Lots of new, exciting stuff!

Okay, it's been a bit since I last posted, and I don't know what I was saving it up for, but prepare for a serious unloading of news.

Deep breath.

First, I traveled by plane back to Northern California to visit family and friends for a week. As it is their rainy season and they're crying for rain (it was 70 degrees and sunny when Logan visited in January), I could hardly begrudge them the rain that we got most of the week. But it was sunny on the day I arrived and at least one other day while I was there.

The appearance of the sun is very different there. It's more golden and somehow a little harder on the eyes. Up here, it's more bleached and even with the snow, I hardly ever feel the need to wear sunglasses.

I ate Chinese food most of the week. I just haven't found any restaurants here in Alaska that match the Chinese food down there, but I'm not done looking yet. We brought Chinese food home from my parents' favorite place one night, went to a place in the new casino in town, and I took my bestest buddy to my favorite place, Debbie Wong's, in El Dorado Hills. I wasn't even able to eat it all before I left. Hope my parents enjoyed the leftovers!

I got to see my three boys, the cats I'd left behind at my parents' house. I was worried they wouldn't remember me, as it had been almost a year since my last visit. But they seemed to know me right off the bat and Gerry jumped on my back like he used to.

I even got to see the Folsom Zoo and Sanctuary, which I just never got around to doing while I lived there!

My friends gave me a stuffed moose dressed in a karate gi to celebrate my return. We ate at Olive Garden that first night, another place I had never really gotten a chance to go to while living in the area. I wasn't missing much, apparently, but it was fun anyway. We were also celebrating Tiffy's birthday.

The flights were good. The midnight flights to California were much quieter, of course, and had no one in the middle seats. I slept a bit on each one, but it's hard to sleep with your head on those little tray tables. Thank Goddess for iPods. I watched Wall-E and Firefly. On the way home, I watched 13 Going on 30 and Moulin Rouge. There were people in the center seats, but at least I had a window the whole way.

As much fun as I had, I was glad to be going back home. Logan and I had been having some problems, but we worked them out over the phone and we were very anxious to see each other.

The very day I got back, since we were in Anchorage, we decided to do some shopping. I certainly didn't expect to going back home with a new Macbook, but we did, and I am using it now as I type. We'd been hearing some good things about Macs, and I'd used them in college. We decided to give them a try. I like them a lot, but they do take getting used to if you've used PCs most of your life.

Now for the most exciting bit of news:

We got an email from Misty, the realtor helping us in our house hunting adventures. It was a link to a single house that had juts come on the market. She said she didn't know if it would be "too Alaskan" for us. (I smile whenever I think of this now.)

We went to see it a few days later. After the viewing, we talked at home for maybe 15 minutes before arranging to make an offer through Misty that evening. Instead of offering less than the asked for price of the house, we asked for certain things to remain with it, like the washer and dryer units, and we asked for $4,000 of the closing costs be covered by the seller.

We had to wait all of the next day, Friday, for an answer back. Logan went to a meeting at work and I went to help a friend search for her missing dog. Logan called me later that afternoon to tell me that Misty texted him that we got the house!

I won't write much about it now, because I plan to post some pictures later on, but we should be moved in by May 1st. It's amazing how fast and how smoothly everything has been going, as if this house were waiting for us to come share its life. The monthly payment is the same as we've been paying in rent for our apartment, and it's going to the ownership of something that suits us down to the ground. I can't believe our luck!

Oh, and my friend found her dog, too!