Albuquerque Trip Part 2 - househunting and gambling

OK, so I already told you about the hiking and sightseeing. Now I'll tell you about the househunting. We were supposed to be just neighborhood scouting but you know how it is, you see these houses for sale from the outside and you just have to know what they are like on the inside. On Sunday, we drove around looking for open houses. At the first open house, we met a young, eager realtor who offered to email us listings that matched what we were looking for. We told her that we wouldn't be ready to buy for almost a year, but she said that was fine, she didn't mind sending them to us anyway. We told her we were looking for at least a 4 bedroom, 2 bath house with at least a 2 car garage and a decent sized yard (something that seems to be a bit harder to find there than here) and most importantly, NO HOME OWNER'S ASSOCIATION.

We were a bit discouraged that day by what we saw since it seemed like most of the houses we saw were somewhat out of our price range. We worried that maybe the market there was too hot while the market here has been cooling and by the time we're ready to buy in a year, we wouldn't be able to afford what we thought we could. Hope that makes sense.

Anyway, she sent us some listings and we found 3 houses that seemed to be what we were looking for in the areas we were looking at. We set up an appointment with her to show us these houses. Of course, we made it clear that we weren't ready to buy and didn't want to take up too much of her time. She said it was no problem and spent an hour showing us these 3 houses. Very smart girl since we are now determined to use her as our realtor when we're ready to buy in a year. Also, my brother-in-law and his girlfriend may move out there and we'll recommend her to him as well. And if we drag my MIL and FIL out there with us kicking and screaming, they'll need a home too. Could be a 3 for 1 for her.

So we saw 3 houses and they were all just what we were looking for IN OUR PRICE RANGE!!! YAY!! Of course, I liked house #1 which was 4 bd, 3ba, 2 car garage, with a large "rec" room (would be perfect for a pool table), hot tub, sauna, and even a 400 sq ft finished basement. The kitchen was a little smaller than I would like but all the other things it had make up for it in my book. D. liked house #3 which was 4 bd, 2 ba, 3 car garage, with a large storage shed and a pool. To me the layout of the house was kinda weird and other than the yard and pool, there wasn't anything in the house itself that I liked. The yard was pretty big though and D. felt like it was in a "more desirable" neighborhood. House #2 was very nice as well, we just didn't like it as much. But it was still a perfectly fine 4bd, 2.5 ba, 3 car garage house in our price range. Anyway, we were way more encouraged after seeing these houses. Of course, we'll still be discussing(arguing about - lol) house #1 vs. house #3 for the next year or so.

We also carved out some time on our vacation (and wrangled my aunt into babysitting) to check out the casino in Albuquerque. The casino itself on the outside is very nice in a pueblo indian kind of way. Definitely not vegas. Anyway, we went in and decided to try our hand at blackjack. We sat down in the only 2 empty chairs at a $5 blackjack table, not next to each other unfortunately and of course, each of us ended up next to a smoker. YUCK!! We each started with $40. We didn't do too well. The dealer had some unbelievable luck and I lost count of how many times D. and I lost with a 19 or 20 when the dealer pulled the right card to get 21. When we were each down to $10, we decided to call it quits.
We moved over to the craps table. The table didn't seem all that hot when we got there, but I told D. to go ahead. He threw $40 on the table (plus the $20 we still had from blackjack) and got started. After he won a little bit, I asked him to put $5 on the number 9 for me. In a short time, the number 9 had been hit 3 times and I had $21 myself to start playing with(it pays $7 on a $5 bet). So I started playing too. We were doing pretty well and we have a system. Whenever we start winning, I start taking some of our chips and put them on the back row, closest to me, in the "bank". This is money that we will not touch regardless. It's what we will walk away with. We were at the craps table for about an hour having a pretty good time before the tide started to turn a bit. I told D. it was time to go. He agreed. We had put in a total of $120 between the blackjack table and the craps table and we walked out of there with $230 after tipping the dealers. Not bad for a night of fun. We walked out shaking our heads wondering why we even bother with blackjack when we never seem to get lucky there.

Anyway, the casino is just one more thing we like about Albuquerque. We wouldn't go all the time, but it's nice to go to for an evening's entertainment. I've never had a gambling problem and I don't see how I would. To me, I go in with what I can afford to spend for a night out. If I lose it, then it was the cost of entertainment. If I come out even or win, I'm thrilled. I never think I'm going to walk in there and win enough money to change my life. Some people don't understand that mindset, but it works for me.

So that was our Albuquerque trip. We went out to dinner a few times while we were there, but to be honest, it was nothing special so I won't bore you with the details. It was definitely different from Florida, but we really liked it. The mountains there are so beautiful and it's neat to watch how they change as the day goes on and the sun hits them from different angles. I'm not sure I'd ever get tired of watching it.

Last night we met D. out at the beach where he runs on Wednesday nights with a group of runners he knows. We had dinner at a little restaurant on the broadwalk overlooking the ocean. It was nice and breezy for a change and I suppose I will miss the ocean, but I think the mountains will be a nice trade off.