Tuesday, February 2, 1999

Archive - 2 Feb 1999

Well, Happy Groundhog's Day. It's looking pretty dismal outside, so maybe spring will come early. Actually, it already has - the high for today is supposed to be around 60. I'm not a big fan of winter, but I'm worried that such a short, mild winter will mean problems this summer - if not an especially hot summer, then a lot of mosquitoes and other bugs. And we're moving when?

Matt and I are "First Time Home Buyers". As a result, the mortgage company wants to make sure that we have at least half a clue about what we're getting into. Ken (our loan officer) tells us that we have a choice: We can either take a three-hour class some evening at the York County library, or he can mail us a book and the company will call us after three days to ask us a few questions.

I don't do well with tests. Especially orals. But Ken convinces us that there's nothing in the book that's difficult to understand, and tells us about one guy who studied and sweated and in the end was asked questions of such patent simplicity as "Do you know why you're buying a house?" So we get the book.

Last night they called. We were expecting it - the letter that arrived with the book said they would call three business days after we'd received it. But Ken lied to us.

They grilled Matt for a good fifteen minutes. And then they grilled me, having to make sure we both understood what was going on. In the end, we were given the certification. But we both felt drained and stupid for the rest of the night. How irritating.

Got my Weight Watcher's meeting tonight. I'm not sure what will happen - I was pretty good for most of the week, though I used up my banked points over the weekend, I'm sure. (I don't know for certain, because I lost my little lookup book a while back and haven't gotten around to replacing it yet.) But we went over to my parents' to watch the Super Bowl, and wound up eating chips and chili and ice cream all night. Come to think of it, I had two servings of the good-to-eat ice cream (Breyer's mint chocolate chip) and one serving of the good-for-me ice cream (TCBY bananas foster), and that was the worst. The only thing in chili that is bad for me is the meat itself, and I ate it with fat-free sour cream and Wow! tortilla chips and only a little bit of cheese. So I did pretty well, even though I ate a lot. So maybe I'll be okay.

I promise not to do this to you every week, even though I worry about it every Tuesday. It's just that I really wish I could reconcile my love of food with the desire to lose weight. Enough.

3GI's "Monthly Munch" was on Saturday. We had dinner at the Pub, which is just around the corner from Matt's and my apartment, and then went bowling. I had fun, even if the service at the Pub was lousy. (It wasn't their fault - as Matt said, they probably hadn't served that many people before ever, much less at one time.) Despite that, I really liked the food we got. I think I'd even like to go back sometime (in a smaller group!) but I don't know what Matt would think about that - he seemed sortof underwhelmed. Though maybe that's because we had planned on each eating half of our meals and then trading, and he didn't like the platter I'd ordered. (He eventually confessed and I was happy to trade back, but I wish he'd said so earlier!) Bowling was a lot of fun. The pain didn't hit until Sunday night - I seem to have wrenched my shoulder and pulled something in my thigh. But it's better today than it was yesterday, so hopefully I won't have to go to the doctor for it.

Kudos go to Matt for enduring a shopping trip. *grin* Let me tell you right now that I am not your stereotypical female shopper. Actually I usually hate shopping. Especially the sort of "just looking" shopping that most women seem to delight in. What's the use in looking if there isn't even a chance that you'll buy? I don't get it. And I really hate having to wait for other people's browsing. If I'm shopping with someone else, I prefer to split up and meet later. But this weekend was a true shopping trip, and I think both Matt and I did very well.

Matt had some things he wanted to exchange, so while he did that I poked around a kiosk I'd noticed that was selling purses. (My purse was less than six months old, but not quite big enough to hold my new Zaurus.) I picked up a new purse that I thought was a good compromise between more space and a nicer look. (So far three people have teased me about it being so big. I'm going to start hitting them with it.) When Matt had finished with his exchange, we went and had some lunch. Then we went and poked around J.C. Penney's for a bit. We still had gift certificates there left over from our wedding, and we'd gotten another for Christmas. We wound up spending most of them on a new lamp, which we both really like. (Which is good, because while I liked the look of the old lamp, its bare lightbulbs disturbed Matt, and because of its age, the wiring was starting to disintegrate. When we move, it might well just become the guest bedroom lamp.)

And then came the real pain - furniture. For our wedding (which was almost ten months ago) my grandparents had given us a check earmarked for a new dining room set. At the time, we were too busy to shop. Then when we did pick something out, the set we wanted was out of stock and not expected until August. When September rolled around, we realized that the saleslady had forgotten us. By then, we were planning on moving out of our apartment at the end of February, so we decided to wait. Now that it's February and our new house won't be built until August again... My grandmother is getting impatient. So we found a dining room set that we liked (again) and was told that it's too early to order it for August. But this time we wrote down the exact model of the set, and we'll come back every so often to make sure they haven't forgotten us.

And we looked at living room sets, beds, tables, cabinets, and refrigerators in preparation for the new house. This is going to be one expensive undertaking!

Oh, well, I suppose I've rambled on long enough...

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