Ang's Journal

Two of Alan's older brothers (Jim & Kevin) & their wives (Stephane & Olivia).
La chica, & I honestly can't believe it took this long for her to get it, considering her job.
Doctor Nick & his family.
Our neighbors across the street: Justin & Annie, & their kids, Carver, Willow, & Ava.
Aunt Nancy & Uncle Paul, & possibly cousin Calvin & some of his kids.

So far, everyone is doing all right, but Uncle Paul was in very bad shape for a while due to severe underlying conditions. It's a mix of vaccinated, boosted, & unvaccinated people.

I felt sick earlier this week & took a Abbott BinaxNOW home test, which came out negative. I was almost - almost - disappointed. Omicron isn't anything to covet, but compared to Delta, it does seem like the kinder, gentler COVID. And it feels nearly inevitable that everyone will catch some variant, sooner or later. Why not get a mild one & then have the super-immunity granted by Moderna/Moderna/Moderna/infection?

One month in. We've looked at nearly 30 houses, bid on two. We were the third-strongest bid on the first one, second-strongest bid on the second. Statistically speaking, we're gonna win the next one, amirite??

Part of the whole experience has been learning how to lower our standards. We started with a list of things that were MUST-HAVES:

• 2 bathrooms
  
• fireplace
  
• basement
  
• good kitchen
  
• A/C
  
• garage
  
• big fenced backyard

.... & we thought we were being flexible when we said stuff like "Well, I guess a fence-ABLE yard would be okay...." HAHAHAH THE DENVER REAL ESTATE MARKET MOCKS OUR NAIVETE.

So here's a Facebook exchange between me & hotpantsgalore today:

HPG: what time are you going to be home friday?
HPG: That house isn't doing showings till Fri.
Me: Maybe by 2 PM?
Me: Make the appointment later than that just to be safe.
HPG: ok
HPG: not too much later
HPG: i'm gonna set up a sniper stand & shoot everyone else who comes to look at it after us
Me: Solid plan. All that exposed brick!
Me: That gorgeous kitchen!
HPG: I know! But it's only a 2/1
Me: We can deal with that. You may have to learn how to pee in the yard. Shadeaux can teach you.
HPG: NOOOOOOOO!
Me: Not even for exposed brick?

So my dishwasher died a few days ago. It died in a very tricksy fashion - it would turn on & make lots of dishwashing sounds, but no water would ever enter the machine & obviously no actual washing occurred. It took me a couple of days to convince the landlord that, yes, I looked in the manual, & no, I don't think I've got the settings wrong. Anyway, it's a weird size (read: small) of dishwasher, so the landlord had to special-order it, & I won't have a dishwasher until May 21st at the earliest. Curses.

So over the past couple of days, I've had lots of vegetables spoiling in my fridge. Which is annoying, because I usually buy stuff for a specific recipe. When the collard greens go bad unexpectedly, one cannot prepare a smoke salmon & collard greens scramble. I turned down the thermostat in the fridge incrementally over a couple of days, but the fridge didn't feel cold, & things kept spoiling. The freezer stayed cold though. Another call to the landlord - this time, she didn't argue with me, she just ordered a new fridge. Which will arrive tomorrow. I loaded everything freezable into the freezer & threw out a ton of stuff. CURSES.

My Bobo Bro moved into his new downtown condo over the weekend & his move went incredibly smoothly - until he started looking around for a cable jack to have internet turned on (a big deal, since he works from home & needs internet access). No ... cable jack? Anywhere in the condo? After a lot of calls to the former owner & the condo association, he learned that there is a cable - but it got buried in the wall during a recent insulation project. Why? Because reasons. Anyway, he will not have internet access this week. So his home office has been relocated to my kitchen table, & I'm working from home in the back bedroom while he's working from home out there. It's actually been very nice to have someone to talk to during the day.

hotpantsgalore should arrive home today!

Sleep: lovely. 11 PM-7:30 AM. Finally, finally, FINALLY feeling adjusted to DST. Maybe.

Breakfast: We tried a new restaurant today, the Sassafras American Eatery. It had a New Orleans theme to both the decor & the menu. I had their daily special: braised pork shoulder, two poached eggs, fried potatoes, & pico de gallo. I also had a cup of black coffee, which sadly was not chicory coffee. It was a delicious meal, reasonably priced, & the restaurant featured no waiting & vey gracious service. A great new find for breakfast.

I put another Wildtree meal in the slow cooker: Beef Bourguignon (made with bone broth, not red wine).

Lunch: went to Braun Taphaus & had the ahi tuna salad with avocado, mango, cucumber, & tons of greens, with a lime-cilantro dressing. So good.

hotpantsgalore & I stopped at Sprouts while out & about today.

Snack: Monkey Salad (raw cashews, coconut flakes, banana). HPG was eating sweet treats from Rheinlander Bakery & I felt left out.


No, it's not made from real monkeys. It's a salad a monkey would eat.

Dinner: a tiny serving of the beef bourguignon. Best Wildtree dish yet!

Sleep: bad. I read a really upsetting email from my boss right before I started to get ready for bed. I didn't follow my pre-bedtime routine; instead, I watched tons of The Walking Dead with hotpantsgalore & didn't hit the sack until 11:30 PM. Bad sleep, cranky morning, very stressed.

Breakfast: tuna cake, slice of sweet potato quiche, half an avocado, blueberries, black Constant Comment tea.

Lunch: acorn squash & lacinto kale topped with HPG's Texas red chili & avocado chunks, & kombucha. Chili makes everything better. I love my girlfriend for making me Whole30-compliant chili.

Dinner: fridge cleanout. Baby asparagus with lemon & mayo, some olives, another serving of the short ribs/veggies dish.

Snack: apple pie Larabar.

*blows dust off of LJ*

Wow, I haven't been here in a while. Which is a shame, really. I like having a journal. But like so many, I have been sucked into the short format version of journaling known as Facebook. It's much easier to come up with one or two sentences (especially when I can just type them in on my phone) than it is to write a full post.

Soooo.... my last post was on June 4th. Since then, I have spent 3 months on a field assignment in Conroe, Texas. We are repairing a landfill at a Superfund site that was leaking. By my standards, this has been a GREAT field assignment - Conroe is close enough to home that I've been staying at home, yet I'm getting overtime. And since we're repairing the landfill, we're not actually in contact with any of the contaminated material, so we haven't had to wear too much safety gear. This is a very nice thing when working outside, in Texas, in July & August.

(I mean, we're still wearing long-sleeved shirts, hard hats, steel-toed boots, & gloves, but at least we're not wearing respirators or Tyvek.)

It has been a pretty boring summer. hotpantsgalore sold peaches in Austin for most of the weekends, so we didn't see much of each other - until late August, when we took at a ten-day trip to the Pacific Northwest. Then we visited Seattle & Portland, & Shay got to meet a lot of my family on my mother's side. We stopped by Crater Lake & visited Fort Rock. It was a superb trip - very fun, very relaxing, & it was great to catch up with my family. They all loved HPG, like there was any doubt about that.

Health has been.... not bad, but not great. I have put on a lot of weight since doing the triathlon in February, & this is because I am getting almost no exercise. No excuses, just pure laziness. In the last few weeks, my right shoulder has flared up something awful & I have an appointment next week with an orthopedist to weld it back together (or whatever they're going to propose to fix it).

I am still really enjoying living in Houston. Our neighbors & neighborhood are simply fantastic. The more I learn about our neighborhood, the more fun things I find to do within walking distance of the house. I have also become very involved with my church, & I will be officially joining the church next month. It's WEIRD to think about being a member of a Baptist church, but I love Covenant & I want to be eligible to be a deacon or a council member, so I'm going to join. In the meantime, I am on the Facilities Committee, I lead Bible study classes, & I'm going to be the lay worship leader during Advent. I've also been volunteering with an outreach program to homeless GLBT teens, which is heartwarming/heartbreaking.

This field project (originally billed as 4-6 weeks, now completing our 12th week on the job) SHOULD be wrapped up this Tuesday. We are working through the weekend to make that happen (boo hiss). Wednesday & Thursday are booked with doctor's appointments that have been put off all summer, & then Friday-Sunday HPG & I will be in Austin for the ACL Music Festival. The lineup is incredible: Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Black Keys, Florence + The Machine, Weezer, Rufus Wainwright, The Shins, & about 2 million other bands. After that, I will finally be back in the office - I wonder if they gave someone else my desk?

I just tweeted “Still haven't made any #resolutions for 2011. This is what is wrong with my life these days - no direction.”

Overlooking the obvious calendrical typo (etcet pointed it out in approximately 45 seconds), this is the biggest problem I’ve got right now. I am underutilized at work – but not particularly worried about it (whether or not that’s wise is another post altogether). I am doing a terrible job of preparing for next month’s triathlon in Corpus Christi. I am not cooking very frequently. I am not doing much volunteer work. I’m not even reading much new material.

A lot of the year has been consumed by money worries – not without reason, I may add. I am my family’s single income earner (outside of the seasonal peach bonanza) & have been for over three years. So it is with cause that I worried about every cent during 2011. This penny-pinching mentality definitely contributed to me pulling in my horns a bit – it’s not impossible to be outgoing, charitable, artistic, well-read, &/or athletic without spending money, but it is harder.

I have also developed a terrible habit of living through hotpantsgalore. She's working towards her graduate degree... & somehow that massive goal is my goal? I take pride in her accomplishments? While it's true that I am helping her make it through grad school (see earlier, "my family's single income earner"), this does not mean that her accomplishments are mine to claim. And yet I feel that I have submerged any desires of my own beneath the generalized idea of "just keep everything together until June 2013, when we will become a two-income family again". But that's no way to live - especially not for five years (2008-2013).

I think that the problem is a lack of long-term goals. Where do I want to be in five years? Ten years? I have said repeatedly over the last few years that I threw away my crystal ball because trying to predict where my life was going was impossible. Perhaps this was a poor decision. When I stopped trying to predict, did I also stop trying to influence or even control where my own life is going? If I've abdicated that responsibility, should I be surprised that I am adrift?

hotpantsgalore started a peach stand last weekend. She bought a tent shelter, a folding table, a cooler (for drinks for sale), some signs ("FREDERICKSBURG PEACHES"), & 5 half-bushels of peaches. Then she found a place in front of an out of business Chuck E. Cheese & started selling. 20 half-bushel boxes & 2 days later, she had paid off her initial investment, made a few hundred bucks, & gotten bitten by the Peach Bug.

Now she's waking up early (WHAT?), negotiating deals directly with the peach orchards, hiring former classmates, & opening up one, maybe two new stands for this weekend. My fiance now has scheduled to purchase 50 half-bushels of peaches for the weekend. At about 65 peaches per half-bushel box, that's over 3,000 peaches.

I, on the other hand, have been banished to East Texas, where the high temperature today hit 106 degrees F. Working on a former creosote treatment pit, basking in the mothball smell of naphthalene, I caught myself thinking a few times, Man, a fresh peach sure would taste great right now....

In other news, I had chicken-fried steak for dinner & it was not entirely awful.