When we were searching for a house out here, it seemed that after meeting with our real estate agent and viewing some homes, Christi and I would always go out to eat and just sit down for an hour or two discussing pros/cons and everything in between.

We got luck with our place since it is literally three blocks away from our rental home, so we knew the neighborhood really well. I vividly remember at one of our sit down conversations, at Max Burger to be exact, I was joking with her that we should have some of our friends randomly go knock on our potential neighbor's doors to make sure we're not living next to the only crazy guy on the street.

Obviously we didn't do that, and when you move in, you just hope you got lucky with the people living around you. I think most people our age are hoping there are a few mid-20s couples living a couple houses away so you can easily relate to someone in a new area. Well, at our end of the block, we could easily be the children of almost everyone living around us. Like I said, you want that young, cool, hip couple to hang out with, but it's more or less luck of the draw. We found out that most people have actually lived in their house for at least 10 years with our neighbor, Alan, taking the cake at 43 years. He's a nice 70 year old guy who throws the biggest parties on the block and is there whenever you need him. And this morning, it was sure nice to have him around.

For the past few years, I keep telling Christi that we don't need to buy a snowblower and that I'm our snowblower. I like to think I'm still young and youthful enough to go out and shovel the driveway when we get some heavier snow a few times a year. Today, I wake up around 7 to shovel out the 18+ inches staring at me on our long and extended driveway. Half way through and fully exhausted, Christi came to help for a little bit. After she had to get back inside, I started seeing the finish line and was about 2/3 of the way done.

This is when my neighbor, without asking for anything, starts up his snowblower, drives it down the street and bails us out. Once again, sometimes you just get lucky who you live next to and today it was a nice surprise to help me, and my back, out in a time of need.

After he was done, I told him he might be the best salesperson ever as he might have convinced me to buy one ... for next year, of course.

Thanks Alan, I owe you one.