Surfing MLS Sites ... My Secret Passion

I like to think of my current house as a starter home. If some harebrained housewives from Orange County can live in lavish homes that they don't deserve, maybe I can manage to find a house that I don't deserve as well. And so, it is a passion of mine to browse through MLS listings and imagine myself lying on an over-sized inner-tube in an infinity pool or having a nice soak in my jet-stream hot tub or whipping up a fancy meal in my fully updated kitchen, complete with stainless steel appliances and tropical brown granite. I imagine that my blood isn't even rich enough to understand the finer interior touches ... I have been excluded from having even a slight awareness of what is available to the elite!

Some MLS listing standouts from a recent browsing session:

Perhaps if my parents, sister, and in-laws sold our existing homes, and pulled all our cash together we could manage a place about oh 15 notches down from what you see here. However, we still probably wouldn't be able to manage the property taxes. It comes to mind that one of the ten commandments is to abstain from 'coveting your neighbor's home.' How interesting that lusting after real estate is an egregious enough sin that it made it into the ten commandments!