I've heard this phrase in several places. I mean, even in Pokemon if you talk to a certain trainer after you defeat her she'll say that. And it is true, you will meet her again, because in Pokemon games you tend to travel around a lot, and besides she always stays in the same relative place.

But anyhow. The reason why I named the post this is that I have "met my playlist again". Previously when I tried to put the code for it into my blog, it wouldn't work. It'd end up in the wrong place, or it would ruin the rest of the coding so the layout wouldn't look right. Finally I've gotten it to stay. Only 30 seconds of Imeem songs really is just terrible. You can't even choose which 30 seconds of the song you want, though I have to say Imeem has more different songs than Playlist. I am so glad to get my playlist back up. True, I have maxed out my song total but I can just delete broken links to put in new songs. Or just make a second playlist. (It would be really funny if I put two playlists on my blog and they played at the same time) My Playlist doesn't exactly match the blog layout (because I am too lazy to find a background or something that would really match), and it's too big to really fit in the div, but whatever. I've gotten it to automatically play on shuffle, so you will hear a random song everytime you come onto this blog. (Just leave your speakers off if you don't want "speaker shock". I have a post somewhere in the past about "speaker shock".)

We saw two open houses today. It seems like this is unofficial Open House Weekend or something. When we were driving around doing things like going to lunch, the library, and so on, we saw a street corner with quite a few Open House signs. More than the usual amount, anyways. We decided to see two of them on Phar Lap Drive which is a steep residential rode connected to my own street, Mann Drive. Phar Lap is loads of fun to bike down because it is so steep, but it is a real pain getting back up again. By the way, I heard there is a long, sloped road in Hawaii somewhere. You can rent a bike or something and ride down the road. It is steep enough that you don't need to peddle, you just enjoy the wind rushing by, but it's not so steep you'd fall and die or something. So I would like to go there sometime. But back to the point. I don't want to get distracted.

There are two houses that I am quite fond of on the street known as Phar Lap. They are across the street from each other. I have written about one of the houses in the post known as ◆ fight, love, live. It's April 18th if you want to check the end of that post. So, the house I have seen before is Spanish-style, with cool things like being able to spy on your neighbors, a view of a creek, and a place next to the shower stall in which you can grow flowers. It even has a home movie theatre which I had not noticed last time. (Anyhow, the house price was like 2.5 million before, I think it was reduced since no one has bought it yet.) The other house, which I just saw the inside of today, is also European style. It appears to be long and thin. It has a small swimming pool and there are many, many balconies. There's a lot of stairs in the house. We had to go in through the back entrance since the realtor was temporarily out, probably doing something. It had many bedrooms (the bedrooms are small, but still, we could always convert some of them to another use), and an inlaw unit downstairs with a bathroom, hidden bed (it's a cabinet which you can use as a bed), kitchen, and TV with nice movie-like chairs. And upstairs was all the rest like dining rooms and the four other bedrooms and several nice bathrooms. This house costed 1.98 million and the price is negotiable so it is a good deal! (That is, if you can get a loan and are able to pay it off)

My parents seem to like the house we saw today better. They are both nice, really, but with different things. My dad says the architectural style of the second house is more unique and stuff. Well, I'm just annoyed by all the stairs. How are you supposed to get up and down them every day? I suppose it would make me more fit, at least. And my mom says if I really want a house that looks like the first one we should just remodel ours. My dad's friend's wife is an architect and she may be able to figure it out. (Still I would feel bad to have an exact copy of another house, you know?)

That reminds me, sometimes I wonder about getting my dad's friend's family to adopt me. They live in an apartment and already have an older son who doesn't talk much (all he really does is talk to his dad, or watch basketball) but maybe I could sleep on the couch. Dad's friend is an engineer at Cisco, my dad helped him get hired, except my dad says "The -namegoeshere- at work is nowhere near as great as the -namegoeshere- I know." Very cheesy, but I guess my father knows best, since they are good friends. And then my dad's friend's wife is a friendly person who likes to cook. Plus, their family wanted to get a cat if they can find the right cat for them. So this is my best chance to get a cat (since you usually can't have a dog in an apartment, and my mom doesn't like dogs). Perhaps I should consider being adopted.

Labels: adoption, again, architect, bike, blog, comparison, family, goodbye, hawaii, house, imeem, meet, music, open house, phar lap drive, playlist, pokemon, short, slope, speakers

Usually you probably hear the term "Live, laugh, love" instead of "Fight, love, live." Filoli Website

But that was the phrase popular at this place I visited recently, called Filoli. It's a California estate built in...the 1900's, I think...by a family, the Bourns. They were trying to get away from San Francisco (where they had previously lived) because a great earthquake and fire had ravaged much of the city, so those people with enough $$$ started building homes in the countryside. It took from 1915-1917 to build the house, which was modeled to look like an estate in Ireland, and also like the architecture of England, both of which Mr. Bourn (at least, I think it was him) was inspired by.

Anyhow, back to the phrase. The name Filoli was very puzzling to the Bourns' friends, since they didn't know what it meant. They thought it was an Italian name. (Yeah, right. The Bourns weren't from Italy.) Actually, he just took the first two letters of each part of his motto, which happened to be "Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life." If you ask me, that wasn't very creative, but oh well. At least he didn't just call it Bourn. (Notice a lot of people name their companies and other things after themselves...Like HP, otherwise known as Hewlett-Packard.)

The main reason my family went to Filoli was because of the gardens. They were really something. There were many, many gardens, and so if you come at different times of year (By the way, Filoli is open from mid-February to October) you might be able to see different flowers. When we went, it was tulip season, which delighted me to no end. (I have this strange fascination with tulips...) If you hurry you might be able to get there before all the tulips start to die. Some of them already lost their petals, like the ones at my house (it's really quite sad, but my dad still thinks they look pretty, even dead). They come in various colors like white, light pink, dark pinkish/red, dark purple, light purple, and even yellow with red parts. Too bad the roses haven't bloomed yet. The ones at my house have started to. I suppose that Filoli just follows a different seasonal pattern from my neighborhood.

Keep in mind that Filoli does charge admission. I was unhappy to hear that since I always want to get in free, but of course they need to make money to keep the place running. (My mom says that a museum in Las Vegas closed down since they had no budget. I wonder what kind of stuff they had - slot machines? Elvis Presley portraits?)

Still, it's a nice place. The house where the Bourns (and later the Roths, who moved in later) used to live has 43 rooms and 17 chimneys, according to one of those retired people tour guides (no offense to them, but they look rather...old, since they have white hair and all). I don't know why you would need so many chimneys. There must be a lot of fireplaces in the house or something. I only have one fireplace and we don't even use it. The house has a bunch of old-looking furniture and portraits. It looks kind of like the Hearst Castle, or a more modern looking version of those European palaces. Outside there's a small rectangular pond, and even a swimming pool. (Wow, I guess people liked swimming pools even back then. It was pretty big and clean, but I hear sometimes people fall into the pool, particularly little kids who just run around in circles. Personally I like the pools at Hearst Castle better since they have interesting designs.)

I wouldn't really want to live there, though. Instead, I'd rather live at this house I just saw today. It was an open house (you know, for sale so you can look inside if you're a buyer). It looked like an adobe house, sort of. It was only one story but there were many rooms. The furniture was very beautiful and the master bedroom had a little room connected to it where you can look outside (great view, the Stevens Creek is right there, and maybe you could spy on your neighbors :o). If you wanted you could set up your computer in that room so you would kind of feel like your were outside even though you were inside. Seeing as I am an indoor person, but like to have a view, that would be cool for me.

Labels: backyard, bourns, fight love live, filoli, flowers, garden, house, money, name, open house, phrase, san francisco, swimming pool

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