Rancid-Tea

Frustration

Over a year ago, I bought a Sansa MP3 player, and found it to be very cool. Around the same time (maybe at the same time, I don’t remember now) I got an FM broadcaster to connect the player to my car so that I can listen to tunes on the drive to and from work, without annoying commercials. Since buying it, the FM broadcaster has slowly been torn apart–by me. Every once in awhile I forget my player is in my lap, and then I stand up to get out of the car, and give the broadcaster a good jolt. It was reduced to just a little block of circuit boards and a screen, but still, it played on.

Tonight it finally gave up the ghost, when I ripped the circuit boards right off of the charger, leaving two sad little wire stumps… Moral of this story: don’t rip your stuff apart by making the same mistake over and over again.

Seeing as I can’t handle sitting through a single commercial break while also dealing with traffic, and my car has what we will call ‘reduced radio capacity’ I’ve already ordered a new broadcaster / charger which has a cradle for my MP3 player and hopefully will not get yanked on over and over again. Hopefully.

Moroccan Stew

A long time ago, my friend Steph found us this recipe for Moroccan Stew with quinoa. It’s a really tasty and hearty meal with ingredients anyone could find in a local grocery store (our local Rainbow Foods stores have quinoa in the bulk section) and it’s surprisingly easy to make. We usually double the quinoa portion of the recipe:
Moroccan Stew with Quinoa at epicurious

Wii Fit

I’ve been wanting a Wii Fit basically since we got our Wii back in July. I had seen them in stores before, but as soon as we got the Wii, I stopped seeing them.

Yesterday Ethan and I were out shopping for some suits (cause hey, suit + guy = very nice) and we spotted a Best Buy. We stopped in just to see (this has become a habit for us lately) and lo and behold they had both a small pile of Wii consoles and just a few Wii Fits. Woo hoo!

My arms were already sore from Wii Boxing with Westy on Friday, and now my legs are super sore from… lunges, running, attempting to ski, and several other activities. It is uber fun. If you have a Wii (if not, you should get one) and you can find a copy of Wii Fit, it’s totally worth it. If I get good at the strength exercises, I might even invest in some ankle and wrist weights.

Long Week

Last weekend I went up to my parents’ cabin with two of my friends, and we had a lot of fun and overindulged quite a bit. While I definitely felt relaxed by Monday morning, I still felt tired, and then proceeded to feel tired the entire week.

I keep thinking of things I’d like to do, if I had more free time, and then reminding myself they’ll never get done. For instance, my quilt I started my Jr year in High School… It only needs to be quilted and bound, but I can’t actually do quilting (not with my sewing machine) and I was unsuccessful last time I looked for someone who can. My mom has a coworker who does it, but when I asked my mom to ask her… she told me to just call a sewing shop, and they weren’t very helpful. It’s not like I wasn’t going to pay her coworker, so I don’t know what the fuss was all about that she couldn’t just give me her number. If I ever finish that quilt, I can start a new one! It’s not like we need quilts or anything, but for some reason I really enjoy doing the top. After that I lose steam, and then have a semi-completed quilt with all the materials just sitting around… for years. Oh well, at least I know my weaknesses.

Interesting Developments Continued…

At least two people have been by to look at the vacant house next door. We spoke with one of them who seems to be a slum lord of types. He informed us that “a little roof sagging is nothing to be concerned about” and “I always just take gutters down, they do more harm than good” and finally “I don’t rent to assholes, you gotta know how to evict someone.” During our brief discussion, he mentioned the possibility of buying the house for cash, which would mean that no bank had a say on what he did with it, and would make it a lot easier to get around the whole permit/inspection process if he decided to, say, tar up the roof and paint over the mold.

Ethan did some price searching and it looks like we could tear it down, including the foundation and everything for about $10K. I’m trying to figure out how to accomplish this financially without totally depleting our savings. I doubt too many banks would want to lend us money to tear down a house, thereby destroying their “collateral,” but we might still be able to find a city program that will help us out.

We made great efforts toward completing our fence around the back yard this weekend. One of my co-workers, Mark, came over to help us dig holes and put in posts. Unfortunately there seems to be bedrock about 2 feet down from the surface, which made digging 4 foot deep holes very hard work. Ethan has been looking into renting a mini jack-hammer to bust through the rest of the way. If that works, we already have the lumber and concrete so we should be able to get the fence posts up as soon as the holes are deep enough.

Interesting Developments

The house immediately south of ours has been on the market since we started looking at our house, which was back in September of last year. As the price dropped and dropped, finally an offer was made by a couple; $30,000 was the going rate. Ethan and I had toyed with the idea of letting the house get to around $10K and just buying, tearing it down and having a double lot. I’m still hoping it will burn down in the middle of the night…

Seeing as the couple haven’t really done anything with the property in the last few weeks since the ‘sold’ sign went up, we became a bit suspicious. Today a notice that the plumbing and sewer were being disconnected due to non-payment went up. Lo and behold, the house is back on the market for $22K. My hope is that we can find out how much it is to tear it down, and make a seriously low-ball cash offer and just buy the ugly thing. It would be nice to never look at it again, and actually have a real yard with space for a garden and room for Ludo (and maybe a foster dog) to run around in. We’ll see what happens.

Snip Snip

Last Saturday I actually got around to making an appointment to have Ludo neutered. I’m hoping he’ll calm down a little once he’s lost his balls. The big day is tomorrow, so this is his last night as a boy. Back when he was little I was thinking that maybe we could breed him once when he was an adult, but now that he’s mostly grown, I’m not convinced he’s a ‘good’ sheepdog. His front legs are a little narrowly set, and his teeth are a slightly crooked. In terms of responsible breeding, it probably would be a bad idea. Plus we get a $6 discount (<sarcasm>woo hoo!</sarcasm>) on microchipping if we get it done while he’s neutered.

I’m hoping that afterward, if he calms down, I might be able to bring him to work with me some more. He really is a sweet and sociable dog, but I can’t help but feel bad when people come to talk to me and he jumps all over them.

I’ve been looking at a dog training co-op in the cities that one of my co-workers is a member of. I would like to sign up for training there, but the procrastinator inside me is insisting this can be put off for another week or month or year, so it hasn’t happened yet.

Oh Dear

Well, I just realized I haven’t posted in two months. There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which is the project I’ve been on at work. Suffice it to say that if you ever want to torture yourself, build a web-based store in Magento (I’m not even going to link to it, because I’d hate for their Google Rank to go up a twentieth of a percent).

Since my last post, we’ve made some minor progress on the house. With a little help from me, Ethan hung a door on one of the upstairs bedrooms, which has been converted into Ludo’s room for when we’re not home. It’s also the computer room, but the door was important to his being able to stay there during the day. Ethan also put up some shelves (again with a little bit of help from me) in the back entry so that we can store a whole bunch of food stuff out there. This means that we freed up a lot of kitchen space and were able to unpack a couple more boxes.

In more personal news, I got a tattoo (someday, maybe pictures, why not?), and we bought a Wii. Also, I’m running late for work. Hopefully it won’t be another two months until my next post.