Iowahawk and the "mortgage crisis"

It's extra-funny if you've been to Coralville and watched it change over the past 15 years. Everytime I'm there, there's fewer trees and more rows of beige boxes of ticky-tacky ("That's not fair, Heather--some of them are ecru!"). I appreciate and admire people's desire for an affordable backyard for their kids, but face it, Levittown's heirs are doing the American landscape no aesthetic favors. On the plus side, I expect one-bathroom mid-20th century homes to remain "affordable" (because there's no demand) in the distant future when I finally amass a 30% down payment to qualify for a 30-year fixed mortgage...Bleh.

I had forgotten that another three months had passed since my last home equity loan, so I hopped into the new Benz and drove to First Coralville to collect my quarterly Fifty Large.

Huh. I'd assumed all the luxury cars in that area belonged to U of I students, both foreign and Chicago. Never occured to me that people were buying expensive toys with home loans...I'm kinda naive.

(Back in antiquity, I schlepped rides back to Iowa from all kinds of strange people, who left me at truck stops along I-80 where I waited for my parents to remember to fetch me. Good times.)