Thursday, August 03, 2006
Home, Sweet Ghetto
Be warned: This is a really, really long post. You've been warned.
Well, last weekend was an adventure and a half. I had my pre-approval letter to buy a house in my price range all ready to go, so after I finished up work around 7pm or so, I got in my beautiful trans-am, carrying only the backpack full of clothes that Becky packed for me, and headed out to the one city where we can afford the three bedroom houses. I was travelling alone this time because Becky had a parenting class to go to (not general parenting, something specific that I didn't want to blurt out on the blog). I wanted to be there with her, but it was a lot more important that she be there than me (if you get my drift) and house shopping was important to us too, since the plan was to try to get something we could move into before Eric is born.
Let me just say here that I didn't have my glasses with me. I lost them a few weeks back at a graduation party and have been doing without them for a little while--just until I can collect enough birthday money or gift certificates to buy another pair, so if you're one of the people that loves me enough to get me something for my birthday, that's the big list-topper. Anyway, I was driving without my glasses and I thought I saw a huge group of restaurants off to the left. I got off on the next exit, which took me in a direction I wasn't planning on going. I pulled over to the side to check my trusty Thomas Guide and I figured out where I was. I wasn't sure where the restaurants were, so I headed for a nearby mall, which was closed, but I figured there'd be some fast food places nearby still open. I was wrong. I took another look at the map while I was driving and decided that the huge restaurant repository (I know I'm using the word incorrectly, but it's a programming term and I like to use those. Besides, I couldn't think of a better word for huge collection of restaurants.) had to be on this one street. Not having my glasses, I passed it up once. I can't stand those cities that don't light up their hanging street signs. So I turned around and got on this street. Well, then it changed names on me and I was sure I was headed in the wrong direction. I was a little confused because it didn't change it's actual name, just the type of street that it was known as. So I made a U-turn and headed back the other direction. Well, before I knew it, I was driving with my high-beams on through dark, tree-covered windy, narrow streets without being able to see where the intersections were and without having a wide enough place to turn my trans-am around. So, I finally pulled off onto a side-street where I was pretty sure nobody would be speeding around the corner and I looked back at the Thomas Guide and found that I was somewhere near the center of Griffith Park.
I gave up on the idea of getting something to eat and took the first freeway onramp I found. I got back to the main freeway I was taking at the time. I kept glancing over to the left to see if that "restaurant repository" was still there. It wasn't. I started to doubt that I'd ever seen it. Maybe it was a mirage. Maybe I got back on the freeway past that spot. But that couldn't be, because I recognized these exit names, so I must've back-tracked a little on my night time excursion into the heart of Griffith Park. Weird. Well, it finally all became clear when I got to an exit that was too recognizable to deny. Yes, I was heading back toward home because I had turned the wrong way at the main freeway junction. I only back-tracked about 20 miles, but along the way I had passed some construction that was just starting to be set up, so I had to take an alternate route back toward my parents house, where I was intending to spend the night. I did end up eating something at a restaurant somewhere along the way, though it wasn't the restaurant that I'd gotten off at that exit to find. When I got up to the room they had set up for me, I crashed on top of the covers without even taking any of my clothes off. That's how tired I was.
My parents were gracious enough to let me borrow one of their air conditioned cars with an alarm that can be enabled/disabled with a remote. I couldn't believe what a difference it made from the last time that Becky and I had drove there together with the windows down and drinking lots of water to stay as hydrated and very warm rather than unbearably hot. So I made pretty good time and started checking out the apartments as soon as I arrived. I wanted to see as many as I could before they all closed for the weekend, being a Saturday and all. Unfortunately, there was only one that was even open on Saturdays. Then again, this was Becky's chosen favorite and it was indeed a nice place to live. More affordable than the place we're in now, too. With that crossed off the list, I gave my realtor contact a call and he invited me over to the open house that he and his brother were showing. There was only about half an hour left for the open house, so he and I took off while his brother stayed back and held the fort down. That house was a tad outside of my price range, so while I appreciated that it was an extremely nice house, I wasn't considering it as a prospective home.
We drove around and looked at several houses, all with asking prices within my pre-approval limit, and all with trash can alleys behind them. Most of them had nice-sized garages, and one or two obviously needed some work. The first house we saw was priced about twenty thousand dollars lower than the rest of them and looked like it was just perfect for our little family. There was another couple there with their own realtor going in through one door when we arrived, so we waited for them to finish before we went in. It had three bedrooms, but one of them wasn't really a bedroom, it was really just an office. That was okay, because that's exactly what I wanted to use it for anyway. It was huge for its price, it had only been on the market a few days, and the neighborhood looked just like it had when Becky and I had driven through it a few weeks ago--quiet, with mostly neat-looking houses and green lawns. It was a full five or six blocks from the train tracks, and hardly had any graffiti in sight, as long as you didn't look at those plastic garbage cans in the alley--and those stop signs every now and then. Every other house we looked at was grossly inferior to this one and much higher priced. The only house on the list that had a lower asking price was 450 square feet smaller and looked so tiny from outside that we didn't even bother going in to have a look around. At the end of the day--it was early evening--I called my dad and talked to him a little about the house and told him I was thinking about putting in an offer on it. He seemed to be agreeable when he heard the square footage, the price, and my assessment of the neighborhood. I tried to get a hold of Becky but I couldn't, so I left her a message. So I headed over to the realtor's office to write up an offer. Becky called back during the process, so I filled her in and she liked the idea too. I had to tell her the bathroom was built by a crazy person, because the sink was right across from the toilet and you had to squeeze between both to get into the shower, but we figured we could get that moved after we'd lived there a bit. We finished writing up the offer and grabbed a bite to eat after dropping it off at the office of the agent representing the seller.
So I had some free time. It was starting to get dark, so I decided rather than look at the parks or elementary schools in the area right away, I'd try to get a look at the Calvary Chapel that we heard was in the area. I figured I probably wouldn't want to drive all the way back here from my parents' house on Sunday morning just to go to this Calvary Chapel, so I might as well get a glimpse of the facilities now. I called Becky for the address and found how to get there. The size of the campus took me by surprise. That thing was gigantic!! There's even a little skateboarding park at one end. I took as many pictures as my cheap digital camera that has no flash would allow and started the trek back to the freeway when it hit me that Becky and I had done the same thing the last time we were there--we had left around 9pm without sticking around to observe any night life. Having already put in an offer, I felt I had the motivation to make it a late evening, so I made the decision that I'd drive around the neighborhood, find somewhere to park for a few hours, and just watch and see who made noise, how long the trains ran, how loud they were, and if there was anyone in sight with a can of spray paint.
I parked in front of the house and took off on foot for the nearest park, Thomas Guide in hand. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the gates were still open and the restroom lights still on. I couldn't see much, but I took a stroll right through the middle of the extremely dark, wide open park, making my way over to the restrooms where there was some light that I could use to see the map. I decided to take a different way back, so I plotted my course and headed back the other way. Not a bad place to live! I was impressed and excited. I sat in the car for a while and noticed that we had some noisy neighbors across the street. They must've been having some sort of get-together because they were all out on the lawn talking like it was the middle of the day. Not only that, but people were driving in and out of this block with loud rap music blaring--not something that would make Becky eager to walk the streets at night. I made a mental note of that and took off to cruise the neighborhood. I tried to doze off a little, but I noticed that they kept going in and out of the house, bickering with each other out on the lawn. I also noticed that the trains ran later than I would've expected and that I could hear them more loudly than I expected from this block. Well, I waited until the neighbor whose house I was in front of had gone to bed and I drove away to cruise the neighborhood. This time I parked across the other street from the noisy neighbors. It got later and later, and they were still making noise. I figured I should probably go to bed and chalk this up to a once-in-a-while party, but I wanted to know when they would stop, and I was curious to see if anyone was in that alley behind all the houses. So, I took off again, this time driving to the other end of the alley to shine my headlights down it. Woah!! Someone on a bicycle was right there in front of me. I backed out and drove back to the other end in a round-a-bout way to see two bikes having just emerged from there at full speed, looking back over their shoulders at my car. Well, that was discomforting. Was that gang activity? Was I just being paranoid? I parked around the corner at the far end of the block so that I could observe the alley in my rear view mirror, but also to see where all those cars were going that stopped to chat with the noisy neighbors and their party crowd. Well, some lady that lived there turned on her lights and passed my car on foot, looking at it suspiciously, so I waited until she had gone back inside and I turned the corner, so I was a block away from the noisy neighbors but on the other side of the street and facing them. That's when stranger things started happening. The cars that used to be coming down toward the intersection behind me were now turning around and heading the other way. Then something scary happened. An SUV or a van turned on their high beams and just sat there in the middle of the road, pointing them toward my car, like he was trying to block me from seeing something. I could see past him anyway, and there were some pairs of headlights and tail-lights pulling up to that familiar corner. I draped my sweatshirt over my head, both to block out the light and to make it appear that I was trying to sleep, while my heart raced. My car doors were locked and I had my cell phone in hand, praying for protection and ready to dial 911. I won that waiting game. The car crept ever so slowly toward me, then drove past me and turned the corner that I had been seeing cars turn all night. But the cars kept coming, and I got the feeling that surveillance was being done by every car that passed. Cars started coming from behind me rather than going there. I kept the sweatshirt over my head (one eye looking around the edge) until it finally got quiet again, around 4am.
I wanted to find a place to use the restroom and head off to the Calvary Chapel parking lot to sleep for a few hours, but the earliest any fast food restraunt dining area opened was 6am. I parked at a McDonalds and watched as the third train of the early morning made a racket passing through. Well, that dinging noise kept going after the train was long gone, and even though it was fifty to eighty cars long, it hadn't shown any signs of slowing or turning around. At the ten minute mark, I called 411 and asked who I could report this to. She didn't know but said she could give me Amtrak's main number. It was a freight train, not a passenger train, but I took it anyway because I know how clueless call center personnel can be about things they're not trained for. Well, Amtrak doesn't own any track in this state, and that was apparently the line you call to report emergencies at Amtrak, but the guy took down the information anyway in case he could find someone to report it to. Half an hour later, that ringer was still going, the gates were still down, and here comes a bus, waiting for the train to pass. I crossed the street and knocked on the door and told her that the train had come and gone 30 minutes ago. She said she couldn't legally cross the tracks unless someone held up the gate for her, so there I was at 5am, holding up a train gate so a bus could get on with its business.
The ringer stopped when the next train came through at 6am, and I was able to use the McDonalds restroom, have a huge breakfast, grab almost two hours of sleep in the Calvary Chapel parking lot (which seemed like about three seconds), attend the service, and head back to my parents' house, where I took a much-needed shower, packed up my backpack, and got back into my own car. Well, at that first stop sign heading toward the freeway, I got into an accident. My beautiful trans-am isn't drivable anymore. Nobody was hurt, but another car did end up going off the road and hitting a post of some sort. Fortunately, I've got insurance. There were some police trainees on site, so they directed traffic while the real live police officer showed up, handled the exchange of information, and drove me to the nearest big city after my car was loaded onto the tow truck. I rented a car from there and drove home. The funny thing is, the car I rented was the same make, model, and color as the one I had collided with. Before that, though, I talked to the cop that gave me a ride about the neighbors, and he was pretty sure that my suspicions about them being drug dealers was quite rational.
As for the car, it has been deemed unrepairable, so I'm waiting for the insurance company to make me an offer. Unfortunately, you don't see many salvaged-title cars like mine in the auto trader, so I'm not sure what to expect. Fortunately, we still have one drivable car that will fit a car seat if it must. And, fortunately, we don't need to drive all that much, since I work from home and Becky's there too. We're hoping that we can get at least one decent Eric-suitable car with air conditioning, an alarm, and room for a car seat using whatever money we get from my insurance and if we sell Becky's car, that money too. As for the house, I withdrew the offer before anyone took a look at it. We might still house-shop in that town, but if we do, we'll do it closer to that apartment complex I was talking about earlier. We might end up renting a while longer, just so long as we find a place with more space than we've got here that costs significantly less money.
Thanks for sticking around, those of you that did. And don't say I didn't warn you about the length.
