Bravo, Lance.

To Jinx or Not to Jinx ... Just got back from a whirlwind househunting trip to Colorado. When we were checking in at the cute little Roanoke airport (another thing I shall miss), the checker-inner-guy said he could get us seats together for the flight on the way to Cinci, but not to Denver from there. When we got to Cinci and asked the gate checker-inner-guy he said he probably couldn't do it, but he would give it a shot. A minute later, he looks up at us and says, "It's your lucky day," and handed us two new boarding passes. It all happened in slow motion, the motion of his mouth, his hand reaching for the under-the-desk ticket printer. As the words came out of his mouth, I was alarmed and my eyes took on the appearance of pie plates. "Take it back!" I wanted to scream. "Knock on wood for God's sakes, or do something!" were the words scurrying through my mind. I knew those few, well-meaning words would mean nothing but destruction for the remainder of the trip. I accepted the tickets with a weak smile and moved to the boarding area.
I was waiting for the plane to blow up, the rental car to pick up to turn into a Seinfeld episode, a tornado to hit DIA. But it didn't. On the contrary, we ended up with an upgrade at the Hertz desk to a Mustang, the drive from DIA to Loveland took way less time than we expected and, here's the best part, we found our house, THE house. It was the 2nd one we looked at. Granted, we still scoured the market the rest of the evening and most of the day Saturday, but we found it. We just made an offer and are hammering out the contract now. I can't believe it.
Saturday evening we met with just about my whole family at Cinzetti's, a fabulous Italian restaurant that always reminds me what gluttons American's are (me included, of course). We arrived late because we had been writing our names over and over again, like a girl signing her name with the last name of the boy she has a crush on, over and over and over again, just to see how it looks. Anyway, my mother, father, step-parents, step-grandparents, step-Aunt and Uncle, sisters, brother-in-law, neice and nephew were all there and surrounded us with love the second we came in sight of the table. The resounding "hey"s and "ho"s emanated from their section of the room and they all wanted to see the pictures and add their advice and compliments. We ate a great meal, chatted with everyone, milled from one end of the table so as to be sure to get in a few moments with everyone. It was a great night -- great food, surrounded by loved ones, sipping on a new drink I discovered that night (a Bellini, or something like that).
So we're back now in Roanoke and I'm dreading saying good-bye to my family here. We still haven't sold our house (it's only been on the market four days) and I'm developing the dreaded stress cold-sore that had better be gone before everyone starts taking that "one last picture" with me. I still don't think I'm jinxed though ...