Just got the word that my wife and I will be signing the purchasing contract for our new house (assuming the financing gets finalized). This Friday, we're signing a note for a quarter of a million dollars. That just astounds me, especially since the house I lived in whilst in New York cost $13,000, and that had ten acres. When you figure out just how much we'll actually pay for the house on a 30-year mortgage, it's almost $900,000, and it ain't Monopoly money. When dollar amounts get that high, it crosses over into abstraction. The biggest dollar amount I can comfortably reason with is about the price of a nice car, about $30K.

So I'll go and sign a note with an almost imaginary number on it. All for the ability to hang a picture on the wall or repainting to a colour that I like.