Competitive Puzzling

Yesterday was a bit of a lazy day to say the least. I didn't shower and we just stayed in all day, except for a trip to the McDonald's drive thru for dinner. Today we actually showered and went out for lunch at our favorite New York Jewish deli here in PDX. We also did competitive crossword puzzling. Most couples would be satisfied to simply do the puzzle together in a sort of bonding, loving way. Not us. We photocopy a blank puzzle and then race to see who can finish first. I am typically faster, but neither of us have been able to finish a puzzle in competition without help from the other. We tend to get different clues. We've done this with sudoku puzzles, too, though neither of us really do sudoku's very often - not our cup of tea. In fact, if you can make something into a competition, it's likely that D and I will do so.

On the way home, we decided to hit the open houses in the surrounding neighborhoods. I found the perfect house for RG based on the things she has described she wants in a house. This is my hobby when looking at houses: identifying which of our friends would go best in the house. Anyway, it had dark wood cabinets (which I believe that Jay likes) and darker wood floors (but not really dark floors, just darker; the cabinets were very dark, but the house was still very light looking). It had an awesome mud room/laundry room on the first floor that came in from the 5-car garage and had entrances into the master bedroom closet (imagine the convenience of that!) as well as another entrance into the main house. The bedrooms on the upper level had a laundry chute to send all clothes directly into the laundry room - awesome! It also had a huge game room with a wet bar in the basement, as well as a library on the main floor. FWIW, basements aren't really basements in our neighborhood because most of the time they have huge windows and walk outs into the yard and are not actually underground because of the slopes. To top it off, it had the ultimate gourmet kitchen with a range and refrigerator easily hitting the 20k range for just those two items. Anyway, overall it was a great layout and ideal for entertaining. It wasn't my taste because I don't like dark wood, but I think RG and JG would just love it. Of course, it would never happen because there was no yard...but, hey, there's always walks!

We have rented a few movies for our viewing pleasure this evening, one being the original Rocky, which I've not seen. I figure we'll go see Rocky Balboa when it's released, so I should at least see the first one. I don't plan to rent the others. I'm also into boxing at the moment since The Contender is in its second season, now on ESPN rather than NBC. I don't enjoy watching boxing, but I like the show nonetheless. I guess because I think it's interesting that these men voluntarily step into the ring and let someone hit them for a period of time. Something that is completely alien to me, but oddly fascinating.