Yep. You are one lucky guy, Radar. Congrats from the humble Howdy home.

Thanks Cap'n.

We finished painting yesterday so I added photos of the exterior parts of the house. The thing that looks like a shed is actually a pump house. We have our own well to supply our water, so no water bill.

That light on the pump house looks big enough to light up the whole yard.

Yeah, it'll spin the meter.

My power bill last month was $353!!! There is no natural gas in my town. I think it has something to do with the power company paying off officials. The power company charges me $170+ for the power, and then charges me nearly the exact same amount for FUEL. They are charging me on both sides of their generator. I'm paying for electricity so they can buy the generators, and I'm paying for the fuel to put into the generator. It's insane.

These guys shut down the power for a lot of poor and elderly people and were also incredibly rude to them so one day when someone's family member on life support at home died because they cut off the power of them went to their offices and shot up a bunch of people.

Their answer wasn't to provide discounts for needy people and it wasn't to improve their customer service skills or to treat people with respect. Their answer was to close down all of their offices so they don't have to deal with customers in person. Instead you have to go to a check cashing place if you want to pay your bill in person.

I have a brand new front loading gas dryer I bought a year ago for $750 and I can't even use it because we have no gas here. It's crazy. My wife made me spend another $750 to buy the electric version of the same dryer to match our washer. Now I'm trying to sell the other dryer and I'm having no luck because other people don't have gas either.

I hate cooking with electricity. I prefer gas. Everything in the house runs on electricity including the pump to bring in water.

It's a good thing I don't have any house payments.

Can you get LP gas? It means you have to have a tank out back, though.

We could set the house up for propane, but propane is a lot more expensive than natural gas, and we'd lose a big part of our backyard for the tank.

I think we should be able to pick our power company the same way we pick our long distance carrier. This way, the power companies would have to remain competitive. Right now they have a monopoly within each neighborhood.

I guarantee, customer service would improve, and there would be no outages, and the price would certainly drop unless their was some sort of collusion between the power companies.

My God, Paul, last I heard, your wife was still pregnant with the little one. 2 years!! It seems like such a long time, but yet, just yesterday.

Regardless, the house looks great (I got that same sterile feeling)! I'm happy that you're doing well.

You still in SoCal?

No. I'm in Florida. I got the house for what a down payment would cost me in L.A.

The only problem is I'm having a tough time finding work out here. They have a HUGE retirement community here called "The Villages". It spans 3 counties.

If I can't find work soon, I"m going to have to be a gigalo for old ladies. ;)

For those of you without facebook or myspace accounts. I've posted the photos on photobucket.

http://s190.photobucket.com/albums/z...use/?start=all