Today I spent approximately six hours driving around Athens looking at houses. It's a testament to either the niceness of Southerners or Athenians' tolerance for college drivers/out-of-staters that during the 40 miles of weird driving that I did - sudden stops and turns, gingerly executed intersection crossings, hazard lights galore - I wasn't honked at once. Also, a postman flagged me down and recited multiple possibilities in his neighborhood by memory. Also, every single owner of rentals in Athens is polite and helpful.

And yet, Athens, I'm on to you. I know you have rentals for me that are both cheap and not cheap-looking. I saw them back in August. But we've arrived at the absolute worst time for renting, i.e., the period right after July and August college rental season.

So as I cruise each neighborhood, at turns seething and on the verge of tears (finding a home is emotional for a homebody, to say the least), I see the cutest little cottages with multiple second-hand cars in the driveway, with Christmas lights askew on the porch, with a carelessly stored recycling bin. Students! Renters! Student renters who are living in MY HOUSE. And it's all I can do not to swerve into their driveway, kick down their little latticed doors, drag them out into their unmowed lawns and verbally abuse them into subletting me their house.

However, as we all know, I have exactly two talents: telling the internet its business and being stubborn, and there's no more perfect marriage of the two than this house-search debacle. Lord knows I didn't leave the land of the half-a-million one bedroom so I could pay out the nose for a tin roof and a front yard full of pine needles.