All style, no sub....

Well, hope everybody enjoys the new blog-look!  Spring is fully sprung 'round here and I'd thought I'd share the love.  Also I'd like to point out the new "follow by email" gadget to the right ------>
Can't say I've tried it (seems weird to "follow" one's own blog) but I'm hoping it simplifies things for those of you who are interested.  Also, I've heard from a little birdie (*cough* sister *sniff*) that it's hard to leave comments after posts.  All I can say is that I have enabled the anonymous commenting option, so folks should be able to leave comments without having to sign up for anything.  That being said, I'm sure that blogger (the free program I'm using to do this) would prefer that you have some sort of account and probably asks you to sign in by some method - just keep looking for that anonymous comment option/button, realizing it won't be the first option that is presented.  Beyond that, I'm afraid I'm not much help b/c I'm pretty sure that blogger "looks" slightly different depending on which web browser you're using.


Business aside, there are a few things going on (har-dee-har-har):


1.  Hubby got a job offer!!!  So I'm not the only one who thinks he's brilliant, hard-working, honest as the day is long and has a cute tush.  Well, I might be the only one who thinks that last part, but whatever.  Of course we're both excited, but not surprisingly the offer wasn't for the income he had hoped....thus begins salary negotiations.  Salary negotiation is such a foreign concept for us coming from academia that we didn't remember that he's supposed to counter-offer at first!  He did call them back with a counter just this past Friday, so we'll see what they say.  He's being modest about his experience and conservative due to the economy, so I have high hopes the company will agree to the counter offer.  I also think he should have pushed for more, but I'm not the one doing the negotiation (and I do have all the wifey bias of thinking he's worth more than his weight in gold.....I mean, c'mon!!  The man does dishes so I can work on my physics homework then helps me with the algebra when I get stuck!  Who wouldn't want him!??!?)


2.  Physics/Hell is drawing to a close! But the pressure is on.  So I kind of dropped the ball on my third exam....as in, like, left my brain somewhere somewhere under the desk at home.   *sigh*  I can over-analyze the situation and why I did poorly all I want, but what it comes down to is that all that's left is cumulative final worth 36% of my grade.  So from now until May 12th, it's one last push to conquer my math and motivation demons.  I'm sure you'll hear more about this :-)


3.  Working on pre-qualification for a mortgage....happily there are still specialized first-time home buyer options out there.  Once we have the pre-qual in hand, it'll be coordinating with an agent to check out as many houses in B'Burg as we can in one day.  We want to minimize the trips with gas being so frickin' expensive.  Pre-qual should be figured out early this week, so we might be looking at houses as early as this Friday.  I wish I could say I'm thrilled to be buying our first home but....well, I honestly feel backed into it by the lack of rental options, and I'm totally dreading all the paperwork and surprise expenses and obnoxious owners who change their minds 20 times and....you get the idea.  Being an adult and realizing the implications of these big decisions sucks the excitement out of it for me.


Don't worry, I still get excited about some stuff.  Stuff like free cookies at a seminar, and new episodes of "Glee".  And I definitely get excited when nature decides to throw a little surprise into the mindless task of lawn-mowing:

     Morels, baby!!  For the first time the five years of renting in the same house, we've had a bumper crop of morels - all over the yard!  These things are about $25 per pound at the foof-stores in Charlottesville.  Hubby and I briefly considered selling our crop, but that passed pretty quickly :-)  First dish I made was a chicken scaloppine with a sautéed morel-vermouth-tarragon-cream sauce. (Random side note - spellcheck just blew my mind and corrected my phonic butchering of scaloppine....my spellcheck speaks Italian.  Who knew?)  Anyway, with lots left over we decided to dry the remaining morels.  Boy was that depressing!   Know what two pounds of fresh morels looks like dried??  A handful of bad-looking prunes is what.  We have one  2/3 full ziploc baggie in the freezer (extra precaution) for all our dried morels.  NOT that I'm complaining, but it was a bit of a surprise to realize how much of a morel is made up of, well, just water.  Anyway, I'm happily soliciting any morel recipe suggestions from you guys - feel free to share!


Well, it's quite past my bedtime now.  I shouldn't start the week sleep deprived, but it's hard to let relaxing Sundays go :-)  Hope everyone had a lovely weekend!


ps- furries are all great.  Dax is a fattie and not getting ridden enough, but otherwise fine.