Separated at Birth?

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

Since it's just the two of us, we didn't see any sense of cooking a big meal and decided to go out for  Christmas brunch. We didn't want to go to a buffet and instead opted for a nice sit down meal. Our choice this year was Bertrands at Mr. A's, I'm not sure who Mr. A or Bertrand are but they have a really nice view from the restaurant. This place even has a dress code, oooohhh fancy!

It is on the 12th floor in the Banker's Hill area with a fantastic view of downtown, the harbor and the airport. This was a three course meal where you choose from an appetizer, main course and desert. After brunch we drove to seaport village and walked off the food.  The weather today was fantastic!

Appetizer:

• "A" had the  Hearts of bibb lettuce without the blue cheese.
• I had the lobster bisque.

Main Course:

• "A" had the sauteed diver sea scallops.
• I had the 48 hour cabernet braised prime beef.

Dessert:

• "A" had pumpkin bread pudding.
• I had the Tahitian vanilla scented creme brulee.

Overall the food was OK, by main course was basically pot roast, but I could cut it with a fork.

View from the table

My Appetizer

"A's" Appetizer

My Main Course

"A's" Main Course

My Dessert

"A's" Dessert

Panoramic from the patio (click to enlarge)

Panoramic #2 from the patio (click to enlarge)

Beautiful weather today.

Dentist visit

So about three weeks ago I was flossing and a piece of something came off my tooth. About a week later another piece came off. I had been meaning to make an appointment and finally did for yesterday. My tooth didn't hurt but after eating I would end up with a half a chicken up there or so it seemed.

What happened was an old filling shrank and came out taking a little of the tooth. Plus the shrinking allowed decay to produce. So they shot me up and replaced the filling. Good as new!!

Rental property part 2, DENIED!

We got word that a higher offer was accepted. Oh well I guess we will just wait for it to fall out of escrow for a fourth time :)

Rental Property part 2

So we finally decided to start looking for another condo.  The prices seem to have stabilized but we are finding that lower end property is still generating multiple offers.

We found another unit for sale in the same complex as our other condo but with a different HOA. The funny thing is that this HOA is less than the other one. The unit also has a different layout but still 2 bedrooms and 2 baths with just over 1,000 sqft and this one really does have a garage.

This place has fallen out of escrow three times and we are not completely sure why. We do know that the first time it went into escrow "mold" was found in every room. Now keep in mind that we live in California and it seems that any thing you can think of is "Found by the state of California to be harmful to your health."  Whatever!!!!

So this time we decided to take a look at it and I have no idea where this "mold" is. I am thinking that some first time home buyer drank the kool-aid and wanted to do all kinds of tests and miraculously they found "mold". I was thinking that the stuff was growing all along the walls. I didn't even smell mildew and it was raining that day.  But if we get the property we will now have to run our own test and probably have someone come out and "remove" 5 mold spores at a cost of $1K.

We placed an offer, below asking of course, and the bank notified us that there were 3 other offers and to come back at best and final. We went back with the same price. Then two days later our agent said that two more offers came in and the bank kicked all offers back AGAIN for best and final. We then went up $2,500 more to make it look like we were trying. So right now we are waiting but we don't think that we have a chance, so we are not holding our breath.