House of the rising Moonglum

So, as most of you know, I recently purchased a home over a year ago. Going into this I knew it was going to be more expensive than I thought, so I stored up some money for the eventual tax bill. Well thanks to the odd way we do things around here, I just got my first tax bill today. I knew it was going to be a doozy, but almost had a heart attack when I saw that it was 60% more than my estimate! However these Cook county property tax bills are not exactly what one might call transparent. So after a bit more looking around and a phone call or two, I discovered that on your first tax bill, depending on your closing date, you actually get the bill for the entire year in one installment.

OK breathing again. Actually came out to 20% less than my estimate. Strangely the same thing happened to me earlier this week with the metro water district. I got someone on the phone who didn’t want to deal with me and yelled at me about having someone call and if I wasn’t there they were going to disconnect me. So when no one called I called them back and a very nice man told me that I had never missed a bill and there was no way they would disconnect me and in fact everything was in order and I didn’t need to contact them again.

At least my tax bill is itemized so I can see where my money is going. (And since I’m not in an SSA or TIF it might be accurate.)

I don’t know if anyone has heard of this, I know I hadn’t. Apparently there is a non Greyhound bus service in the midwest. It is called megabus, and fares start at $1! As air travel becomes more of a pain, I am loving seeing alternate intercity transportation modes. I would really love to see an express electric train company follow much the same routes, especially if they could get some fast ICE style trains.

Still driving myself to Indy though. :/