The big news for 2017 is we moved to the hill country, a lovely hilltop acreage in unincorporated San Antonio where we plan to have a few retired horses and plenty of room for the Corgis to run about and explore. It’s been a dream of ours to have it all in one place with Jesse’s home office walking distance from the horses and sitting spots outdoors, a pool in Diane’s back yard, a modern showpiece kitchen for home cooking, a cross country agility course for Loki, and enough space for Cooper to lay in the sun without Loki forever getting on his last nerve. We figured it was time to make the leap. It’s just shy of 8 acres, most of it a wooded hill that is the scenic overlook for the pool and fire pit. Deer and rabbits pass through and I’m sure all other manner of critters and varmints. Please see low res card enclosed and note our new physical address: 27387 Mark Wayne Dr, San Antonio, TX 78261
Finding the place and getting it under contract was the kind of unlikely sequence that would make you think it’s either a tall tale or “meant to be”. Diane was trolling the realtor sites and found it, priced a country mile above our max budget. I told her stop looking at stuff outside our price range. Then we spent about a month fretting over another property that maybe could be outfitted with a pool after we bought it, maybe not. It was an intriguing possibility, which we considered just long enough for it to be snatched up by somebody else. Enter regret, remorse, and recriminations. Then Mark Wayne came back on the market, in our price range, the week before Jesse’s big presentation. Diane was determined. She drove to San Antonio Sunday morning, passing through a weather system that looked something like Moses crossing the Red Sea, dark and windy, with torrential rain for 2 hours, simply crazy weather, with Jesse in the passenger seat alternately working on that presentation and white knuckling the hand rails for fear of life. When we arrived, it was a beautiful Fall morning, sky as blue as the sea. Gotta love Texas weather. It turned out the previous buyers had gotten inspections and pulled out when the pool report included phrases like “possible loss of life”. Heck, we went through that just GETTING there to see the place, so it’s all relative. So that’s how the place fell to us. By the way, we did get the seller to fix the life threatening issues like grounding it – we are not that crazy.
To be sure, there are things we’ll miss about living in the Katy area. Mostly the people – close neighbors and friends and family, who we probably won’t get to see quite so often. But in San Antonio we’ll be closer to other family and friends who we haven’t seen quite as often as we would have liked to in the past so that will be nice. Also, the new place has a detached guest house and a pool with a view so maybe we can entice some to come visit us.
The year 2017 wasn’t all about buying and selling houses. In August, we weren’t even thinking about moving. We took the afternoon off and took a tour of the brand new $70 million Legacy Stadium for the Katy School District. Taking off to go see a High School Football seemed like a very Texas thing to do, and it was pretty interesting what the spent time and money on. We even saw our tour guide on the national news and the Today show.
August was also the month we go caught up on our yearly rainfall, and then some. By the third day of Harvey news coverage the newscasters were calling it a biblical flood because it had surpassed the 1000 year flood nomenclature. We were very fortunate to not suffer any house flooding but that first day of rain was a doozy. The tornado warnings kept getting extended and the sirens would cascade across our cell phones all at once. It felt like a war movie. The tv news was on for like 9 days straight. But probably the most amazing thing was so much neighbors helping neighbors. The news could hardly cover a fraction of it. When we identified a way to help, there were hundreds of people there donating ahead of us. A local dojo opened their doors as a shelter posting they had a mere case of water and the next post was letting people they were stocked and weren’t in need of any supplies at all. The pictures of destruction were poignant, but – all told – completely overshadowed by the sense of community coming together.
We also found time to get away to rejuvenate throughout the year. Back to Cabo San Lucas in May, which provided some incredible venues to watch the San Antonio Spurs make another playoff run amid fine dining, sunset beach vistas, and unlimited tequila. We also made it out to Fort Collins again in October and San Francisco in June to visit Diane’s uncles Mike and Bill, respectively. We seem to have found a rhythm whom to visit, and when, and where – which I now realize probably makes us sound very boring indeed. But it makes for a pretty happy year. We hope you are also finding success and joy throughout the year, at regular predictable intervals, and in particular, throughout the holidays.
Jesse, Diane, Cooper, Loki, and Malloy
Corgi Ranch, TX 