Seriously, all I want for the New Year is to find the toaster.  Either or both of our printers would be a bonus.

Ms. Stim and I moved the Tuesday before Christmas a whole half-mile east  of our previous local.  The key difference being that we left an older apartment we'd rented for the past six years to a recent gut-rehab condo with more modern features, but less storage.  And a mortgage.  Back to paying a mortgage.

Through utterly no plan or forethought on our part, over the years Ms. Stim  and I have -- again, through sheer luck -- bought condos or a townhouse while the market was down and sold while the market was up.  It's what has happened in between these purchases & sales that's kept us from becoming accidental real estate moguls. 

For example, the last place we owned, a townhouse, had become far too expensive for us to keep.  We needed to sell it and sell it quickly.  At that time it was a seller's market.  We put the townhouse on the market without using a broker (brokers cost money that we didn't have, even after a sale).  Three weeks later a young couple walked through the place in the morning and put a bid on it by evening.  This was on Super Bowl Sunday.  The lesson learned:  do not listen to real estate "experts" who tell you not to bother showing your home on Super Bowl Sunday.  There are people more interested in finding a new home than spending an entire day drinking and downing Cheez Whiz snacks.

Having had it with owning, Ms. Stim and I decided to rent.  If something goes wrong in the place, the landlord can pay for fixing it.  Frankly, it was a mental relief to only have to be concerned with paying rent and a few utilities.  So when the housing bubble blew intestinal sludge on the economy -- once again, through sheer luck -- we were in a perfect spot to not be affected.

Six years of rental contentment later, with no talk of buying a place, Ms. Stim takes a walk in the extended neighborhood one fine October Sunday afternoon.  She stops in at an open house for a condo, falls in love with said condo, calls me to hurry over before the broker leaves ... and here we are now.

As you might imagine, the developer took a bath on the price of the condo, as the Chicago market has been down and stagnate since the rehab work was finished a couple years ago.  For us, our monthly payment of the mortgage, property tax escrow and condo association fee add up to slightly more than we'd be paying in rent had we signed a new lease.

Again, with massive emphasis, Ms. Stim and I don't know what we're doing when it comes to real estate wheelings and dealings.  We're not "doing it right," we are blindly stumbling into it at the right time.

So come this New Year, we are surrounded by boxes and happy cats who sit on boxes.  Some boxes have been unpacked, some are partially unpacked with no place for their contents to go at the moment, some have been opened just to see what's in them, and others remain unopened for now.

But the toaster remains unfound.  And I'd really like a simple piece of toast right now.