One more late-night blog.

NO BLOG TOMORROW OR MONDAY. We’ll be out and about. More on that when we return.

’nother busy day, today, roughly in this order: yard work, preparing the house for show, seeing a handful of houses ourselves way up in the northwestern suburbs, more yard work, watching (but not too closely) someone walk through our house — the first person to do so, a woman whom I suspected was looking to live somewhere alone. This would be a good house for a single, or a couple. Add a few kids, and things get tight.

So far we’ve poked around seven houses in two weekends. Don’t let anyone tell you that suburban housing is homogeneous. We’ve seen a couple that we might like to live in, and others that made us wonder what the builder was thinking. My own favorite oddity was a house in Palatine that, instead of actually having a back yard, merely has two oversized side yards, including one fenced in like a back yard — but only a decorative fence, without a lick of privacy. Inside, brown wood panels and faux wood were practically everywhere. Put a couple of moose heads on the walls and you’d have a hunting lodge.

Another house, which fronted a busy street, was floor-to-ceiling in southwestern-style gewgaws, though of course the numerous bits of décor would presumably be going with the sellers. The kitchen was phone-booth sized, which is a no-go from the get-go, especially since there was no dining room. In the basement, there was a fancy drum set, and a Jacuzzi room in which the owners had clearly spent a lot of money. It was not a house that had any small children in it, and I pity the fool who tries to raise any there. Bonus: the back yard had almost no grass.