Monday, March 03, 2008

Hearth and home

I'm currently craving tofu-bean paste soup with chopped-up greens and sticky rice with black onion and a tiny bit of cinnamon. Apparently I'm having a childhood gustatory moment.

This weekend I made more rye bread (with oil this time; we'll see how it turned out when Eric finishes the current loaf), garlic-rosemary bread, and oatmeal bread. The oatmeal bread was 100% whole wheat and turned out flat and dense, but Eric liked the taste, so I'll give it another try with some AP flour substituted. I'm starting to feel baked out. At least this week.

This weekend we also went up to Ann Arbor to be maudlin about our ninth anniversary of meeting. I'm glad we'll be able to go up again for number ten, but after that we'll have to find another coffee shop to be sentimental in because we'll be on the West Coast if all goes well. Well, if all goes 67% well--we're figuring that in order to move, ideally three things would happen: he gets a good job, I get a good job, and the house sells. But we can still do it--potentially--with two out of three.

Incidentally, Eric's mom is considering buying the house next door to hers. It's $70K and could probably be negotiated down further so I can kind of understand her thinking--how can you pass up a bargain like that??--only that sort of thinking applies better to, say, shoes, or books, or maybe a nice set of pots, than a house. I asked her what she would do with it, and she said, "Whatever! Use the land, build a garage..." I'd say maybe she could buy our house, but it's less convenient and would cost nearly twice as much--well, depending on how the market goes over the next year.

I'm reading up on candidates to figure out who to vote for tomorrow. My phone keeps ringing with an 800 number. I don't pick up and they never leave a message.