Yep, the old HotBar was doing more that just sending me pop-ups at inopportune moments. Despite it's promises that it was protecting me and not sending my information out to the world, it was doing its own deal on me, I guess.

After several scary crashes- one in which my screen went all pale and blotchy, like it was melting, I appealed to my husband, the computer dude. He whipped out his diagnostic ware (which I know he was dying to do to prove me wrong for downloading stuff...) and had it scan the hard drive for alien, evil software.

For all of its appearance of being benign, HotBar sure didn't go without a fight. He had to put the computer into Safe Mode to get rid of the little bugger.

While he was at it, he did a virus scan, and then de-fragmented my hard drive. This took a good, long time, but I think that my computer is feeling much more spry!

Yesterday, we began our condo hunt with our real estate agent. We looked at a loft, a cedar townhome, and some remade apartment homes in the very center of the city. I don't know if those were for us, although one of the converted apartments had been beautifully remodeled by a gay guy. The kitchen was awesome, with a custom tile backsplash, and a glassed in porch area.

But, truth be told, in my searches on the Internet last night I found all sorts of larger condos and townhomes in the northeast part of town, mostly outside of the Perimeter. I even found what seems to be a beautiful 3 BR, 2 1/2 BA townhome south of Roswell and Alpharetta for only $150,000. I did my standard MapQuest search and it clocked out at 35-40 minutes from both of our workplaces. It's worth a try.