Emilie and I have begun the grueling process of purchasing a home. We've picked the lot, as well as the carpet, tile, etc. It's scheduled to be done by the end of October, which I doubt but I suppose it could be done. The house is in a development called Gold Country and is located in the south end of Reno in Double Diamond Ranch. The process has been exciting given the current home purchasing situation in the area. To get a home, it requires a lot of dedication since homes tend to sell about as fast as they can be put up for sale. In the case of the home we ended up purchasing, we started visiting the office towards the first of this year and we went back on a regular basis. Once the phase opened and homes became available for sale, the whole phase sold out in about an hour. This is not uncommon these days, which is good for the seller but not so good for the consumer. Prices go up at a ridiculous rate, as well. The price for the home we are purchasing went up almost $30k from the time we started looking to when we actually solidified the deal. Since this is the big event in our lives right now, more information will be posted on a regular basis, I'm sure...

Well, I finally caught one that wasn't totally embarrassing. I went to Lake Davis (near Portola, CA) with a friend from work. We left at the unnatural hour of 4:00a so that we could be on the lake and fishing before 6:00a (it takes about an hour to get there from Reno). Although the fruits were not many, at least they were okay. I pulled one out that's definitely 18" (questionably 18 1/2"?) and the other one was about 13", which is a decent-size fish (it just looked a little small next to the bigger one). All in all, there was nothing to complain about. It was extremely windy, so we ended up leaving to get out of the wind.