FTT Off Topic: The High Life

As always with FTT O-T, it's a big wide Internet and this ain't going to be about sports. Go bail if you aren't ready to indulge.

You are looking at a 9,000 square foot house in Incline Village, NV, near South Lake Tahoe. I was fortunate enough to be invited to the wedding of a close friend to her new husband today, and, um, there appears to be some cash in the relationship. Either that, or they just know somebody, because Dear Lord, Was This Place Lush.

The wedding and reception were held in the same place; the chapel area, as it were, seated 70 or so comfortably, with great acoustics for the Shooter Wife's harp playing. Here's the view over her shoulder during the recessional.

Afterwards, there was some of the best food I ever ate (tiger prawns? fillet Mignon aperitifs? tri-tip steak? um, yes, kill me, more), a preposterously good raspberry pumpkin chocolate cherry cake, booze and more booze... and the sense that these two people, as much as any two people can, deserved it. They brought people from all over the country, they housed a couple dozen of them in this amazing place, and no one got sloppy drunk or had impossible children or anything else you could even get jealous at them for. I have no doubt that they are going to be together for the duration, that both families are just thrilled by this, and that today was just the start of a great life together as husband and wife.

Oh, and the below ground level? Dedicated movie theater with projection screen, full-sized pool room with red velvet table, separate kitchen and full bath, and a private entrance to the whole thing. I could hold 5 or 6 table poker tournaments down there and just leave everything set up, full time. And that's just the downstairs; upstairs had indoor and outdoor hot tubs, more bedrooms than I could count, spiral staircases to secret lofty kid dormer rooms, a piano, a theater kitchen, a quarter acre yard...

And it's in freaking Incline Village, which is to say Tahoe, a living national park and resort area where the stars are plainly visible, the seasons change, there's no humidity or bugs and you can go play poker or bet on sports without any real planning at all. I don't know why any person of means does not live here, I really don't. And while I can't imagine that I will ever be of enough means to come and book a place like this for me and mine, at least now I know what it's like to live in it for 6+ hours, and dream.

Tomorrow the Shooter Wife and I drive back to San Fran, fly back on the near-overnight, and drive home from Newark after midnight. The fact that our children are there, and we miss them very much, is going to be enough to make us happy that we are home. But after 48 hours in luxury decadence? Let's just say that getting a whole lot better at poker and sports gambling to pay for this kind of thing seems much more appealing now...