Mishaps and other haps

Three of us looked at a house last night that seemed highly agreeable and well within our price range.

The couple who currently live there have owned it for the past twenty years and they have maintained the place well and have replaced and updated appliances, the furnace, and the roof recently. They have made an offer on a new place (near their grandkids and closer to the husband’s work) and the offer has been accepted, so it looks like they would be able to move out in time for us to move in when our leases expire.

This place has all of the features we have discussed, particularly: the correct number of bedrooms, a good kitchen, hardwood floors, enough space for four adults, “not ranch style”, and it’s situated at a decent location for access to public transportation. Plus, it has a cozy, private backyard with a great brick patio and wood deck. It is in a nice, quiet neighborhood and most of the neighbors have been there for 20+ years.

I am feeling a little better about the house hunt.

I did one thing today that I am proud of.

I avoided doing one thing today that I would not have been proud of.

What a day. But I think maybe it has been a good day.

When a moderate-sized city can’t even offer its citizens safe, clean drinking water … ISN’T THAT SOMETHING TO BE ALARMED ABOUT?!

Shame on you, Madison! Fix the water system! No excuses!

Someone pointed out that I had not posted about hitting 60th level yesterday with Montanni, my Scarlet Crusade Main on World of Warcraft.

In fact, I let Montanni speak for himself in his own blog

But yes, I have a 60 now. It is exciting. Molten Core, here I come!

Between regularly scheduled events and irregularly scheduled events, the rest of my week is semi-booked. I think this is going to be the case a lot this summer.

– We normally tabletop game on Tuesday nights (D&D), Thursday nights (Shadowrun), and Saturday afternoon/evening (D&D). Not up to 5 games/wk. as I was a couple of summers ago– not that I can’t handle being ubergeeky, but there isn’t enough time to fit in two more games right now.

– We have guild events (and generally do WoW things) on Monday nights (weekly guild meeting), Saturday morning/early afternoon (weekly guild instance/raid time), and now either on Friday evening or Sunday, or both (for those who like PvP or who just want to play and chat with lots of other people who are online). Our guild is up to 125 members and this is likely to increase in the next week or two, as we may be getting a few new players from another guild that is dissolving.

– We have an appointment to see a house Wednesday night. Still working out the details of our primary buyer’s agent, but contact has been made with a couple of people who are starting to help us. House shopping currently has the privilege of trumping other events, such as WoW or gaming, as it is a priority to find a place within our timeframe. Shopping should become hot and heavy in the next week or two.

– Going to see a play with PhysOrg Friday night

– Hoping to repeat our early morning shopping/gym routine on Saturday. Technically, this is not a “routine” yet, but I am hoping it will become routine.

Noteworthy this week:

1) Sweet Potato soup– made Thursday night during character creation for our Shadowrun game. Toward the end of the cooking time, we had four or five power brown-outs in a row and then lost power for about an hour. The soup did not simmer as long as I wanted, but luckily it was done enough to eat.

A hand blender is now on my list of desired kitchen utensils. I think I would make a different kind of homemade, fresh vegetable soup every night (at least for a while) if I had a hand blender to puree it to a thick, creamy consistency. Just imagine how this would revolutionize “fast food” in the winter. Soup is not always fast, per se, but apart from chopping up some vegetables, it is not usually very labor intensive. In fact, use frozen vegetables and there is practically no labor involved. Just simmering.

2) Veggie pot pie, but with homemade crusts this time. I was feeling sleepy yesterday evening and decided to cook, rather than keel over. The purple asparagus from the Farmers’ Market was chopped into bite-sized pieces (it’s green inside) and steamed for about 3 minutes. I also made cheese sauce for the asparagus, which was overkill, but my roommate and I enjoyed it. I have not yet had asparagus that I didn’t like, but I do recommend the purple kind, as it is very sweet and tender.

PhysOrg and I tried something different this morning. We woke up *early* and did things.

We’ve been talking about going to the gym on Saturday mornings for ages. We both need the exercise (‘cuz, you know, we’ve got to Maintain) and it’s easier to go together on the weekend. However, we usually stay up very late on Friday night and sleep in on Saturday. We usually make it to our Saturday morning raid at 10:30, but we miss early morning Saturday.

Today we woke up early and headed down to the downtown Farmers’ Market. We made the loop around the square. Saw several things of interest for the future: homemade canned pickles and pickled peppers, habanero pepper seasoning, cheese and cheese products, green onions, and fresh flower arrangements. This week, we just picked up purple asparagus.

We had espresso drinks and danishes at ERC for breakfast and headed to the west side to go to the gym.

Saturday mornings at the gym are surprisingly busy, but it was not as crowded as it is some days after work. Phys headed to the pool area and I hit the treadmill for 45 minutes.

We arrived back home in time to group with people for our raid (Strat Live). Montanni put on half of his last level (until the expansion). I am hoping to hit 60 with him tomorrow. He also picked up a spiffy new belt and boots.

This afternoon Phys has been napping, so I am not entirely sure we defeated the purpose of sleep and losing part of Saturday. However, I like this gym/Farmers’ Market routine for Saturday and hope we can do it often throughout the summer. It’s a nice way of spending time together and sharing activities.

I was lucky. Saturday was beautiful and I thought I had probably condemned my weekend by doing the requisite napping and healing on Saturday.

However, Sunday was also beautiful and I felt much more like doing things on Sunday.

I ran a few errands in the morning. Noticed a Geo Metro in the parking lot at Whole Foods !!! I was surprised to find that one of those cars still exists– in Madison, nonetheless! I noticed it because it is TINY compared to my small car.

Later in the afternoon I ran to Borders to pick up something I had forgotten earlier and headed down to the Memorial Union afterwards for Babcock Hall ice cream. The line was long, which is normal for a weekend afternoon in early May.

The woman behind me (with husband and a couple of kids in tow) did not seem to understand that this was normal. I stood in front of them long enough to hear the parents try to bribe the kids into getting rice krispie treats instead (shorter line), try to persuade them to settle on various flavors, and try to hide/deny the fact that a waffle cone was larger than a wafer cone. All the time, they tried to make it seem like an exciting and fabulous experience so that the kids wouldn’t misbehave while waiting in a line. Hmmm … the kids may have been OK, but what godawful parents!

But Babcock Hall ice cream is worth a long line.

I walked around for a while downtown and then met my roommate, who had a Sunday final, and we shopped at Ragstock for a while. We each found several cute items of clothing, grabbed dinner to go, and ate outside.

Lovely day. The days are getting so long now that the sun starts to drop in the sky around 6:30, but it’s well after 8 before it has really gone down. This makes for nice, long evenings that should be spent outside.

I spent the rest of the evening with PhysOrg, who returned from his weekend hiking trip with small amounts of pinkness, very sore muscles, and no ticks (hopefully).

The city of Madison has been having problems with its water supply.

It’s time for the annual flushing of the city water mains and these issues are coming to a head: we have been advised not to drink the water at work today (which also means no coffee or ice), but have been supplied with bottled water instead. This is unusual, to say the least.

I have also received a couple of letters at home (over the past few months) about the manganese problems. Maybe I shouldn’t be drinking the water there, either

Yesterday I got home well before our normal Tuesday night game time, so I took the opportunity to test out my new pie pan with a veggie pot pie.**

It was my first time trying to create one of these from scratch, but I think it came out pretty well. I had looked over a couple of recipes to get a general idea of how to make one and improvised from there.

I used phyllo for the crust and the vegetables were no problem, so I was mostly concerned about making the sauce taste right and using the right amount of sauce in the pie. This was not really a problem, either. I started with three cups of veggie broth, thickened it with flour, cooked it for a while, then added heavy cream, herbs, and spices. I was glad to find that my roommate had sage on hand. Just a tiny bit of sage was critical.

Phyllo made the process faster (surprisingly fast, in fact) and it was fine, but I think I might make crust from scratch next time. I felt like I was slighting the pie pan just a little bit by cheating with the crust.

But we’ll see. If phyllo helps me to be more productive, maybe I will just use it for everything from now on.

** I get a bit excited about things like this sometimes, but I do realize that a dishwasher-safe pan made from high-quality, glazed clay that can go directly from the freezer to the oven will not be deemed a source of inspiration for everyone.