Weird is Good

Poor Minnesota birdie… http://tinyurl.com/57mc5t

Derek and I are now members of the Chestnut Farms meat CSA (community supported agriculture). Basically that means that every month, we pick up ten pounds of assorted locally-grown, grass-fed meats (chicken, pork, and beef - we opted to not have lamb) for $70 a month. We picked up our first share a week ago, and thus far we are pretty impressed. We received:

1) Bacon
2) A whole chicken
3) Four pork chops
4) Two packages (about 1 lb each) of ground beef
5) Top round steak
6) Porterhouse steak (!)

So far we have eaten the bacon and the chicken (which I cooked in the crockpot - I made “Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic”, and it turned out pretty well, although I will probably try a different recipe next time). It’s kind of fun to have random meats that we need to use in a limited amount of time, meaning before we pick up the next batch next month - it makes us cook things we might not normally cook. And it’s nice to be able to support local farmers, and to know that the animals we are eating were treated nicely.

Work has been interesting the past couple of days. On Wednesday evening our fileserver had a very major meltdown. Our IT guy was there from 7 PM until 9 AM Thursday morning, and an outside IT guy was there from 9 AM until…well, I don’t know when he left, because we all got to go home early. I spent about five and a half hours on Thursday getting paid to play on the internet, watch videos on my iPod, and do homework with my coworker/classmate (we are doing a paper and presentation together, due on October 13, so it was a perfect time to work on it). Today things were kind of back up, enough that we could actually work, so I guess that’s good. I couldn’t do my normal work, but I was able to keep busy anyway.

Smell update: we got a Febreze plugin thingie for our bedroom, which has helped more than I thought it would. I can still smell the gross smell if I get close enough to where it’s coming from (there’s a little gap between the baseboard and the wall in one place, which is where the smell is coming from), but at least the whole room doesn’t smell like it anymore.

I’ve started another blog to document a project I am working on for school, if anyone is interested.

Good: We got a really nice used washer and dryer yesterday for $150 for the pair. Yay!

Bad: We think something died in our bedroom wall. Blehhhhh. Whatever it is, we really hope the smell goes away soon.

Apparently our kitty likes to hunt and eat bugs. At least someone is happy about the fact that our new apartment has more bugs than our old one…

Spiders: Mostly dead. Fortunately they are of the daddy longlegs-ish variety, so they don’t freak me out too much. There is one in particular, though, that is so large that even though it’s dead, I’m scared to get rid of it.

Drain flies: Disgusting! One of the downsides of having a “vintage” claw foot tub, I suppose…the drain has all sorts of “vintage” skin cells and hair, which drain flies like to eat and breed in. Bleaggh. I believe I have defeated them, at least for the short term, with several doses of boiling water down the drain. Haven’t seen any for several days now (there used to be at least 5 easily visible at any time in the bathroom). I will probably order some kind of bacterial solution which is supposed to eat all of the nasty gunk in the drain. No WAY am I cleaning it by hand. EDITED TO ADD: Of course IMMEDIATELY after I posted this I went into the bathroom and saw one. Arrrrgh!!!!!

Little ants: Have only seen one or two since we set out the ant traps. Phew! I was kind of freaking out after I saw about 10 of them crawling around on the kitchen floor once.

Big ants: Have only seen 4-5 of them, but I am a little worried. They’d better go away.

Really, the bugs are the only complaint I have so far about this place. And I think we have them mostly under control, so I don’t think they’ll be too much of a problem for us.

Since I blogged last, I…

1) Started classes. This semester is going to be a lot easier than last semester (partly because I’m only taking one class)

2) Enjoyed the Fall-like weather here in New England. It’s nice to not have to use the AC anymore (our bedroom, which is upstairs, gets very warm, so we have a window unit. No central air). However, I am not looking forward to paying for our own heat - heat was included in the rent for our previous apartment. I guess actually we already paid for most of our heat in advance by filling the oil tank a couple weeks ago (almost $600…ouch). Hopefully that will get us most of the way through the winter.

3) Was summonsed for jury duty! It’s November 26. I hope I’m not put on the standby list…I kind of want to go. It can’t be much more boring than going to work.

4) Kind of turned into a morning person. I haven’t slept past about 9 AM in a while. I normally get up at 6:20 AM now, with no problem. We must get more sunlight in our new bedroom or something.

We moved into our new apartment last week, and we’re mostly unpacked - just a few more boxes left. Our kitchen is kind of a mess because we don’t have a whole lot more storage in the kitchen than we did in our old apartment. Fortunately there is a lot more space, so today we ordered the Texas Kitchen Cart from JC Penney which will give us a lot more storage and counter space. Unfortunately, it’s backordered until 11/23/2007. Hopefully it will come sooner than that.

Beauty seems to enjoy our new apartment. She made herself at home quite quickly. It probably helps that all of our stuff already smelled like her. We set up a bird feeder outside our apartment, which she likes to watch. Also, there is a chipmunk who has a hole visible from one of our windows, and he likes to come out and take seeds that have fallen from the bird feeder. Beauty is very interested in him.

Derek and I were fortunately able to find a new apartment on Thursday. And we actually like it better than the apartment we were going to move into, so that’s good. It’s closer to where we need to be (my work and UMass - and it’s close enough that if one of us needed to bike to the bus stop to go to work/school, that would be a possibility), has a big yard where we will be allowed to plant a garden, PLUS a deck (which isn’t built yet but the landlord says he will build), has hardwood floors in the bedrooms, and is in a two-family house instead of a small apartment building. There’s also a huge storage area that we’ll share with the other tenants. The location is a lot better - in the center of a tiny town, instead of on a busy US highway. Rent is the same, and I think the utilities should be less (oil heat instead of electric). Downsides are that the kitchen doesn’t have much more storage or counter space than we have currently - but there is a lot more space in the kitchen, so we will make do. Also, the bathroom is located downstairs while the bedrooms are upstairs, so that’s a little bit inconvenient, but I guess it will be OK. So, two weeks from today, we will be out of here!

We independently answered the questions on the Which Lolcat Are You quiz EXACTLY THE SAME.

We are moving in 2 1/2 weeks…and no longer have somewhere to move. So Derek was kind enough to line up several apartments to look at in the next few days. Some sound very promising, so I am hopeful that something will work out. If not…we’re in trouble :(