be back in town visiting after moving up to KC. Terry is a fellow geek that really knows his shit.

At the used book store, I came across these. These pictures don't do justice to the lack of quality in the cover art. First off, there wasn't a single occurance of the words "Star Wars" on either book. Instead, there was only the subtitle, "from the adventures of Luke Skywalker based on the characters and situations created by George Lucas." I suppose I can understand that Lucas wouldn't want his baby's name on this slop, and considering how much slop gets that privledge, that's saying something. Now, about Han Solo's Revenge - I mistook the cover illustration for a 10-year-old half-wit with Parkinson Disease's doodlings at first. The cover has some background imagery, but Han's face was so horribly mangled. Also notice how Chewie so completely takes the foreground - Isn't this book supposed to be about Han Solo? Maybe Han gets revenge against Chewie for being illustrated just well enough to not look like he has horrible birth deformities, unlike himself? Only Brian Daley (and arguably the publisher, Del Rey (come on, did they really let this book pass through quality control?)) knows for certain. Next up is Han Solo At Stars' End - Again, Chewie is in front, and again, the cover illustration looks like a 3rd grade art project. Only this time, it looks like it was traced from a 20-year old VHS bootleg screen cap by a half-wit child without Parkinson's.

Whew, okay, time to call it an evening and get this pre-approval application finished... argh.