I Need a Dress.

When you buy a place of your own, you spend a lot of time evaluating the pros and cons of a given property. Things like total square footage, types of flooring, can I put a roller hockey net in the garage consume your every waking moment until you finally settle on the place you plan on calling home for the next several years. Lost in the shuffle is one major detail: the address.

When Katie and I first started scoping out the town home communities of Fairfax County, I used that opportunity to regale you all with tales of the stupid addresses I’ve called home to date. And while we did not end up on Ruddy Duck Road, we’re about two miles due north of it. (assuming ruddy ducks can fly straight.)

Setting out earlier this fall, I had totally intended to rule out potential homes because of their stupid street addresses. I figured that there would be so many perfect properties for us, with our exact specifications, that it would actually help to have an arbitrary scythe to swing to pare the list down. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. I mean, sure, there is plenty of inventory on the market right now, and many of them had many of the things we were looking for (everything except the aforementioned Condockey Indoor Arena).

It’s not that easy.

When you’re getting ready to write the biggest check of your entire life, you realize quickly that EVERYTHING needs to be perfect. You need to find THE home with a complete package of features, location, and price that will warrant kissing your savings good bye. The inconsequential, such as your actual address, gets filed away with hopes that everything works out for the best. All you can do is pray that when you look up from signing that deed that the road on which the house is located isn’t named Redskins are Awesome Boulevard.

Since this is essentially the second post I’ve devoted to street addresses, you may be wondering what I would name streets had I been granted this magic cartographical power. That’s easy. Characters from the Mighty Ducks Trilogy. If you need me, I’ll be sitting in my mansion at the end of Guy Germaine Lane.

So I’m in the new place this past Saturday, in the company of friends who had come over to celebrate our new home, and I quickly realized that these people are hungry. And since the cupboards are bare, the fridge only has light refreshments, and Nordberg demands sustenance, I acted quickly and dialed up my local pizza vendor.

But on this night, he’s more than just my local pizza vendor. After all, whoever picks up the phone at Domino’s will be the first person to ask me “what’s my address” and I can then respond with the location of a place that I own. The pizza guy has unknowingly assumed a symbolic role, and all he really wants to know is where he can deliver 5 pizzas. So when I proudly I announce, “I LIVE at 5229 Jule Star Drive,” I’m mildly disappointed that his response was “that’ll be 53.50” and not “Congratulations, sir.”

Yes, I live on Jule Star Drive.

It’s not the best of addresses, but it’s not the worst either. My one quibble is this: why did we have to spell it “J-U-L-E”? No one spells that sound that way. For the rest of my time there in Centreville, I will have to spell out a word that someone else has written down J-E-W-E-L. And yes, I had to spell it out for the pizza guy. The dialogue is below.

“5229 Jule Star Drive, that’s J-U-L-E.”
“I’m not seeing it my system. All I have is JULIE STAR Drive.”
“I assure you it’s JULE. I suppose you may have it as JEWEL?”
“Nope, only JULIE STAR Drive.”
“Fine. That’s me."

Yes, I live on Julie Star Drive.