baby, it's cold in here!

this past wednesday night, i turned on the water at the house to wash my hands, and despite our really awesome tankless water heater, no hot water came out. so i waited... and i waited... and i yelled to andrew that no hot water was coming out... and he turned on another faucet, and still there was no hot water. so he went to the stove and attempted to light it... and only a meek glow emanated from the burner... and then i checked the temperature, and we were at 67 instead of 70 degrees. we were out of gas. completely.

andrew told me not to panic, that he would contact the gas company in the morning. see our gas tank had been at 30% since we'd bought the house. we took this to mean either 1. we do not use much gas, or 2. the gauge was broken. apparently it was 2. or at least the gauge was stuck, because when i woke up to SNOW on friday morning (when the heat didn't work), the gauge said 0% - yeah, thanks a lot for the warning. (my attempt at capturing a picture of the snow while driving through zebulon... probably not the wisest idea.)

luckily, after much harassment, the gas people showed up and filled our tank, so now i think we owe them 5 billion dollars... or something, i wouldn't know though because the man who came to fill the tank couldn't tell me the price of gas. this seems wrong to me. i think you should KNOW how much you're going to have to pay before you agree to something. but since we were completely out, i didn't have much of a choice.

after the gas fiasco, the rest of the weekend consisted mostly of doing nothing, with some eating and napping in there, the only big thing we did was go to the oberlin christmas party. other than that, it was very relaxed. just what we needed after a crazy week. now it's two days and on to thanksgiving break!

i made steaks!

for those of you who haven't been around me lately, the current economic crunch has caused me to become much more domestic than i ever imagined i could be. i am doing all kinds of cooking and baking many nights each week instead of eating out. it's been pretty fun for the most part, and i've made pretty tasty stuff (which is good because if it'd been bad we would have had to eat it anyway), but last night was really outstanding!

i made some new york strip steaks that were on sale at harris teeter, marinated them overnight in a ziploc bag in the fridge, heated a cast-iron skillet to medium-high and cooked them between 4-5 mins on each side. we paired them with creamed spinach and tri-colore orzo - they were fabulous! even though each steak was over half a pound, andrew and i cleaned our plates. i would have pictures for you, since they were beautiful specimens of MEAT, but we ate them too fast!

renovations are back!

thanks to my wonderful husband and my fabulous mother, the living room is now livable! instead of the pepto-pink wall, nasty green carpet grossness that was in here when we arrived, our room is now updated with a lush wall color, beautiful thick carpet, luxurious window dressings, and even antique bronze outlet covers. awesome.

no flash view:


with a flash:


chair in the corner:


and that's pretty much what we did this weekend!

*there are now pics posted (below) of "andrew's trail."

sorry, i'm a slacker

i realized this week that i hadn't updated... AT ALL. it's been so long, i don't even know what i was going to blog about the several times this week when i fell asleep before doing so. i am SO LAZY that i can't even do another "week in pictures" because i haven't taken enough! the only one i did take was of the route andrew had named after him at the climbing gym.
it's the one with the yellow tape (and that's a random person's foot).

mostly the week was a confusing blur. we had school monday, after which we went to our first "community group" at the farmers'. i made a baked pasta (completely from scratch!) that was pretty darn good. then tuesday i had the day off for veteran's day and did a lot of nothing. the highlights were eating lunch with andrew and hanging out with mom at glaxo for a little. i tried a great experiment of baking my wonderful banana bread with chocolate chips, but it failed miserably and ended in mush - 1 for 2 isn't too bad i guess.

wednesday was another monday at work (thanks to the random day off), and afterwards i hung out with dr.page while she got her gigantic balloon-hand checked out at urgent care, followed by a cvs run and chinese food. thursday was more torturous work, followed by a trip (courtesy of andrew's job) to see madagascar 2 at the marbles imax. it was pretty cool. after that, we wild and crazy kids went to target to put together a study-care-package for the almost dr.cindi as she studies for her medical boards. then we met up with brittany for some ice cream at coldstone, where i fussed about my students for too long and ended up EXHAUSTED this morning after very few hours of sleep last night.

after making it through another gloomy, awful day at work, we went out for sushi with andrew's work crew. we had a great time hanging out and laughing for several hours, as the waitress tried to hurry us out to get more tables turned. then we went to the cupcake shoppe for dessert. we wanted to go to see the jay clifford concert, but we were too tired (and poor), so we came home to watch the dvr-ed grey's anatomy. or at least i did... andrew fell asleep sitting up in the chair next to me. i guess i should be a good wifey and go join him in the bed now. night!

a week (or so) in pictures

i began the week feeling somewhat "strapped down"
like i was tied into something i couldn't escape...
(like our futon? we were moving it back to our house from megan's)

but then i quit my job, and while it was stressful, it went ok. the cloudy, rainy weather made it easy to want to stay inside and cook...

so i made a really yummy butternut squash soup. it was awesome comfort food, and that's what i really needed during the longest week ever. i'm pretty sure andrew liked it (and the fact that i cooked a lot this week) too.


but this friday, we were all able to cut loose. the "under 40 crew" of high school teachers went out to watch lisa (english 2&3) and her band sing at 42nd street oyster bar. not pictured are lisa, amy, andrew or me... but craig really got into it and put on heather's headband. he wasn't so happy about the re-inactment photo-op :-P

and apparently "tequila makes heather's clothes fall off" because not only did craig get her headband, but i got her shirt! i'm pretty sure this face is in reaction to craig's new look.
we had a great time seeing lisa sing, dancing our butts off, and i even got a little tipsy and did the first shot i've done in about a year - teachers gone wild!

i guess for me, it was fun to embrace this persona for at least one last hurrah. it'll be back to being an hourly paid peon technician in a few short weeks... no regrets, but definitely some adjusting is coming. happy weekend!

change

i live in a world of constant change.

i feel like since i graduated high school, nothing in my life has been able to escape this change. there was college, which as anyone knows is one of the things that changes you as a human more than most other things. i even changed colleges twice! during that time, i changed residences almost every semester and each summer. then i transitioned into the working world, where i changed jobs from student teaching, to cow-washing, to waitressing, to teaching, to working at the vet. in that time, i hopped back and forth from raleigh and chapel hill, moved in with andrew, got engaged, and then moved to boone. i worked at a web design company, got married, moved back to raleigh, got a job teaching, bought a house, moved to johnston county, and now i'm leaving teaching to go back to the vet... and this has all occurred since high school graduation in 2001 - whew!

i keep thinking that the slow-down is right around the bend, that in a month, 6 months, a year, i'll finally be set locationally, occupationally, financially, but perhaps that's not the kind of life God has set out for me. and i may just have to get used to that idea.

at least there is one change that promises to be an exciting one, and that is the election of barack obama last night. way to make history, united states!

baby steps and big decisions

ahahaha you all thought i was going to say we were having a baby - WRONG! get your mind away from that topic - at least for a while!

but andrew and i have made some big decisions recently, which include me leaving teaching (and most likely having to pay the teaching fellows back), and going back to work at oberlin full-time beginning in january. i've been considering these things for a long time now, and we both believe that this is the right way to go. finances might be a little tight for a while, but hopefully it will all work out. we've both prayed a lot about it, and while change is always a little scary, we both think this is the right choice.

in the way of baby steps, we are also doing a little more work on the house, like pulling out more of the old, ugly boxwood bushes and planting azaleas in their place in front of the house. i would have some lovely pictures for you, but we didn't take any. oops.

time for bed... gotta resign tomorrow.