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notmattIt's been a year (and a day) since we moved into our house in CA. So what's up?
We just cleaned the house. That's the good thing about having people come to visit; it forces you to clean up. The house is actually in the best shape it's been since the moving van arrived. Except for the floors. Those still need to be Dysoned / Swiffered. I also want to clean the grill grate and the inside of my car.
The truly annoying part is that we don't own the house. Seems like everyone I know owns their home or just bought one or something. If we lived anywhere else, we'd be seriously looking. But the median home price around here is something like $600k. We probably couldn't afford to buy a crappy studio condo in Santa Cruz. My cousin in Columbia, MO bought a house for less than we paid last year in rent. Speaking of rent, our lease just expired. We've been here a year, no surprises there. And we don't have a new one. Our landlady said we don't need to do that; she's happy to rent to us on a monthly basis so we're not locked into staying a whole year. Even if we were looking at moving, we'd still feel better with some sort of contract. Supposedly the terms of last year's lease default to a monthly basis after that (basically as long as we pay the rent, the previous lease is extended to the end of the month). We have however, misplaced our copy of the lease. We need to find that, or get a new one.
I'm dissapointed that a year in, I still haven't got a new paper out. I've written the draft, but there's still some things that need to be verified before I'm comfortable submitting that for publication. I'm in a much more competitive field now, so I'm in more danger of getting scooped. Other than that it's a very nice environment. I have a boss to whom I can say "What possible use are you?" and get a laugh in response. (This was in regards to his total failure to acquire any maple syrup on his trip to Vermont.)
We've done a terrible job of actually meeting new people out here. Of course, we haven't tried real hard either. Doesn't help that I don't live in the same town I work in. There's SAMA, the anime club, but there's certainly an age disparity between us and the majority of the club members, something that wasn't as noticeable at CU.
What else, I've finally started Final Fantasy XII. I actually find I like the gambit system for combat, although I didn't expect to. Progress is slow because I play very little except on weekends. On the Wii, we've been playing Mario Party 8. That was pretty good. Kate's trying out Big Brain Academy Wii Degree right now. The less-than-epic and party-style games are actually nice when you don't have a lot of time to dedicate to videogames.
The food's good here, as I keep saying. We've been eating so many cherries and strawberries lately that we're actually starting to tire of just eating them straight. Problem is they're so good that it's almost a shame to cook them. They make great milkshakes, we've discovered. And it's wild salmon season, which is much better than the farmed stuff (both for flavor and the oceans). On a non-local issue, why are chicken breasts these days so astronomically large? I now package them individually in the freezer since ONE will feed both of us. I've got one in the freezer right now that weighs in at 17 oz. I gave up on the basil. It grows fine, but the spider mites keep attacking it, no matter what. We've spotted them on the thyme and oregano, but they're controllable on those plants. They leave the chives alone. I'm considering planting it outside since the mites will have some natural predators out there, and the lavender, rosemary, and sage do just fine outside.
We just cleaned the house. That's the good thing about having people come to visit; it forces you to clean up. The house is actually in the best shape it's been since the moving van arrived. Except for the floors. Those still need to be Dysoned / Swiffered. I also want to clean the grill grate and the inside of my car.
The truly annoying part is that we don't own the house. Seems like everyone I know owns their home or just bought one or something. If we lived anywhere else, we'd be seriously looking. But the median home price around here is something like $600k. We probably couldn't afford to buy a crappy studio condo in Santa Cruz. My cousin in Columbia, MO bought a house for less than we paid last year in rent. Speaking of rent, our lease just expired. We've been here a year, no surprises there. And we don't have a new one. Our landlady said we don't need to do that; she's happy to rent to us on a monthly basis so we're not locked into staying a whole year. Even if we were looking at moving, we'd still feel better with some sort of contract. Supposedly the terms of last year's lease default to a monthly basis after that (basically as long as we pay the rent, the previous lease is extended to the end of the month). We have however, misplaced our copy of the lease. We need to find that, or get a new one.
I'm dissapointed that a year in, I still haven't got a new paper out. I've written the draft, but there's still some things that need to be verified before I'm comfortable submitting that for publication. I'm in a much more competitive field now, so I'm in more danger of getting scooped. Other than that it's a very nice environment. I have a boss to whom I can say "What possible use are you?" and get a laugh in response. (This was in regards to his total failure to acquire any maple syrup on his trip to Vermont.)
We've done a terrible job of actually meeting new people out here. Of course, we haven't tried real hard either. Doesn't help that I don't live in the same town I work in. There's SAMA, the anime club, but there's certainly an age disparity between us and the majority of the club members, something that wasn't as noticeable at CU.
What else, I've finally started Final Fantasy XII. I actually find I like the gambit system for combat, although I didn't expect to. Progress is slow because I play very little except on weekends. On the Wii, we've been playing Mario Party 8. That was pretty good. Kate's trying out Big Brain Academy Wii Degree right now. The less-than-epic and party-style games are actually nice when you don't have a lot of time to dedicate to videogames.
The food's good here, as I keep saying. We've been eating so many cherries and strawberries lately that we're actually starting to tire of just eating them straight. Problem is they're so good that it's almost a shame to cook them. They make great milkshakes, we've discovered. And it's wild salmon season, which is much better than the farmed stuff (both for flavor and the oceans). On a non-local issue, why are chicken breasts these days so astronomically large? I now package them individually in the freezer since ONE will feed both of us. I've got one in the freezer right now that weighs in at 17 oz. I gave up on the basil. It grows fine, but the spider mites keep attacking it, no matter what. We've spotted them on the thyme and oregano, but they're controllable on those plants. They leave the chives alone. I'm considering planting it outside since the mites will have some natural predators out there, and the lavender, rosemary, and sage do just fine outside.
