well, if we had gotten through this whole house-buying thing without a hitch i might have been really nervous to move in. so i suppose it is good that we've just experienced the hitch. a big hole in our front yard. a coffin-sized hole covered in shiny reflective metal. no more happy grass, no more pollyana perfection, just a big ol' hole and an industrial reflecting pool on top of it.
tracy and i were both pretty upset about it at first (we heard about "the crater," which it evidently was before the dirt was dragged away, from mari and our neighbors and james before we saw it for ourselves), but after our visit yesterday we're feeling a bit better. most importantly, we finally met randy voller, the developer of chatham forest and (promising) (even liberal?) candidate for pittsboro mayor. he lives across the street from us, we learned, and doesn't want to stare at that thing either. so, he assures us, we will do something.
we also talked with tracy's father, who is an amazing designer with a great vision for landscaping. he is out to visit today, in fact, and will undoubtedly come home with several ideas about how to make this be ok. probably if this had all not been done six days from closing, we wouldn't have minded so much! it's not that much worse than the green tv box, i suppose - and we have more clout to make this one look better. welcome to homeownership! hey, but isn't the neighborhood lovely in the fall? :)
our visit to the pittsboro street fair also made everything look a bit brighter. it's an annual downtown festival with food, local music, local nonprofit and political and religious organizations (never before have i been offered so many bottles of water that say "God loves you" on them!). wish we had pictures of that. it was fantastic. what an amazing town we are moving to. more racial diversity crammed onto pittsboro's small downtown streets than i have seen in years. we registered to vote, made friends with the general manager of the new food co-op, met a few neighbors ("oh good. now there's three of us." "three what?" "three couples in town without children."), and learned how to use a marshmallow shooter (yup). it was a tremendously beautiful day. everyone was tremendously friendly. so despite the hole in our yard it made me tremendously excited to MOVE IN!
the countdown is on. pending further hitches (hope hope!) we become official pittsboro residents in FOUR DAYS. woohoo!
tracy and i went up to asheville this weekend. it was time for the trip for many reasons: to spend treasured time with much-missed family, the annual brewgrass festival, short visit with friends lauren & jeremy, driving around in my dad's new saab (note the gas prices, can you see them?), a trip to the state-sponsored farmers market (an annual tradition during my childhood), and quick self-crafted bloody marys at the french bar (still the french bar, dammit) just like tracy and i used to have when we first started dating. it was a wonderful induction of fall. mostly, i want to share two things from the weekend (quality time in mom's and dad's respective living rooms cannot, i'm afraid, be cyber-shared): pictures that i hope will convey the vibrancy of the farmers market, and a few recipes i stole from my mom (let the recipe sharing begin). first, then, fall's favorite: apple crisp (8 servings, unless you have a sweet tooth. in that case, maybe 4). ingredients: 4-5 sliced apples (preferably from henderson county) 1 tsp. cinnamon 1 tsp. salt 1 c. flour 1 c. sugar 1/3 c. margarine (i use butter) place the apples in a buttered baking dish (which, if you're local and lucky, you might be able to borrow from rebecca). mix the other ingredients and spoon them on top of the apples. bake at 375 for 40 minutes or until golden brown on top. this recipe has the added advantages of making your house at least a degree warmer (if it's as small as ours) and smell really cozy. next? spinach cheese soup (i haven't made this yet). ingredients: oil 1 clove garlic salt 6 c. scalded milk 2 c. grated cheddar 2 c. grated swiss 3/4 chopped onion 6 c. vegetable broth (actually it calls for chicken) 2 c. fine egg noodles (huh?) 2 pkg. chopped spinach paprika sautee garlic and onions. add broth and boil. add salt and noodles, and cook them until they are "tender but firm." add scalded milk and cheese. heat until melted, but do not boil. yum, cozy.
finally, spinach quiche (i wouldn't recommend putting habaneros in this, even though they are lovely). first, the filling: 1/4 tsp. salt 1/8 tsp. nutmet 1 tbs. melted butter 1 1/2 c. light cream 3 eggs (beat that all together with a whisk) then, a pie shell (bought or, if you're brave, homemade) 1/2 c. chopped onion 1 tbs. parsley 1/2 c. swiss cheese 2 lb. chopped, cooked, drained spinach (my mom used arugula, which was excellent. you can also use broccoli). mix spinach and chopped onion in the pie shell. pour over the filling top with grated cheese and parsley bake at 375 for 45 minutes or until puffed and golden.
that oughta get us started. good thing i put these up on the blog because i surely would have lost them in the move. now on to the fun stuff...
tracy and ginger checking out the beautiful habanero peppers at the farmers market. and some colorful corn.
some of the choices in the wnc farmers market warehouse.
i just realize this post is all about food. you can pretend it was written by tracy. love you, darling.
Hi there. I'm being forced to blog tonight. Not that I don't want to. In fact this whole blog thing was my idea in the first place. See my first attempt That clearly predates the 'trulie' blog. Though only two entries, it was still a try. I can't really believe that I'm on a blog called "trulie," which, for the dense out there, (none of my friends of course) is an amalgam of Tracy and Julie, in much the same vein as "benifer."
Hey look at our new Fridge and Range! $250 total for both offcraigslist. Granted we offered $50 to the seller to hold them until Nov. 4th, when we close on our house!
To the two or three people out there who haven't discoveredcraigslist, get on it y'all. It is such a great resource. NOT ONLY did we find this deal on the appliances, but we found a renter for the house we're renting. A pediatric nurse who is going to UNC to become a P.A.. You can also find a job, a place to stay, an even trade, or a little idle entertainment. Really, be careful you can lose entire nights exploring this site. The bartering section is a hoot.
So that's an entry, huh? I hope Julie is quite satisfied. When I cook something cool, I will blog about that. Or when I taste a great wine. So far I'm only drinking the remains of bottles I've taken out to market, and cooking sporadically. I did make my first potato salad: potatoes, one small onion, one red pepper (from a house we looked at whose garden had been abandoned), mayo, mustard, salt, pepper, done.
the girl i thought was so great and who agreed to take over our lease on the purefoy house has suddenly decided she must move to honolulu. i'm happy for her random decision, but really? it's a drag. if you know anyone who would enjoy living in a very small but extremely cute house in chapel hill, let me know. soon. where is october going?
more pictures. they're the fun part, anyway. it's a good thing our cats are this cute, because they're being very very bad lately. tracy and i definitely stayed up until 2am this morning waiting for our dear leo to return. we searched with flashlights. we put turkey on the front steps. we whistled (he usually comes, no kidding) and sang and even did our kitty-treat dance (yep). as usual, he returned when he was ready, nearly 3 hours after cairo-the-less-intelligent first meowed at the front door. very little sleep, due to these boys. so as i said, good thing they are cute.
tracy calls this one the alien beacon. cairo wanted to be taller, evidently, or perhaps needed to in order to communicate clearly with his alien comrades. really these are tracy's pictures but he refuses to allow his first post to be of his cats. too unmanly? c'mon. i'll get him here yet.
happy early trick or treating. we had a great pumpkin-carving party at anna's last night (tho i think the carving was perhaps overshadowed by dinner - anna's fiber-full black bean soup & famous apple pie).
the angry one, front left, is tracy's. anna's scarface is on the right. we all agreed joe's was the scariest, because it might eat your foot on your way up the stairs. my cat is in the middle, will require some work (who wants a friendly kitty for halloween?). rebecca's geometric and actually quite symmetrical face, on the right. eek, a scary crew!
yesterday we attended the inspection for "our" house. actually, we missed 2/3 of it because we spent more than two hours (two hours?!) in a spooky office with an increasingly frenzied mortgage broker (to whom, i should say, we are deeply indebted, tho not literally, thank goodness). mere mention of the word "wachovia," and he nearly jumped out of his chair. no banking with them and applying for a mortgage at the same time! who knew? i think we understand now why people say this house-buying stuff is stressful. we submitted a loan application, which is good, but had to move back the closing from oct. 31st to nov. 4th, bleh. can we still be the halloween house?
14 cynthia is not scary, yay. built in 2000, it's as perfect as it should be. "sturdy," our inspector says, and well-built all around. whew. there's a bit of rot on one porch column, caused by gutters that are both clogged and slanted. eh? and a bunch of other smaller things that i should remember but can't. we'll start yet another negotiating process with the seller on those things today. yikes!
it was fun to be back in the house, though. we met the seller and his brother in law and, despite about.com's advice not to become friends with your seller, i feel sort of attached to them both. likely the feeling is not mutual, as we did little more than shake their hands, so we're probably safe.
we also met our new neighbors! crystal and jan, who, it turns out, are the same folks we saw jogging through pituresque chatham forest on our first driving tour through the neighborhood, and the same again as the young couple that we saw at the general store cafe our first saturday night in town. same, too, as jen & james' favorite hairdresser and her husband, and the "young couple" in chatham forest who bought their first house through mari. small world (small town). they seem quite creative and they have two cats, so i like them already.
that's the update. i'm still working on tracy, to get him to post here. i think he's upset about that picture i posted (sorry). c'mon, c'mon...
rowing on university lake ok, i'm having trouble linking to pictures online. i can't seem to make this one disappear. really, my intention was not to post pictures of myself so that i would have a greater presence on the web. and i used to think i was pretty smart when it came to computers. clearly, my early-earned commodore 64 knowledge is obsolete. i am going to have to ask for help. tracy? in any case, this is a silly picture of a lovely afternoon that tracy and i spent rowing on university lake. well, tracy rowed; i sat gracefully under a parasol. we were preparing for suburbanite life. alright, back to work.
now that we've been cut off from the luxury of institutionally-provided (unc) webspace, we've decided to experiment with blogger, in hopes of creating a useful space where we can share updates & pictures with everyone we love! here are a few pictures of the newest change in our life: OUR FIRST HOUSE! 14 cynthia lane, in pittsboro, nc.
and a few links to the new town we will call home... chatham forest, the development the house is in. i know, a development. but it's actually a great one. really. we will be the coolest suburban 20somethings ever. pittsboro, the "micropolis" we will call home! chatham marketplace, the fledgling new local foods coop down the road hiddencoast, the website of mari, our realtor and great friend!
that's it for now...please enjoy, and post a reply...and we'll see how this experiment goes!
