Let it snow?

Today, November 7th, I saw the first snow. Winter is officially here. I'm not ready for it, but I know it comes with the territory.

I am so behind in blogging, so here is my attempt at catching up and bringing everyone up to speed.

October 26-28 my parents came for a quick whirlwind trip.

Saturday we went to the Corning Museum of Glass, which I highly recommend!

From Oct 2007

I think this was my favorite piece. This dress is made entirely of glass. I can only imagine how heavy it is.

From Oct 2007

This wall was beautiful, but unfortunately doesn't photograph well.

From Oct 2007

Sunday my parents helped with house projects, and then we went to Ollie's Bargain Outlet (yes, my parents junk shop on vacation!) and then to dinner at Sherri's. The proposal happened after that, so my parents got to sort of be around when it happened (they weren't at my house, but I got to tell them about it in person). It was great to have them here, even if it was such a short time and I put them to work!

The weekend before that was a beautiful 80 degrees, so Bryan got to pick apples for the first time EVER! Shorts in mid-October is so strange, but it was so nice to enjoy the sun. We also picked fall raspberries. We're definitely going to miss the fruit farm so close to our house.

From Oct 2007

Finally there is happy house news. We've passed the inspection phase, after much arguing back and forth, and the bank appraised the house just fine. As long as her mortgage goes through, we'll be moving in about a month! Waahoo! Now we're apartment hunting. Man is there a lot of crap out there!

Braces are on my mind, since I just went for an appointment today. I'm now all rubber banded up, but my ortho is thrilled with my progress. He made such a fuss about it that all of the assistants had to come over and see my "before" pictures. He thinks I'll be done in time for the wedding...a full 7-12 months ahead of schedule! Yes!

Wedding plans are in the beginning stages, and we're actually both enjoying figuring out what we want to do. Plans for now are a small ceremony in Vegas in May, and a "reception" in Portland in June. Thanks for all of the happy comments from everyone. We are both so excited!

This Old House

The lack of blogs lately is just a result of little worth blogging about. I know you all are waiting on the edge of your seat to hear about doing laundry, washing dishes, grocery shopping, and the like (dripping with sarcasm).

This weekend my fabulous other half helped me with the many house projects that befall us here, some so laden with ironicness (is that a word?) that we just have to laugh. While we were outside hanging the new side door light, Krista, dripping from the shower, appears holding a mysterious object saying "This fell out while I was in the shower." It turns out the object was the built in ceramic 1962 soap dish from her shower. It just randomly gave way and fell out. Back to Lowe's for the second time, where some fantastic men (one a shopper himself) talked us through how to reinstall it (plaster of paris and 100% silicone caulking). Lowe's is head and shoulders above Home Depot. So this weekend "we" (and by "we" I mean Bryan while I supervised and generally got in the way, unless I was being helpful and holding the flashlight):
- Put up a new outside light
- Re-installed the soap dish
- Mastered the rented carpet cleaner and cleaned the carpets and rugs
- Replaced 2 bulb fixtures that were broken in the attic and basement
- Tried to put new rails on a drawer (but we need one more Lowe's trip for a bracket)

We celebrated all of the successful projects with a yummy dinner at Dinosaur Barbecue. Just to sum up the house horrors, we also found out last week that the furnace has a crack in it and we need AN ENTIRELY NEW FURNACE. Please pray that this house sells quickly before more things break. It went back on the market with a new realtor on Friday.

On the up side, we did do some fun things this weekend. Friday night we did the Light the Night walk to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Bryan's best friend had non-hodgkins lymphoma in his early 20's (and is now doing well), and it's always nice to support causes that resonate personally. It's neat because it is done at night and everyone gets a lighted balloon. This is a horrible picture, but shows a couple of the lights in the dark.

From Sept 2007

From Sept 2007

Saturday Bryan, Krista and I went to the Hilton Apple Fest. Admittedly it was a bit disappointing as there were few apple things there. It was very odd! But they DID have Kelly's non-pasturized apple cider, which is just heavenly. Even better, it comes in these really cute little sippy things.

From Sept 2007

But despite the non-appleness of the Apple Fest, the weather was beautiful and it was nice to get out and wander and eat yummy fair food. Next weekend we're off to Toronto, so I'm sure I'll at least have some fun pictures from that.

The end of summer

Labor Day weekend is always sad because it is the unofficial marker of the end of summer. Here is Rochester, it is more the beginning of the wild swings in weather. Yesterday was overcast and a bit chilly, the first day all summer (minus the gym) that I wore shoes and socks. Today was 91 and humid.

To celebrate Labor Day weekend, we went wine tasting with some friends in the finger lakes. The weather was beautiful, and we had a great time. I think we ended up going to 6-7 wineries, but the hands-down winner for everyone was the organic winery.

The gang...Bryan, me, Kim, Anthony, Kristina, Nick

From Wine tasting ...

A winery/meadery

From Wine tasting ...

Bryan at Belhurst winery, Seneca Lake in the background

From Wine tasting ...

Our loot...the apple one is for our apple themed supper club on Saturday

From Wine tasting ...

Now it's back to school for Bryan and Krista, and working for me as usual. I'm also going to be co-teaching program evaluation at UR to grad students on Mondays this term, and I'm super excited about that. It's nice to have some thought-provoking evaluation discussions now and then. I think Bryan doesn't appreciate me saying "Please, before you go to bed, let's discuss the merits of RCTs as the gold standard" (and yes, I did that last night, and he was a good sport and played along).

I'm not sure of the last update here, but the condo is back on, hopefully to close late this month. No one seems to be able to do their job, so no one will commit to a firm closing date. The house didn't sell and officially went off the market on the 4th. I learned a lot of lessons in that process, but won't elaborate too fully since I don't know who all reads this thing. We hopefully have a renter lined up though (I'm still waiting for her check to arrive). We'll reassess what we want to do in the spring.

Let's Make a Deal

Bryan and I were talking last week about how much we liked Let's Make a Deal. Maybe that is one game show they should resurrect. None of these stupid new-fangled primetime "game shows." Who in their RIGHT MIND wants to watch an HOUR of BINGO on TV???

If they brought back Let's Make a Deal, what do you think the loser prizes would be now? I don't think a donkey would cut it anymore. And what ever happened with those donkeys anyway. Did someone really take home a donkey?

Thanks to the wonder of the internet, I just discovered the the GSN cable network currently broadcasts episodes of the classic Let's Make A Deal each weekday at 10:00 A.M. ET and late night at 2:00 A.M. & 2:30 A.M. It's a good thing I don't have a channel as wonderful as GSN, or I would never get anything done. I love game shows, especially old ones. I also just learned that the costumes were the idea of the audience, and not originally part of the show. People started to bring signs and funny hats to attract Mr. Hall's attention. It spiraled from there to the outlandish costumes they used to wear.

Anyway, the real point of this blogging episode is that no one seems to want to make a deal with us. On Monday the offer on my house fell through. I guess the husband lost his job, so they could no longer afford my house. We should have another offer coming in either Friday or Monday from another, so we'll see if that actually happens. Also, the deal fell through on the condo we were going to buy. The inspection "found" a faulty breaker (it popped FOUR times in the hour we were there, and got really hot. The scummy owner declared "that has never ever happened before." Right. Even my inspector said he had to be lying. The guy refuses to fix the breaker, or even get an estimate to fix it. Now, regardless of him being a jerk or not, this is a HUGE fire hazard that even he shouldn't want to live with. There also is a flue pipe that isn't properly connected and has asbestos tape on it. Estimate to fix - $315. The seller refuses to put a dollar into it, so we told him to take his condo and shove it (well, we would have liked to say it that way). Now we are out at least the $275 inspection and whatever attorney fees we have racked up to date with the offer...at least $200. But I guess that is all better than getting a place with issues. Back to the drawing board. We found another condo that we love, but the taxes are $3,864 with a $253 a month HOA. That's $575 before we even paid for the unit! For now we are thinking about just renting and deciding what we want to do when we are back to a two income family.