So the secret is revealed. I had expected a good deal of discussion over whether Baltimore or Manhattan were gaining or losing in this deal, and depending upon their positions in this debate, gasps of horror from people who live in either of those fine cities. I suppose the jury is still out on that topic.

In case anyone is wondering, searching for a house is not an easy task. It starts out with the amusing challenge of imagining the potential of every space you invade, but it quickly transforms into a terrifying spreadsheet of comparing budgets, taxes, neighborhoods, and the myriad benefits and drawbacks of every building. Our wish list was for a house that contained at least three bedrooms (we each have home offices) and, ideally, a friendly ghost. Proximity to the train station, offstreet parking, and places to walk Goblin were other considerations.

Many of our needs were met in a gorgeous, newly converted building in Little Italy. There was no place to walk the dog, but the establishment it had been converted from was a funeral parlor, thus increasing the chances of supernatural encounters. Naturally, we put in a bid, which was seriously entertained before being blown out of the water by someone who was willing to pay more than the asking price. It was a crushing blow, augured by two path-crossing black cats and a swooping seagull with menacing black eyes.

So many properties we looked at had either been funeral parlors or were directly adjacent to one that even we were beginning to get the creeps. We also looked at an abandoned church (cool, but too costly to renovate, and too much bad energy from Christians) and an abandoned bank (huge, but falling to pieces, and too much bad energy from capitalists). Finally, the second-to-last property we were scheduled to see was paydirt: a Victorian rowhouse in a beautiful neighborhood, currently owned by a gay couple who had transformed it into a showplace. They accepted our first offer without negotiating, and the deal was blessed by a friendly squirrel we saw in the back yard.

No funeral parlors, though.