So HW and I are buying a house, which most of you know already. (Pictures of the new place can be found here.) What you probably aren't familiar with is the entire home buying process, so I figured I'd enlighten you as to what exactly we did to purchase our new home.

Step 1: Find a realtor. I asked my coworker, Mike, what realtor he used when he bought a house about this time last year, and he recommended Melissa. We clicked with her immediately, for three reasons:

1. She's extremely competent.
2. She's very tall.
3. She laughs at most of my stupid jokes.

Step 2: Contact a mortgage company and get preapproved for a mortgage. Get pre-approved for a $300,000 loan. Dance with joy. Realize you can only really afford a $180,000 home. Dance with somewhat mitigated mirth.

Step 3: Establish a price limit for your new home. We went with $175,000.

Step 4: Look at some homes. Every day, Melissa would email me a list of homes, and we would go out about once a week to look at the ones that fit our requirements.

Step 5: Realize that none of the homes that fit your requirements are located in areas in which you want to live (defined in our case as "areas where we wouldn't need to put snipers on the roof to deter serial murderers"), and bump your price limit up by 10 grand or so.

Step 6: Look at more homes.

Step 7: Increase price limit to $190,000. Become extremely concerned about your ability to buy a home outside of the ghetto.

Step 8: Look at more homes. Weep openly in your realtor's van.

Step 9: Increase price limit to $200,000. Resolve yourself to eating nothing but cat food and ramen noodles for the next 30 years.

Step 10: Find a glorious home, and put in a bid. Find out that the seller is insane, and refuses to bargain at all on the price. (We found out later she dumped her agent, found a new one, and bumped the price up even more.)

Step 11: Look at more homes. Consider moving in with your parents and spiking their eggs with strychnine so that you can inherit.

Step 12: Find another nice home, and put in a bid. Haggle back and forth for a week. Meet your realtor at a supermarket (Zingo's, in our case) to sign the papers.

What, you think you're done? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Now the work just begins!

Having finally settled on a home, you have to make mortgage arrangements (you thought you did that already; you were wrong), find a lawyer, bribe civic officials, and sleep with the zoning commissioner. These, and other issues (somehow I found myself owing a favor to the Godfather) will be covered in the next column.

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Queries? Problems? Chlamydia got you down? Shoot an email to spam(at)matthearn(dot)com.

This is it! I'm finally completing the process of puberty. Or at least I'm past the midway point. I now have to shave every day.

That may not seem like an accomplishment in and of itself, but when coupled with the fact that I now have a pretty nice collection of chest hairs (even if 70% are congregated around, for some reason, my right nipple), and recently I've had to spend a LOT more time yanking at nosehairs during meetings, I think I'm advancing towards manhood pretty quickly now.

This is great! I'll be able to ask out all those hot high school girls that would never come near me before I developed the ability to grow 11pm shadow. And then, after I'm convicted of statutory rape (17 year old girls don't keep quiet about that as much as they used to), I'll be able to grow a really cool goatee in prison to go along with the "I be chuckie's bitch" tattoo on my cheek.

Of course, I still can't grow a moustachio; the hair there consists mostly of fine white hairs. I think one of my aunts has more upper lip growth. And my sideburns don't actually connect my cheek whiskers to my hairline. I imagine these things will come in due course, and I should be able to grow a nice handlebar just in time for them to fit me for a coffin.

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Queries? Problems? Your brain leaking from your nose? I don't care. Ah, just kidding. Shoot an email to spam(at)matthearn(dot)com.

Is it just me, or are people wearing a lot more perfume recently? Perhaps I'm just sensitive to it because I'm a singer. There's nothing quite like taking a deep breath just as an old lady walks by wearing two gallons of Eckerd's new scent "Intransigence", followed by your throat snapping shut and your nose flinging itself from your face, sliding across the floor, leaving a trail of boogery slime.

I find it happens a lot at church, which of course is where I do most of my singing. The choir, luckily, has to deal with the same issues I do, so they mostly don't wear any stinkum. Unfortunately, I usually find myself sitting within a few seats of the acolytes and communion helpers, none of whom are singers, and at least one of whom seems to have a vat of CK1 in her backyard into which she dips herself after bathing. People that don't sing never seem to get why it's so bad, either; if you ask them to maybe tone down the Eau de Nasal Searing, their usual response is, "I smell just fine!" I think I should be allowed to stab them.

It's even worse when you go out to a party or a club. Apparently the best way to attract women these days is to spray Drakkar Noir onto yourself until you get a nice crusty layer of it dried onto your shirt. Around here, some folks call it a Puerto Rican Shower, which is of course highly insulting and racist, and therefore never fails to make me laugh myself hoarse.

It happens at work as well. We have a woman here who is very nice, but luckily is not someone I have to deal with very often. It's difficult to talk to someone while holding your breath to avoid passing out. I fail to understand why you need perfume at work. The purpose of smell, last I checked, was to attract potential lovers. Not something you particularly want to do at work.

I can't even escape it at home! I'll be on the throne, having some nice quiet time before showering and driving to work. Suddenly Sarah bursts into the room, and fills the air with some kind of cross between daisies, honeysuckle, and wild boar sweat. She then vacates as abruptly as she arrived, leaving me with my head between my legs, trying to breathe whatever fresh air might be left in the toilet bowl beneath me.

I often get my revenge, however. I've developed my own scent, which I call Essence of Stench. All you need to make your own batch of it is a large vat of refried beans, and it's guaranteed to clear the room of odorous individuals.

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Queries? Problems? Your brain leaking from your nose? I don't care. Ah, just kidding. Shoot an email to spam(at)matthearn(dot)com.