Negative weather!

I've never been somewhere so cold before that when you walk outside, your nose hairs freeze. Seriously. As soon as you go outside and breathe in through your nose -- crackle! Frozen nose hairs! It hit about -7 one day. NEGATIVE! Today it is a balmy 12. Everyone up here is saying "don't worry, it isn't normally this cold in Chicago" but I dunno. It's pretty darn chilly. The snow is really pretty though.

We drove up on Saturday and spent the weekend kind of wandering around neighborhoods. We found an interesting one called Prairie Crossing. It's a "conservation community." There are two condo buildings, but most of it is 359 single family homes. They are really quaint -- though a bit Disney-ish (kind of like Celebration, FL). There's an organic farm on the land, as well as a lake and a lot of trails.

So Monday I went out with our realtor, Nancy Abzug. We checked out a bunch of houses in Mundelein and in Grayslake (Prairie Crossing). Liked three of the ones in PC. One is really charming, one is really striking, and one is just quite nice. On Tuesday, we went out to Gurnee and checked out houses there. Found three that were good: one that I've since stricken for not having a fireplace, one with a MONSTER kitchen, and one that was a nice all-around house other than the lack of hardwood floors (mostly carpet and tile).

Today I've just been mostly hanging out (more in some other posts). Tomorrow I go back out again with Nancy. And either Friday or Saturday we'll see about getting Tony a look into the whittled down list of houses.

It was definitely an adventure yesterday. It snowed pretty much all day. There were two major pile ups -- one with 19 cars and another with 30. It was slow going. I don't think anyone could believe we were out seeing houses. Very adventurous. And cold.