Bit of a bust

Although that title is a bit misleading: Friday certainly went well, we went out to a new place - well, new to us - Acadia, which is located up in Hillcrest (one of the posh bits of town, occupying one of the hills). The restaurant is quite lovely, with a series of outdoor decks spilling down the side of the building, woven amongst several trees, with the whole decorated with fairy lights all over. The inside looked pretty impressive, but we - of course - chose to sit outside.

And we had been granted a great night for it, neither too hot&sticky, nor rainy - the rain threatened a few times, but never actually delivered. I don't know how busy it usually is (when I first spotted it 12 months ago, it was packed out), but on Friday they managed to fill all the outside tables (6 or 7), but there was noone seated inside (I guess at least 12 tables), so I guess they are hurting as much as any restaurant.

Amazingly, the restaurant actually lived up to the location, for once - so many restaurants with spectacular locations or views seem to use those as an excuse to be ordinary, or worse. Here the service was impeccable, and the food both interesting and delicious. I had possibly the best Caesar salad I've ever tasted, and a nicely-done breast of duck on the strangest casserole I've ever encountered - more like shredded potato with bacon and mushroom, quite delicious. Cat's scallops were also, she said, delicious (I declined the offer of a taste, feeling about shellfish as I do).

We also had several glasses of dessert wine with our meal (having long abandoned any pretensions to 'good taste' in wine, and all that wine-bluff stuff, we now just drink what we like, and the hell with developing our palates). Of course, this wasn't actually the wisest of choices, as I wound up paying for it the next day.

Sadly, in my case it seems high-sugar alcoholic drinks exact a disproportionate revenge the next day, so I spent most of Saturday feeling quite hungover and ill. Mind you, as Cat got me DVDs of The Sopranos, I could just sit & watch some of those and vege out, which kinda fitted in with my capabilities for the day.

Sunday, unfortunately, I got a phone call at 8 a.m. for work, and had to spend the day in a mixture of working, and waiting for others to fix things so I could do another step. This staggered on until 6:15 p.m., in a most frustrating fashion. If I could have just done my bit, it would only have amounted to a couple of hours of actual work, but of course, things don't work like that.

We did get out at one point to look at an Open Home nearby - someone had gone the extra mile and delivered flyers in all the letterboxes inviting people to come and see it, and find out about 100% financing and 'buying the house at less than market price'. I have to say, wow - what a con job. The couple had obviously bought the place to do a quick flip - tidy it up, give it a quickie facelift, and then sell it for a profit. Talk about bad timing for that manouevre!

The job that they had done was so obviously a completely superifical one, done to the lowest standards - a nasty mid-brown mushroom paint job, the cheapest of carpets, missing handles, and so on. Not that there weren't some nice points to the house, but overall a fairly cramped 3 bedroom house with a nice lounge & no dining room. Then there was the price - $181,000. At that point I just about laughed out loud, as it is so completely unreasonable in the current market. For less than this ($179k), I saw a -very- nicely finished 4 bedroom place with office, playroom and large fully-landscaped & fenced yard, in a nicer part of town ... and that was 2 months ago, so if it's still on the market it's price will have fallen.

I mean, seriously, house prices are just in free-fall all over the US. I'm quite happy to hold off buying for another six months, as I think they'll just keep falling for at least that long. Around then, we can start looking at foreclosures, as these are usually so much cheaper: true, the banks can be harder to negotiate with than private owners, but they are also not emotionally invested, and once the property has been on the market for a while as a foreclosure, you can use the same sort of pressure on the bank - i.e. show them how much they are losing each month it doesn't sell, as a persuasion to cut the price for a certain sale. Or so the theory goes, anyway ...

Oh well, on the brighter side, the 2nd series of True Blood has just started on TV, so we were agog to see that. We were riveted by the first series, so much so that we went and bought all the books the series is loosely based on, and devoured them in short order. I have to say, the books are actually less substantial & thoroughly thought-out than the TV series (which is already deviating a fair distance from the underlying source). Of course, the TV series is made by the brilliant Alan Ball (of Six Foot Under fame), which is why I gave it a look in the first place, & it's not surprising that it is rife with so many levels of meaning and subtext.