I have been binging on smoothies and Mario Kart the past couple of days. I may finally be reaching my breaking point with both. I am officially Kart obsessive. I think about it constantly. I can feel the turns in my thumbs. And when I go to sleep at night I see shells and banana peels flashing across my closed eyelids. Right now Baby Bowser’s victory cry keeps ringing through my head. Maybe a week in Atlanta next week away from the temptation will do me some good.

Our poor little Taylor went under the knife this morning. No babies for her. I already miss her energy around the house after only one day away. I think Trammell does too. He slept until noon today and has been pretty subdued all evening. It should be fun to see them reunited tomorrow morning. I really have no idea how we’re going to keep her calm the next few days while her stitches heal.

Yesterday after my morning team meeting I drove out to our new property and wandered around for probably about forty-five minutes. Just trying to kind of get a better feel for the land. I checked out all the deer tracks and poked around the neighboring properties a little. I discovered St. Andrews Catholic Church behind the woods to the south and also got a better look at Lamberton Creek running to the east of us. The creek seems to be surrounded by a decent-sized marsh between our property and Fuller Ave. When I strayed from the berms in this area I crunched through the ice a of couple times, soaking my boots in dark muddy water. I’m curious to see what everything looks like after the snow thaws. I imagine the area will be fairly teeming with wildlife. Our yard already seems to be a significant deer corridor as the back half is criss-crossed with deer paths and the crushed snow today showed a half-dozen deer beds. Mary came out later with the dogs and they went crazy sniffing around everything. The neighbor’s dogs howled up a storm while we were there until the neighbor lady came out and introduced herself. She seemed decent enough, certainly more pleasant than her husband was a week ago. She was kind of edgy though and I’m sure she’s annoyed to be losing her view, but I would be too in her shoes. All in all the outing just nudged up the home-building-desire level and if we can somehow build this summer I think we’ll give it a shot. I’m sure it’s not the smartest financial choice to rush into something like this, but I think it will be worth it in the long run.