So, we went to look at that house last Thursday. The listing didn't do it justice. It's not perfect in every single way, but we sure checked a lot of our "want" boxes while viewing it, and only one "not ideal" box got checked while there.

After the viewing, we then--totally gung ho--go immediately to the bank afterwards only to find out the agent spouse had been talking with was on vacation. No problem, the lady we do meet with leaves a message for the mortgage...

When we moved to this state, the intent was that we would do our best in six-nine months' time to make sure this city had strong potential to be our forever home before we would start looking to buy. We hoped to buy within either our second or third year here, depending on how the market turned out to be.

Due to an unforeseeable query from a retiring co-worker within the first few weeks of being here, we suddenly found ourselves spending an inordinate amount of time discussing home...