how are your petunias doing

The other evening I was at a cocktail party given by the Catalina Foothills homeowners association where I live. It was a close-knit neighborhoody kind of affair to welcome some new homeowners and introduce the board members of the association and other residents to each other.
After fueling ourselves at the bar and buffet, and introductions and opening remarks by the board members, we all broke up into little cocktail party-like groups. And eventually, and inevitably, the conversation turned to real estate.
Everyone at this little soiree was a homeowner, some of us new homeowners in this area, so everyone had a vested interest in how the market was doing here in the Foothills. And since I was the only Realtor in attendance, I was prepared to be dragged into the middle of discussions of real concern and worry about the current market.
But it wasn't like that at all. The tenor of the conversation was more one of curiosity - by people who were interested, but just kind of mildly interested - than of concern.
No one seemed worried by the slower real estate market here in the Foothills. No one seemed terribly concerned that home values in the Foothills were going to drop significantly, or that the current woes would have any long term effects.
On the contrary, people seemed very content and happy to be living here, and after a little bit of real estate talk, were more interested in talking about just about anything -baseball, gardening, even politics - than worrying about the slow real estate market.
It was very refreshing, and reassuring. And I discovered that there is life out there, beyond the suffocating barrage of dire reports and predictions from the local and national media and the increasingly in-bred buzz of we Realtors and bloggers.