Sabbatical 1998 - Day 28

Honey, I'm Home.

TT and I went to see the 1998 Street of Dreams.  I call it the "Street of Unaffordable Homes."  The houses featured in this program are not your run of the mill, weekend cabins.  The annual property tax on one of these would probably pay for my house outright.

Anyway, I tried to not be jealous of anyone who could afford one of these homes and to remind myself that they couldn't possibly appreciate them the way I could... and that they're just sorry they're not poor.

We boarded a chartered bus at the PCC Rock Creek campus and we were driven high up on Skyline to the street where nine new fabulous homes waited.  We viewed them in reverse order (9 through 1) just to be contrary.

The Don "I can move zoning boundaries" Morrissette (no relation to Alanis) homes had rooms roped off so you couldn't enter them and they generally had the worst "flow" to them as people had to play "down elevator" like a bunch of submariners to move from room to room.  A particularly good example of how not to design a home was The Stewart; this house had a front room with lots of usable space (assuming that you could walk on the walls.)  The kitchen was small, yet useless.  The bedrooms were complete yawners and for the privilege of owning this fine piece of non-inspiring sameness, you have to pay a premium.  No thanks.   Maybe Mr. Morrissette should go stick to moving lines on the map thus keeping the woods safe for bulldozers.

My favorite by a long shot was a house called The Skyview.  Kind of a Frank Lloyd Wright-esque feel to it, but without the ridiculous high-backed chairs.  It has a sunken living room, a master shower that's sort of half outside, boulders in the hallways and lots of skylights.  The kitchen is to die for!  The walls have artwork sculpted directly into them.  The front the house looks like something that Mike Brady might have designed.  Ditch the ugly Cadillac they had parked out front and it would be a perfect picture.  I made an offer on the spot, but it turns out that no bank will underwrite a 100 year home loan.

At the end of the tour, we took the bus back to our car at PCC.   Drove home in silence, realizing that we would never be good enough or rich enough to deserve a fancy house.  We covered ourselves in sack cloth and ashes, hiding our faces from the increasingly cold stare of an unforgivingly materialistic society.   Having to live within our means is so embarrassing.  Oh, to be more highly leveraged.  Maybe someday.  I've applied for another credit card.

Conclusion?

This is it folks.  We've come to the end of the line.  I'm all out of sabbatical and the time as come for me to return to the warm embrace of my employer.  What have we learned?  Well, we've learned plenty.  We've learned to keep the bees out of our eyes.  We've learned to cut in line when ever possible.  We've learned that sunscreen is not just a good idea.  We've learned that triple vertical loops followed by a double corkscrew is the path to enlightenment.   Mostly we've learned that what we need here is another month off.

Perhaps I'll do this again in another five and a half years.  Or not.

The end.