Option 1: We can suck it up and pay the extra month’s worth of rent. That’s not gonna leave us starving, but it’ll mean tightening our belts alot tighter than we’d like for a month. On the other hand, we’d get the house, and we’d have a full month to casually move as time allowed.

Option 2: Forget the house, and renew our current lease. That means we’d be paying what we consider too high of rent for a townhouse (in this area, in other parts of the country, it’d be a bargain), and we wouldn’t have the more flexible leasing options that would come available after just a year in the house. On the other hand, monthly rent would be $50/month less than the house, and we wouldn’t have to go through the headache of moving.

Option 3: We could give vacating notice, but wait to put a hold on the house until closer to the end of our current lease. Of course that means hoping nobody else comes along and rents the house while we’re waiting, and if they do it means frantically trying to find a new place before our current lease runs up. We probably wouldn’t end up homeless, but if somebody rented out the house from under us, we might be forced to move in to wherever we could find, even if we really didn’t like it at all. (This one is a little too risky for me, so I really probably only have the first two options)

Haven’t talked to TheBoyfriend™ about it yet, I called him earlier but he didn’t answer his phone so he must be with a client, so we’ll see what he thinks…

Update: Talked with TheBoyfriend™ at lunch and he wanted to sleep on it. But then I got a call, while still at work, asking if we’d made up our minds because someone else wanted to see the house and if we wanted it, she wouldn’t bother showing it to them. So I made the split second decision to say we wanted it, lest the other people she was about to show it to, decided they wanted it and claimed it before us. Not sure TheBoyfriend™ was overwhelmingly thrilled I made such a decision without him, but hey, he always says he wishes I’d make more decisions, and I didn’t want to lose the house. So we move in on June 15th (though since our current lease doesn’t end til July 15th, we’ll probably move over bit by bit at a leisurely pace), and now that it’s decided (though technically I still have to swing by by Wed of next week to sign he lease before it will truly be a done deal), my impatience is kicking in and I want to move NOW.

Not surprisingly it has some pros and cons, but on the whole, we both really like it and are quite excited as it is the first house we’ll be living in together as well as the first house either of us have lived in since living with our parents.

Con - Rent’s $50/month higher than our townhouse would be if we renewed our lease there.

Pro - it’s a HOUSE.

Con - The walls in the living room are kind of a funky color right now. Not unlivable, but certainly not something either of us are crazy over.

Pro - We’ll probably be allowed to paint the walls, but even if we can’t, at least the walls aren’t white!

Con - Bizzare kitchen layout. The first thing you notice when you walk in the kitchen is that there is no fridge or stove. That’s because they are in a small room connected to the kitchen instead of in the main kitchen itself.

Pro - Alot more counter space in the kitchen. We’d actually both be able to cook in there at the same time without tripping over each other.

Con - Both bedrooms are pretty small. In fact I somewhat wonder if we’re going to have to crawl into our king-size bed from the bottom instead of being able to walk up the sides.

Pro - Total square footage is 20 more than our townhouse, plus we’ll have both an unfinished basement and attic space to store things in. We have NO storage in our townhouse, so that will open up even more space.

Con - No obvious place to put the litter boxes where they are out of sight but easy access for the cats.

Pro - One time $100 pet fee. That’s it.

Pro - A working gas fireplace in the living room.

Pro - Off-street parking.

Pro - Big backyard.

Pro - Air-conditioning (which we have in our townhouse but alot of the other houses we looked at didn’t have it).

Pro - After the first year we can lease in two month chucks for $25 extra a month. That will be great since after the first year, timing will be dependent on the progress of the house we’re building.

We don’t have it yet, but all looks good. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Apparently very quietly and mostly into your lap. Reading the comments under the video clip was interesting. Seems some people thought bringing it up went too far because they “watch Ellen because she’s funny, not to find out her politics” (and how dare a talk show host bring up politics while interviewing a politician?). Most of the negative responses boiled down to this: “It was uncomfortable to watch.” And that’s not surprising. It’s easy to attack gay people when they are some nebulous abstract group. Its a very different thing to do so when you’re face to face with a real, living, breathing, and outright likable gay person. When you put a human face on the issue, it forces you to recognize that you are intentionally and seriously harming people for no reason. Because most of us like to think of ourselves as good people, the recognition that we are doing something so evil is hard to take.

Would McCain have voiced his opinion with such visible shame were he giving a speech to a rally of bigots? Not likely. It could be most any gay person, but in this case it was Ellen who acted as a mirror into McCain’s heart and it was pretty obvious he didn’t like what he was seeing. Apparently, many of the “uncomfortable” viewers also didn’t like what they saw of themselves in that particular mirror. If I’d been Ellen, I’d have polished the mirror a bit more. I wouldn’t have allowed any of this “we disagree” crap. I’d have asked McCain to state directly to my face the words “You don’t deserve the same civil rights that I do.”

As a bit of an aside, McCain’s response is yet another reason that this just won’t be that big of an issue in the coming election. The Republican candidate’s position is really not all that different from the Democrats (and shame on the two Democratic candidates for that being the case). It’s hard to mobilize an army of voters on a topic you more or less agree with your opponents on.

There’s still an effort in the works by the California religious right to add an amendment banning marriage rights for same-sex couples to the state constitution, but I’m thinking it will find little success if it even makes it to the ballot. Especially if this decision leads to a sudden boom of same-sex marriages. If Massachusetts and foreign countries which have established marriage equality are any indicator, once people see gay couples marrying and realize the sky isn’t falling, they tend to stop opposing it.

Of course, the question remains as to what effect this might have on the Presidential election. In the last presidential election, anti-gay sentiment gave the GOP a big bonus, but I’m not so sure it will be as big of a deal this year. First of all, most of the states in which a anti-marriage amendment could pass, have already passed them, so there won’t be that incentive for the bigots to hit the polls like there was last time around. Second of all, we have had legal gay marriage in this country (in Mass.) for years now. As I noted above, fear tactics don’t work when the target is revealed as just not really being all that scary. It will however almost certainly make the candidates lay out their views on marriage equality, but if the scare tactics have indeed lost their teeth, will the majority of straight America even care?

Update: It appears that the decision does in fact make California the second state to establish marriage equality. The courts reasoning is the same that I’ve stated numerous times:

“There can be no doubt that extending the designation of marriage to same-sex couples, rather than denying it to all couples, is the equal protection remedy that is most consistent with our state’s general legislative policy and preference,”

That is to say that the only decisions a court can possibly make about marriage laws without contradicting equal protection clauses is to either strike the marriage laws from the books completely (nobody can marry) or strike gender-specific language from the laws. Clearly, the preferred method is the later and that’s just what the CA Supreme Court has done.

What I’m talking about is what seems to be the polarization of the population in just about every major aspect of life. It’s like the bell curve is reversing. The number of middle-of-the-road’ers is decreasing while the number of outliers is spiking. The obvious example is of course politics where it seems there really is no such thing as a “swing voter” anymore, and those on the left are REALLY on the left and those on the right are REALLY on the right. Not only that the the number of mutally agreed upon issues is getting smaller and smaller. But it’s not limited to politics (perhaps the polarization of politics is as much a symptom of a larger phenomenon that anything else). Look at spirituality. People have been flocking to spirituality and not just the mainstream religions (though for the most part they have been growing too). The so-called “casual christian” (I’m using the common christian term, but I really think it can be applied to any spirituality) is dying out, while people of every spiritual path are starting to more actively incorporate their respective paths into their daily lives (whether or not they are appropriately interpreting or executing their claimed belief system is a separate question). Meanwhile, atheism is growing nearly as rapidly and the atheists are staying quiet any more. And true agnosticism is a rare find with most “agnostics” being atheists who don’t want to call themselves atheists. For the record, I’m not casting judgement here on anybody, simply noting my observation.

Any of the GOP faithful will be quick to tell you that we’re not technically in a recession, and yet average folks can’t afford to feed their families. If the market is busy making rich folks even more money, yet even most white-collar families are having to tighten their belts, then where exactly is the “middle-class?” Seems that the paychecks that used to make folks “upper-middle class” are now only barely bumping them into the “lower-middle class” range, if they are lucky. Gas and food prices don’t show any signs of dropping, which is just going to price more and more folks out of the middle class. Yet those prices are in part the very thing lining the pockets of the rich.

Healthy habits are doing the same thing. Grocery stores shelves are lined with the latest organic foodstuffs, health food stores are expanding, vitamin and supplement sales are increasing and people are learning how their bodies work, what they’re bodies need and how to stay healthy. Yet at the same time, McDonald’s is packed with people who eat there 7 days a week and restaurant portions are enough to feed a small country. Even intelliegence seems to be flipping the bell curve. The smart people I know are incredibly brilliant, where as those who aren’t so smart, well, just leave it at them being not so smart.

So there it is. Don’t know what it means. Don’t know if it’s right. Don’t know why I keep noticing it here and there.