Happy Turkey to anyone still checking in on this blog from time to time! Akhil and I are packing up this weekend for our east-meets-west Thanksgiving extravaganza in Seattle, departing Tuesday night. My parents, my brother, Akhil's brother and wife, all of us descending on Medina, Wash. for our first-ever blended holiday, Pacific Northwest-style. A momentous event!

We just got back from doing our regular househunting chores -- and I'm slightly happy to report that it's true, the prices seem to have capped out for the moment, as you've seen the media report for most of the country. BUT, here on the "affordable" east side, they still managed to jump up according to the "six-months-ago-plus-10-percent" formula these slimy agents are using into the $720-750k echelon for 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom homes -- in bad school districts. So, we are seeing a lot of one-bathroom offerings just under the 700k mark (we refer to this as the "pain threshold"), though nothing yet has tempted us to make any offers. The interest rate plus holiday slump would make it seem likely that we'd find something next month SOMEwhere, but we'll see. You'll be sure to hear if we make any headway. And you'll certainly be happy to hear the end of this rather LONG story, for sure! Two years ago this weekend we were just getting into our Round-the-World trip, having landed in Auckland as our first stop. Two years later -- here we are, same old digs! Pushing on.

Post-hunting we had an amazing chicken and mozzarella with sundried tomato spread on ciabatta sandwich at this fairly new gourmet deli, wine and cheese shop in Montrose that I have to recommend. It's called Gouda and Vines, on Honolulu Ave. They've got some tasty-looking stuff in there. We'd love to see the place succeed so give it a shot. That's all from the SoCal trenches for this week. We're Seattle-bound.