Tales of a First-Time Home Buyer: Meeting the Neighbors
Here’s something I haven’t discussed with my readers yet – meeting the neighbors. Our new townhouse is smack dab in the middle of a row of six townhouses. Naturally, we have six new neighbors.
We met our next door neighbors before we even moved in. When we made one of our sneaky trips to the house after dark to wander around, they were doing the same thing. When we met them, we knew we would be friends. They are close to our age, just a little older perhaps, but young at heart and very easy to talk to. Every single time I see him I stop and chat for a few minutes. He has every power tool ever made and he knows how to use them, and I have definitely picked his brain on more than a few things so far. He also has a lot of man-toys: two motorcycles, a jet ski, a snow blower, a power washer, a leaf blower, and a big beautiful beast of a truck with all the bells and whistles. He sounds like a convoy of tanks coming down the street. They were a bit more established when they moved in, but everyone has to start somewhere. My wife and his wife also have a lot in common, so a future friendship is definitely brewing.
Our neighbors to the other side are from Pakistan and are also very nice. Both the husband and wife are engineers and are not home very often. He is a man who takes great pride in his yard. He has already installed custom landscaping and he waters his grass every day, which makes my dead grass look even worse. (But for those who read my last entry, I have since purchased a hose and sprinkler and now I water my lawn 30 minutes a day.) He and I had the FiOS vs. Dish talk already, and I’m afraid that we agreed to disagree. I stuck with my FiOS and he went with Dish Network. We talked again about two weeks later and he said he loses his signal when it rains…I hate to say I told you so, but…I told you so.
Some of the other neighbors have been scarce, but they include a police officer and a school teacher and his wife. The police officer is actually a Sheriff who works the night shift. That means his police cruiser is parked in front of the house all day every day, which is a nice little back-up security system. Needless to say, he is a guy I will actively be trying to make friends with. The school teacher in the end unit is a very nice guy, probably just a year or two older than me and a chatterbox just like me. We have talked several times, and when I had some friends over to shoot some hoops at our neighborhood basketball court, he asked if he could play. Of course you can play! Now I have a B Ball buddy. His wife is also very nice and she works for the builder of our neighborhood, NV Homes. They have a little girl and another on the way. Good luck with that.
We have an entire neighborhood of new people to meet. Our house is pretty much at the back of the neighborhood on the end of the last street, so I drive through the whole thing every day. I wave to all the potential friends I see as I drive through, scoping out the people I will live near for the next few years. I can’t wait to meet them all and I hope they are as excited to meet me as I am to meet them.
