How I discovered that I'll be renting for a long time

The weekend was a typical one...lots of hanging around and not going to events we'd planned to. But, we did try to be spontaneous and go to a different restaurant. Unfortunately, we made this decision on Friday night. At 7 p.m. In Hollywood. Everywhere we thought of to call was too busy for the likes of us. Every place we passed in the car drive around town was spilling over with people. After about an hour and blood-sugar levels reaching the critical point, we ended up going to Chan Dara, which was not different for us, except for the mass quantities of food we ordered (and subsequently taking home). We managed to get free sake and 10 percent off dinner, though, when we pointed out the small insect floating in N's cup. So, all's well that ends well, really.

Saturday we ended up at The Grove, ate, wandered around for a bit, petted some dogs up for adoption, came home, did I don't know what to fill the time (I might've been sleeping in front of the TV), ended up ordering even more Asian food and downing some wine (That was just me, really. I'm totally a wino now. We can talk about this more later.), and, before we could make a decision about how to fill our evening, got sucked into watching Anchorman before calling it a very early night.

Here's something interesting (sort of): There's a house a few blocks down on N's street that we've been watching being rebuilt from the ground up. It was finally complete a couple weeks ago, and a big For Sale sign went up in front of it. Sunday, there was an open house, so we decided to go check it out. On the way there, I guessed out loud that it would be going for "not less than $600,000." We picked up a flyer, and guess what? The asking price was $1,600,000! I was a million dollars off! A million dollars! Off! We couldn't believe it! Seriously, I mean, N's neighborhood is decent and it's located two blocks from the shopping on Melrose, but there's also a bum who hangs out with his cart on the corner and we hear others going through the trash in the early mornings. The Hills of Beverly it's not. I guess I'm totally out of touch with the real estate market right now. If that house sells for a million-six, I will never, ever, be able to afford a home of my own (unless I move to Idaho, which might not be so bad).