Dream Shopping

Have you noticed that the biggest shopping day of the year is creeping ever closer to Halloween? Whatever happened to Thanksgiving? I guess it's dead - it's been outgrown by Christmas trees. Pretty soon, people will start believing that the colors of Thanksgiving are red and green. Then again, what colors are associated with Thanksgiving? Golden brown? Nobody's going to rob me of my turkey!!

I don't celebrate the holidays. At least not in the sense of knowing what the holidays actually mean. I wonder sometimes if anyone knows anymore. It's just an excuse to take time off work. For me, it's kind of a piggy-backing off other people's religious beliefs. Christmas? SURE, I'll take time off for that! Time to get as far away from the Christmas madness as possible... What I want for Christmas is to not have to go Christmas shopping. Then again, there's not many people who would notice if I didn't.

I went shopping for a dream today. We took another trip up to Grass Valley - we left early in the afternoon on Friday, hoping to beat the traffic. Apparently, everyone else who was going away for the week of Thanksgiving also left early on Friday to beat the traffic. It took us nearly six hours to get there. Today, it took less than three hours to return home.

While in (or I should say, near) Grass Valley, I took a look at a 5-acre parcel of land that my wife and I really like. Here's a couple of shots of it:



The land has a gentle slope to it, leveling out at the bottom. This shot was taken up at a high spot, near where we would build a house, looking down (toward where my wife would have her animals, and I could fly my planes).



And here is a shot from down low, looking up the slope. The area where the trees are is where we would build -- probably a bit to the left of center in the image. You can kind of see my car behind a tree on the right.

It's a dream. We don't know if we can get it or not. They're asking more than we can afford, but it is a buyer's market right now, and we hope to be able to make a reasonable offer that we can afford and that they would accept. There's already a well there and the perc and mantle has been done, we would just need to put in a septic system and start building.

Either way, if we can get the land and discover that, for some reason, we can't work it out, it is in a great area that is growing and we would have no problem selling it. It would be a huge change for us to move out there - we'd have to figure out the whole telecommuting thing with work - but we're ready for a change. Ready to get away from where we are now, anyway.

We've got to follow our dreams while we have them, or they'll never happen. We have to make our dreams come true, as I don't think they will come true on their own.

Keep your fingers crossed. And send your donations to.... Just kidding. I think I'll start playing the Lotto - maybe I'll get lucky.