Buying a home

So Hubii and I have been trying to buy a house. We are trying to buy it in Platte City. buuuttt.... ugh, I hate buying houses. I should know, I have never bought one and there's a reason for it. How do I know that this exorbitantly priced town home is worth the money I am going to pay for it? I know I should look at comps but the only comp my real estate agent will give me are for the other town homes in this complex. I feel like I am pulling teeth getting comps from her. Sigh. This is majorly stressful. I don't want to be the cause of a housing crisis.
I just got some more comps from my agent. It seems that there are none. How do people justify selling this house at the same price as a year ago if they haven't sold it in a year. grrr....

Just so I am not the worst blogger out there

Hello,
I haven't posted in 3 months now. I have been very lame. I thought I would go back and put up pics that I missed but I can't. I have missed too much. We just have to go on from here. Sorry, the last 3 months will have to remain a mystery for you.
I am at school right now, taking a too long break. I am now a graduate student at the University of Kansas in the Mechanical engineering. Yesterday Hubii and I went to a pancake dinner for Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day or Fat Tuesday. Yummy. Today one of Hubii's classes is cancelled for the all school Ash Wednesday service. School is busy, but I like it.
:)
There, I posted. Now I can be less lame.

It's snowing

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..."
So incase you haven't been following my pictures on facebook I have put some on my blog.
This is what it looks like outside out home today. We haven't cleared our driveway because our car is sick. We think that it has a bad alternator but we will probably only find out on Thursday. Then I will no longer be house bound.

Here is a pic from the carriage ride that we took recently. We went for a tour of old homes of Weston. It was nice to look inside the old homes. Some were remodelled and look all modern. Some tried to stick with designs that were more true to the age when the home was built. For example one home that we visited had a kitchen that had a floor and walls of exposed red brick. It look pretty cool, but kinda cold for the winter. It also had an open hearth that you could just walk into. You could roast a pig in there probably (a small pig maybe a pig let).

Here is a picture of some cookies that the local catholic youth baked as a fundraiser. They were delicious (I suspect that there were some moms and grandmas lending a hand). We picked an assortment of cookies and treats for $5/lb. They were delicious.

And here is the picture of our town all dolled up for the coming of Christ (or seasonal tourists).

This is probably the only Christmas decorations we will do this year. It seems kinda pointless to me to put up a tree if we aren't gonna be home for most of Christmas or on Christmas day. We did decorate it with ornaments that James has collected over the years.


Here is picture we took while we were at Hubii's sister's place in Iowa. Her husband is showing everyone how he practices putting the baby in the car seat and buckling her in (he is practicing with a doll).

At college the Math club had a ginger bread house decorating contest. But they made it with gingerbread trains. And no one actually made a train.
There were three groups of students two of the groups made one entry each, the third group weren't really a group and submitted individual entries.



This group's entry came with a story about ants, human, aliens, and the fourth dimension.

This one collapsed shortly after the picture was taken

A jack of hearts



And the winner is....
Moustach man!

Just so you know this gingerbread is really bad. We hope that everyone is having a good time. It's really cold here (as you can tell from the snow). I will be doing my GRE soon and hope to apply to a couple of Uni's here for grad school. Hopefully I can get it all completed soon.
James will be done with school soon. His last class is today and next week is exam week. Then his break will be done and he can get some house work done ;)
I hope everyone takes this Christmas time to relax (easy for the housewife to say) and reflect on all the great gifts that we have received over this year.

Merry Christmas!!

Biometrics

If you have had any contact with INS or USCIS you will know what that word means. Shame. Shame and long lines. When you get an appointment for biometrics you have to go in and have the finger prints of all your fingers in all possible combinations scanned and put into a government database so that they can identify your body when the zombies attack.
It actually wasn't so bad, the Kansas City location was a lot less busy and the staff and officers were much more friendly than at the office in Atlanta.
But friends, let me tell you, if you think that your drivers license photo was bad you haven't seen a greencard photo. They look like mugshots. I got to look at my photo for my future card and let me tell you it wasn't pretty. First you feel like you are being booked having had your prints taken. Second they don't let you smile. What!!! What's wrong with a smile? Well the problem I hear is that smiles on photographs mess up facial recognition software. Well the jokes on them because my natural state is smiling!!

I haven't had enough pictures of Hubii on here so here's a picture of him after he drove home in the snow.

I feel kinda lucky that 20 minutes from Weston in Leavenworth is a tiny Korean grocery with a small restaurant on the side. I ordered the Jampong. It's not great but it's ok. I really shouldn't order sea food when I live 20 hours from the coast. I didn't order the Jajangmyeon because I was feeling very cold. But if I ever need a fix they have it on the menu. I feel like it's a mini blessing.
Last night I attempted to make Panna Cotta.
I served it on fudge sauce. The yellow lumps are from the gelatin not dissolving well. It was ok, but this was a first attempt so I was just happy that it gelled at all (although I don't think that not gelling was a possibility).
Here is a photo I took of a Walmart near Kansas City:
Why did I take a picture of a Walmart, well because the facade reminded me of another supermarket that was just down the street.
It looked even more a copy where we were because the "Whole Foods" was also in green. Unfortunately it was too far for my bitty mobile phone to snap so this is just off the interwebs. I am gonna go get dessert while Hubii finishes this post.

Wifii has gone to get some Panna Cotta for us to eat, so I need to finish up this post. I've been really busy with end-of-semester work. I gave three exams this week and now I have to grade them. But the semester will be over soon and then we can start the next semester. It is enjoyable to interact with students and learn new things, but this week has been tiring.

Very sore body

This weekend was chock-full of fun activities for me (not so fun/ work related activities for Hubii). At least it started out well. Below is a picture of Hubii with his apple compote stuffed crepes. He loves pancakes, waffles etc so we make them every Saturday (he has been making his own every weekend since graduate school days I think).

Hubii doesn't usually dress up just for crepes though. He had to go to work that Saturday for a parent and prospective student open house for the college. But it was only till 12 so he was home by lunch.
After that he spent the day grading homework and exams :( Hopefully, in future semesters, once he has his lesson plans and exams mostly done, he won't have to work over the weekends.
I had a much more enjoyable weekend. As some of you know I have been playing in the Leavenworth Soccer league this fall. For all this season I was playing with a team that for the first few weeks lost all the games (though not too badly) and for the rest of the games had to forfeit as we were short. Just before the final league they decided that we could be broken up and divided among the other teams. I was given to the team that needed an extra lady. Well we played 3 games this weekend one on Saturday and 2 on Sunday and in the end I was part of the winning team! I was super luck, especially as I had been on a team that was doing so poorly all season.


Hopefully I will play again in the spring. By them I hope to figure out how to dribble the ball.

Little knobbly bones

Last Saturday we went to lunch with a professor who teaches at Hubii's work and the prof's wife and two girls. His wife also teaches at the college but as an adjunct. She is Chinese and found a great dim sum place (well great in that it had variety but not as good as Atlanta, which I guess is not as good as in Asia). But it was yummy!
And for the first time in my life I ate chicken feet. Fried chicken feet in black bean sauce. Not the tastiest dish in the world but a great way to leave nothing to waste. I didn't want to be gauche and take a picture of the feet at the restaurant so here is what it looks like on the menu.


After that we came home to prepare for the trick-or-treaters.We didn't have awesome costumes for the kids we just recycled last years costume and became generic witch and her cat. Unfortunately we started to late and didn't get too many visits. I would say 5-6 groups came by. The upside is that we have waaaayy to much candy left behind!

Fall!

So if I haven't been posting for a while I apologize. I place the blame solely on this book:


I loved this book. I was rapt, I could barely stand to put it down. It was so exciting I felt as if it gave me a heart attack! Why hasn't Scify made a mini series of this already!!!?
I am now reading Paladin of Souls also by Louis McMaster Bujold and set in the same world as the Curse of Chalion. I was so excited to read it I started reading whatever I could on Amazon before the book was delivered to our library.
Converesly, may I tell you what I do not like? 24. I know that people are in love with it but I don't care for it. I saw the first half of season One and it was good. It was exciting and the twists were not too annoying. But Season 2 started out interesting but I was sick of how things never worked out for Jack and Kim kept getting into worse and worse trouble (spoilers ahead). After the bomb blew up it was downhill from there. He couldn't prove that the recording was fake, then the chip was damaged but maybe they can get the data off of it, oh no they can't get the data, then he tries to get the guy who made the fake, Jack finds the guy who agrees to work for him, then the guy stabs the president's wife and escapes... and that is when I stopped watching.
Season 3 was worse than that. In every episode they had some twist, something to make things more annoying and frustrating. First it's about drugs and terror connections, then it's about a kid with weaponized disease, then it's about stopping Jack from breaking Salazar free, then it's not, then his watch breaks.
I like twists but I can get overloaded with constant changes in the direction of the plot. It nauseats me slightly and just when I feel like I am in a groove and can get into the action I have to change gears. No thanks. I find these constant plot changes show a lack of mature writing talent and are just cheap and easy gimmicks to keep people watching.
aaaahhh... well I am glad I got that off of my chest.
We also had a few of Hubii's students over for Soup night. The college tries to build community ties between the profs and the students by having the professors host a dinner for the students at their homes. Three of his students made it and were treated to palak paneer and butter chicken. Thankfully none were too picky and seemed to enjoy my 'exotic' dishes. Let me tell you paneer is expensive: It cost $6 for 12oz of cheese. It seems even more expensive as making paneer at home is reasonably easy and I have almost mastered it myself. But the palak paneer came out pretty well. This despite the fact that I was going easy on the spices to keep it palatable.The picture isn't great as I took it with my mobile phone.



Last night Hubii and I carved a pumpkin. I think that it came out pretty well. You can't really see the pumpkin, just the carving. But i think that the moon came out pretty well. I can't wait for halloween. I hope that kids will come to the house. I fear that we have lost our neighborhood kids to convenient for parents Trunk or Treats. But we will see.