Anniversary

We got our hopes up last night that we might get rain. We heard thunder and the lights went off and on half a dozen times, sometimes staying off a few minutes (ruining our chances of finishing our movie since the tv and all had to start back up every time). We went outside to take the umbrella down and also just to watch the lightning, it looked like quite a storm -- really windy too! I've never been so excited to hear thunder and see lightning! After all that, we got just a few drops - we looked at the radar and it actually went around us. The street was wet this morning, so we must've gotten some rain, but nothing like I was thinking we'd have after that intro.....I am so glad to hear that some people got rain, the whole area needs it so badly.....

I often hear people say, this summer is much worse than last summer or other similar comparisons of weather to other years (milder winter, colder winter, etc., etc.). I am hopeless at remembering weather from one year to the next, with this exception -- I know that 2 years ago June was MUCH wetter, it rained nearly every day...I know because we were getting married at the end of the month and planned to have an outdoor ceremony, so I was anxiously watching it rain each day and wondering if we'd get the ceremony we wanted. We did get the ceremony we wanted even though we moved it inside -- it was still too hot and would've been miserable outside. I find it hard to believe that happy day was two years ago today. Happy Anniversary sweetie! We have no big plans since its a Tuesday - though we will have wine with dinner to toast the year and ring in the beginnings of year #3...we already know it will be a year of milestones - a move and our first niece...

Also a Happy Anniversary to Hillery & Mike and our next door neighbors! what are the chances that your neighbors will have the same anniversary you do? not sure, but ours do!

We thought the rain might've been an early anniversary gift (or a late birthday gift for Kevin). Here's hoping July is cooler and more wet.

Addition: We got a great anniversary gift - we were able to lock in a good interest rate for the new house!

Heat Emergency

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband! He loves summer, but I don't think anyone can love THIS much heat. Today has been declared a heat emergency by the National Weather Service, and expects tomorrow to be one too. I would not mind if I never saw another heat record broken, yesterday....104, and we haven't had rain since late May. If anyone knows how to do a successful rain dance, let me know. I don't think washing the car will make it rain this time.

My sister spent the night with us last night because the power at her apartment complex is out, the heat is making the power lines and water lines in many areas struggle (and often break), can't we get some relief?

This was the right year to get an ice cream cake for K's birthday. We got it over the weekend and finished it off last night...so hot, it just cools the body down...yum!

Be safe if you're outside in this heat....

Summer recipe

It has been quite a while since I’ve posted a recipe we’ve tried – yes I have been cooking, but not as many new things since we’ve been househunting and now houseprepping. I am quite proud of myself that last night I not only made dinner, but after dinner I put together tonight’s dinner (beef enchiladas) so that all we have to do tonight is pop it into the oven! I’m on a constant hunt for easy, good recipes and want to find more stuff I can make ahead of time. Here is a recipe we tried recently. Kevin found it at cooking.com. This was a great meal to have since it has been so hot and dry in Houston recently.

Saffron is quite a pricey spice – THE most expensive by weight according to Wikipedia. I’ve never bought a spice for that much - $12! But we used only a teeny-tiny bit of it, and it smells really good so I'm sure it added to the flavor. I’d charge a lot for it too if I had to take apart flowers and they dry them to make the spice. My dad has found that he can buy spices online cheaper than in the stores, so you may want to go that route if you want to use spices like this one or vanilla beans which I see in the store sell with only ONE in the bottle.

It tasted great on a hot day, and we opened up a mojito mix I've had to complete the tropical meal. I forget what sides we had - rice I think...

Creole Red Snapper

We went to 2 stores and neither had red snapper, so we used tilapia. We also left out the olives, other than that we followed the recipe.

4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 cup finely chopped green bell pepper
1/2 cup chopped scallions
2-1/2 teaspoons finely chopped garlic
1 cup chopped tomatoes, fresh or canned with juice
1 lemon, peeled, seeded, and chopped
16 small pitted whole olives
Pinch of saffron
4 red snapper fillets, skin on
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Fresh dill, for garnish (optional)

DIRECTIONS
Put the vegetable oil in a sauté pan. Over medium heat sauté the onion, pepper, and scallions until the pepper loses its raw green color, about 5 minutes.
Add the garlic and sauté for 1 minute.
Add the tomatoes and cook for another minute.
Add the lemon, olives, and saffron, crushing the saffron between your fingers before you add it, in order to bring out the flavor. Stir and cook for 5 minutes.
Put the fish fillets, flesh side down, into the pan. Cook for 3 minutes.
Turn fish over carefully, using a spatula or two, and sprinkle with lemon juice, salt and pepper, to taste.
Cover and continue to cook until desired doneness, approximately 3 more minutes.
Carefully remove from the pan, and garnish with fresh dill if desired.

legal stuff: Recipe reprinted by permission of Doubleday. All rights reserved.Date Added: 01/01/2008. Hopefully they won't mind that I've copied it for you, but I did give credit :)

Neighborhood Hitckhiker

Its official, our house is listed for sale. On Friday, the signs were put up in the yard and the key box on our door. I’m very happy about our upcoming move, but have to admit that it is strange to drive up to the house and see a for sale sign in the yard.

We got the biggest of our staging projects finished this weekend with the help of my wonderful parents. We have been clearing out the study to turn it into a dining room (its intended use) to help the house show better, and were going to rent a trailer to get the couch and table we had in there to our storage unit.

My parents offered to come up with their trailer and help us. It’s a good thing they did, because we needed the third and fourth person to get the items – especially the couch – out of the house and into the trailer. K and I had secured a trailer on our own, but would not have been able to manage the furniture on our own. We got everything to the storage unit and rearranged furniture in the house so that our new table is now in that room, we also added a lamp and corner unit. I can’t get over how LARGE the room is! In addition to helping us with the furniture, we had a good visit with my parents. They came up Friday and spent the night so we could get an early start Saturday, before it got so hot…

A strange sighting I have to share – our current neighborhood has a hitchhiker. I’ve seen him several times in the morning when I am driving to work, and I assume he’s trying to get a ride to work - which if he does get a ride why doesn't he just make arrangements to always ride with that person Anyone driving by almost has to live there, there is almost no thru traffic in our neighborhood.. I saw him yesterday evening – a Saturday. Where is he going? And is this his method of transportation everywhere? I am not curious enough to stop and ask him, but do find it very strange…

Packing

We've started packing. We rented a storage unit this weekend so that we can declutter our house and make it more appealing to buyers and made 2 trips over there on Sunday.

At this point, we are mostly trying to clean out the room we've used as a study so that we can put a table in it and stage it as the dining room it is meant to be. You have show people what a room is supposed to be, because they can't imagine it - seems strange, but we did have that problem when we were looking at houses ourselves, so we can appreciate it and will do what we can to make our house more appealing to buyers.

We originally wanted a "POD" but they are a LOT more expensive then we thought, so we'll settle for one we have to drive to - it is really close, climate controlled and BONUS we took advantage of a $19 move-in special an 86% savings for this month! The coupon queen/savings part of me is very happy about that.

How have we accumulated this much stuff in 3 years? We'll take our time packing and take the opportunity to go through stuff, already we have a box of books to sell to Half-Price...

Nametag

In interoffice mail on Monday, I got a name tag - no information with it or explanation of where it came from. I called another office and the woman I spoke to said they want us to start wearing them each day, probably mostly for identification and security purposes. I've never had a name tag for this job, so it will be strange to put a nametag on every day and to remember to take it off again. I should take a guess at how long I think it'll take to lose it. The last time I wore a nametag for any length of time (other than a conference or meeting) was for my job in 1997 , oh and for one year in high school when they made us wear our IDs.

Thankfully in this job I don't have to mop floors or clean up a movie theater after the showings. I worked at a dollar movie theater the summer after HS graduation. I'd wanted to work at the new 10-screen theater (same company) and interviewed for it, but ended up staying at the old theatre that became a $1 theater when the new one opened. I am still not sure why...oh well, my jobs went up from there. Each of these jobs could be posts of their own, but I felt like doing a bulleted list instead:

• worked at a daycare the summer after my freshmen year of college, this sounds awful but it actually was fun...and 40 hours/week so I made decent money (and was too tired to spend any of it). bonus - I lost a lot of weight that summer - on your feet all day looking after 3 and 4 year olds will do that for you
• housesitting, also I was supposed to babysit at a church but no kids ever showed so I got paid to do my homework for 2 hours every Wednesday for a bit, greatest job ever!
  
• 2 different student worker jobs in college - one for the foreign language department and another for the department that I ended up working for after college. This is really how i found the field I'm in now and i couldn't be happier
• my first post-college job was with my alma mater, and I stayed there for over 6 years!
• my current job, which I love...

House Hunting Success!

We found our house! Saturday was our third day of househunting with a realtor, and we saw several more resale houses....at the first one, we walked in to look around and when I went to see the master bedroom, suddenly a guy walked out of the bathroom (thankfully he was fully dressed!) He'd been in the shower and hadn't heard us knock...


We had narrowed down our search and kept coming back to the Eagle Springs neighborhood, it has the trees we want (they don't clear cut when they build) and just felt like a good fit for us. We found several existing houses we liked, but decided to also look at the inventory houses since the builders are offering incentives now. The house we really liked is not complete, it is framed. We walked throught it and liked it but had a hard time picturing it so we drove across town to see a complete model of it, and loved it! We knew from what we saw that we loved not only the house, but the lot its on as well - the yard (or lack of) had eliminated several houses we'd looked at. We drove back across town and filled out the paperwork to make it our house. It will be finished in July. We'll post photos as it goes along, bceause I'm sure we'll be going back to visit OUR HOUSE!


It has all of the space that we want inside - large master bedroom (and closet), kitchen, and living space, and a secondary living space upstairs which we think will be a great media room! It is on a corner, but the side street is really just a short alley and we won't have any back neighbors because we back up to a gully, that area will be a perfect place to take Smokey on walks! that means we'll have only ONE neighbor, instead of neighbors all around right on top of us like we have now.


People kept telling us, you'll know it when you see it, your house will be there for you...and somehow it did work out. We counted it up, and in total we saw 33 houses to find our house.....and I don't know how many we looked at online that we ruled out simply by what we saw online..


Househunting is exhausting - it doesn't seem like it should be, you're driven around in a realtor's car and just walk around in various houses, but its mentally draining. I am so glad we have successfully finished the househunt and can move onto all of the next steps. I was so excited I couldn't sleep Saturday night.