Countdown - Only five weeks to go before the baby arrives. Jenny and I have been packing our social calendar for the past several months on the assumption we'll be out of action after the baby is born, and this weekend was no exception.

On Friday night, we celebrated our mortgage refinancing with John and Mary. John works for BayCal, a mortgage broker in Burlingame and he’s married to Mary, who is Jenny’s friend from their Wells Fargo teller days. We had dinner at the House, a once-trendy restaurant in the Sunset district. I had pork chops and Jenny had the ostrich, which tasted unexpectedly like beef. John and I spent much of the evening talking about politics, and by the end of dinner I succeeded in converting him into a conservative. It was the taxes and school situation in SF that clinched it.

Before dinner, we took a tour of their gigantic six bedroom, four bathroom house. I was in awe of the space that they had. The house looks small from the front, but most of it hidden from view as it hugs the side of a hill in the Sherwood Forest section of San Francisco. The house also has three separate outdoor decks, the most I’ve ever seen. It could easily fit 300 people. I’m glad the mortgage business has been good to them.

We finally had our ex-neighbors Bruce and Darrell over for dinner on Saturday night. They are very nice people. I really enjoyed hearing about their take on things, being that they are both Black and single guys (straight, of course) originally from the South. It was funny hearing Bruce tell us about his family in Memphis—they think he’s strange for eating sushi. Black people in the South don’t like sushi or Elvis, I found out. I didn’t get to talk about their political philosophy because we ran out of time and I wanted to be cautious about bringing up topics like Ronald Reagan and Jesse Jackson. But surprisingly, several Black people that I’ve met out here are actually conservatives, but they’re afraid to tell others for fear of being ostracized by their peers. Bay Area liberals are very intolerant, I must say. It’s time to come out of the closet!

I took out my financial advisor’s hat on Sunday when Fred and Sharone came over for brunch on Sunday morning. Jenny made some awesome French toast and fruit salad that we completely finished. Afterwards, we watched the Baby Shower video from last week and lounged around in the back yard for a while talking investments. Taking a page from my own book, I suggested that Sharone put most of her retirement plan money into Dodge & Cox Balanced and Income funds. She selling her house soon, so she also needs a place to park her money for a while. I suggested that she place that money into a money market fund, since she’s going to probably roll over the proceeds into another house within the next two years. Sometime soon, Fred will get the hint and ask Sharone to marry him. I wonder when that will happen?